Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1Grote, George
Philosophy
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1
Grote, George
Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
[Footnote 3: We find a remarkable proof how long the name and
conception of Sokrates lasted in the memory of the Athenian public, as
having been the great progenitor of the philosophy and philosophers of
the fourth century B.C. in Athens. It was about 306 B.C., almost a
century after the death of Sokrates, that Democharês (the nephew of
the orator Demosthenes) delivered an oration before the Athenian
judicature for the purpose of upholding the law proposed by Sophokles,
forbidding philosophers or Sophists to lecture without a license
obtained from the government; which law, passed a year before, had
determined the secession of all the philosophers from Athens until the
law was repealed. In this oration Democharês expatiated on the
demerits of many philosophers, their servility, profligate ambition,
rapacity, want of patriotism, &c., from which Athenæus makes several
extracts. [Greek: Toiou=toi ei)sin oi( a)po\ philosophi/as stratêgoi/;
peri\ ô(=n Dêmocha/rês e)/legen,--Ô(/sper e)k thu/mbras ou)dei\s a)\n
du/naito kataskeua/sai lo/gchên, ou)/d' e)k _Sôkra/tous stratiô/tên
a)/mempton_].
Demetrius Phalereus also, in or near that same time, composed a
[Greek: Sôkra/tous a)pologi/an] (Diog. La. ix. 37-57). This shows how
long the interest in the personal fate and character of Sokrates
endured at Athens.]
[Side-note: Names of those companions.]
Besides Plato and Xenophon, whose works are known to us, we hear of
Alexamenus, Antisthenes, Æschines, Aristippus, Bryson, Eukleides,
Phædon, Kriton, Simmias, Kebês, &c., as having composed dialogues of
this sort. All of them were companions of Sokrates; several among them
either set down what they could partially recollect of his
conversations, or employed his name as a dramatic speaker of their own
thoughts. Seven of these dialogues were ascribed to Æschines,
twenty-five to Aristippus, seventeen to Kriton, twenty-three to Simmias,
three to Kebês, six to Eukleides, four to Phædon. The compositions of
Antisthenes were far more numerous: ten volumes of them, under a
variety of distinct titles (some of them probably not in the form of
dialogues) being recorded by Diogenes.[4] Aristippus was the first of
the line of philosophers called Kyrenaic or Hedonic, afterwards (with
various modifications) Epikurean: Antisthenes, of the Cynics and
Stoics: Eukleides, of the Megaric school. It seems that Aristippus,
Antisthenes, Eukleides, and Bryson, all enjoyed considerable
reputation, as contemporaries and rival authors of Plato: Æschines,
Antisthenes (who was very poor), and Aristippus, are said to have
received money for their lectures; Aristippus being named as the first
who thus departed from the Sokratic canon.[5]
[Footnote 4: Diogenes Laert. 1. 47-61-83, vi. 15; Athenæ. xi. p. 505
C.
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