L'organismo vivo del logos (Plat. Phaedr. 264c): storia di un'analogia

This article focuses on Plato’s memorable metaphor about speeches (Phaedrus 264c), underlining the relationship between speech and body; I examine the long history of this topos in the rhetoric and philosophical culture of the Imperial Age. It is possible to notice how rhetoricians and philosophers, starting from Aristotle in his Poetics and up to Olympiodorus in his Commentary on the First Alcibiades, use the Platonic metaphor in different ways: on the one hand, rhetoricians (such as Demetrius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hermogenes) assert that speeches should be similar to organic bodies in order to emphasize the importance of the principles of τάξις and συμμετρία on which the persuasiveness of the composition depends; on the other hand philosophers (such as Hermias, Olympiodorus, the Anonymous author of the Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy) refer to the passage in the Phaedrus to describe a key principle of their platonic exegesis: a dialogue must have one σκοπός only, and thus be an organic whole, like a living organism.