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Classical sources speak of the so-called "Seven Sages", the Sophoi, regarded as pillars of Greek culture. Plato evokes them as models of civic virtue, Herodotus singles out Solon, Diogenes Laertius gathers lists and anecdotes, Plutarch and others recall the Delphic maxims attributed to various members of the group. Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias and Pittacus are the best-known names, to whom are often added Anacharsis the Scythian, Myson of Chen, Pherecydes of Syros, and Epimenides of Crete.

According to Diogenes, two schools diverge from this initial circle of Sages: the Ionian, stemming from Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, and the Italic, stemming from Pythagoras, a disciple of Pherecydes. But what is Sophia? Commonly translated as "Wisdom", it is often confused with prudence or sound judgment, born of experience. By Sophia we mean, rather, a very ancient doctrinal corpus, linked to the Temple of Delphi and the cult of Apollo; a body of teachings guarded and transmitted by a lineage of "initiates", that is, disciples specifically trained to grasp its content, preserve it, and pass it on. This content concerns notions of the first metaphysical principles and the causes of the universe. By their very nature, these notions are difficult to apprehend and to assimilate; hence, an initiatory path is required, to lead the aspirant from mere "knowledge", namely, simple retention in memory, to genuine "comprehension".

According to ancient tradition, the doctrinal nucleus of Sophia has roots in Egyptian culture. From antiquity, the priests of the Nile were said to have transmitted this particular knowledge to its first Greek custodians. Plutarch writes: "Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and even Lycurgus, these all came to Egypt and met the priests. Eudoxus, they say, was taught by Chonufis of Memphis, Solon by Sonchis of Sais, Pythagoras by Enufis of Heliopolis. Pythagoras especially, admiring those priests and being admired by them, drew from them both their symbolism and their occult teaching, blending his doctrines with the Mysteries."

From Egypt, then, Sophia reaches Greece as a patrimony to be transmitted through initiation. Yet in the age of the polis, literacy, the circulation of texts, and the new market for teaching open up knowledge to wider circles. This democratizing process has consequences not entirely positive. When fragments of Sophia escape the initiatory line and enter the public sphere, new phenomena arise. On the one hand, the dissemination of metaphysical notions reinterpreted empirically and hence distorted; on the other, the birth of Sophistry with its rhetorical techniques, instrumentalizing the acquired notions for short-sighted, personal ends.

At the same time, thanks to Anaximander and Pythagoras, Sophia becomes Philosophy, perpetuated by lay circles of aspirants, "Brotherhoods of Wisdom", who continue to guard its content and transmit it by way of initiation, with novel additions whose extent we cannot determine. In the Lives, Diogenes Laertius distinguishes the ancient Sophoi from the new Philosophers and states: "The Philosopher is he who aspires to Sophia." The term philosophos first signals belonging to this circle of aspirants before broadening into a general label that, over time, comes to mean "one who loves knowledge."

How, then, does Plato come into contact with the content of Sophia? We do not know whether he had direct access to the doctrine of the earliest Sophoi. What is certain is that he draws upon the Pythagorean transmission. Here is a brief portrait of Plato, penned by Aristotle: "After the philosophies already mentioned, there arises the Platonic approach, which in many respects follows the Pythagorean philosophy of Italy, while adding original elements. Having been acquainted from youth with Cratylus and the theses of Heraclitus, namely, that all sensible things are in flux and that knowledge of them is impossible, Plato continued to take these doctrines seriously, even in old age. Socrates, in his day, concerned himself with moral questions, setting aside the study of nature, and he sought universal concepts in the ethical sphere, being the first to focus philosophers' attention on clear definitions. Plato shared this approach, yet he came to hold that these universal concepts are transcendent entities, for in his view, one cannot found an exact science upon sensible entities, since they are always in flux. He called these entities, different from sensibles, the Ideas-Forms, and he maintained that all phenomena depend on, and are what-they-are, according to the Ideas-Forms. Phenomena that take their name from the Ideas-Forms would exist by "participation". The term Methexis is attributed to Plato, while the Pythagoreans in his time said that phenomena "imitate" numbers. By speaking of "participation", Plato merely varies the expression. In any case, what this "participation", or "imitation" of Ideas-Forms may be, is a problem they both left open."

To judge from Aristotle, Plato appears indebted to Pythagoras, although in the Dialogues the creditor is mentioned only in passing. Plato refers to the Pythagoreans exactly twice, and only in the Republic. It is a curious reticence if, in the Philebus, it is Pythagoras to whom Plato alludes, when speaking of Dialectic, the logic of two polarities. "Dialectic is a divine gift to human beings, stolen from the Gods by a new Prometheus, together with the brightest fire. And the ancients, our betters because nearer to the Gods, have handed down these words: Things derived from Unity and Multiplicity, having Limit and Illimit intrinsic to their nature." Here we hear an echo of Philolaus' words quoted by Diogenes Laertius.

Iamblichus, in the Egyptian Mysteries, seems to know the true recipient of that flattering epithet: it is Hermes, the Egyptian Thoth, from whom Pythagoras himself would also have drawn his doctrine. "A God revealed Dialectic and transmitted it to men. Some say it was Hermes, the God of the Logos, who bears in his hand the emblem of two serpents regarding one another."

