The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Another of his epigrams is:—
I throw this apple to you. And if you
Love me who love you so, receive it gladly,
And let me taste your lovely virgin charms.
Or if that may not be, still take the fruit,
And in your bosom cherish it, and learn
How fleeting is all gracefulness and beauty.
And another:—
I am an apple, and am thrown to you,
By one who loves you: but consent, Xanthippe;
For you and I shall both with time decay.
They also attribute to him the following epigram on the Eretrians who had
been surprised in an ambuscade:—
We were Eretrians, of Eubœan race?
And now we lie near Susa, here entomb’d,
Far from my native land.
And this one also:—
Thus Venus to the muses spoke:
Damsels submit to Venus’ yoke,
Or dread my Cupid’s arms.
Those threats, the Virgins nine replied,
May weigh with Mars, but we deride
Love’s wrongs, or darts, or charms.
Another is:—
A certain person found some gold,
Carried it off, and in its stead
Left a strong halter neatly roll’d.
The owner found his treasure fled;
And powerless to endure his fortune’s wreck,
Fitted the halter to his hapless neck.
XXIV. But Molon, who had a great dislike to Plato, says “There is not
so much to wonder at in Dionysius being at Corinth, as in Plato’s being
in Sicily.” Xenophon, too, does not appear to have been very friendlily
disposed towards him: and accordingly they have, as if in rivalry of
one another, both written books with the same title, the Banquet, the
Defence of Socrates, Moral Reminiscences. Then, too, the one wrote the
Cyropædia and the other a book on Politics; and Plato in his Laws says,
that the Cyropædia is a mere romance, for that Cyrus was not such a
person as he is described in that book. And though they both speak so
much of Socrates, neither of them ever mentions the other, except that
Xenophon once speaks of Plato in the third book of his Reminiscences. It
is said also, that Antisthenes, being about to recite something that he
had written, invited him to be present; and that Plato having asked what
he was going to recite, he said it was an essay on the impropriety of
contradicting. “How then,” said Plato, “can you write on this subject?”
and then he showed him that he was arguing in a circle. But Antisthenes
was annoyed, and composed a dialogue against Plato, which he entitled
Sathon; after which they were always enemies to one another; and they say
that Socrates having heard Plato read the Lysis, said, “O Hercules! what
a number of lies the young man has told about me.” For he had set down a
great many things as sayings of Socrates which he never said.
Plato also was a great enemy of Aristippus; accordingly, he speaks ill
of him in his book on the Soul, and says that he was not with Socrates
when he died, though he was in Ægina, at no great distance. He also had
a great rivalry with Æschines, for that he had been held in great esteem
by Dionysius, and afterwards came to want, and was despised by Plato, but
supported by Aristippus. And Idomeneus says, that the speech which Plato
attributes to Crito in the prison, when he counselled Socrates to make
his escape, was really delivered by Æschines, but that Plato attributed
it to Crito because of his dislike to the other. And Plato never makes
the slightest mention of him in any of his books, except in the treatise
on the Soul, and the Defence of Socrates.
XXV. Aristotle says, that the treatises of Plato are something between
poems and prose; and Phavorinus says, when Plato read his treatise on
the Soul, Aristotle was the only person who sat it out, and that all the
rest rose up and went away. And some say that Philip the Opuntian copied
out the whole of his books upon Laws, which were written on waxen tablets
only. Some people also attribute the Epinomis to him. Euphorion and
Panætius have stated that the beginning of the treatise on the Republic
was often altered and re-written; and that very treatise, Aristoxenus
affirms, was found almost entire in the Contradictions of Protagoras;
and that the first book he wrote at all was the Phædrus; and indeed
that composition has a good many indications of a young composer. But
Dicæarchus blames the whole style of that work as vulgar.
XXVI. A story is told, that Plato, having seen a man playing at dice,
reproached him for it, and that he said he was playing for a trifle; “But
the habit,” rejoined Plato, “is not a trifle.” On one occasion he was
asked whether there would be any monument of him, as of his predecessors
in philosophy? and he answered, “A man must first make a name, and the
monument will follow.” Once, when Xenocrates came into his house, he
desired him to scourge one of his slaves for him, for that he himself
could not do it because he was in a passion; and that at another time
he said to one of his slaves, “I should beat you if I were not in a
passion.” Having got on horseback he dismounted again immediately, saying
that he was afraid that he should be infected with horse-pride. He used
to advise people who got drunk to look in the glass, and then they would
abandon their unseemly habit; and he said that it was never decorous to
drink to the degree of drunkenness, except at the festivals of the God
who had given men wine. He also disapproved of much sleeping: accordingly
in his Laws he says, “No one while sleeping is good for anything.”
Another saying of his was, “That the pleasantest of all things to hear
was the truth;” but others report this saying thus, “That the sweetest of
all things was to speak truth.” And of truth he speaks thus in his Laws,
“Truth, my friend, is a beautiful and a durable thing; but it is not easy
to persuade men of this fact.”
XXVII. He used also to wish to leave a memorial of himself behind, either
in the hearts of his friends, or in his books.
