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 The next twelve years must have been the period of Plato's greatest intimacy with Socrates; and he was the great philosopher's constant companion until the day of his death. He had now no ties to bind him to Athens—perhaps, indeed, he did not feel secure there—and he went to live at Megara with his friend Euclid. Then he set out upon those travels of which we hear so much and know so little; "and" (says an old historian), "whilst studious youth were crowding to Athens from every quarter in search of Plato for their master, that philosopher was wandering along the banks of Nile or the vast plains of a barbarous country, himself a disciple of the old men of Egypt." After storing his mind with the wisdom of the Egyptians, Plato is said to have gone on to Palestine and Phœnicia—to have reached China disguised as an oil merchant—to have had the "Unknown God" revealed to him by Jewish rabbis—and to have learned the secrets of the stars from Chaldæan astronomers. But these extended travels are probably a fiction.

His visit to Sicily, however, rests on better evidence. He made a journey thither in the year 387, with the object of witnessing an eruption of Mount Etna—already fatal to one philosopher, Empedocles. On his way he stayed at Tarentum with his friend Archytas, the great mathematician, and a member of the Pythagorean brotherhood. This order—which, like the Jesuits, was exclusive, ascetic, and ambitious—had formerly had its representatives in every city of Magna