The sources of Phaedo

1. Aeschylus 1 refuted 1 citation · 2 passages

   phaedo 2 passages anchored here

   Socrates explicitly names Aeschylus's play and Telephus's claim, then argues against it, making this a clear refutation.

   for he says a simple path leads to the lower world, but I think the path is neither simple nor single, for if it were, there would be no need of guides, since no one could miss the way to any place if there were only one road.

2. Homer 1 authority 1 citation · 2 passages

   phaedo 2 passages anchored here

   Homer's verse is invoked as the authoritative naming source for the chasm called Tartarus, without dispute.

   Far off, the lowest abyss beneath the earth;

3. Odyssey Homer 1 authority 1 citation · 3 passages

   phaedo 3 passages anchored here

   Socrates explicitly invokes 'Homer' and the episode 'in the Odyssey' as textual support for his philosophical claim about the soul's nature.

   Do you suppose that, when he wrote those words, he thought of the soul as a harmony which would be led by the conditions of the body, and not rather as something fitted to lead and rule them, and itself a far more divine thing than a harmony?

Each stands at a single passage. The chapter carries the anchors.

phaedo 12 sources

Claim that the senses are inaccurate · Fables · Saying that all things are chaos · Teaching of the mysteries · Teaching on the prohibition of suicide · argument for the soul's harmony (as raised by Simmias) · popular belief about swan song · the initiates' teaching on the afterlife · the previous argument establishing the soul's pre-existence · unnamed book on nature · unspecified common doctrine on death (proverbial/folk belief) · unspecified skill or lore of Glaucus

The harvest records where a citation is made: the paragraph in the citing book, and the chapter that paragraph stands in. It does not record which page of this book is meant. Where the citing text names a locus, you will find it in the quotation.

1. Stromata Clement of Alexandria 4 authority · 1 neutral · 1 extended 6 citations · 9 passages

   book 1 · book 2 · book 3 3 passages anchored here · book 4 2 passages anchored here · book 5 2 passages anchored here

   Explicitly named: 'So in the Phaedo he says the philosopher can be helped from every quarter, writing...', followed by direct quotation.

   "Great is Greece, O Cebes, in which there are everywhere good men, and many too are the races of the barbarians.

2. De Anima Tertullian 2 refuted 2 citations · 6 passages

   de anima 6 passages anchored here

   The Phaedo is quoted and cited as the key source of Plato's claim that bodily senses hinder the soul's attainment of wisdom, which Tertullian rebuts.

   For it is his, in the Phaedo, that souls go thither from here and come hither from there.

3. De legendis gentilium libris Basil of Caesarea 1 authority 1 citation

   de legendis gentilium libris

   Plato is named directly as source for the teaching on subordinating bodily service to philosophy.

   or else we must cling to it only so far—as Plato says—as we win from it a service for philosophy, speaking somewhat like Paul, who exhorts that we should take no forethought for the body unto the occasion of lusts.