Prof. Hallvard Fossheim (University of Bergen), "Why Saïs Matters: Plato on the Past"

Plato is generally taken to present Egyptians as further from human and political ideals than were his contemporary Greeks. Egypt, specifically Saïs, is not denigrated by Plato in the Timaeus, however. On the contrary, the Egyptians are treated as in important respects closer to the dialogue’s ideal than are the contemporaneous Greeks, in that they uphold a living relation to and evaluation of the past which the Greeks have all but lost. After establishing how the dialogue’s opening functions as a signpost highlighting the importance of the past, I explain the significance of the Apatouria as the framework for the retelling of Solon’s story to Critias. I then establish how Saïs is set up as a mirror image of Athens, before exploring the significance of this relation in terms of time and history. The upshot is that Saïs should in important cultural respects be seen as a half-way house between contemporary Athens and the true potential of Athens. I end with some comments on what might have been Plato’s cultural ambition in offering the Timaeus-Critias construct as such a historically comparative framework.