Callias was in love with Autolycus, the son of Lyco, who gained the victory (while yet a boy) in the Pancratium during the greater Panathenæa, Ol. 89, 4, upon which occasion Callias gave an entertainment to his friends at his house in the Piraeus. He had been scholar to the sophists Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus; was very wealthy; and had learned the art of memory from Hippias of Elis, at the recommendation of Antisthenes. He was Пpoževos of the Lacedæmonians who came to Athens; was hereditary priest of the Eleusinian deities, o Aadouxos; was remarkable for his nobility and the gracefulness of his person; 25 he had two sons, who were instructed by Evenus, the Parian sophist; he entertained Protagoras, Prodicus, and Hippias, and other sophists, their companions, in his house, Ol. 90, 1.27

NICERATUS.

He was son to the famous Nicias; was present at the symposium of Callias, Ol. 89, 4, and then newly married. He could repeat by heart the whole Iliad and Odyssey, and had been scholar to Stesimbrotus and Anaximander. He was very wealthy and somewhat covetous; was fond of his wife, and beloved by her; was scholar to Damon, the famous musician, who had been recommended to his father by Socrates; and finally, he was put to death by order of the Thirty, with his uncle Eucrates.30

29

28

ANTISTHENES.

He was extremely poor, but with a contempt of wealth; was present in the symposium of Callias, where he proved that riches and poverty are in the mind alone, and not in externals. His way of life was easy and contented: he passed whole days in the company of Socrates, who taught him (he says) to be mentally rich. He was much beloved in the city, and his scholars were esteemed by the public. He recommended Prodicus and Hippias the Elean to Callias; " bore great affection to Socrates, and was present at his death.32

CHÆREPHON.

A man of warmth and eagerness of temper; 33 he was a friend to the liberties of the people; he fled to and returned with Thrasybulus; he died before Socrates's trial, for he is mentioned in Socrates's Apology, as then dead, and in the Gorgias, as then living:

25 Ibid.

24 Xenophon, Symposium; Athenæus, v. p. 216. 26 Plato, Apolog. 27 Plato, Protagoras. 28 Xenophon, Sympos. 30 Xenophon, Gr. Hist. ii. Andocides de Mysteriis. 32 Plato, Phæd. 33 Vid. Charmidem, p. 153.

29 Plato in Lachete.

31 Xenophon, Sympos.

his death must therefore have happened between Ol, 93, 4, and Ol. 95, 1. He consulted the Delphian oracle to know if any man were wiser than Socrates. His brother, Chærecrates, survived him.34

EPIGENES.

He was the son of Antipho of Cephisia: and was present at the death of Socrates.36

APOLLODorus.

37

He was brother to Aiantodorus: was a man of small abilities, but of an excellent heart, and remarkable for the affection he bore to Socrates; he was present in the prison at the time of his death.39 He lived at Phalerus, of which Añμoç he was ;'

38

40 was but a boy when Socrates was fifty-three years old, and must therefore have been under thirty-seven at the time of Socrates's death. He was called Mavikóç from the warmth of his temper.

PHÆDO.

He was an Elean. See his account of Socrates's last moments."

SIMMIAS.

He was a Theban, and a young man at the time of Socrates's death (as was Cebes), at which they were both present. He had received some tincture of the Pythagorean doctrines from Philolaus of Crotona; and was inquisitive and curious in the search of truth, far above all prejudice and credulity.12

CEBES.

He was a Theban. (Vid. Simmiam.)

HERMOGENES.

He was a man of piety, and believed in divination. He was present in Callias's symposium; was a person of great honesty, mild, affable, and soberly cheerful: 13 not rich, and a man of few words; was son to Hipponicus and brother to Callias.45 present at the death of Socrates."

44

46

Cratylus.

36 Phædo.

He was

37 Apol. Socrat. 42 Plato, 45 Plato,

39 Id. 40 Plato, Sympos. 41 Plato, Phædo. 43 Xenoph. Sympos. Ibid. p. 391 and 408. 46 Plato, Phædo.

CHARMIDES.

He had a considerable estate in lands before the Peloponnesian war, which he thence entirely lost, and was reduced to great poverty. He was present at the symposium of Callias, where he discoursed on the advantages and pleasures of being poor. He ran at the stadium, at Nemea, contrary to Socrates's advice." He was of extreme beauty when a youth."

48

ESCHYLUS.

He was of Phlius, and was introduced by Antisthenes to Socrates.

CRITO.

He was father to Critobulus; was of Alopecæ, and about the same age with Socrates.49 He made the proposal to contrive the escape of Socrates out of prison, and to send him into Thessaly; 50 he attended him daily in his confinement, and at the time of his death; he received his last orders; he closed his eyes, and took care of his funeral.51

47 Plato, Theages.

48 Plato, Charmid.

50 Id. Crito.

51 Id. Phædo.

49 Plato, Apolog.

PHEDRUS.

