68 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



in the works of Plato. The other books contain a system both of 

 municipal and international laws, written with so much comprehensive- 

 ness of understanding, and illustrated by so much copiousness and dis- 

 tinctness of reasoning, that whatever helps we may suppose Plato to 

 have received from writings of his predecessors which are now lost, it 

 is impossible to read them without admiration of the author's sagacity 

 and judgment and genuine humanity. As this was the work of Plato's 

 mature years, it may be considered as his last thoughts as a moralist 

 and politician. As a statesman, and speaking with practical views, he 

 never thinks of recommending any community of goods or wives ; but 

 he proposes many excellent regulations, considering the condition of 

 females at that time in Greece, for the education and elevation of that 

 sex from the comparative servility in which' they lived. 



' The Minos ' which is generally prefixed as introductory to the 

 ' Book of Laws,' has been shown to be spurious by an eminent foreign 

 critic; and although Plato did write an ' Epinomis,' or supplemental 

 close to his Laws, yet the same learned critic holds the dialogue which 

 we now have under that title to be spurious also. 



Plato's death, Plato died at Athens in the first year of the hundred and eighth 



B. c. SIP. Olympiad, as it seems, of a general decline, at the advanced age of 



eighty-one years. A monument was raised to his memory* in the 



Academy, inscribed with an epitaph written by his pupil Aristotle, 



in terms of gratitude and enthusiastic reverence. 



Certain dialogues generally introduced in the editions of Plato, have 

 Spurious been long ago admitted to be spurious by general consent. These are 

 writings. , The Axiochus,' Demodochus,' * Eryxias,' ' Sisyphus,' ' Clitopho,' 

 and the two short dialogues on Justice and Virtue. Other dialogues 

 generally received as genuine, the ' Hipparchus,' ' The Minos,' ' The 

 Epinomis,' ' The Latter Alcibiades,' ' The Rivals,' ' Clitopho,' and 

 'Theages' bear strong marks of spuriousness. The dialogues last 

 enumerated are accordingly rejected by Bockh, 1 Bekker, 8 and Von 

 Ast. 3 Bekker and Von Ast also reject the Letters. Bekker in like 

 manner condemns * The First Alcibiades,' ' The Lesser Hippias,' and 

 ' The Io.' Von Ast not only concurs in this judgment, but goes much 

 greater lengths. He questions the genuineness of ' The Meno,' 

 * Euthydemus,' ' Charmides,' ' Lysis,' ' Menexenus,' * Laches,' ' The 

 Greater Hippias,' ' Io,' Euthyphro,' The Defence of Socrates,' The 

 Crito,' and the ' Books of Laws.' In the two ' Hippias ' it is true that 

 the gravity and importance of the sophist are caricatured with almost 

 too great boldness and freedom of pencilling, and that the touches of 

 satire are not of that more reserved and delicate cast which generally 

 prevails in Plato's style. But we know not any sufficient reason for 



1 See Bockh's excellent critical tract, entitled Commentatio in Platonis qui 

 vulgo fatur Minoem, ejusdemque libros priores de Legibus, Hal. Sax. 1806. 



2 In his edition of Plato, Berlin, 1818. 



3 In his Platons Leben und Schrif'ten, als einleitung in das studium des Platon, 

 Lips. 1816, 8vo. 



