"Gazing on the gods" and "trance dancing" with them: Plato's metaphors of ideal citizenship and their reception by Philo, Clement of Alexandria, and ps-Macarius

This chapter explores two key metaphors employed by Plato to articulate the transformation of consciousness experienced by those engaging with philosophy, and their reception by the Jewish thinker Philo and early Christian authors, like Clement of Alexandria in the second century and pseudo-Macarius in the fourth. The metaphors of gazing (theōria) and participating in Bacchic revelry (baccheia) are used by Plato both in the Republic and the Laws to highlight the expansion of the philosophizing mind and its rapprochement with the divine as paramount civic duty of the ruling elites of Kallipolis and the colonists of Magnesia. While in the Republic Plato focuses on the education of the philosopher-kings and the guardian class, in the Laws all citizens are expected to nurture the virtue of moderation, or sōphrosynē that entails the principles of philosophical engagement. Plato’s emphasis on moderation as a key civic virtue that enables the citizenry to participate in philosophical ecstasy to the ability of each, was powerfully adapted by the Jewish thinker Philo, who presented Moses as an ecstatic philosopher-king. While in deep contemplation and Bacchic elation, Jewish sages establish communion with God and join His Heavenly city; the motif impressed Christian thinkers like Clement of Alexandria who discussed meditation and moderation in Christian terms as ways, predicated on faith, of gaining access to Heavenly Jerusalem. Plato’s metaphors were re-employed with renewed zest by pseudo-Macarius, a Syriac reader of Clement and ascetic writer, who defended the benefits of claiming citizenship in God over worldly citizenship. His Homilies provide a little-explored but fruitful avenue for the reception of Platonic language in fourth-century Christianity.