But even if Wilamowitz is right, the absence of any other reference to Crito of Samos in any of the extant texts of classical or post-classical antiquity would be mysterious. Some have surmised a much more recent forgery.
More recently, a distinguished English philosopher, the late Gilbert Ryle, sustained an ingenious but circumstantial argument for the authenticity of the Mysteries. This was also in an unpublished paper, though it seems to have been circulated among classical scholars. Ryle points out that each Mystery consists of a shortish narrative culminating in a dénouement. The main narrative is plausible. It recounts, as the historian Thucydides or later the philosopher Aristotle might have put it, ‘what would (be likely to) happen’. Yet these narratives arise from other often surprising events, for which the main narrative provides evidence, but also conceals, until the dénouement makes everything clear.
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