These are six short dialogues transmitted with Plato's works but not his: On Justice, a dialogue on aretē, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias and Axiochus. The Greek title, Nothoi, means 'spurious', the word ancient critics used of such works. Diogenes Laertius, after setting out Thrasyllus' nine tetralogies, lists the Eryxias, Sisyphus, Axiochus and Demodocus among the dialogues agreed to be spurious, outside the nine tetralogies; the other two came down in the manuscripts beside them. Their authors and dates are unknown.
Socrates leads each of them. On Justice finds the same acts both just and unjust and ends that no one is unjust willingly; the dialogue on aretē argues from the sons of Themistocles, Aristides and Pericles that goodness is neither taught nor inborn but a gift of the gods. Demodocus asks what a deliberating council can achieve and adds three short puzzles; Sisyphus asks what deliberating is. In the Eryxias Socrates narrates a talk on whether wealth is a good, and in the Axiochus he consoles a sick man who dreads death with arguments credited to Prodicus and a tale of judgement after death.
All six survive complete in the medieval manuscripts of Plato.
Contents
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Περὶ Δικαίου On Justice
Socrates asks an unnamed companion what justice is and, getting no definition, compares it with measuring, weighing and counting to find the art and the judges that settle disputes over the just. Lying, deceiving and harming turn out to be just towards enemies, and lying and deceiving towards friends for their good, so the same acts are both just and unjust, and the dialogue ends by agreeing with the poet that no one is wicked willingly: the unjust are unjust through ignorance.
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Περὶ Ἀρετῆς On Aretē
Can the goodness of good men be taught? Socrates argues with a companion that if it could, Thucydides, Themistocles, Aristides and Pericles would have taught it to their sons: Thucydides had Melesias and Stephanus trained by the best wrestlers in Athens, yet could not make them good. Since good men are not bred like good horses either, the dialogue concludes that goodness comes neither by teaching nor by birth but as a gift of the gods, like the inspiration of seers.
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Δημόδοκος Demodocus
Asked by Demodocus to advise a council met to deliberate, Socrates first questions what such a meeting can achieve: if right counsel rests on knowledge, those who have it need no meeting and those who lack it cannot deliberate. Three short narrated conversations follow, on whether a judge can decide after hearing only one party, on a man blamed for refusing a loan, and on whether to trust friends rather than strangers, each left as an open puzzle.
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Σίσυφος Sisyphus
Sisyphus of Pharsalus missed Stratonicus's display the day before because his city's magistrates required his counsel, and Socrates turns this into the question of what deliberating is. No one deliberates about music, generalship or steering without knowing them, and seeking is not deliberating; the argument presses on until deliberation about the future seems to aim at what does not yet exist, and Socrates leaves open why anyone is called a good or a bad counsellor.
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Ἐρυξίας Eryxias
Socrates narrates a conversation in the Stoa of Zeus the Liberator with Eryxias of Steiria, Critias and Erasistratus, newly back from Sicily, who points out a Syracusan envoy as the richest of the western Greeks. The talk turns to whether wealth is a good, what counts as money, from the Carthaginians' sealed leather coins onwards, and whether riches are useful, until the argument suggests that the richest, needing most, are in the worst state.
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Ἀξίοχος Axiochus
On his way to Cynosarges, Socrates is fetched by Clinias to his father Axiochus, who lies sick and now dreads the death he once mocked. Socrates consoles him with arguments he credits to Prodicus, with a survey of the miseries of every age and calling, recalling the condemnation of the generals after Arginusae, and with a tale of judgement after death heard from the Magian Gobryas, until Axiochus says he now longs for death.