¹ Linforth, I.M., ‘The Corybantic rites in Plato’, University of California Publications in Classical Philology 13(5) (1946), 121–162Google Scholar, at 160 (subsequently cited by author's name only). Other notable literary sources from classical Athens are Ar. Lys. 558 and Vesp. 8, 119, Eur. Hipp. 141–3 and Bacch. 120–34. For an overview of other sources on the Corybantes, see Schwenn, F., ‘Korybanten’, RE 11.2 (1922), 1441–6Google Scholar. Our epigraphic evidence derives mainly from Erythrae: for a treatment of recent discoveries unknown to Schwenn (SEG 52.1146 and SEG 47.1628), see Herrmann, P., ‘Eine “pierre errante” in Samos: Kultgesetz der Korybanten’, Chiron 32 (2002), 157–72Google Scholar and Dignas, B., ‘Priestly authority in the cult of the Corybantes at Erythrae’, EA 34 (2002), 29–40Google Scholar. On Corybantism more generally, see Strabo 10.3.7–24, Pöerner, J., De Curetibus et Corybantibus (Halle, 1913)Google Scholar and, more recently, Y. Ustinova, ‘Corybantism: the nature and role of an ecstatic cult in the Greek Polis’, Horos 10–12 (1992–8), 503–20 (subsequently cited by author's name only) and Cosmopoulos, M.B. (ed.), Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults (London, 2003)Google Scholar.

² Harte, V., ‘Conflicting values in Plato's Crito’, in Kamtekar, R. (ed.), Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito: Critical essays (Lanham, MD, 2005), 229–59Google Scholar (subsequently cited by author's name only).

³ Weiss, R., Socrates Dissatisfied: An Analysis of Plato's Crito (Lanham, MD, 2001)Google Scholar (subsequently cited by author's name only).

⁴ Stokes, M.C. (Dialectic in Action: An examination of Plato's Crito [Swansea, 2005], 187–94)Google Scholar also argues explicitly against Weiss and Harte's pejorative reading of the Corybantic reference in the Crito. Maintaining that the associations attached to the Corybantes vary too much between the Phaedrus, the Symposium and the Laws for us to make any ‘sweeping statement as to the favourable or unfavourable implications for a passage of a mention of their rites’ (p. 192), he concludes that we cannot safely use the reference in the Crito as evidence that Socrates discards the Laws' arguments. I go further and give an account of why the associations might vary, arguing that we do not have to suspend judgement on the Crito's Corybantic reference, but have reason to see it as sign of Socrates' approval of the arguments involved.

⁵ See e.g. Strabo 10.3 and Pl. Euthyd. 277d4–e2.

⁶ J. Burnet (ed.), Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito (Oxford, 1924).

⁷ Croiset, M., Œuvres complètes: Platon 1 (Paris, 1920)Google Scholar.

⁸ See Resp. 564d10 and 573a4. He also uses the corresponding noun (ὁ βόμβος) once, to the same effect, in the Prt. 316a1–2.

⁹ ‘The stone hummed as it flew’ (Od. 8.165); ‘oars flew, and splashed’ (Od. 12.192); ‘the wine-jug fell to the ground with a clang’ (Od. 18.394); ‘the crested helm fell to the ground with a clang’ (Il. 13.526); ‘the head of bronze fell ringing to the ground’ (Il. 16.112).

¹⁰ See also Schwenn (n. 1), at 1442, who provides a number of ancient sources for there being wild screams, cymbals, tambourines and flutes.

¹¹ See Origen, C. Cels. 3, and Lucian, Lexiphanes 16 respectively.

¹² I will return to the question of what the buzzing prevents Socrates from hearing when discussing the Corybantic analogy in the Crito.

¹³ Reading αἱ instead of ἡ, following the Aldine edition. See Linforth, pp. 131–2 for a discussion of the emendation.

¹⁴ Saunders, (in Cooper, J.M. [ed.], Plato: Complete Works [Indianapolis, 1997])Google Scholar translates this clause as ‘the women who cure Corybantic conditions’. Linforth, pp. 130–1, however, argues that the above is the better translation because it does not make the unwarranted assumption that the illness cured is inflicted by the Corybantes and because it is the Corybantes and not the women that actually bestow the cure. While granting this second point, it might be worth noting that the cure is not presented as a mere favour. Socrates offers something like a physiological explanation as well; the motion applied through the dance is said to overpower the internal disturbance so that harmony is restored.