THIS is supposed to be the first dialogue which Plato wrote, according to Diogen. Laert. iii. 38. Dionysius Halicarnassus (ii. 270, ed. Hudson) calls it one of his most celebrated discourses; and from it he produces examples both of the beauty and of the blemishes of Plato's style, which is all purity, all grace, and perspicuity; and he remarks that he sometimes rises to a true sublimity, and sometimes falls into an ungraceful redundancy of words and of ill-suited figures, ungraceful and obscure.

There is a good analysis of the Phædrus by the Abbé Sallier, wherein he shows its true subject and intention. It is upon eloquence, and is designed to demonstrate, that no writer, whether legislator, orator, historian, or poet, can do any thing excellent without a foundation of philosophy. The title prefixed to it, "On the Beautiful," cannot be genuine. It has no other relation to it, than that beauty is accidentally the theme of Socrates's second little oration, which is contained in this dialogue; not that it is, directly, even the subject of that, for the tendency of it is to prove, that a person ought to gratify rather the party who loves, than the one who does not, as the two preceding orations were to show the contrary. These are what Diogenes Laertius calls questions of a juvenile kind, though he may mean it of the whole dialogue, which is something juvenile and full of vanity, and such, Dionysius very justly says, was the character of Plato.

The Socratic dialogues are a kind of drama, wherein the time, the place, and the characters are almost as exactly marked as in a true theatrical representation. Phædrus here is a young man particularly sensible to eloquence and to fine writing, and thence a follower and an admirer of the famous Lysias, whose reputation was then at its height in Athens. He had been sitting the greatest part of the morning at the house of Epicrates, near the Olympium, to hear Lysias recite a discourse; and, having procured a copy of it, is meditating upon it with pleasure, as he walks without the city walls, where Socrates meets him. To avoid the heat of the day they retire to the shade of an ancient plane-tree, that overshadows a fane of Achelous and the Nymphs on the banks of a rivulet, which discharges itself at a little distance into the Ilyssus. The spot lay less than a quarter of a mile above the bridge, which led over the river to the temple of Diana Agræa. Here they

pursue their conversation during the hours of noon, till the sun grows lower and the heat becomes more mild.

We may nearly fix the year when this conversation is supposed to have happened. Lysias was now at Athens; he arrived there from Thurii in Italy in the forty-seventh year of his age, Ol. 92, 1. Euripides is also mentioned as still in the city; he left it to go into Macedonia, Ol. 92, 4, and, consequently, it must have happened in some year of that Olympiad, probably the 2nd or 3rd, and Plato must have written it in less than ten years afterwards, for his Lysis was written before the death of Socrates, which was Ol. 95, 1, but the Phædrus was still earlier, being his first composition; so he was between twenty and twenty-nine years of age.

NOTES ON THE GREEK TEXT.

P. 231, § 12. In my request.] What he desired, will appear but too plainly in the course of these little orations, and must appear a most strange subject of conversation for Socrates, to all who are unacquainted with the manners of Greece. The President de Montesquieu has observed, but too justly, on the nature of their love and gallantry. Esprit des Loix, v. 1. See also Xenoph. Economic and Symposium; and the Symposium of Plato; see also de Legib. i. 636.

P. 231, § 13. The law.] There were, indeed, laws of great severity in Athens against this vice; but who should put them in force in such general and shocking depravity?

P. 235. Nothing from myself. Пapá yɛ iμavтov ovdiv.] It is observable, that Socrates, whenever he would discourse affirmatively on any subject, or when he thought proper to raise and adorn his style, does it not in his own person, but assumes the character of another, Thus, for instance, he relates the beautiful fable between Virtue and Pleasure after Prodicus; he treats of the miseries of human life in the words of the same sophist; he describes the state of souls after death from the information of Gobryas, one of the Magi; he makes a panegyric on wine in the style of Gorgias; and here he does not venture to display his eloquence, till the Nymphs and the Muses have inspired him. This is consistent with that character of simplicity and of humility which he assumed.

P. 241. 'OσтρáкOV μETаTEGÓνToç.] A proverb, taken from a game in use among children, called 'Ooтpaкívda, described by Jul. Pollux, ix. 154, and by Eustathius. They were divided into two parties, which fled or pursued each other alternately, as the chance of a piece of broken potsherd, thrown up into the air, determined it: the boy who threw it cried out N'Huέpa; if the black (or pitched) side came uppermost, his party ran away, and the other gave them chase; if the white one, the others ran, and they pursued them. Hence 'Oσтρáкоv ПIεpioтpoon was used to describe a total reverse of fortune. Erasmus, in his Adagia, has not explained it well.

P. 257. A pleasant bend.] Erasmus

explains it in his Adagia,