How Phaedo drew on Aesop’s Fables
A documented line of influence: Plato demonstrably engaged Aesop’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Aesop’s Fables
Aesop · c. 560 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Phaedo
Plato · c. 385 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
6/10
On Phaedo’s page
- The Phaedo opens with Socrates versifying Aesop in his cell — Plato names the fabulist and adapts him on the page (60b–61b)
- Watch Socrates spin an Aesopic observation of his own, on how pleasure and pain are bound together at the head
- Knowing the fables makes the moment land: the simplest popular form, pressed into service at the threshold of death
On Aesop’s Fables’s page
- The fables follow Socrates into his death cell — in the Phaedo he spends his last days turning Aesop into verse
- Plato names Aesop directly and improvises in his manner: a new fable about pleasure and pain joined at the head, inseparable
- The humble animal tale earns a place in philosophy's most solemn scene