Plato, Poetry, and the Lyric Nine

Chapter 3 focuses on Plato’s attitude towards the lyric poets and on the diversity with which certain lyric extracts are incorporated in his dialogues. Lyric poets are portrayed in Plato as authorities on ethical matters, lyric passages are integrated in philosophical arguments as pieces of eternal wisdom, and gnomic utterances from several lyric poems are re-contextualized in a number of passages in the Platonic dialogues. This method attests to the atemporal poetics and the broad applicability of lyric. The evidence provided in the Platonic dialogues allows us to conclude not only that the lyric poets were well recognized by mid-fourth century BC but also that a number of their poems were still performed during Plato’s time or were famous enough to be recalled in his work.