cap it all, letters.” Theuth presents his marvelous new inven-
tion, writing, to Thamus, the King of Egypt. Socrates contin-
ues: “When it came to the subject of letters, Theuth said, ‘But
thisstudy, King Thamus, will make the Egyptians wiser and
improve their memory; what I have discovered is a drug [phar-
makon] of memory and wisdom.’”
King Thamus is less than impressed by the god Theuth’s
ingenious novelty. “Most scientific [tekhnikotate] Theuth,” he
says,
You, as the father of letters, have been led by your
affection for them to describe them as having the
opposite of their real effect. For your invention will
produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who
have learned it, through lack of practice at using
their memory, as through reliance on writing they
are reminded from outside by alien marks, not
from inside, themselves by themselves: you have
discovered a drug not of memory but of remind-
ing. To your students you give an appearance of
wisdom, not the reality of it; having heard much, in
the absence of teaching, they will appear to know
much when for the most part they know nothing,
and they will be difficult to get along with, since
they will have become seeming-wise rather than
wise. ( 274 b– 275 b)Socrates, commenting on the Theuth story, presents a par-
allel between painting and writing. He remarks to Phaedrus:
Writing has this strange [or surprising,deinon] fea-
ture, which makes it like painting. The offspring of150 Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud