Loeb Plato publishes Phaedrus 270c naming Hippocrates of Cos
In 1914 the Loeb Classical Library issued Fowler’s Plato volume containing Phaedrus. At the standard pagination 270c Socrates cites Hippocrates of Cos as holding that the body cannot be understood without the nature of the whole. In the causal graph this event sets in motion Health-System Capacity, a driver that strengthens Hospital beds (per 1,000 people) — an improving welfare path.
Read the full account
In 1914 the Loeb Classical Library issued Fowler’s Plato volume containing Phaedrus. At the standard pagination 270c Socrates cites Hippocrates of Cos as holding that the body cannot be understood without the nature of the whole. The dated public English instrument is the 1914 volume. Conventional dating of the Greek dialogue remains the early fourth century BCE.
Context
Greek medicine was already split between Asklepieia, root-cutters, and a literate craft. Plato’s citation is one of the few near-contemporary literary anchors that a historical Hippocrates of Cos existed as a famous physician. It does not prove that he wrote On the Sacred Disease, the Oath, or Epidemics. Alexandrian librarians later grouped heterogeneous treatises under one heading.
Hippocrates of Cos is not the sole author of every Greek medical treatise later copied under his name, and he is not the signer of every later oath or code that quoted him. Shared work with unnamed Coan practitioners, Alexandrian compilers, Galen, Latin printers, medical faculties, and twentieth-century medical associations does not erase the Cos identity Plato used, and it does not make a fifth-century physician the author of the 1948 Declaration of Geneva.
Why it matters
Confidence is medium because the dialogue is literary.
The welfare claim is modest: literate Greek medicine acquired a name later institutions could cite. Temple medicine did not disappear.
A printed corpus does not vaccinate a child. An oath does not staff a clinic.
Who was responsible
Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.
Hippocrates
PersonDirect responsibility
responsibility level 0.35 · verified
Plato attributes a whole-nature method to Hippocrates of Cos. The dialogue is Plato’s.
What changed
Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.
- FactLoeb Plato publishes Phaedrus 270c naming Hippocrates of Cos
- sets in motionDriverHealth-System Capacity
- strengthensIndicators (2)Hospital beds (per 1,000 people)
impact weight 0.35 · Effect from 1 January 1914 · verified
A named professional method is an early public identity for secular medical inquiry rather than temple healing alone.
Strengthens · Relationship strength 0.21 (weight 0.35 × strength 0.6)
Observed
3.08 Per 1000 people · 1.24 below the normal line (2023)
Worse than normal6 readings, 2018–2023: rose from 3.07 Per 1000 people to 3.08 Per 1000 people.
Above normal = better
Weakens · Relationship strength 0.17 (weight 0.35 × strength 0.5)
Observed
37.4 deaths per 1,000 live births · 12.4 above the normal line (2024)
Worse than normal7 readings, 2018–2024: fell from 40 deaths per 1,000 live births to 37.4 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Above normal = worse
Evidence
The sources behind this fact and its verification state.
- 1.Britannica — Hippocratic Corpus and later editionsEncyclopaedia Britannica · High credibility · verified
- 2.Plato, Phaedrus 270c — PerseusPerseus Digital Library / Tufts · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish
This Fact records the attestation as printed, not a lecture Hippocrates delivered in Athens.
The Perseus text of Phaedrus 270c transmits the Greek with English. The Stanford Encyclopedia’s Hippocrates entry treats the passage as a primary literary attestation and states the corpus authorship problem in the same article. Neither source converts the citation into a dated clinic or a patient list.
Established: Plato’s Phaedrus names Hippocrates of Cos. Not established: that he taught Plato, wrote any given treatise, or ran a school whose enrolment can be counted.
The documentary trail can name an office, printer, code, trial, or treatise heading; it cannot name a complete Coan patient register. Confidence belongs on the impact path. Estimates of later harm from humoral treatment, where historians publish them, are attributed to those historians, not invented here.
A Cos vita, a medieval oath manuscript, a Venetian folio, and a twentieth-century medical-association code are different instruments even when they share a heading. Hippocrates’ contribution, where it exists, is the name and the later use of treatises grouped under that name, not a modern ministry signature. Sharing labour with printers, editors, prosecutors, or assemblies is not a reason to drop the row and not a reason to treat the row as a clinical trial. If a number of deaths, doses, or pupils is not in the official or independent record named above, it is not supplied here.
Causal path
How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.
- ActorHippocrates
- contributed toFactLoeb Plato publishes Phaedrus 270c naming Hippocrates of Cos
- sets in motionDriverHealth-System Capacity
- strengthensIndicatorHospital beds (per 1,000 people)
Cite this page
Factrail. (2026). Loeb Plato publishes Phaedrus 270c naming Hippocrates of Cos. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/gr-plato-phaedrus-names-hippocrates
https://factrail.ai/facts/gr-plato-phaedrus-names-hippocrates
Accessed 16 October 2026.
By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed
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