Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/329

PLATO AS 'SCHOLARCH' 305 next two dialogues, Parmenides and Thecstetus, bear the stamp of the recognised philosophical ' Scholarch.' The former is unmixed metaphysics : a critical examination, first, of the kind of Being possessed by what Plato calls ' Ideas ' — our ' General Conceptions ' ; and, secondly, of the Absolute Being of Parmenides. The attacks on the authenticity of this dialogue are merely due to the difficulty which critics have found in fitting it into any consistent theory of Plato's philosophy; it is impossible that the author of the Paj'nienides can have held that crude 'Theory of Ideas' which Aristotle has taught us to regard as Platonic. The ThecBtetus condescends to a dramatic introduction : Eucleides has just been to the Piraeus to meet Theaetetus, who is returning, dangerously wounded and ill, from the Corinthian War, when he meets Terpsion, and they talk of the celebrated meeting long ago between Theaetetus and Socrates. But the introduction has become an external thing, and the dialogue itself is severe reasoning upon the Theory of Knowledge. Plato remarks that he has purposely left out the tiresome repetitions of 'he said' and ' I said'; that is, he has taken away the scenery and atmosphere, and left the thought more bare. The next dialogue of this period is apparently the PhcBdrus ; the evidence is as conclusive as such evidence can ever be. The technical terms which Plato coined, the ways of avoiding hiatus, the little mannerisms which mark his later style, are palpably present in the PhcEdrus. The statistics will not allow it to be earlier than 375. On the other hand, it not only leaves an impression of imaginative and exuberant youthfulness, but it demon- strably bears some close relation to Isocrates's speech Against the Sophists, which was written about 390, at