XXVIII. He also used to travel a good deal as some authors inform us.
XXIX. And he died in the manner we have already mentioned, in the
thirteenth year of the reign of Philip of Macedon, as Phavorinus mentions
in the third book of his Commentaries; and Theopompus relates that Philip
on one occasion reproached him. But Myronianus, in his Resemblances, says
that Philo mentions some proverbs that were in circulation about Plato’s
lice; implying that he had died of that disease.
XXX. He was buried in the Academy, where he spent the greater part of
his time in the practice of philosophy, from which his was called the
Academic school; and his funeral was attended by all the pupils of that
sect. And he made his will in the following terms:—“Plato left these
things, and has bequeathed them as follows.—The farm in the district of
the Hephæstiades, bounded on the north by the road from the temple of
the Cephisiades, and on the south by the temple of Hercules, which is
in the district of the Hephæstiades; and on the east by the estate of
Archestratus the Phrearrian, and on the west by the farm of Philip the
Chollidian, shall be incapable of being sold or alienated, but shall
belong to my son Adimantus as far as possible. And so likewise shall my
farm in the district of the Eiresides, which I bought of Callimachus,
which is bounded on the north by the property of Eurymedon the
Myrrhinusian, on the south by that of Demostratus of Xypeta, on the east
by that of Eurymedon the Myrrhinusian, and on the west by the Cephisus;—I
also leave him three minæ of silver, a silver goblet weighing a hundred
and sixty-five drachms, a cup weighing forty-five drachms, a golden ring,
and a golden ear-ring, weighing together four drachms and three obols.
Euclides the stone-cutter owes me three minæ. I leave Diana her liberty.
My slaves Tychon, Bictas, Apolloniades, and Dionysius, I bequeath to
my son; and I also give him all my furniture, of which Demetrius has
a catalogue. I owe no one anything. My executors shall be Sosthenes,
Speusippus, Demetrius, Hegias, Eurymedon, Callimachus, and Thrasippus.”
This was his will. And on his tomb the following epigrams were inscribed.
First of all:—
Here, first of all men for pure justice famed,
And moral virtue, Aristocles lies;
And if there e’er has lived one truly wise,
This man was wiser still; too great for envy.
A second is:—
Here in her bosom does the tender earth
Embrace great Plato’s corpse.—His soul aloft
Has ta’en its place among the immortal Gods.
Ariston’s glorious son—whom all good men,
Though in far countries, held in love and honour,
Remembering his pure and god-like life.
There is another which is more modern:—
_A._ Eagle, why fly you o’er this holy tomb?
Or are you on your way, with lofty wing,
To some bright starry domicile of the Gods?
_B._ I am the image of the soul of Plato,
And to Olympus now am borne on high;
His body lies in his own native Attica.
We ourselves also have written one epigram on him, which is as follows:—
If fav’ring Phœbus had not Plato given
To Grecian lands, how would the learned God
Have e’er instructed mortal minds in learning?
But he did send him, that as Æsculapius
His son’s the best physician of the body,
So Plato should be of the immortal soul.
And others, alluding to his death:—
Phœbus, to bless mankind, became the father
Of Æsculapius, and of god-like Plato;
_That_ one to heal the body, _this_ the mind.
Now, from a marriage feast he’s gone to heaven,
To realize the happy city there,
Which he has planned fit for the realms of Jove.
These then are the epigrams on him.
XXXI. His disciples were, Speusippus the Athenian, Zenocrates of
Chalcedon, Aristotle the Stagirite, Philip of Opus, Histiæus of
Perinthus, Dion of Syracuse, Amyclus of Heraclea, Erastus and Coriscus of
Sceptos, Timolaus of Cyzicus, Eudon of Lampsacus, Pithon and Heraclides
of Æmus, Hippothales and Callippus, Athenians, Demetrius of Amphipolis,
Heraclides of Pontus, and numbers of others, among whom there were also
two women, Lasthenea of Mantinea, and Axiothea of Phlius, who used even
to wear man’s clothes, as we are told by Dicæarchus. Some say that
Theophrastus also was a pupil of his; and Chamælion says that Hyperides
the orator, and Lycurgus, were so likewise. Polemo also asserts that
Demosthenes was. Sabinus adds Mnesistratus of Thasos to the number,
quoting authority for the statement in the fourth book of his Meditative
Matter; and it is not improbable.
XXXII. But as you, O lady, are rightly very much attached to Plato, and
as you are very fond of hunting out in every quarter all the doctrines
of the philosopher with great eagerness, I have thought it necessary
to subjoin an account of the general character of his lectures, and of
the arrangement of his dialogues, and of the method of his inductive
argument; going back to their elements and first principles as far as
I could, so that the collection of anecdotes concerning his life which
I have been able to make, may not be curtailed by the omission of any
statement as to his doctrines. For it would be like sending owls to
Athens, as the proverb is, if I were to descend to particular details.
They say now, that Zeno, the Eleatic, was the first person who composed
essays in the form of dialogue. But Aristotle, in the first book of his
treatise on Poets, says that Alexamenus, a native of Styra, or Teos,
did so before him, as Phavorinus also says in his Commentaries. But it
seems to me that Plato gave this kind of writing the last polish, and
that he has therefore, a just right to the first honour, not only as
the improver, but also as inventor of that kind of writing. Now, the
dialogue is a discourse carried on by way of question and answer, on