W.K.C. Guthrie, Life of Plato and philosophical influences

From, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. IV, Plato: the man and his dialogues, earlier period,
Cambridge University Press, 1989⁶, pp. 8-38. 

(Ι) LIFE  |||  (a) Sources  |||  (b) Birth and family connexions  |||  (c) Early years  |||  (d) Sicily and the Academy  |||  (2) PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES  \ Greek Fonts \ Plato Home Page

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Page 29

[41] At Ροl. 259b, he says that a man who understands the art of ruling, even if he holds no offιce, will rightly be called a statesman in virtue οf his skill.

[42] The earliest source is Plato’s Sixth Letter, which is probably genuine. Next come the extracts from Hermippus and Theopompus in Didymus’s commentary on the Philippics of Demosthenes, Strabo and the Index Acad. See esp. Düring, A. in Anc. B. Τ. 272-83 and Wormell in Yale C.S. 1935.

[43] Ρlut. adv. Col. 1126c. If anything, Skemp errs on the side of caution when he sums υp (CR 1971, 28): ‘Ιt is difficult (except in the case of Erastus and Coriscus) to check the evidence for the sending of young men from the Academy into actual politics; but there is at least a probability that it is reliable, and that ΡΙato personally felt this to be a responsibility.’ For the evidence in full see Morrow, Ρ.’s C.C. 8-9.

[44] By Cyrene, Plut. Ad princ. inerud. 779d; by the Arcadians and Thebans for Megalopolis, D.L. 3.23 quoting Pamphila (1st cent A.D.). See also Ftiedländer, Ρl.1, 102, and for further ancient and modern reff. ib. 355 n. 27. Add Zeller 2.1.420 n. 1.

[45] The evidence for Isocrates’s school is mostly from his own writings: he was not backward in speaking of himself and his career. Ιt seems, as Field says (Ρ. and Contemps. 32), ‘to have been a purely personal connexion, without any permanent organization’. Isocrates charged fees and despised Sophists who charged toο little. In founding his own school ΡΙatο did not take Isocrates for a model, but rather, one would think, the Pythagorean communities which he had met in S. Italy.

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