Socrates; Meno; the way to Larissa

Socrates gives the example of a guide on the road to Larissa: whether the guide has knowledge of the way or a true opinion about the way, the result is the same (a successful trip to Larissa). But if this is the case, asks Meno, "why is knowledge prized far more highly than right opinion, and why are they different?"

Socrates' answer gives the metaphor of a man who possesses a valuable sculpture by Daedalus. If the statue is "tied down," it is of lasting value. If, however, it is not tied down, it won't last long and is therefore of less good. Similarly, true opinions "are not willing to remain long, and they escape from a man's mind, so that they are not worth much until one ties them down by giving "an account of the reason why" the opinion is true [my italics]. Such an account allows true opinion to become knowledge through the process of "recollection" discussed earlier, and so to become fixed in the mind. Nonetheless, at least in terms of directing actions at given times, true opinion serves as well as knowledge.

Socrates and Meno now face a final problem: they have concluded both that virtue cannot be taught and that it is not innate (both parties agree that neither knowledge nor true opinion can be innate). So, returning to the question that opened the dialogue, how do men become virtuous? Plato (through Socrates) is content to leave this a mystery of sorts for now, concluding only that virtuous statesmen are only so through a sort of divine inspiration, like "soothsayers and prophets. They too say many true things when inspired, but they have no knowledge of what they are saying" [my italics].

Thus, virtue is left as "a gift from the gods which is not accompanied by understanding." Though this deep uncertainty may not seem like much of an end to the dialogue, the apparent emptiness of Socrates' conclusion is mitigated by the importance of the lack of knowledge in and of itself. Socrates has succeeded in convincing two prominent citizens and men of politics not only that they have no understanding of virtue, but also that no one does. This state of uncertainty, or aporia, the state of knowing that one does not know, is a major Platonic theme, and clears the ground for the pursuit of a kind of truth far more exacting and rigorous than had been previously sought.

The Meno ends as Socrates bids his interlocutors farewell, reminding them once more that they must seek to know what virtue is (and, according to him, they'd be the first to truly know) before finding out how it comes to be in men. Departing, Socrates tells Meno to teach Anytus what he has learned today.

Larissa, sometimes written Larisa on ancient coins and inscriptions, is near the site of the Homeric Argissa. It appears in early times, when Thessaly was mainly governed by a few aristocratic families, as an important city under the rule of the Aleuadae, whose authority extended over the whole district of Pelasgiotis. This powerful family possessed for many generations before 369 BC the privilege of furnishing the tagus, the local term for the strategos of the combined Thessalian forces. The principal rivals of the Aleuadae were the Scopadac of Crannon, the remains of which are about 14 miles south west.

Larissa was indeed the birthplace of Meno, who thus became, along with Xenophon and a few others, one of the generals leading several thousands Greeks from various places, in the ill-fated expedition of 401 (retold in Xenophon's Anabasis) meant to help Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II, king of Persia, overthrow his elder brother Artaxerxes II and take over the throne of Persia (Meno is featured in Plato's dialogue bearing his name, in which Socrates uses the example of "the way to Larissa" to help explain Meno the difference between true opinion and science (Meno, 97a–c) ; this "way to Larissa" might well be on the part of Socrates an attempt to call to Meno's mind a "way home", understood as the way toward one's true and "eternal" home reached only at death, that each man is supposed to seek in his life).^[9]

The constitution of the town was democratic, which explains why it sided with Athens in the Peloponnesian War. In the neighbourhood of Larissa was celebrated a festival which recalled the Roman Saturnalia, and at which the slaves were waited on by their masters. It was taken by the Thebans and afterwards by the Macedonian kings, and Demetrius Poliorcestes gained possession of it for a time, 302 BC.