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Library Plato

Letter VII (to the relatives and friends of Dion) — Plato

Traditional attribution

Letter VII (to the relatives and friends of Dion)

Ἐπιστολή Ζ

Busto de Platón (Museos Capitolinos, MC 1377)
byPlato

Written after Dion's assassination (354 BC), it is a long apologia: Plato recounts his youthful disillusion with Athenian politics under the Thirty and after Socrates' condemnation, his conviction that evils will not cease until philosophers rule, and his three journeys to Sicily. It includes a philosophical digression on the five degrees of knowledge and the claim that the highest things cannot be put in writing but are kindled in the soul like a light after long companionship (341c-d).

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Editions and translations · 10

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Authorship note

Disputed. It is the most debated text of the corpus. Many specialists accept it as authentic and as the main autobiographical source on Plato; others, with weighty arguments (Burnyeat and Frede, 2015), regard it as a very early forgery, perhaps from within the Academy itself.

Editions and translations

Editions in your language first, without hiding the others. Each with its cover and its store.

English

  • Plato's Letters: The Political Challenges of the Philosophic Life

    Cornell University Press, 2023

    ISBN 9781501772894

  • Plato: Complete Works — Plato

    Plato: Complete Works

    Hackett, 1997

    Translation: varios (ed. John M. Cooper y D. S. Hutchinson)

    ISBN 0872203492

    Volumen único con todo el corpus, incluidos dudosos, espurios y epigramas

  • Plato IX: Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Epistles — Plato

    Plato IX: Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Epistles

    Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 1981

    Translation: R. G. Bury

    ISBN 9780674992573

    Loeb Classical Library 234, bilingüe (1.ª ed. 1929; reimpresión)

  • Phaedrus and The Seventh and Eighth Letters — Plato

    Phaedrus and The Seventh and Eighth Letters

    Penguin Classics, 1973

    Translation: Walter Hamilton

    ISBN 9780140442755

  • The Epistles

    Henry G. Bohn (Londres), 1855

    Translation: George Burges

    The Works of Plato, Bohn's Classical Library, vol. 4; traducción de dominio público

Español

  • Cartas

    Medina y Navarro (Madrid), 1872

    Translation: Patricio de Azcárate

    Obras completas de Platón, tomo 11; traducción de dominio público

  • Diálogos VII: Dudosos, apócrifos, cartas

    Gredos, 1992

    ISBN 9788424914783

    Biblioteca Clásica Gredos 162; trad. de Juan Zaragoza (dudosos y cartas) y Pilar Gómez Cardó (apócrifos)

  • Protágoras. Gorgias. Carta séptima

    Alianza Editorial, 1998

    ISBN 9788420636542

  • Cartas

    Akal, 2006

    ISBN 9788446001768

  • Carta VII — Plato

    Carta VII

    Cátedra, 2014

    ISBN 9788437632537

Other works by Plato

Sources

  • Burnyeat, Myles y Frede, Michael, The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter, ed. Dominic Scott, Oxford University Press, 2015.

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