Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/318

 XIV PLATO Plato, son of Ariston, from Koll-^tus (427-347 b.c.) Descended by his father's side from Codrus, the last king of Attica, through his mother from Solon ; a cousin of Critias and nephew of Charmides ; an accomplished gymnast and wrestler, a facile and witty writer ; with a gift for occasional poems and an ambition towards tragedy, with an unusually profound training in music, mathematics, and letters, as well as a dash of Heraclitean philosophy; Plato must have seemed in his early days a type of the brilliant young Athenian aristocrat. He might have aspired to a career like that of Alcibiades, but his traditions and preferences made him turn away from legiti- mate political action. He despised the masses, and was not going to flatter them. He went in sympathies, if not in action, with his relatives along the road dimly pointed by the Old Oligarch — the road of definite conspiracy with help from abroad. When he first met Socrates he was twenty, and not a philosopher. He was one of the fashionable youths who gathered about that old sage to enjoy the process of having their wits sharpened, and their dignified acquaintances turned into ridicule. These young men were socially isolated as well as exclusive. They avoided the Ecclesia, where oligarchism was not admitted ; their views were as a rule too 'advanced' for 2Q4