oppressive, and indiscreet; but his kinsmen. Critias, Charmides, and their colleagues, were more lawless, sanguinary, rapacious, and brutal. It is safe to reject the blind partisanship alike of Grote and of Mitford. Whether under the rule of the mob or under the rule of the few, the internal condition of Athens had become desperate. Our histories of Greece, with all their de- tails of license and exaction, reveal but little of the consuming fever by which Athens and her sister states slowly perished. What outraged Plato more than any- thing else wras the indignity and treacherous injustice shown towards his master, Socrates, himself affiliated with the dominant party. Socrates was ordered to ar- rest an innocent man, and to conduct him to punish- ment, in order that he might be involved in the crimes and odium of the chiefs. We are reminded of the ne- farious counsels given by the historian and administra- tor Guicciardini for the repression of the prostrate and humiliated Florence. Socrates refused, and his life was endangered. At the same time his garrulous mouth was stopped, and his instructions in the streets and highways prohibited. Plato gave up the delusive vis- ions of reform which he subsequently ascribed to his youth, and withdrew himself from political concerns. Critias was killed, the Thirty driven out, the usurpa- tion overthrown, and a complete subversion of the recent polity was effected. Plato again sought an en- trance into public life. He was dragged in this direc- tion by a strong desire, as he confesses. His inclina- tions were decidedly political. He complains of the violence and vengeance which attended the political disturbances, but admits that much moderation was shown by the restored democracy. Still the party ad- verse to him acquired full ascendency, and he found himself excluded from influence. His final repulse from Athenian politics was due to the malicious indictment of Socrates, and his death under sentence of the criminal court. The peril and the condemnation of his teacher drew Plato closer to him. He attended and advised the sage in his trial. He offered to pay the fine that might be imposed upon him ; and, if parted by sickness from his last serene hours, he fondly treasured up his memory and his aims, and consecrated his own life to the illustration of his virtues, and the perpetuation of the fame of his great guide and friend. Anxious and occupied with other cares as were the years of Plato's intercourse with Socrates, many of the learned German scholars who have occupied themselves with the Pla- tonic writings have concluded that several of them wrere composed and published before or soon after the death of his illustrious instructor. It seems more rea- sonable to refer them all, or nearly all, to a much later period.
The tragic fate of Socrates dispersed the Socratic fra- ternity and drove Plato from Athens. He naturally feared to be involved in like odium and like danger with Socrates. It must be remembered that the real cause of enmity was mainly political — that Socrates and Plato were not merely adversaries of democratic ascendency, but had been identified with the tyranny of the Thirty. The looseness, too, and unregulated passion of Athenian procedure, civil and criminal, must also be borne in mind. Justice, innocence, and law were no assured protection before an Attic dicas- tery. This, doubtless, intensified Plato's hereditary op- position to the rule of the majority, and would increase his distrust after the judicial murder of Socrates. lie might recall the remark made by Alcibiades at the time of his flight from Sicily, that he would not trust his life to the vote of his own mother, lest she should blun- der and deposit a black pebble for a white one. Plato accordingly retired from At liens, and found refuge in the house of Euclid at Megara, a fellow-pupil, and the father of the Megaric school. He was nowin histwenty- eighth year. How long he continued at Megara. and how far he imbibed the doctrines of Euclid, cannot be ascertained, though Megaric tendencies may readily be
PLATO
2 :t
PLATO
1 in his own teachings. Aim t leaving Mega- ra. Plato entered upon a round of distant voyagi s; but • ni. their order, and whether continuous <>r interspersed with visits to his native city, musl remain undetermined. In the course of his travels he visited Cyrene, where he studied geometry under Theodorus; and thence proceeded to Egypt, where he admired the ancient monuments, and held intercourse with the Some r< ports alleged that he extended his journeys to Palestine, Syria, Babylonia, and even to Persia. When he was about forty years of age he \ is- iti d Tan iiiiiin -where be became acquainted with the Pythagoreans, Archytas, Timseus, Echecrates, etc. and Syracuse, where his intimacy with Dion was formed, lid i" have been admitted at this time to the society of the elder Dionysius, and to have offended the tyrant, who sent him away in charge of Pollis, the Spartan, to be disposed of as a prisoner of war. The commission was executed, and Plato was sold as a slave in .I'.-ina. inn soon ransomed by Anniceris, who refused reimbursement. The story is questionable in all its
pari-.
Immediately after this supposed adventure Plato re- turned to Athens, and revived in a novel and mure s\ sti matic form the career of Socrates, opening a school of philosophy in the grove of the hero Academus, w hich adjoined a small estate of Ids own, either inherited or purchased, lying a mile north of Alliens, on the road to Eleusis. Here he remained for nearly forty years, in the exercise of his didactic vocation, with the exception of two absences in Sicily, each of considerable length. To this interval between the death of Socrates and the establishment of the Academj has been attributed the composition of many of the Platonic Dialogues. This has been done by German critics, who have been ena- bled by keen intuition to discover what was in the mind of Plato, though wholly unrevealed by himself. The object of their production in these years is not easily discernible. The leisure for their preparation would Scarcely be afforded during the fatigues of his lout; jour- ney-: nor i> ii likely that one so averse to the literary promulgation of his views would engage in such labors npied in storing his mind with multifarious knowledge, in examining the dogmas of other philoso- phers, and in maturing his own views. In the absence of all positive information, a decision is as absurd as it would be impossible. But the conclusion of Grote is most plausible that the Charta Platonica are all sub- sequent to 1'lato's entrance upon his career as a teacher. Tin- history of the Academy under the rule and in- struct ion ol its founder is unknown. That it was thor- oughly successful i- evident from the high and wide m of it- ica. her. from the distinguished names of its pupils, from the duration of their academical