WorkPlato
Phaedo (c. 360 BCE), or a secondary philosophical compilation Inferred
Plato (c. 428 BCE–c. 348 BCE) · c. 360 BCE
AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Documented 1833–1843
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Manuscripts
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had this work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“June 3, 1833.—I part with Plato with regret...Eutyphron is excellent...'Crito' I have only read once...The 'Apology' I deem only remarkable...I was much affected by Phaedo”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · June 3, 1833
Dated journal entry with explicit reading statements: 'I have only read once' and detailed reactions to each Plato dialogue.
“I was much affected by Phaedo, but think the argument weak in many respects.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · 3 June 1833
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re568 (L-2 Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth, letter_1012.txt; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. Continues same report, 'I was much affected by Phaedo,' an explicit personal reading reaction.
“I have got a vol of Plato and other good books, but can read little.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Jany 23d 1839
"I have got a vol of Plato and other good books, but can read little" is an explicit, if modest, first-person reading statement.
“I was much affected by Phaedon but think the argument weak in many respects- The nature of abstract ideas is clearly set forth: but there is no justice in reasoning from their existence that our souls have lived previous to our present state”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
“I was much affected by Phaedo, but think the argument weak in many respects.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Vol. I: 1817-1838. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“I have now three good letters from you and think I will write you one. I pay you a compliment in so doing for I have just been reading Plato's Phaedrus”
Inferred She later alludes directly to the work's famous image of the charioteer managing two horses representing the rational and passionate parts of the soul, writing of "the wise charioteer managed both his steeds," as Hudspeth identified.
“the wise charioteer managed both his steeds; he needed not to unyoke either but chose rather to remember their several natures”
Inferred Fuller alludes to Plato's famous charioteer allegory from the Phaedrus (246a–254e), where the soul is likened to a charioteer managing two horses—one noble and rational, one base and passionate.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“I have only read this time Phaedrus and the Banquet, but, I have had this vol several times before. I think when I am tranquil to read it.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“Such was the romance of Socrates when he bade his disciples "sacrifice a cock to Aesculapius.”
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
Inferred Fuller quotes Socrates' last words from Plato's Phaedo (117e?118a): 'Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; pay it and do not forget.' These were Socrates' dying words, directing his friends to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius (god of healing), traditionally interpreted as thanks for the cure of life (death releasing the soul from the body).
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Socrates has declared that the belief in the soul's immortality is so delightful, so elevating, so purifying, that even were it not the truth, "we should daily strive to enchant ourselves with it.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p278
Inferred While Fuller names Socrates, the specific Platonic work is not cited directly; the title Phaedo is inferred from the content.
“The Cicadae of gold, which she braided in her hair, signified that the natives of Attica sprang from the soil upon which they sang [...] Do you remember the story of the Cicadae as told by Plato?”
Fuller, Margaret. "Wordsworth's Greece and Notes on Greek Myth." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred Fuller asks 'Do you remember the story of the Cicadae as told by Plato?' This story — in which the Muses transformed humans into cicadas who forgot to eat and drink out of love of song — is from Plato's Phaedrus (259b–d). Fuller names Plato explicitly but not the dialogue.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Would I study carefully those works of art in which learned heathen have embodied their dark surmises as to the divine and human, or groped in unaided philosophical search after God, and only arrived at the sublime but dim hopes of Socrates and Plato, and would I allow to be comparatively unknown that gospel which Jesus Christ brought down to earth ?”
Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.
Inferred Richard is paraphrasing Margaret's argument to him about Bible study. Margaret cites 'Socrates and Plato' as classical philosophers who reached only 'sublime but dim hopes' about God — contrasting them unfavorably with Christian revelation.