¹⁵ Harte does not refer to this passage, presumably because it does not contain a direct comparison between some λόγοι and Corybantic rites. But since it tells us something about how Plato understood and judged the rites, it is important in helping us understand his analogies.

¹⁶ The myths relating to the Corybantes, frequently either identified or confused with the Couretes, involved some frightful elements that might well have translated into the rites. The Corybantes were said to have helped hide the infant Zeus from Cronus at Mount Ida (to where, incidentally, the Laws' conversation partners are headed) by creating a noisy din around him, but they were also said to have facilitated the dismemberment of the infant Dionysius by the same means. For an outline and discussion of these myths, see Edmonds, R.G., ‘To sit in solemn silence? “Thronosis” in ritual, myth, and iconography’, AJPh 127.3 (2006), 347–66Google Scholar, at 353–8.

¹⁷ Linforth also shows that while the Corybantes sometimes had a bad effect on people (Linforth, p. 151), ‘the most characteristic thing about Corybantic madness, in the rites or elsewhere, was emotional excitement’ (Linforth, p. 129) and enthusiasm. In Euripides' Hippolytus, for instance, the chorus mistake passionate love for frenzy caused by Corybantes (Hipp. 141–4).

¹⁸ The main evidence for this is Socrates' assumption in the Euthydemus (277d4–e2) that the youth Cinias would be familiar with the rites. Socrates seems to make the same assumption concerning Crito at the end of the Crito.

¹⁹ Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951)Google Scholar, 78 discusses the continuity between ‘the old Dionysiac cure’ and that of the Corybantes. See also Jeanmaire, H., Dionysos: histoire du culte de Bacchus (Paris, 1970), 131–6Google Scholar and Gill, C., ‘Ancient psychotherapy’, JHI 46(3) (1985), 307–25CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, for an analysis of how the Corybantic cure might have worked.

²⁰ Edmonds (n. 16) argues that Aristophanes' Clouds parodies the Corybantic rather than the Eleusinian chairing. If this is the case, there might even have been a Socratic precedent for Plato's analogies.

²¹ Both epigraphic evidence from Erythrae (see Dignas [n. 1], 30) and archaeological evidence from Toumba (see Voutiras, E., ‘Un culte domestique des corybantes’, Kernos 9 (1996) 243–56)Google Scholar suggest that ritual bathing would be a feature of Corybantic rites in these areas. There might also have been something called a κρατηρισμός of which we know little except that it involved a κρατήρ (see Graf, F., Nordionische Kulte [Rome, 1985], 319–34)Google Scholar. Both Graf and Linforth stress, however, that we cannot use this to make inferences about the Athenian rites, as these seem to have been ‘purged of the Oriental extravagances from which they sprang’ (Linforth, p. 161).

²² According to Linforth, p. 160, ‘[t]he common translation of τελεῖν by the English “initiate” is fundamentally misleading’ as there is no reason to suppose submitting to the rites was a one-off event. Still, the chairing might have been reserved for those participating in the rites for the first time.

²³ The Euthydemus (277d6–e2) is our main source on the Corybantic chairing. For a discussion of the practice of chairing, see Edmonds (n. 16).

²⁴ Weiss, based on Burnet (n. 6), understands the participants to fall asleep and wake up cured, but there is no mention of this within Plato's account of the cure.

²⁵ καὶ ἐγὼ γνοὺς βαπτιζόμενον τὸ μειράκιον, βουλόμενος ἀναπαῦσαι αὐτό, μὴ ἡμῖν ἀποδειλιάσειε, παραμυθούμενος εἶπον ... (277d2–4).

²⁶ This is one of many examples in the Euthydemus of the two brothers being oddly familiar with some of the central questions and themes in Plato's philosophy.