Within Greek culture, there are notable analogies between Prometheus and Hermes. Both act as mediators between the divine and the human. In Greek myth, Prometheus intervenes on behalf of humankind, bringing the gift of fire and fostering progress. In the Hermetic tradition, Hermes is the custodian of universal truths, dispenser of knowledge and divine instruction. Both Prometheus and Hermes are associated not only with intelligence, but with cunning and deception. Whoever that Promethean figure may be, it is from the same line of thought, transmitted by the disciples of Pythagoras, that Plato draws the foundations of Dialectic, symbolized by the two facing serpents entwined upon the staff of the Caduceus, that Hermes displays before mortals.

Who introduces Plato to Sophia? We have no certainties, though plausible hypotheses may be ventured. In the Dialogues, Socrates invites interlocutors who style themselves "sage" to explain the nature of knowledge, and he presses them to clarify those abstractions they deploy when speaking of "beauty", "justice", or "goodness". The quest for an answer to this question will mark Plato's entire life.

In the Phaedo, a conversation between Socrates and Cebes culminates in a beautiful recollection, often taken as Plato's autobiography, though it might, in truth, fit the biography of any aspirant to Sophia. Socrates recounts his intellectual path: in youth, he is enthralled by natural science; he wishes to know the causes whereby things come to be, grow, and perish. Empirical inquiry, however, leaves him unsatisfied. He compares those who seek causes in sensible phenomena to people who stare at the sun during an eclipse, and go blind. Along his studies he encounters Anaxagoras, and is captivated by the thesis of an intelligence ordering the universe. Yet, reading his works, he finds only explanations in terms of natural elements, and it seems to him that Anaxagoras confuses effects with causes. He therefore concludes, with profound disappointment, that many who call themselves "sage" are in fact nothing of the sort.

Thus, Socrates undertakes a "second sailing", a metaphor for his initiation into true Sophia under the guidance of Diotima of Mantinea, through whom he comes to grasp the subsistence of transcendent Forms. Things are beautiful, good, and just, not by virtue of their material attributes, but because they participate in eternal Ideas-Forms, the "Beautiful itself", the "Good itself", the "Just itself". From that point on, only knowledge of the Ideas-Forms counts for him as "true knowledge". And the content of Sophia will finally open to him the comprehension of the soul's immortality.

From this literary fiction, we may infer that the "initiate" Socrates initiated Plato into Sophia. Yet, in the Dialogues, Plato does not present Socrates as a master dispensing lessons that unveil the content of Sophia. Rather, he shapes his character by exalting his skeptical disposition. This enables him to dismantle arguments he deems as fragile as those of Anaxagoras, and, through this "idealized Socrates", to throw down the gauntlet to the keen minds of his time, sowing clues to the path that might lead to truth.

Socrates, however, is not the only source that draws Plato into the orbit of Sophia. In Italy, Plato comes into contact with the last generation of Pythagoreans. Applying their dialectical method, he first isolates, by pushing them to the extreme, two opposed positions: on one side Heraclitus, according to whom the sensible world is an uninterrupted flux of changing phenomena, so that knowledge of sensibles is unstable and transitory; on the other, Parmenides, for whom the only truth is that reality is an "indivisible whole".

This reading of the two philosophers is reductive, yet Plato uses their contrariety instrumentally to illustrate the dialectic between the Unity of the Subject, Parmenidean, and the Multiplicity of the Object, Heraclitian. That is, the archetypal dialectical opposition between Forms that imply one another. The Pythagoreans guarded and transmitted a formal key, a diagram, that allows one to partition a Whole, Reality itself, into well-definable Parts. This deductive, structural method can be applied to phenomena, to thought, and to language.

The Forms yielded by this partition are a finite set of stable, eternal elements, capable of breaking up and liquefying Parmenides' monolithic Unity, while at the same time recompacting and stabilizing Heraclitus' fluent Multiplicity. This diagram, at once static and dynamic, sets out to mark the stages of reality's transformation, the Becoming, through a double movement of Decomposition and Composition, that is reflected in the very process of thinking.

Thus, in the Phaedrus, Plato places in Socrates' mouth a precise judgment on this ancient method: "The processes of Composition and Decomposition that enable us to think and to speak, greatly delight me. And were I to judge another capable of grasping how Unity is by nature able to imply Multiplicity, I would follow in his footsteps as though he were a God. Whether or not the name I give to those who can do this is fitting, I cannot say, yet I have always called them 'Dialecticians'."

In Socrates, Plato finds a mentor; in Pythagoras, a true master. For the Samian philosopher bequeathed a method capable of defining the objects of knowledge and rationally reconciling things that appear opposed and irreconcilable. Thus, Plato aspires to apply, by structural analogy, Pythagoras' Cosmos to the sphere of human interiority, seeking in the Forms a precise definition of eternal, immutable Ideas. As his vision matures, to one of Socrates' ancient questions: "What is the essence of what we call 'The Good'?" Plato will reply that The Good is an Idea deriving its essence from a specific Form: that of Identity, which leads to Unity. This is the Synthetic Logic that informs Sophia. Yet, it is still too soon to clarify the full import of this claim, for the correct comprehension of Ideas is impossible in the absence of the Pythagorean key that structures the Forms. The truth and necessity of this assertion will emerge, step by step, as our narrative unfolds. "To the Principle!"