Talk:Critias (dialogue)

Untitled
Where is the oldest preserved copy of this title?

Could you provide link to good quality scan/picture of it?

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 13:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

A comma between a subject and a predicate
Athens in those days, was very different. The correct way is either to remove the comma, or add a second one - after "Athens". Even though I'm generally allergic to any commas between a subject and a predicate, I've gone for the latter here as it sounds more decent.--Adûnâi (talk) 02:44, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

The controversy about which Critias it is.
The article states that a group of scholars that argue "that there is too much distance of time between the oligarch Critias (460–403 BC) and Solon (638–558 BC)" and that according to the text "Solon told the story to the great-grandfather of the Critias appearing in this dialogue, Dropides, who then told it to his son, who was also named Critias and the grandfather of the Critias in the dialogue. The elder Critias then retold the story to his grandson when he was 90 and the younger Critias was 10." And then further that this group of scholars "alleges that the tyrant's grandfather could not have both talked to Solon and still have been alive at the time the hypothetical discussion".

Here are given two interpretations of a text, both stated as fact, and the latter just in passing, without pointing out that this is the core of the disagreement, which it surely must be.

The text in the Benjamin Jowett translation of the Timaeus reads: "[Solon] was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us."

Because I can't read ancient (or any) Greek, I cannot say whether this is clearer in the original, but it's very ambiguous in English. Either Solon told Dropides the story, who then told the elder Critias, or Solon told him the story directly.

If Critias was born in 460 BC and his grandfather and namesake was 80 years older than him, then he was born in 540 BC; 18 years after Solon died. When there is 80 years difference between grandfather and grandson, having a kid at age 40 must not be far out of the ordinary. Thus, if we assume another 40 years, then the great-grandfather, Dropides, would have been 22 when Solon died. So on this reading there is no impossibility, but since circa 18 years separate the lives of Solon and the elder Critias, there the impossibility is real.

So if anyone could check out what these scholars are actually saying, or read the Timaeus 20d-23e in the original Greek and see if either of those shed some light on this disagreement so the wording in this article could be bettered, that would be great.