The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

Additional evidence for these meanings of zw|~a and zwgra&foi in Plato is found
in the Cratylus, where Socrates describes different categories of painters and their
paintings as analogous to those of builders and their buildings:
SOCRATES. Some painters (zwgra&foi) are better, and others worse, are they
not?
CRATYLUS. Certainly.
SOCRATES. And the better produce better works (kalli/w)—that is, their
zw|~a—and the others worse works (faulo&tera)? And likewise some builders
build better houses and others worse? (Cra. 429a) [142]
Socrates divides painters and builders into good and bad on the basis of the quality of the
works they produce. He uses the plural zw|~a to refer to the works of painters in general,
but he does not state whether these zw|~a should be understood as objects or images. Both
Fowler and Reeve translate these zw|~a as “paintings.” 584 The general sense of the
meaning of zw|~a as “paintings” is also supported by Socrates’ assertion that zw|~a can be
both the finer (kalli/w) and worse works (faulo&tera) of analogous painters. This
evidence shows clearly that, in the context of fourth-century painting, the meaning of
zw|~a as “paintings” was not bound to any notion of quality.
The next occurrence of zw|~on in connection with painting in Plato is in the
Republic. Here the word refers to the subject represented by a work of sculpture; it is
used in a passage, in which Socrates explains to Adeimantus that in order to create a
happy state, all citizens and not only a small group of them, namely, the guardians must
be happy. To support his argument, he starts from the opposite premise, that is, the
584 Fowler, Plato. Cratylus 153; Reeve, Plato. Cratylus 76.
298