Plato himself does nothing in them to
retard the effacement which mere time brings to persons and their
abodes; and there had been that, moreover, in his own temper, which
promotes self-effacement. Yet as he left it, the place remained for
centuries, according to his will, to its original use. What he taught
through the remaining forty years of his life, the method of that
teaching, whether it [149] was less or more esoteric than the teaching
of the extant Dialogues, is but matter of surmise. Writers, who in
their day might still have said much we should have liked to hear, give
us little but old, quasi-supernatural stories, told as if they had been
new ones, about him. The year of his birth fell, according to some, in
the very year of the death of Pericles (a significant date!) but is not
precisely ascertainable: nor is the year of his death, nor its manner.
Scribens est mortuus, says Cicero:--after the manner of a true scholar,
"he died pen in hand."
NOTES
127-28. +Transliteration: Synesometha pollois tôn neôn autothi. Pater's
translation: "We shall meet a number of our youth there." Plato,
Republic 328a.
133. +Transliteration: Kai hos eipen erythriasas, êdê gar hypephaine ti
êmeras ôste kataphanê auton genesthai. E-text editor's translation:
"And he blushed as he spoke, for presently the day began to break, so
as to make him visible." Plato, Protagoras 312a.
134. +Transliteration: Ta erôtika. Pater's translation: "the discipline
of sensuous love;" more literally, the phrase means "things pertaining
to love." Plato, Symposium 177d.
136. +Transliteration: ta erôtika. Pater's translation: "the discipline
of sensuous love;" more literally, the phrase means "things pertaining
to love." Plato, Symposium 177d.
136. +Transliteration: hêttôn tôn kalôn. Pater's translation: "subject
to the influence of fair persons;" more literally, "yielding to
beauty." Plato, Meno 76c.
140. +Transliteration: ta erôtika. Pater's translation: "the discipline
of sensuous love;" more literally, the phrase means "things pertaining
to love." Plato, Symposium 177d.
140. +Transliteration: theôria. Liddell and Scott definition: "a
looking at, viewing, beholding . . . contemplation, reflection."
Plato, Republic 486a.
146. +Transliteration: theôria. Liddell and Scott definition: "a
looking at, viewing, beholding . . . contemplation, reflection."
Plato, Republic 486a.
CHAPTER 7: THE DOCTRINE OF PLATO
I. THE THEORY OF IDEAS