²⁷ The Euthydemus is full of puzzling features and bewildering imagery, and the intricacies of the Corybantic rites are so little known that we might not be in a position to uncover the full extent of the analogy. Carl Levenson (Socrates Among the Corybantes: Being, Reality, and the Gods [Woodstock, 1999]) points to several possible (and more sinister) references to Corybantic rites throughout the dialogue, and offers an interpretation according to which the whole dialogue acts as a Corybantic rite administered by the brothers, through which Socrates is transformed from the unhelpful sceptic of the early dialogues to the bold Platonist of the middle.

²⁸ In this context it might be worth noting that the Laws' description of the benefit of movement, both for children and in the Corybantic rites, is preceded by the Athenian claiming that children would be best served by being kept in perpetual motion, as if permanently on board a ship (790c5–9).

²⁹ Unfortunately we do not know enough about the Corybantic rites to be able to safely judge whether any of the peculiar incidents in the Phaedrus (such as their feet getting soaked, Socrates' veiling himself before his first speech or the two-part chairing) are references to Corybantic rites that Plato's initial audience could be expected to pick up.

³⁰ I have translated δεομένους as ‘standing in need of’ rather than ‘being apt/ready for’. This fits better with an interpretation of τῶν τελετῶν as referring to curative τελεταί.

³¹ I follow Linforth, p. 142 in translating μόνα as ‘by themselves’ rather than ‘only’. The claim that only Marsyas' melodies could make people manic would, as Linforth argues, plainly be false.

³² Linforth, p. 143 calls the analogy between Alcibiades and those shown to be mad when hearing Marsyas' music (outside of the rites) but unwilling to submit to the τελετή ‘clear and striking’. Yet he concludes that we do not have enough textual evidence to exclude the possibility that all that is revealed by listening to Marsyas' music (outside of the rites) is a craving for the rites. Alcibiades, however, might seem a little too ambivalent towards Socrates' company to be said to crave it.

³³ As my overall argument does not depend on making sense of the puzzling claim that the Corybantes are moved to frenzy by different tunes according to which god possesses them, I will not attempt to do so here. See Linforth, pp. 138–40 for a discussion.

³⁴ Weiss, p. 144 argues that ‘Socrates does nothing to tie “the god” to the speech of the Laws ... they give up on the plan to escape not because of what the Laws have said but because “the god” is leading this way’. I think this split is unwarranted: the reference to the God could very well be a continuation of the Corybantic analogy.

³⁵ M. Lane seems to share this view: ‘The Laws’ arguments … seem to have blotted out his commitment to argument, at least in this moment of exertion to quiet Crito. They ring in Socrates' own ears. Crito has forced him to abandon the path of argument and take his stance …' (Lane, M., ‘Argument and agreement in Plato's Crito’, HPTh 19[3] [1998], 313–30Google Scholar, at 330). Weiss, p. 141 claims that it ‘is not that Socrates no longer wishes to converse with Crito; it is that, owing to the deafening loudness of the Laws’ speech as it booms within him, he is unable to do so ... his intellect is temporarily impaired'. If we take the Laws' arguments to be recognized by Socrates we would not have to see him as abandoning the path of argument or having his intellect temporarily impaired at this crucial moment of his life.

³⁶ As Weiss, p. 140 points out, those who take the Laws to present an argument that Socrates does not endorse have difficulties explaining this claim of Socrates'.

³⁷ Miller, Μ., ‘“The arguments I seem to hear”: argument and irony in the Crito’, Phronesis 41(2) (1996), 121–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues against this interpretation based on the fact that Socrates has been able to respond to Crito's arguments. He therefore takes the arguments in question to be Socrates' own, unvoiced arguments. But the fact that Socrates has been able to hear Crito's arguments does not prove that he still is. Weiss, p. 136 and Stokes (n. 4), 188 also take the arguments to be Crito's. Harte's translation of τῶν ἄλλων as ‘anything else’ (Harte, p. 230) is, I think, too strong.

³⁸ K. Quandt also interprets the Corybantic reference as an indication that the Laws' arguments have served to calm and appease Socrates and Crito. (Quandt, K., ‘Socratic consolation: rhetoric and philosophy in Plato's “Crito”’, Philosophy & Rhetoric 15[4] [1982], 238–56Google Scholar.)