The Prolific Borrower: Deconstructing a Quote Falsely Attributed to Plato

A widely circulated quote, "The Greeks never invented anything, but what they borrowed, they improved upon," is frequently attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. However, a thorough examination of Plato's authenticated works reveals no such statement. While the sentiment of the quote reflects a historical reality of cultural exchange and adaptation in the ancient world, its direct attribution to Plato is incorrect.

The origin of this misattribution likely lies in a passage from the Epinomis, a dialogue appended to Plato's Laws. The authorship of the Epinomis is a subject of scholarly debate, with many classicists believing it was written by one of Plato's students, possibly Philip of Opus, who served as his secretary and is thought to have edited and published the Laws after Plato's death.

The relevant passage in the Epinomis (987d-e) discusses the Greek adoption of foreign knowledge, particularly in the realm of astronomy, which the Greeks learned from the Egyptians and Syrians. The author of the Epinomis argues that while the Greeks may have received the initial knowledge from "barbarians," they brought it to a higher level of perfection.

The passage states: "...whatever the Greeks have acquired from foreigners is finally turned by them into something nobler." This sentiment closely mirrors the idea in the misattributed quote, suggesting a likely source for the confusion.

Plato himself, in his undisputed dialogues, acknowledges the intellectual debts of the Greeks to other cultures. In the Timaeus, he has the Egyptian priest tell Solon that the Greeks are "children" in their historical memory compared to the ancient Egyptians. In the Phaedrus, Socrates recounts the myth of the Egyptian god Theuth, the inventor of writing, numbers, and astronomy. These instances demonstrate Plato's awareness and respect for the knowledge of other civilizations, particularly Egypt and Babylonia, in fields like mathematics and the study of the cosmos.

Therefore, while the exact quote, "The Greeks never invented anything, but what they borrowed, they improved upon," is not found in Plato's writings, the underlying idea that the Greeks were adept at adopting and refining the knowledge of other cultures is a theme present in works closely associated with him and his school of thought. The popular, punchier version of this concept appears to be a paraphrase that has been incorrectly but persistently credited to the master philosopher himself.

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