Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 6) (Burges, 1854).djvu/437

Rh P. 211. Ὅρτυγα.] The passion of the Athenians for fighting quails and game-cocks is well known. See Plutarch in Alcibiade.

P. 214. The wisest.] Empedocles, perhaps, who ascribed the first formation of things to this friendship, Ἅλλοτε μέν φιλότητι συνέρχομεν εις ἑν απαντα, etc. as stated in Diogen. Laert. viii. 76, or Anaxagoras, who taught that the Universe was made up of small bodies consisting of similar particles, as we learn from Diogen. Laert. ii. 8.

P. 219. After drinking hemlock.] A quantity of wine, drunk after the cicuta, "hemlock," was believed to prevent its mortal effects.

P. 223. It was late.] It was a law of Solon, that school-rooms were to be closed before sunset.

The title expressing the subject of this dialogue (like that of Lysis) is wrong. Dacier rightly observes, that the titles are commonly nothing to the purpose; but he is strangely mistaken in saying, they are of modern invention, and that Diogenes Laertius makes no mention of them. That author actually mentions them all, and from his account they appear to be more ancient than Thrasyllus, who lived probably under Augustus and Tiberius, and who seemingly took them to be all of Plato's own hand.

The true subject certainly is, to demonstrate the necessity of knowing one's self, and that, without this foundation, all other acquisitions in science are not only useless, but pernicious.

The time of this dialogue is towards the end of Alcibiades' nineteenth year, which (as Dodwell reckons) is Ol. 87, 1. Socrates was then about thirty-nine years old.

P. 106. To mount the platform.] Boys when they had undergone the Δοκιμασία, "Scrutiny," before the Thesmothetæ, who presided in the court of Heliæa, see Lysias in Diogeiton. p. 508 and 515; Aristoph. Vesp. 576 ; and Antiphont. de cæde Choreutæ, p. 143, ed. Steph. ; and were enrolled among the men, though they were for a year excused from undertaking all Λειτουργίαι, "Public Duties," seem to have been at liberty, at this time of the republic, to vote and speak in the assembly of the people. Therefore, Potter (Archæolog. i. 17) is not correct when he affirms that they could not speak there, who were under thirty years of age. They could not indeed be chosen into the senate, etc. till that age.