|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: a theme as the meeting of a philosopher and a tyrant, once imagined by the
genius of a Sophist, may have passed into a romance which became famous in
Hellas and the world. It may have created one of the mists of history,
like the Trojan war or the legend of Arthur, which we are unable to
penetrate. In the age of Cicero, and still more in that of Diogenes
Laertius and Appuleius, many other legends had gathered around the
personality of Plato,--more voyages, more journeys to visit tyrants and
Pythagorean philosophers. But if, as we agree with Karsten in supposing,
they are the forgery of some rhetorician or sophist, we cannot agree with
him in also supposing that they are of any historical value, the rather as
there is no early independent testimony by which they are supported or with
|
