Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

We, being all of us the friends of Plato, have sent to you Lamiscus and Photidas in order to take the philosopher away by the terms of the agreement made with you. You will do well to remember the zeal with which you urged us all to secure Plato’s coming to Sicily, determined as you were to persuade him and to undertake, amongst other things, responsibility for his safety so long as he stayed with you and on his return. Remember this too, that you set great store by his coming, and from that time had more regard for him than for any of those at your court. If he has given you offence, it behoves you to behave with humanity and restore him to us unhurt. By so doing you will satisfy justice and at the same time put us under an obligation.

The third time he came to reconcile Dion and Dionysius, but, failing to do so, returned to his own country without achieving anything. And there he refrained from meddling with politics, although his writings show that he was a statesman. The reason was that the people had already been accustomed to measures and institutions quite different from his own. Pamphila in the twenty-fifth book of her

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Memorabilia says that the Arcadians and Thebans, when they were founding Megalopolis, invited Plato to be their legislator; but that, when he discovered that they were opposed to equality of possessions, he refused to go.[*](Compare Aelian, Var. Hist. ii. 42.) There is a story that he pleaded for Chabrias the general when he was tried for his life, although no one else at Athens would do so,

and that, on this occasion, as he was going up to the Acropolis along with Chabrias, Crobylus the informer met him and said, What, are you come to speak for the defence? Don’t you know that the hemlock of Socrates awaits you? To this Plato replied, As I faced dangers when serving in the cause of my country, so I will face them now in the cause of duty for a friend.

He was the first to introduce argument by means of question and answer, says Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History; he was the first to explain to Leodamas of Thasos the method of solving problems by analysis[*](The same statement that Plato made over to Leodamas the analytical method occurs in Proclus, On Eucl. i. p. 211, 19-23 ed. Friedlein. See T. L. Heath, Euclid, vol. i. p. 36, also p. 134 note 1, and p. 137; vol. iii. p. 246.); and the first who in philosophical discussion employed the terms antipodes, element, dialectic, quality, oblong number, and, among boundaries, the plane superficies; also divine providence.

He was also the first philosopher who controverted the speech of Lysias, the son of Cephalus, which he has set out word for word in the Phaedrus,[*](230 e sqq.) and the first to study the significance of grammar. And, as he was the first to attack the views of almost all his predecessors, the question is raised why he makes no mention of Democritus. Neanthes of Cyzicus says that, on his going to Olympia, the eyes of all

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the Greeks were turned towards him, and there he met Dion, who was about to make his expedition against Dionysius. In the first book of the Memorabilia of Favorinus there is a statement that Mithradates the Persian set up a statue of Plato in the Academy and inscribed upon it these words: Mithradates the Persian, the son of Orontobates, dedicated to the Muses a likeness of Plato made by Silanion.

Heraclides declares that in his youth he was so modest and orderly that he was never seen to laugh outright. In spite of this he too was ridiculed by the Comic poets. At any rate Theopompus in his Hedychares says[*](Meineke, C.G.F. ii. 796.):

There is not anything that is truly one, even the number two is scarcely one, according to Plato.

Moreover, Anaxandrides[*](Comic poet; ib. iii. 170.) in his Theseus says:

He was eating olives exactly like Plato.

Then there is Timon who puns on his name thus:[*](Ib. vi. 25.)

As Plato placed strange platitudes.