There was also at least one deme which was proverbial for not looking into your background before enrolling you as a citizen, and I’m totally blanking on the name of it (the saying goes, “today a slave, tomorrow a demesman of…”). Cohen mentions it a few times, too.

I’d have a hard time believing that phratry membership would get you very far, but I’d be willing to accept cult membership as doing so: you hang out with a bunch of people for five or ten years, letting on that you’re a citizen, and, in the near-total absence of written records, next time someone questions you about it, you say, “hey, I’m a citizen, just ask all my buddies down at the cult!”

422 is by no means solidly established as the dramatic date of the dialogue (although it has influential adherents). And it looks like establishing the dramatic date and the date of the of the first Bendideia (and the associated inscription) are related problems. Middle of last century, there was a consensus that the inscription was from 430 or so, though there seem to be only a few scholars who dated the Republic accordingly (it would be at odds with biographical details about Cephalos and his family from external—though questionable—sources, partcularly the biography of Lysias attributed to Plutarch).

The current consensus (of the two or three people who actually care about this) seems to be that the inscription/founding of the Bendideia date to 413/2, which, if correct, would arguably put the dialogue there, too (and thus well after the Peace of Nikias and not long after the Sicilian disater; though this, too, presents biograpical difficulties). (A delay between introduction of the cult and establishment of a festival might not be strange if the cult was originally essentially a Thracian ex-pat organization with a local seal of approval, and only later was an effort made to integrate it. In fact, it might not be strange regardless; there aren’t a whole lot of data points on cult importation/festival establishment in this period.)

Of course, any attempt to fix the dialogue’s dramatic date on internal evidence like this assumes that Plato both intended and achieved chronological verisimilitude; and scholars since antiquity have recognized that this is a dubious assumption.

It may be that the alienness of Piraeus made it the perfect spot to discuss the radical ideas found in the Republic. Alternately, it may be that Plato wants to show that even in such a setting philosophy is possible if you keep it private and discuss things with only the few people able to appreciate it (e.g., not Cephalus, who is removed from the scene early on).

The cult of Bendis had some pretty unusual features: her shrine was owned by a group of resident Thracians, who also organized the procession from the Prytaneion in Athens to the Bendideion in Piraeus. There’s no other state festival in which non-citizens have such a prominent role. (This is from Robert Parker’s Athenian Religion, which is using the inscriptions that ettinauer mentions above. Parker also cites R.R. Simms, “The Cult of the Thracian Goddess Bendis in Athens and Attica,” Ancient World 18 (1988) 59-76.)

I’m starting to find it quite odd that Plato sends Socrates down to the Piraeus to discuss the ideal city. As much as Plato disliked certain features of Athenian society, he must have disdained the Piraeus even more, since it was the most mercantile and sea-oriented part of Attica, probably had many foreigners living there, and was, according to later authors, where the most radical democrats lived. In going from Athens to Piraeus it’s almost like Socrates is going to the antitype of the Kallipolis.

Where’s Starbuck, and does she have your Arrow?