Chance Encounters in Plot and in Life. On Plutarch’s De genio Socratis

Abstract

Plutarch’s De genio Socratis has been described as one of Plutarch’s best and most sophisticated works. This article examines the qualities of that sophistication and the demands these place on a reader. The unity is not as obvious and smooth as in Plato’s Phaedo, and it is, I claim, productively problematic. It is not the unity of a single theme, I argue, but the unity of a network of ideas. Yet, there is one topic that holds the whole dialogue together and gives it a complex unity. The De genio is a reflection on what a story is and what role chance has to play within a story (in life and in literature).