THESE DIALOGUES were written twenty-three hundred years ago, and the thought of the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and that of contemporary times, have all come under their influence. They have been praised as the substance of Western thought, as the corrective for the excesses to which the human mind is subject, and as setting forth the chief lines, of the Western view of the world as they have never been delineated before or since in philosophy, politics, logic, and psychology. It has been held that a return to the insights of the dialogues is a return to...

I do not know what effect my accusers have had upon you, gentlemen, but for my own part I was almost carried away by them—their arguments were so convincing. On the other hand, scarcely a word of what they said was true. I was especially astonished at one of their many misrepresentations; I mean when they told you that you must be careful not to let me deceive you—the implication being that I am b a skillful speaker. I thought that it was peculiarly brazen of them to tell you this without a blush, since they must know...

SOCRATES: Here already, Crito? Surely it is still early?

CRITO: Indeed it is.

SOCRATES: About what time?

CRITO: Just before dawn.

SOCRATES: I wonder that the warder paid any attention to you.

CRITO: He is used to me now, Socrates, because I come here so often. Besides, he is under some small obligation to me.

SOCRATES: Have you only just come, or have you been here for long?

CRΙΤΟ: Fairly long.

SOCRATES: Then why didn't you wake me at once, instead of sitting by my bed so quietly?

CRITO: I wouldn't dream of such a thing, Socrates. I only wish...

ECHECRATES: Were you there with Socrates yourself, Phaedo, when he was executed, or did you hear about it from somebody else?

PHAEDO: No, I was there myself, Echecrates.

ECHECRATES: Then what did the master say before he died, and how did he meet his end? I should very much like to know. None of the people in Phlius go to Athens much in these days, and it is a long time since we had any visitor from there who could give us any definite information, except that he was executed by drinking hemlock. Nobody could tell us anything more than...

Yesterday evening we returned from the army at Potidaea, and having been a good while away, I thought that I should like to go and look at my old haunts. So I went into the palaestra of Taureas, which is over against the temple of Basile, and there I found a number of persons, most of whom I knew, but not all. My visit was unexpected, and no sooner did they see me entering than they saluted me from afar on all sides, and Chaerephon, who always behaves like a madman, started up from among them and ran to me,...

LYSIMACHUS: You have seen the exhibition of the man fighting in armor, Nicias and Laches, but we did not tell you at the time the reason why my friend Melesias and I asked you to go with us and see him. I think that we may as well confess what this was, for we certainly ought not to have any reserve with you. Some laugh at the very notion of consulting others, and when they are asked will not say what they think. They guess at the wishes of the person who asks them, and answer according to his, and...

I was walking straight from the Academy to the Lyceum, by the road which skirts the outside of the walls, and had reached the little gate where is the source of the Panops, when I fell in with Hippothales, the son of Hieronymus, Ctesippus the Paeanian, and some more young men, standing together in a group.

Hippothales, seeing me approach, called out, Ha, Socrates, whither and whence?

From the Academy, I replied, and I am going straight to the Lyceum.

Straight to us, I hope, cried he. Won't you turn in? It will be worth your while.

Turn in where?...

EUTHYPHRO: This, Socrates, is something new? What has taken you from your haunts in the Lyceum, and makes you spend your time at the royal porch? You surely cannot have a case at law, as I have, before the Archon-King.

SOCRATES: My business, Euthyphro, is not what is known at Athens as a case at law; it is a criminal prosecution.

EUTHYPHRO: How is that? You mean that somebody is prosecuting you? I never would believe that you were prosecuting anybody else.

SOCRATES: No indeed.

EUTHYPHRO: Then somebody is prosecuting you?

SOCRATES: Most certainly.

EUTHYPHRO: Who is it?

SOCRATES: I...

SOCRATES: Whence come you, Menexenus? Are you from the Agora?

MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I have been at the Council.

SOCRATES: And what might you be doing at the Council? And yet I need hardly ask, for I see that you, believing yourself to have arrived at the end of education and of philosophy, and to have had enough of them, are mounting upward to things higher still, and, though rather young for the post, are intending to govern us elder men, like the rest of your family, which has always provided someone who kindly took care of us.

MENEXENUS: Yes,...

