We thus see, that the dictum forbidding dialectic debate with youth--cited from the seventh book of the Republic, which Plato there puts into the mouth of Sokrates--is decidedly anti-Sokratic; and anti-Platonic, in so far as Plato represents Sokrates. It belongs indeed to the case of Melêtus and Anytus, in their indictment against Sokrates before the Athenian dikastery. It is identical with their charge against him, of corrupting youth, and inducing them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of established customs and opinions heard from their elders.[188] Now the Platonic Sokrates is here made to declare explicitly, that dialectic debate addressed to youth does really tend to produce this effect:--to render them lawless, immoral, disputatious. And when we find him forbidding all such discourse at an earlier age than thirty years--we remark as a singular coincidence, that this is the exact prohibition which Kritias and Charikles actually imposed upon Sokrates himself, during the shortlived dominion of the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.[189] [Footnote 188: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 19-49. Compare Aristophanes, Nubes, 1042-1382.] [Footnote 189: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 33-38. Isokrates complains that youthful students took more delight in disputation than he thought suitable; nevertheless he declares that youth, and not mature age, is the proper season for such exercises, as well as for Geometry and Astronomy (Orat. xii. Panathen. s. 29-31, p. 239).] [Side-note: Contrast between the real Sokrates, as a dissenter at Athens, and the Platonic Sokrates, framer and dictator of the Platonic Republic.]