A step too far?

This morning I looked up Plato, then Plato’s Phaedrus on Google. I expected to find there a reference to ‘2a Dating of the Phaedrus – doctrinal arguments (the tripartite and the unitary soul in Plato’s Republic)’, which I posted yesterday. To my dismay, I found there no refence to this post, nor to the preceding ‘2 Dating of the Phaedrus – doctrinal arguments (with a glance at Plato’s Protagoras and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics)’ posted on Dec. 24, or to ‘1 Dating of the Phaedrus – doctrinal arguments (the soul in Republic X)’ posted on Dec. 17. The two references I found there go back to Dec. 16, ‘3 Polemarchus in Plato’s Phaedrus and Republic I, and Dec. 15, ‘2 Polemarchus in Plato’s Phaedrus and Republic I’.

Have I gone too far by beginning to grapple with the doctrinal arguments that Richard Sorabji raised against my dating of Plato’s Phaedrus? Does this mean that from December 16 the Google-visitors interested in Plato will cease to be informed about my work? Just when I get to grips with the crux of the matter?

It makes me sad, and it has its effects. The ‘Stats’ was telling me that for weeks the greatest number of visitors on my blog were from the USA, then United Kingdom, then France, then Germany. It changed. The number of visitors this week: USA 1613, France 41, Russia 21, United Kingdom 17, Ireland 6, Germany 4, Israel 3, Canada 2, India 2, Portugal 2 – no Czech Republic.

What I particularly deplore is the low number of German visitors, for the German scholars in the early 20th century ‘proved’ that the Phaedrus was a late dialogue – see R. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedrus, Cambridge University Press, 1952, repr. 1972.