But this is certainly why those ancient theologians, Homer, Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras, and also he himself about whom we are speaking at present, Plato, and many other divine mouthpieces of the true wisdom of the muses communicated that complex knowledge of all of philosophy through certain myths and symbols, as well as through concealing and disguising words (involucra and integumenta), and it is as though they barricaded their meaning with certain cancelli (or church screens), lest the religious mysteries of the Eleusinian deities become profaned, and lest they were to throw pearls to swine, as one is wont to say. For what the Pythagorean Lysis writes in his letter to Hipparchus is most true: “One who would intermingle divine speeches and thoughts with corrupt and obscene disturbances, acts in a contrary manner no less than one who pours out the most pure water into a muddy well; in disturbing the mud he contaminates the purity of the water.”9
These quattrocento praises of Plato’s writing refer to ancient comparisons between Plato’s and Homer’s abilities to tell readers that both ancient Greeks are capable of speaking from the perspective of the gods. Indeed, these comparisons from antiquity do nothing more than turn Plato’s own judgment on its head regarding the poet’s ability for divine prosopopoeia, that is, for speaking in the person of the Olympian gods. This is why Plato’s ingenium is said to be their mouthpiece, like the Delphic oracle. Poliziano’s metaphors from religious architecture reinforce this interpretation of Plato. A lexical or grammatical interpretation of Plato’s text will always remain at the threshold, Poliziano reasons, while figurative readings enter into the edifice but also establish boundaries, rood or chancel screens (cancelli), protecting the philosophical or even anagogical meaning of the dialogues (the Platonic adytum and altar, so to speak).10 But, as Poliziano’s metaphors imply, everyone knows that oracles do not speak clearly; they require interpreters. Or if one wishes to transpose the metaphor into Christian terms, as Poliziano himself does, intercessors or priests are required to serve as mediators with the divine.
Very early on in Plato’s reception in the quattrocento, Latin humanists needed to address why, despite Plato’s stylistic merits, so many of his interpreters debated his meaning. As we saw, one strategy was to turn any confusion into a positive judgment on his Homeric style, his divine ingenium, his oracular nature, or (as Poliziano mentioned) his Pythagorean wisdom. Yet not everyone was so easily convinced. Antonio Cassarino, for instance, who also translated the Republic into Latin, feared that few would appreciate Plato’s style, since it is pleasing neither to humanists educated in the Latin eloquence of Cicero and Livy nor to scholastic philosophers accustomed to the clear precision and brevity of Aristotelian terminology.11 The humanists not only had ancient examples of praise of Plato’s eloquence, they also had ancient precedents that judged his style to be confused. The most common of these would have been Augustine. In the De civitate Dei, after stating that Plato joined Socratic practical philosophy with Pythagorean theoretical philosophy, Augustine writes that Plato’s confused use of dialogic personae conceals his true doctrines: “For since Plato aspired to preserve the most notorious practice of hiding his knowledge and opinions of his master Socrates, whom he makes an interlocutor in his books, and because this Socratic practice pleased Plato, the fact remains that it is not easy also to uncover Plato’s own doctrines on important matters.”12 Augustine’s response to Plato’s style is essentially to characterize it as esoteric—although this intentional concealment does not have the same positive connotations as are seen in Poliziano’s preface. Augustine famously praises Plato’s preeminence over other pagan philosophers, and claims that among all philosophers the Platonists are the closest to Christianity. Yet Plato’s confused esoteric style is also exceptionally dangerous insofar as it became a model for later Platonists’ esoteric strategies. Platonic verisimilitude, Augustine writes, might resemble truth, but it is not the same thing as truth. In fact, Augustine thinks that because of their confused and esoteric doctrines, which often resemble Christianity, the Platonists, hiding their true opinion, can deceive and lead their readers astray from Christianity.
No one shaped Plato’s reception in the Latin West more than Augustine, but perhaps the strongest accusations against Plato’s confused style in the quattrocento came from the Greeks. The De differentis of Georgius Gemistus Pletho (c. 1355–1454) raised the stakes in the Latin West by sending the first volley in a series of exchanges, commonly known as the Plato-Aristotle controversies, that were largely contested between Greek scholars and émigrés.13 There is no need to step into the fray to study the Byzantine origins of these debates or to survey the question as a whole, but I do wish to discuss briefly the exchanges from the second generation of the controversy, between George of Trebizond (1395–1472/3) and Cardinal Bessarion (1403–72), particularly because Ficino was aware of them, and it was George who, despite translating Plato’s Parmenides and Laws, waged the Greek war on Plato on a Latin front.14 Drawing on his native knowledge of Greek, his translations of Plato, and his studies of rhetoric and Aristotelian philosophy, George critiqued Plato in his Comparatio Platonis et Aristotelis (1458), among other reasons, for being an inferior philosopher to Aristotle (in the fields of rhetoric, dialectic, logic, natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics), for being incompatible with Christianity, for being a hotbed of heresies and vices, and for having a confused style. George largely dismisses Plato’s dialogic form, claiming that the argumentative method of Platonic dialectic is far coarser (rudis) than Aristotle’s demonstrations and syllogistics. Addressing the question why Plato is famous for his style, George asks, “But where did Plato teach on rhetorical invention? Where did he communicate lessons on eloquence? Where on poetics? For this subject also concerns greatly what he says, did this scholar of myths teach anything about his own vigilance and expertise? But Aristotle opened the fonts of poetics and disclosed the rivers of oratory.”15 Similarly, if one studies and imitates Plato’s prose, George believes, one realizes that Plato’s elevated and sublime style is nothing more than a confusion of symbols and enigmas.16 In comparing Plato to Aristotle, George in effect presents a dogmatic Plato who is inferior in rank to the dogmatisms of Aristotle and Christianity. In sum, George wrote that Plato’s dialogues were poor teachers of style and philosophy, as well as being unorthodox or heretical works.
Bessarion, as everyone knows, responded. First writing the In calumniatorem Platonis in Greek and later composing and circulating the work with the help of Niccolò Perotti’s (1429–80) Latin, he drew on a much larger corpus of Neoplatonic texts to come to Plato’s aid. The broad strokes of Bessarion’s response to George are to present a dogmatic Plato who, at the bedrock of his argument, is largely a Pythagorean who does not divulge all matters pertaining to the divine to the public. We have seen how Poliziano later adopts a similar strategy, but Bessarion goes much further. In the second chapter of In calumniatorem Platonis, responding to the charge that because of his enigmatic style Plato does not write clear teachings in the manner of Aristotle, Bessarion, like Poliziano, quotes the famous pseudepigraphic letter attributed to the Pythagorean Lysis and written to a certain Hipparchus, who was condemned for having revealed the master’s teachings to noninitiates.17 Bessarion concludes his comparison of Plato with the Pythagorean motivations in the letter: “This mos Pythagoricus was guarded until Plato’s time, and through all of the successors of his school. Plato also always protected this very truth itself most diligently. For Plato taught neither with books, but orally, nor about those matters, which he had taught, did he leave behind books. If he wrote something it is Socrates not Plato himself who speaks. Besides about divine matters he briefly transmits implicit and obscure teachings, which are not easily understood by reading.”18 To support his claims, Bessarion then appeals to Plato’s famous (or infamous) supposed Second Letter to confirm this interpretation of Plato’s oral teachings. Thus, the dialogic role of Socrates only comes into play for Bessarion as a cover to hide Plato’s own unwritten Pythagorean doctrines. In arguing in this manner, Bessarion proleptically stole his adversary’s weapon, that is, the accusation that Plato’s writings were unclear or