other of Plato's writings: for he is 'fooled
to the top of his bent' by the worldliness of Callicles. But he is also
more deeply in earnest. He rises higher than even in the Phaedo and
Crito: at first enveloping his moral convictions in a cloud of dust and
dialectics, he ends by losing his method, his life, himself, in them.
As in the Protagoras and Phaedrus, throwing aside the veil of irony, he
makes a speech, but, true to his character, not until his adversary has
refused to answer any more questions. The presentiment of his own fate
is hanging over him. He is aware that Socrates, the single real teacher
of politics, as he ventures to call himself, cannot safely go to
war with the whole world, and that in the courts of earth he will
be condemned. But he will be justified in the world below. Then the
position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed; all those things
'unfit for ears polite' which Callicles has prophesied as likely to
happen to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on the
ears, will recoil upon his assailant. (Compare Republic, and the similar
reversal of the position of the lawyer and the philosopher in the
Theaetetus).

There is an interesting allusion to his own behaviour at the trial
of the generals after the battle of Arginusae, which he ironically
attributes to his ignorance of the manner in which a vote of the
assembly should be taken. This is said to have happened 'last year'
(B.C. 406), and therefore the assumed date of the dialogue has been
fixed at 405 B.C., when Socrates would already have been an old man.
The date is clearly marked, but is scarcely reconcilable with another
indication of time, viz. the 'recent' usurpation of Archelaus, which
occurred in the year 413; and still less with the 'recent' death of
Pericles, who really died twenty-four years previously (429 B.C.) and
is afterwards reckoned among the statesmen of a past age; or with the
mention of Nicias, who died in 413, and is nevertheless spoken of as
a living witness. But we shall hereafter have reason to observe, that
although there is a general consistency of times and persons in the
Dialogues of Plato, a precise dramatic date is an invention of his
commentators (Preface to Republic).

The conclusion of the Dialogue is remarkable, (1) for the truly
characteristic declaration of Socrates that he is ignorant of the true
nature and bearing of these things, while he affirms at the same time
that no one can mainta