Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 6) (Burges, 1854).djvu/50

 what the translators found in the MSS. before them. But such is not the case with Ficinus, who has here, as elsewhere, kept very close to the original, except when he perceived the text to be manifestly corrupt. And a similar observation is applicable to the translation of Hieronymus Wolfius, printed, together with the text and notes, at Basle in 1577, 4, under the title of "Doctrina recte vivendi et moriendi," a fact not known, it would seem, to Cousin, who attributes that work to an anonymous scholar.

With regard to the author of the dialogue, Ficinus attributes it to Xenocrates, either because he found it so assigned in the MS. before him, or because he knew that the follower of Plato had written a treatise "On Death" as recorded by Diogenes Laert. iv. 12. By others the author was supposed to be Æschines, the follower of Socrates. But this idea was given up, when it was ascertained that none of the passages quoted by Athenæus and Pollux, from the Axiochus of Æschines, were to be found in the existing dialogue of that name.

But whatever uncertainty may exist as to the author, it is evident from §8, p.45, n.1, as Wolf was the first to remark, that it was written at the time, when the successors of Plato occupied the Academy, and those of Aristotle the Lyceum, at Athens.