The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius (best free ebook reader txt) 📕

of his time in the practice of philosophy, from which his was called the Academic school; and his funeral was attended by all the pupils of that sect. And he made his will in the following terms: “Plato left these things, and has bequeathed them as follows.⁠—The farm in the district of the Hephaestiades, bounded on the north by the road from the temple of the Cephisiades, and on the south by the temple of Hercules, which is in the district of the Hephaestiades; and on the east by the estate of Archestratus the Phrearrian, and on the west by the farm of Philip the Chollidian, shall be incapable of being sold or alienated, but shall belong to my son Adimantus as far as possible. And so likewise shall my farm in the district of the Eiresides, which I bought of Callimachus, which is bounded on the north by the property of Eurymedon the Myrrhinusian, on the south by that of Demostratus of Xypeta, on the east by that of Eurymedon the Myrrhinusian, and on the west by the Cephisus;⁠—I also leave him three minae of silver, a silver goblet weighing a hundred and sixty-five drachms, a cup weighing forty-five drachms, a golden ring, and a golden earring, weighing together four drachms and three obols. Euclides the stonecutter owes me three minae. I leave Diana her liberty. My slaves Tychon, Bictas, Apolloniades, and Dionysius, I bequeath to my son; and I also give him all my furniture, of which Demetrius has a catalog. I owe no one anything. My executors shall be Sosthenes, Speusippus, Demetrius, Hegias, Eurymedon, Callimachus, and Thrasippus.” This was his will. And on his tomb the following epigrams were inscribed. First of all:

Here, first of all men for pure justice famed,
And moral virtue, Aristocles lies;
And if there e’er has lived one truly wise,
This man was wiser still; too great for envy.

A second is:

Here in her bosom does the tender earth
Embrace great Plato’s corpse.⁠—His soul aloft
Has ta’en its place among the immortal Gods.
Ariston’s glorious son⁠—whom all good men,
Though in far countries, held in love and honor,
Remembering his pure and godlike life.

There is another which is more modern:

A

Eagle, why fly you o’er this holy tomb?
Or are you on your way, with lofty wing,
To some bright starry domicile of the Gods?

B

I am the image of the soul of Plato,
And to Olympus now am borne on high;
His body lies in his own native Attica.

We ourselves also have written one epigram on him, which is as follows:

If fav’ring Phoebus had not Plato given
To Grecian lands, how would the learned God
Have e’er instructed mortal minds in learning?
But he did send him, that as Aesculapius
His son’s the best physician of the body,
So Plato should be of the immortal soul.

And others, alluding to his death:

Phoebus, to bless mankind, became the father
Of Aesculapius, and of godlike Plato;
That one to heal the body, this the mind.
Now, from a marriage feast he’s gone to heaven,
To realize the happy city there,
Which he has planned fit for the realms of Jove.

These then are the epigrams on him.

His disciples were, Speusippus the Athenian, Zenocrates of Chalcedon, Aristotle the Stagirite, Philip of Opus, Histiaeus of Perinthus, Dion of Syracuse, Amyclus of Heraclea, Erastus and Coriscus of Sceptos, Timolaus of Cyzicus, Eudon of Lampsacus, Pithon and Heraclides of Aemus, Hippothales and Callippus, Athenians, Demetrius of Amphipolis, Heraclides of Pontus, and numbers of others, among whom there were also two women, Lasthenea of Mantinea, and Axiothea of Phlius, who used even to wear man’s clothes, as we are told by Dicaearchus. Some say that Theophrastus also was a pupil of his; and Chamaelion says that Hyperides the orator, and Lycurgus, were so likewise. Polemo also asserts that Demosthenes was. Sabinus adds Mnesistratus of Thasos to the number, quoting authority for the statement in the fourth book of his Meditative Matter; and it is not improbable.

But as you, O lady, are rightly very much attached to Plato, and as you are very fond of hunting out in every quarter all the doctrines of the philosopher with great eagerness, I have thought it necessary to subjoin an account of the general character of his lectures, and of the arrangement of his dialogues, and of the method of his inductive argument; going back to their elements and first principles as far as I could, so that the collection of anecdotes concerning his life which I have been able to make, may not be curtailed by the omission of any statement as to his doctrines. For it would be like sending owls to Athens, as the proverb is, if I were to descend to particular details.

They say now, that Zeno, the Eleatic, was the first person who composed essays in the form of dialogue. But Aristotle, in the first book of his treatise on Poets, says that Alexamenus, a native of Styra, or Teos, did so before him, as Phavorinus also says in his Commentaries. But it seems to me that Plato gave this kind of writing the last polish, and that he has therefore a just right to the first honor, not only as the improver, but also as inventor of that kind of writing. Now, the dialogue is a discourse carried on by way of question and answer on some one of the subjects with which philosophy is conversant, or with which statesmanship is concerned, with a becoming attention to the characters of the persons who are introduced as speakers, and with a careful selection of language governed by the same consideration. And dialectics is the art of conversing, by means of which we either overturn or establish the proposition contended for, by means of the questions and answers which are put in the mouths of the parties conversing. Now, of the Platonic discourse there are two characteristics discernible on the very surface: one fitted for guiding, the other for investigating.

The first of these has two subordinate species: one