EUDICUS: Why are you silent, Socrates, after the magnificent display which Hippias has been making? Why do you not either refute his words, if he seems to you to have been wrong in any point, or join with us in commending him? There is the more reason why you should speak, because we are now alone, and the audience is confined to those who may fairly claim to take part in a philosophical discussion.

SOCRATES: I should greatly like, Eudicus, to ask Hippias the meaning of what he was saying just now about Homer. I have heard your father, Apemantus,...

SOCRATES: Welcome, Ion! And whence come you now to pay us a visit? From your home in Ephesus?

ION: No, Socrates, I come from Epidaurus and the festival of Asclepius.

SOCRATES: What! Do the citizens of Epidaurus, in honoring the god, have a contest between rhapsodes too?

ION: Indeed they do. They have every sort of musical competition.

SOCRATES: So? And did you compete? And how did you succeed?

ION: We carried off first prize, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Well done! See to it, now, that we win the Panathenaea also.

ION: It shall be so, God willing.

SOCRATES: I must say,...

CALLICLES: This is how they say you should take part in warfare and battle, Socrates.

SOCBATES: What, have we arrived at the latter end of a feast, as the saying goes?

CALLICLES: Yes, and a very charming feast, for Gorgias has just given us a fine and varied display.

SOCRATES: Well, Chaerephon here is to blame, Callicles, for he compelled us to loiter in the market place.

CHAEREPHON: ’Tis no matter, Socrates, for I can supply the remedy too. Gorgias is a friend of mine, and will treat us to another display, now, if you want, or if not, later....

FRIEND: Where have you come from, Socrates? No doubt from pursuit of the captivating Alcibiades. Certainly when I saw him only a day or two ago, he seemed to be still a handsome man, but between ourselves, Socrates, ‘man’ is the word. He’s actually growing a beard.

SOCRATES: What of it? Aren’t you an enthusiast for Homer, who says that the most charming age is that of the youth with his first beard, just the age of Alcibiades now?

FRIEND: Well what’s the news? Have you just left the young man, and how is he disposed toward you?

SOCRATES: Very...

MENO: Can you tell me, Socrates—is virtue something that can be taught? Or does it come by practice? Or is it neither teaching nor practice that gives it to a man but natural aptitude or something else?

SOCRATES: Well, Meno, in the old days the Thessalians had a great reputation among the Greeks for their wealth and their horseto manship. Now it seems they are philosophers as well—especially the men of Larissa, where your friend Aristippus comes from. It is Gorgias who has done it. He went to that city and captured the hearts of the foremost of...

CRITO: Who was it, Socrates, you were talking to yesterday in the Lyceum? There was such a great crowd about you people that I myself, wanting to hear, could not get any nearer or hear anything clearly; however I stretched up and had a look over, and I thought it was a stranger you were talking to. Who was it?

SOCRATES: Which do you mean, Crito? There were two of them, not one.

CRITO: The one I mean was sitting third from you on your right, and between you was Axiochus’ boy. I thought he had grown quite a lot,...

HERMOGENES: Suppose that we make Socrates a party to the argument.

CRATYLUS: If you please.

HEBMOGENES: I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus has been arguing about names. He says that they are natural and not conventional—not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use—but that there is a truth or correctness in them, which is the same for Hellenes as for barbarians. Whereupon I ask him whether his own name of Cratylus is a true name or not, and he answers yes. And Socrates? Yes. Then every man’s name, as I...

SOCRATES: Where do you come from, Phaedrus my friend, and where are you going?

PHAEDKUS: I’ve been with Lysias, Socrates, the son of Cephalus, and I’m off for a walk outside the wall, after a long morning’s sitting there. On the instructions of our common friend Acumenus I take my walks on the open roads; he tells me that is more invigorating than walking in the colonnades.

SOCRATES: Yes, he’s right in saying so. But Lysias, I take it, was in town.

PHAEDRUS: Yes, staying with Epicrates, in that house where Morychus used to live, close to the temple of...

APOLLODORUS: Oh, if that’s what you want to know, it isn’t long 172 since I had occasion to refresh my memory. Only the day before yesterday, as I was coming up to the city from my place at Phalerum, a friend of mine caught sight of me from behind, and while I was still a long way ahead he shouted after me, Here, I say, Apollodorus! Can’t you wait for me?

