Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/425

 EVIDENCES ABOUT SOKRATES. 403 posed, and memoranda put together, by other hearers of Sokra- tes, respecting his conversations and teaching, which arc all now lost. 1 The " Memorabilia " ot Xenophon profess to record actual conversations held by Sokrates, and are prepared with the announced purpose of vindicating him against the accusations of Meletus and his other accusers on the trial, as well as against unfavorable opinions, seemingly much circulated respecting his character and purposes. We thus have in it a sort of partial biography, subject to such deductions from its evidentiary value as may be requisite for imperfection of memory, intentional dec- oration, and partiality. On the other hand, the purpose of Plato, in the numerous dialogues wherein he introduces Sokrates, is not so clear, and is explained very differently by different com- mentators. Plato was a great speculative genius, who came to form opinions of his own distinct from those of Sokrates, and employed the name of the latter as spokesman for these opinions in various dialogues. How much, in the Platonic Sokrates, can be safely accepted either as a picture of the man or as a record of his opinions, how much, on the other hand, is to be treated as Platonism ; or in what proportions the two are intermingled, is a point not to be decided with certainty or rigor. The "Apology of Sokrates," the " Kriton," and the " Phasdon," in so far as it is a moral picture, and apart from the doctrines advo- cated in it, appear to belong to the first category ; while the political and social views of the " Republic " and of the treatise ' De Legibus," the cosmic theories in the " Timaeus," and the hypothesis of Ideas, as substantive existences apart from the phenomenal world, in the various dialogues wherever it is stated, certainly belong to the second. Of the ethical dialogues, much ' ( nophon (Mem. i, 4, 1) alludes to several such biographers, or collect- ors of anecdotes about Sokrates. Yet it would seem that most of these Soci-atlci viri (Cicer. ad Attic, xiv, 9, 1) did not collect anecdotes or con- versations of the master, after the manner of Xcnoplion ; but composed dialogues, manifesting more or less of his method and ?/$of, after the type of Plato. Simon the leather-cutter, however, took memoranda of conver- sations held by Sokrates in his shop, and published several dialogues pur- porting to be such. (Diog. Lae'rt. ii, 123.) The Socratici viri&rc ger orally praised by Cicero (Tus. D. ii, 3, 8) for the elegance of their style.