Things up in the sky · Lexicon

From the book

The Lovers

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordMeteōros means raised or up aloft.
In The LoversThe expression belongs to a hostile speech.
In this editionThe note at 132b connects the expression with comic portrayals of philosophers.
A place to readπερὶ τῶν μετεώρων — The skyward subject is named by the disparaging lover.

Meaning

Meteōros means raised or up aloft. Its neuter plural with the article, ta meteōra, means the things above or in the sky. In the athlete’s speech the genitive tōn meteōrōn follows “about.” The edition’s “the things up in the sky” preserves an ordinary descriptive phrase rather than substituting the modern technical discipline “meteorology.” The latter would also mislead by narrowing the phrase toward weather, whereas the opening names thinkers and shows circles and inclinations.

Use in the book

The expression belongs to a hostile speech. The athlete says the boys prattle about the things in the sky and talk nonsense while philosophizing. A cosmological subject is thus bundled with a contemptuous judgment about the activity. Socrates does not endorse that bundle: he is surprised by the answer and asks why philosophizing should be shameful.

The phrase helps define the distance traversed by the dialogue. Its initial instance of philosophy concerns distant things apparently represented in diagrams. Its final sequence concerns oneself, other people, the household, and the city. One can reasonably read the movement as a reorientation of philosophical importance, but not as a demonstrated ban on investigating the heavens. The text never evaluates the boys’ actual astronomical conclusions.

It is equally important not to turn the athlete’s sneer into a secure historical definition of philosophy. The dialogue makes such a label the occasion for inquiry. What people call philosophizing is precisely what the interlocutors have not yet adequately explained.

Places to read

132bπερὶ τῶν μετεώρων — The skyward subject is named by the disparaging lover.

Translation in this edition

The note at 132b connects the expression with comic portrayals of philosophers. It cites Aristophanes’ Clouds 225–228, where Socrates investigates things above from a basket, and passages calling his school prattle. The supplied edition, rather than a fresh survey of comedy, is the source for that contextual connection. The note’s comparison illuminates the tone of the athlete’s remark; it does not establish a quotation from a particular comic line in The Lovers.