So I stopped and waited for him.

Apollodorus, he said as he came up, you’re the very man I’m looking for. I want to ask you about this party...

I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the goddess, and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival, since this was its inauguration.

I thought the procession of the citizens very fine, but it was no better than the show made by the marching of the Thracian contingent.

After we had said our prayers and seen the spectacle we were starting for town when Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance as we were hastening homeward and ordered his boy...

EUCLIDES: Have you only just come to town, Terpsion?

TERPSION: No, some time ago. What is more, I was looking for you in the market place and surprised that I could not find you.

EUCLIDES: I was not in the city.

TERPSION: Where were you, then?

EUCLIDES: On my way down to the harbor I met them carrying Theaetetus to Athens from the camp at Corinth.

TERPSION: Alive or dead?

EUCLIDES: Only just alive. He is suffering from severe wounds, and still more from having caught the sickness that has broken out in the army.

TERPSION: The dysentery?

EUCLIDES: Yes....

After leaving our home at Clazomenae we arrived at Athens and met Adimantus and Glaucon in the market place. Adimantus took my hand. Welcome, Cephalus, he said. If there is anything we can do for you here, you must let us know.

Well, I replied, I have come for that very purpose. There is something you and your brother can do for me.

Please tell us what it is.

What, I asked, was the name of your half brother on the mother’s side? I cannot remember. He was only a child, you know, when I was here before, and that...

THEODORUS: Here we are, Socrates, faithful to our appointment of yesterday, and, what is more, we have brought a guest with us. Our friend here is a native of Elea; he belongs to the school of Parmenides and Zeno, and is devoted to philosophy.

SOCRATES: Perhaps, Theodorus, it is no ordinary guest but some god that you have brought us unawares. Homer tells us that gods attend upon the goings of men of mercy and justice, and not least among them the god of strangers comes to mark the orderly or lawless doings of mankind. Your companion may be one...

SOCRATES: Theodorus, I am really very much indebted to you for my 257 introduction to Theaetetus and to our guest from Elea.

THEODORUS: Good, but you are likely to be three times as much in my debt, Socrates, when they have done their task and defined the statesman and the philosopher as well as the Sophist for you.

SOCRATES: Three times as much? Really, my dear Theodorus, must it go on record that we heard our greatest mathematician and geometer say that?

THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Are we to say that we heard you reckoning all these...

SOCRATES: Now, Protarchus, consider what the two theories are—the one which you mean now to take over from Philebus, and the other which I and my friends maintain, and which you are to dispute if you don’t find it to your liking. Would you like us to summarize them both?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, do.

SOCRATES: Well, Philebus says that the good for all animate beings consists in enjoyment, pleasure, delight, and whatever can be classed as consonant therewith, whereas our contention is that the good is not that, but that thought, intelligence, memory, and things akin to these, right opinion...

SOCRATES: One, two, three, but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainers today?

TIMAEUS: He has been taken ill, Socrates, for he would not willingly have been absent from this gathering.

SOCRATES: Then, if he is not coming, you and the two others must supply his place.

TIMAEUS: Certainly, and we will do our utmost not to disappoint you. Having been handsomely entertained by you yesterday, those of us who remain should be only too glad to return your hospitality.

SOCRATES: Do you remember what were the...

TIMAEUS: Well, Socrates, at last I am barely in port after my voyage on the seas of discourse, and with what a sense of relief! I feel like some traveler at the end of a weary journey. So I make it my prayer to the god who has been born but now in our tale, though so long ago in fact, that he will of his grace vouchsafe us retention of what has been spoken to purpose and visit us with the proper penalty for any false note we have unwittingly struck in our treatment of these matters. Now the...

ATHENIAN: To whom is the merit of instituting your laws ascribed,

gentlemen? To a god, or to some man?

CLINIAS: Why, to a god, sir, indubitably to a god—in our case to Zeus, in the case of Lacedaemon, to which our friend here belongs, I believe, according to their own story, to Apollo. That is so, is it not?

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: You mean that Minos, just as Homer relates, used to repair to a conference with his father every ninth year, and that his legislation for your Cretan cities was based on his fathers oracles?

CLINΙAS: So our...