The Portable Plato by Plato Read Free Book Online

treated in the Protagoras, respected and criticized. The latter should be treated as Hippias is treated in the Protagoras, questioned and refuted. Under this treatment both will deliver their goods to us. They should be crowned with laurel and dismissed. We should be grateful for their contributions, and read the dialogues with our own eyes.
    If we do this, we shall find the theatrical machinery an instrument of deeper vision in which both literary style and philosophical ideas will find a focus. To aid in that vision the reader may find the following suggestions useful.
    All of the characters in the dialogues are historic personages, most of them familiar even to us in other writings. Plato is reporting historic occasions, as far as we know, accurately. And yet, the events take on high dramatic effects, chiefly because the characters are stylized to the point of becoming the abstract types, or stock characters, of comedy. Perhaps the best evidence for this is that the names, although real names, are also allegorical, like those in mystery or morality plays. The etymology of them is too good to be true. Also, the plots are semi-ritualistic, although again the historic content is factual. The following selected points of interest may be welcome to the beginning reader.

    PROTAGORAS
    Probably written toward the end of the ten-year period of the earlier dialogues, 398-388 B.C.
    Historic meeting of Socrates and Protagoras about 435 B.C. at the end of the peace following the Persian War at the height of the good life in Athens. Protagoras was sixtyfive years old; Socrates thirty-five.
    The plot is a free rendering of a meeting of the Assembly or a session of a court, although the actual setting is a private home. The Alexandrian subtitle is The Sophists: An Arraignment. It could be an inverted parody on the trial of Socrates.
     
    The Persons of the Drama
    Protagoras. Name means “first in assembly or markets place.” Protagoras was a visitor from Abdera, one of the first professional sophists who trained young men for public life, and accepted pay for it. He is recognized as learned and skilled in teaching, but is unaware of the limits of his powers, and, therefore, lacking in wisdom. There is an ironic play on the word sophist.
    Hippias. Name means “knight,” “aristocrat,” “plutocrat.” A follower of Protagoras and many other sophists. Has a facile tongue and a confused mind.
    Prodicus. Name means “advocate,” or “lawyer for the defense.” Another follower of Protagoras, whose scholarly pretensions consist in many pedantries.
    Critias. Name means “judge in a literary or athletic contest.” One of several Critiases, all of whom were involved in politics and were relatives of Plato.
    Callias. Name means “member of a board of magistrates.” A rich man and a soldier, he is said to have spent more money on sophists than any other man in Athens.
    Hippocrates. Name means “master of horses.” Son of Apollodorus, a devoted friend of Socrates.
    Alcibiades. Name means “strong in defense of life,” possibly also “a cure for snake-bites.” Here a very young man, Socrates’ problem-child.
    Socrates. Name means “master of life.” His irony here consists in questions that pretend ignorance.

    PHAEDO
    Also an early dialogue, written some time after the death of Socrates and before the founding of the Academy. It is often included with the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro to complete the account of the trial and death of Socrates.
    Setting is the prison, 399 B.C. five years after the end of the Peloponnesian War.
    The clue to the plot is given in the accident that Athenian law prohibited the execution of capital sentence while the ceremonial ship was on its way to Delos and returning. The ceremony connected with this event celebrated the legendary expedition of Theseus to slay the Minotaur of Crete. Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, showed Theseus how to find his way through the Labyrinth and back by means of a