Dialogues of Plato: Containing the Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo, and Protagoras (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Dialogues of Plato: Containing the Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo, and Protagoras

These four dialogues of Plato are submitted to English readers as being, on. the whole, the most satisfactory selection that can be given within the limits of such a volume as this. The undying interest which is attached to the story of the trial, imprisonment, and death of Socrates has secured for the first three an easy preeminence of popularity. Not only have they the advantage of biographic and dramatic interest, superadded to the more purely didactic merits of the other dialogues, but the drama therein disclosed, by one who was himself a bystander, possesses, in its pathos, the qualification of purest tragedy - the presentment of matter of earnest import and inherent greatness. And still more admirable are these pieces as showing Socrates carrying his own teaching to its most perfect conclusion - a preacher proving on himself his own precepts, - a pre-Christian martyr enduring to the end, and crowning a life spent for humanity by a death for conscience-sake.

A short recapitulation of the few facts that are known about Socrates may be acceptable to some readers. He was born in the year B.C. 468, in tho immediate neighbourhood of Athens, being the son of Sophroniscus, a working sculptor, and Phænarete, a midwife.

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