PLATO. 



FROM B. C. 428 TO B. C. 348. 



OUR readers have been already presented with the particulars of the 

 life of Socrates, whose moral worth illustrated the age in which he 

 lived, and whose pupils and admirers branched out into so many 

 separate families or schools, that he has been very justly entitled the 

 great patriarch of Grecian Philosophy. The first of those schools, 

 that of the earlier Academics, as they have been called, was founded 

 by the subject of the present memoir. Plato, the pupil of Socrates, 

 who was one of his country's highest ornaments, and whose works 

 remain as the great model of Athenian genius, elegance, and urbanity. 



Our memoir will contain a bare outline of the principal facts of the 

 life of Plato, as far as they can be authenticated by the concurrent 

 testimonies of Cicero, Apuleius, and Diogenes Laertius. We shall Fables con- 

 reject all fables ; and think it unnecessary, for instance, to trouble our 

 readers with the tale that Plato was born of a virgin mother, and that 

 he had the honour of Apollo for his father, though Diogenes and 

 Apuleius, and Plutarch and Lucian, concur in the story ; nor do we 

 think it worth while to stay and inquire whether the fable might not 

 originate in some circumstance of illegitimate birth, or in the fact that 

 Plato was born on one of Apollo's festivals. In like manner, we 

 cannot dwell on the account that a swarm of bees gathered round the 

 cradle, and settled on the infant's lips, though Cicero, 1 in one passage, 

 assumes the fact. We prefer relating what may be credited, and trust 

 that our readers will approve our caution, though it may. deprive us of 

 some amusing materials. 



Our narrative will be interspersed with brief abstracts of some of 

 those Dialogues of Plato, which we think contain the best views of 

 his sentiments, or in which we suspect the characters and objects of 

 the speakers to have been generally misapprehended. To the narra- 

 tive we shall subjoin a general outline of Plato's doctrines, with a few 

 general reflections on the bearings of his philosophy ; and here we 

 shall maintain the same reserve as in our relation of facts. We shall 

 state Plato's own doctrines from his own writings, and we shall not 

 trouble ourselves with the consideration of notions (and of such there 

 is abundance) which are generally attributed to him, but of which we 

 do not find the slightest trace in his own writings. 



Plato was born of Athenian parents, in the island of jEgina, in the His birth, 



1 Platoni cum in cunis parvulo dormienti apes in labellis consedissent, responsum B * * 8 ' 

 est, singulari ilium suavitate orationis fore, ita futura eloquentia provisa in infante 

 cst. De Divinat. lib. i. 36. 



