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‘Metaphor’ in Platonic vocabulary is included in the term for ‘image’ (eikôn), and structurally related to ‘models’ (paradeigmata) in identifying the similarities and differences between two subjects. As the Politicus makes clear, ‘models’ differ in providing a more developed and systematic exploration of these similarities and differences, and can be used to aid understanding of difficult or unfamiliar subjects. Although Plato to this extent foreshadows 20th-century cognitive theories of metaphor, he believes that neither ‘images’ nor ‘models’ can ultimately be of more than heuristic value.

This chapter examines the two places where Homeric speakers string together several paradigmatic tales or exempla in the format of a catalogue (Iliad 5.382–405, Odyssey 5.118–36). It is argued that the striking similarities between the two examples are not coincidental, e.g. that a goddess (Dione or Calypso) speaks to another god about a situation pertaining to a major hero (Diomedes or Odysseus). The choice of divine speakers reinforces the authoritative tone of the catalogue form and suggests its ability to communicate a privileged perspective on history and historical patterns. Yet in each case the speaker’s rhetorical aims, and the catenulate or fragmented structure of the catalogue form itself, distort the overall picture. While speakers may attempt, through paradigmatic catalogues, to impose a pattern or interpretation on the events of the narrative, Homer in each case preserves crucial differences between the catalogue and his own story.

This chapter focuses on the metaphysical innovations Plato introduces in the Timaeus to solve (some of) the difficulties he has wrestled with in the preceding dialogues. It argues that by introducing the paradeigma, Plato reifies structure into a single Form. The paradeigma is all the Forms, which are now primitively structured into one single Form, as qualitative aspects of it. This radical change in Plato’s conception of the Forms brings about an equally significant change in his account of participating in the Forms. Plato comes to endorse a new explanatory ‘mechanism’ for property qualification, that is, similarity, and moves from constitutional to qualitative overlap between Forms and objects. In the Timaeus, Plato enriches his account by introducing efficient causation in his system: the operation of a divine agent, the Demiurge, to implement imitation. Further, the chapter shows how Plato finds in the Timaeus his own solution to the Third Man regress.

Kuhn organized his 1969 “Postcript” to Structures of Scientific Revolutions around three aspects of “paradigms”: (1) Paradigms as community structure, (2) Paradigms as the constellation of group commitments, also spoken of as a “disciplinary “matrix”, and (3) as the “central element” of novelty in Structures, paradigms as shared examples. This chapter is concerned only with (3), paradigms as shared examples (or, as Kuhn sometimes preferred, exemplars). The premise of the chapter is that no one has given a satisfactory analysis of Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm as example, and it explores some of the theoretical difficulties that have made such an account elusive. This discussion is embedded within more general (mostly “Western”-focused) reflections on the history of reasoning and the use of examples in argument, with illustrations ranging from Aristotle’s paradeigma in Rhetoric to Kuhn himself and other figures in 20^th century philosophy.

This chapter turns to the events in the Euthydemus that Socrates portrays as having taken place the day before. Socrates tells in vivid detail how he and some visiting sophists entered into public debate over the question of how one should convince others to adopt a different way of life. Both Socrates and the sophists were competing for the attention of a large audience, which included men seeking lovers, intellectual entertainment, and professional instruction. This chapter examines how the narrating Socrates has a hand in characterizing himself, his competition, their disciples, and potential students. Socrates asks for a paradigmatic speech that aims at conversion, presents his own, and chastises his competition for what is missing in their protreptic discourse. In other words, his protreptic discourse turns others away from both their habits and his competition (i.e., is apotreptic), and presents another option. Protreptic discourse is apotreptic.

The conclusion of The New Politics of Olympos sets the arguments developed throughout the book in the context of praise rhetoric and suggests further ways in which Kallimachos’ poetry book may have shaped its readers’ views on what constitutes good rule. In particular, it examines the potential impact of the Hymns on a Ptolemaic reader for whom the book might serve as an education in and inducement to good kingship. This speculation is bolstered by comparison with Hermokles’ hymn for Demetrios Poliorketes as well as the literary trope of the speculum regis (“king’s mirror”). Finally, the conclusion examines Kallimachos’ didactic presentation of Erysichthon, whose transgression and punishment is the subject of the Hymn to Demeter. Such edifying moments throughout the Hymns incentivize good kingship and gently admonish its opposite.

On Mount Sinai Moses was shown the ‘pattern’ (tavnit) of the tabernacle, which came to be interpreted as the divinely prepared sanctuary ready for the end of time. The earthly tabernacle/temple was seen as a copy of the heavenly one. The words used by the LXX to translate ‘pattern’ (paradeigma, eidos, tupos) made it easy for the heavenly plan to be equated with the Platonic world of Ideas, the kosmos noētos. Ascent texts use temple imagery in their pictures of heaven, but with paradoxical twists, as they are aware that heaven is a different dimension. For Gregory, this paradoxical tabernacle not made with hands, the source of creation, the fountainhead of life and power, becomes a type of Christ.