© 1998 Bernard SUZANNE | Last updated January 17, 1999 |
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This page is part of the "tools" section of a site, Plato and his dialogues, dedicated to developing a new interpretation of Plato's dialogues. The "tools" section provides historical and geographical context (chronology, maps, entries on characters and locations) for Socrates, Plato and their time. By clicking on the minimap at the beginning of the entry, you can go to a full size map in which the city or location appears. For more information on the structure of entries and links available from them, read the notice at the beginning of the index of persons and locations.
City of Thessalia (area
2).
Pharsalus was one of the leading cities of Thessalia in the Vth and IVth centuries
B. C. It is mentioned by Thucydides in his
Histories,
II, 22, 3 among the Thessalian cities that sent troops to help Athens
against Sparta in 431,
at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. It this section, Thucydides mentions
a Meno of Pharsalus as leader of the Pharsalian contingent. This Meno should
not be confused with the Meno who gave
his name to a dialogue of Plato, a Thessalian too, but much younger and from
the city of Larissa.
Pharsalus was the homeland of the interlocutor of Socrates
in the Sisyphus, an apocryphal dialogue ascribed to Plato and inspired
by the Meno. This Sisyphus is probably the same person as the
one Athenæus (IIIrd century A. D.) says (Epitome, VI, 61) was mentioned
by Theopompus (a Greek orator of the IVth century B. C. who was a disciple of
Isocrates) as an influencial citizen of Pharsalus
toward the time of Philip of Macedon.