ng an analysis of the real and apparent
(Schleiermacher); and both may be brought into relation with the Apology
as illustrating the personal life of Socrates. The Philebus, too, may
with equal reason be placed either after or before what, in the language
of Thrasyllus, may be called the Second Platonic Trilogy. Both the
Parmenides and the Sophist, and still more the Theaetetus, have points
of affinity with the Cratylus, in which the principles of rest and
motion are again contrasted, and the Sophistical or Protagorean theory
of language is opposed to that which is attributed to the disciple
of Heracleitus, not to speak of lesser resemblances in thought and
language. The Parmenides, again, has been thought by some to hold an
intermediate position between the Theaetetus and the Sophist; upon this
view, the Sophist may be regarded as the answer to the problems about
One and Being which have been raised in the Parmenides. Any of these
arrangements may suggest new views to the student of Plato; none of them
can lay claim to an exclusive probability in its favour.

The Theaetetus is one of the narrated dialogues of Plato, and is
the only one which is supposed to have been written down. In a short
introductory scene, Euclides and Terpsion are described as meeting
before the door of Euclides' house in Megara. This may have been a
spot familiar to Plato (for Megara was within a walk of Athens), but no
importance can be attached to the accidental introduction of the founder
of the Megarian philosophy. The real intention of the preface is to
create an interest about the person of Theaetetus, who has just been
carried up from the army at Corinth in a dying state. The expectation
of his death recalls the promise of his youth, and especially the famous
conversation which Socrates had with him when he was quite young, a few
days before his own trial and death, as we are once more reminded at the
end of the dialogue. Yet we may observe that Plato has himself forgotten
this, when he represents Euclides as from time to time coming to Athens
and correcting the copy from Socrates' own mouth. The narrative, having
introduced Theaetetus, and having guaranteed the authenticity of the
dialogue (compare Symposium, Phaedo, Parmenides), is then dropped. No
further use is made of the device. As Plato himself remarks, who in this
as in some other minute points is imitated by Cicero (De Amicitia), the
interlocutory words are omitted.

Theaetetus,