In the Republic, in the context of the education of the Guardians (or the purification of the Kallipolis), a certain Damon is mentioned explicitly a few times by Socrates. There are really two episodes. I find them startling upon reflection.
The first episode begins around 400b1 and ends around 400c2. Damon is introduced as a technical expert on the representational qualities of different kind of rhythms used in (musical) poetry. If one doesn’t like ‘representational’ here, it’s okay to substitute ‘expressive’ or ‘emotive’' as long as one remembers that the rhythms are supposed to correspond to particular human character qualities (that is, virtues and vices). In an accompanying footnote to his translation Shorey calls him a “musical expert.” In an endnote to his translation, C.D.C. Reeve calls Damon a “pioneering musicologist who had views on the psychological and political significance of music.”(p. 332) In context, the issue is which rhythms represent and generate order and courage if and when they accompany words that are characteristic of order and courage.
During the first episode, Socrates appeals to the authority of Damon for two explicit reasons: (i) to save time (400c5); (ii) and because Damon has specific expertise that has eluded Socrates (despite Socrates having a memory of hearing Damon expound on the relevant details (400b)).
In a note, Shorey suggests that there is a hint of satire in Socrates’ remarks about the fact that Damon’s own vocabulary or terminology (to illustrate the representational qualities of particular rhythms) was opaque. That may be so, but it wouldn’t follow that Socrates is thereby devaluing the claim to genuine expertise or skill he has attributed to Damon. (Consider: presenting probabilities in terms of modalities with boxes and diamonds. One may mock them without denying the expertise involved.)
Now, a bit later in the Republic, Socrates makes non-trivial show of the fact that at the founding of the Kallipos the purified (civic) religion, including (quoting Reeve) “the temples and sacrifices, and other forms of service to the gods, daimons, and heroes; the burial of the dead, and the services that ensure the favor of those who have gone to the other world,” (427ab) will be shaped by the binding advice of the Delphic oracle of Delphi.
But already in the first episode involving Damon, Socrates signals that the blueprint he offers will presuppose relatively important other expertise. This matters because it shows that the Socratic legislative art is not self-sufficient, but part of a wider cognitive division of labor that has already advanced quite a way. So much so such that Socrates effectively is in no position to really check (except, perhaps, post facto) if Damon’s expertise is sound. That is to say, the conditions to found a Kallipolis are, in part, dependent on the background expertise that is or is not available or ready at hand in context (and that may be out of the hands of the legislator). The advancement of knowledge is a non-trivial enabling constraint to the best or near best political life.
Before I move to the second episode, it is worth noting two things: first, at different times throughout the history of music and philosophy, musicologists and philosophers (not to mention cultural anthropologists here) have been interested in versions of the question on which Damon is a purported expert. It is a topic that, for example, fascinated Rousseau and Adam Smith in some form or another.
Second, while I do not want to exaggerate it, it’s not as if Damon’s expertise is relatively trivial to the survival of the Kallipolis or altogether insignificant. At various points in Plato’s works music and philosophy are treated as rather close in character; one doesn’t need to go all Nietzschean here, but in the Phaedo, Socrates even says that prior to his trial (that is in the extended present of the Republic) he thought of “philosophy [w]as the greatest kind of music.” (61a) And this is also true for political life; the order and harmony of of good cities is articulated by Socrates at least, in part, in musical terms and metaphors throughout.
These two considerations are themselves part of the point of the second episode in which Damon is mentioned (in Book IV of the Republic). I quote from Shorey’s translation:
For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions, as Damon affirms and as I am convinced.—424c [Reeve’s “the greatest political laws may be better for πολιτικῶν νόμων τῶν μεγίστων.]
This passage re-affirms Damon’s authority as an accepted expert pertaining to music. In addition, we learn that Socrates agrees with Damon that innovating in music can be sufficient to undo the stability of the polity. Musical life (be it as an instrument of education or civic festivals) is constitutive of the political order. (We may be tempted to put this in terms of ‘culture,’ but lets leave that aside.) Socrates and Adeimantus develop this claim in subsequent paragraphs, so it’s not treated as a mere aside.
So, even if one can be an expert in music without being an expert in politics, Damon is acknowledged by Socrates to be an expert in one of the causes of social/political (in)stability. When it comes to Socrates, Damon is in some respects, then, much more like Diotima in the Symposium then most of the other learned to be refuted in Socratic dialogues.
This matters also for a kind of popular understanding of Socrates that resonates also with philosophers today. Socrates is not an isolated gadfly who through skilled interrogation and independence of thought primarily unmasks the pretentions of others. Even as represented by Plato, Socrates is himself part of a community of experts, who are students of politics (and other philosophical matters). Of course, Socrates does not merely treat Damon as an unquestioned authority; there is clearly sufficient overlapping understanding that some judgments are best understood as converging rather than mere expert testimony.
I could stop here.
In Alcibiades 1, Damon is mentioned by Alcibiades as an advisor to the aging Pericles. And this made curious if he is mentioned by Plutarch in his life of Pericles. Plutarch introduces Damon by the report that most authors treat Damon as the musical teacher of Pericles. He then says (in the old translation of Perrin),
I don’t mean to suggest that I take Plutarch as a reliable source here. But rather, that Plutarch, too, is inclined to treat Damon not as a mere musicologist, but rather as someone who teaches the political art and not without influence in so doing.