PLATO, a most illustrious philosopher of antiquity, was born at Athens about 430 B. C. He was a person of very great quality; being descended by his father's side from royal ancestors, and by his mother's side from Solon. He was educated in a manner suitable to his rank: he learned grammar, mathematics, music, and painting. In his first years he addicted himself much to poetry; he wrote odes and dithyrambics first, and afterwards epic poetry: which last, finding much inferior to Homer's, he burned. Then he betook himself to writing tragedies, and had prepared one to contend for the prize at the Olympic theatre; but the day before it should have been presented, he happened to hear Socrates, and was so charmed
charmed with his way of discoursing, that he not only forbore the contest at that time, but neglected poetry ever after, and even destroyed all his poems.
He was about the 20th year of his age, when he became a follower of Socrates, and began to study philosophy. This great master, soon observing in Plato a greater genius than common, was mightily taken with him: he advised him to read Homer often; and from thence Plato brought himself to conceive and speak of things in a lofty, copious, and striking manner. Plato was equally attached to Socrates: he raised a considerable sum of money to procure his release, after he was imprisoned upon the accusations of his enemies; and when this failed, had the boldness to harangue in defence of him to the people, which he began to do so pathetically, that the magistrates, fearing a tumult, caused him to be silenced. Eight years he lived with Socrates; in which time he committed, as did Xenophon and his other disciples, the substance of his master's discourses to writing. Of this he composed dialogues; but with so great additions of his own, that Socrates, hearing him recite his Lydis, cried out, "O Hercules! how many things does this young man feign of me!" for, as Laertius adds, many of those things which Plato writ, Socrates never spoke.
The philosophers who were at Athens were so alarmed at the death of Socrates, that most of them fled the city to avoid the injustice and cruelty of the government. Plato, whose grief upon this occasion is said by Plutarch to have been excessive, retired to Megara; where he was friendly entertained by Euclid, who had been one of Socrates's first scholars, till the storm was over. Afterwards he determined to travel in pursuit of knowledge; and from Megara he went to Italy, where he conferred with Eurytus, Philolaus, and Archytas. These were the most celebrated of the followers of Pythagoras, whose doctrine was then become famous in Greece; and from these the Pythagoreans have affirmed that he had all his natural philosophy. He dived into the most profound and mysterious secrets of the Pythagoric doctrines; and perceiving other knowledge to be connected with them, he went to Cyrene, where he learned geometry of Theodorus the mathematician. From thence he passed into Egypt, to acquaint himself with the theology of their priests, to study more nicely the proportions of geometry, and to instruct himself in astronomical observations; and having taken a full survey of all the country, he settled for some time in the province of Sais, learning of the wise men there, what they held concerning the universe, whether it had a beginning, whether it moved wholly or in part, &c.; and Pausanias affirms, that he learned from these the immortality, and also the transmigration, of souls. Some of the fathers will have it, that he had communication with the books of Moses, and that he studied under one Sechnuphis, a learned man of Heliopolis, who was a Jew: but there is nothing that can be called evidence for these assertions. St. Austin once believed that Plato had some conference with Jeremiah; but afterwards discovered, that that prophet must have been dead at least 60 years before Plato's voyage to Egypt.
Plato's curiosity was not yet satisfied. He travelled into Persia, to consult the magi about the religion of
that country: and he designed to have penetrated even to the Indies, and to have learned of the Brachmans their manners and customs; but the wars in Asia hindered him.
Being returned to Athens from his travels, he applied to the teaching philosophy, which at that time was the most honourable profession there. He set up his school in the academy, a place of exercise in the suburbs of the city, beset with woods; and this, not being a very healthy situation, brought a quartan ague on him, which lasted 18 months. The physicians advised him to remove to the Lyceum; but he refused, and answered, "I would not live on the top of Athos, to linger away life:" and it was from the academy, that his feet took the name of Academics. Yet settled as he was, he afterwards made several voyages abroad: one particularly to Sicily, in order to view the fiery ebullitions of Mount Ætna. Dionysius the tyrant reigned then at Syracuse; a very bad man; for, as Cicero relates, after he had robbed a temple at Locris, and was returning by sea to Sicily with a prosperous gale, he said to his companions, "You see, my friends, how the gods favour sacrilege." Plato went to see him; but instead of flattering him like a courtier, reproved him for the disorders of his court and the injustice of his government. The tyrant, not used to disagreeable truths, grew enraged at Plato; and would have put him to death, if Dion and Aristomenes, formerly his scholars, and then favourites of that prince, had not powerfully interceded in his behalf. Dionysius was content to deliver him into the hands of an envoy of the Lacedæmonians, who were then at war with the Athenians; and this envoy, touching upon the coast of Ægina, sold him for a slave to a merchant of Cyrene, who as soon as he had bought him sent him away to Athens. Some time after, he made a second voyage into Sicily in the reign of Dionysius the Younger; who sent Dion, his minister and favourite, to invite him to court, that he might learn from him the art of governing his people well. Plato accepted the invitation, and went; but the intimacy between Dion and Plato raising jealousy in the tyrant, the former was disgraced, and the latter sent back to Athens.
