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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: Other persons, Menexenus, Ctesippus, Lysis, are old friends; Evenus has
been already satirized in the Apology; Aeschines and Epigenes were present
at the trial; Euclid and Terpsion will reappear in the Introduction to the
Theaetetus, Hermogenes has already appeared in the Cratylus. No inference
can fairly be drawn from the absence of Aristippus, nor from the omission
of Xenophon, who at the time of Socrates' death was in Asia. The mention
of Plato's own absence seems like an expression of sorrow, and may,
perhaps, be an indication that the report of the conversation is not to be
taken literally.
The place of the Dialogue in the series is doubtful. The doctrine of ideas
is certainly carried beyond the Socratic point of view; in no other of the
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