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, in whom, as we have seen, Plato thus merges his own personality, and who is the spokesman in nearly every Dialogue, was the son of a sculptor at Athens, and was born in the year B.C. 468. He left his father's workshop at an early age, and devoted himself to the task of public teaching,―being, as he believed, specially commissioned by the gods to question and cross-examine all he met. Accordingly he might be found, day after day, in the workshops, in the public walks, in the market-place, or in the Palæstra, hearing and asking questions; careless where or when or with whom he talked. His personal ugliness―about which he makes a joke himself in the "Theætetus"―his thick lips, snub nose, and corpulent body, and besides this, his mean dress and bare feet, made him, perhaps, the most remarkable figure in Athens, especially when contrasted with the rich dresses and