His fame was now spread far and wide; and several states, among which were the Arcadians and Thebans, sent ambassadors with earnest requests that he would come over, not only to instruct the young men in philosophy, but also to prescribe them laws of government. The Cyrenians, Syracusians, Cretans, and Eleans, sent also to him: he did not go to any of them, but gave laws and rules of governing to all. He lived single, yet soberly and chastely. He was a man of great virtues, and exceedingly affable; of which we need no greater proof, than his civil manner of conversing with the philosophers of his own times, when pride and envy were at their height. His behaviour to Diogenes is always mentioned in his history. The Cynic was vastly offended, it seems, at the politeness and fine taste of Plato, and used to catch all opportunities of snarling at him. He dined one day at his table with other company, and, trampling upon the tapestry with his dirty feet, uttered this brutish sarcasm, "I trample upon the pride of Plato;" to which Plato wisely replied, "With greater pride."
The fame of Plato drew disciples to him from all parts:
parts: among whom were Speusippus, an Athenian, his sister's son, whom he appointed his successor in the academy; the great Aristotle; two ladies, Lathenia a Mantinian, and Axiothia a Philianian, who went habited as men, and thereby gave occasion to injurious suspicions of Plato; Hyperides, Demosthenes, and Isocrates, with the last of whom Plato was very intimate. In the mean time, as his great reputation gained him on the one hand many disciples and admirers, so on the other it raised him some emulators, especially among his fellow-disciples, the followers of Socrates. Xenophon and he were particularly disaffected towards each other; and their emulation appears in nothing more than in their having written upon the same subjects. They both write a Symposium: they both write about Socrates: they both write upon government; for the Commonwealth of Plato, and the Institution of Cyrus, are works of the same nature; the latter being pronounced by Cicero, as much a work of invention as the former.
This extraordinary man, being arrived at 81 years of age, died a very easy and peaceable death, in the midst of an entertainment, according to some; but, according to Cicero, as he was writing. Both the life and death of this philosopher were calm and undisturbed; and indeed he was finely composed for happiness. Besides the advantages of a noble birth, he had a large and comprehensive understanding, a vast fund of wit and good taste, great evenness and sweetness of temper, all cultivated and refined by education and travel; so that it is no wonder if he was honoured by his countrymen, esteemed by strangers, and adored by his scholars. The ancients thought more highly of Plato than of all their philosophers: they always called him the Divine Plato, and they seemed resolved that his descent should be more than human. "There are (says Apuleius) who assert Plato to have been sprung from a more sublime conception; and that his mother Perictione, who was a very beautiful woman, was impregnated by Apollo in the shape of a spectre." Plutarch, Suidas, and others, affirm this to have been the common report at Athens. When he was an infant, his father Ariston went to Hymettus, with his wife and child, to sacrifice to the muses; and while they were busied in the divine rites, a swarm of bees came and distilled their honey upon his lips. This, says Tully, was considered as a presage of his future eloquence. Apuleius relates, that Socrates, the night before Plato was recommended to him, dreamed that a young swan fled from Cupid's altar in the academy, and settled in his lap, thence soared to heaven, and delighted the gods with its music: and when Ariston the next day presented Plato to him, "Friends (says Socrates), this is the swan of Cupid's academy." The Greeks loved fables: they show however in the present case, what exceeding respect was paid to the memory of Plato. Tully perfectly adored him: tells us, how he was justly called by Panetius the divine, the most wise, the most sacred, the Homer of philosophers; entitled him to Atticus, Deus ille noster; thinks, that if Jupiter had spoken Greek, he would have spoken in Plato's language; and made him so implicitly his guide in wisdom and philosophy, as to declare, that he had rather err with Plato than be right with any one else. But, panegyric aside, Plato was certainly a very wonderful man, of a large
and comprehensive mind, an imagination infinitely fertile, and of a most flowing and copious eloquence. Nevertheless, the strength and heat of fancy prevailing in his composition over judgment, he was too apt to soar beyond the limits of earthly things, to range in the imaginary regions of general and abstracted ideas; and on which account, though there is always a greatness and sublimity in his manner, he did not philosophise so much according to truth and nature as Aristotle, though Cicero did not scruple to give him the preference.
The writings of Plato are all in the way of dialogue; where he seems to deliver nothing for himself, but every thing as the sentiments and opinions of others, of Socrates chiefly, of Timæus, &c. He does not mention himself any where, except once in his Phædo, and another time in his Apology for Socrates. His style, as Aristotle observed, is betwixt prose and verse: on which account, some have not scrupled to rank him with the poets. There is a better reason for so doing, than the elevation and grandeur of his style: his matter is oftentimes the offspring of imagination, instead of doctrines or truths deduced from nature. The first edition of Plato's works in Greek was put out by Aldus at Venice in 1513: but a Latin version of him by Marsilius Ficinus had been printed there in 1491. They were re-printed together at Lyons in 1588, and at Francfort in 1602. The famous printer Henry Stephens, in 1578, gave a most beautiful and correct edition of Plato's works at Paris, with a new Latin version by Serranus, in three volumes folio; and this deservedly passes for the best edition of Plato: yet Serranus's version is very exceptionable, and in many respects, if not in all, inferior to that of Ficinus.