ocrates.

Yet some of the topics may have been actually used by Socrates; and
the recollection of his very words may have rung in the ears of his
disciple. The Apology of Plato may be compared generally with those
speeches of Thucydides in which he has embodied his conception of the
lofty character and policy of the great Pericles, and which at the same
time furnish a commentary on the situation of affairs from the point of
view of the historian. So in the Apology there is an ideal rather than a
literal truth; much is said which was not said, and is only Plato's view
of the situation. Plato was not, like Xenophon, a chronicler of facts;
he does not appear in any of his writings to have aimed at literal
accuracy. He is not therefore to be supplemented from the Memorabilia
and Symposium of Xenophon, who belongs to an entirely different class of
writers. The Apology of Plato is not the report of what Socrates said,
but an elaborate composition, quite as much so in fact as one of the
Dialogues. And we may perhaps even indulge in the fancy that the actual
defence of Socrates was as much greater than the Platonic defence as the
master was greater than the disciple. But in any case, some of the words
used by him must have been remembered, and some of the facts recorded
must have actually occurred. It is significant that Plato is said to
have been present at the defence (Apol.), as he is also said to have
been absent at the last scene in the Phaedo. Is it fanciful to suppose
that he meant to give the stamp of authenticity to the one and not to
the other?--especially when we consider that these two passages are the
only ones in which Plato makes mention of himself. The circumstance that
Plato was to be one of his sureties for the payment of the fine which he
proposed has the appearance of truth. More suspicious is the statement
that Socrates received the first impulse to his favourite calling of
cross-examining the world from the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already
have been famous before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell),
and the story is of a kind which is very likely to have been invented.
On the whole we arrive at the conclusion that the Apology is true to the
character of Socrates, but we cannot show that any single sentence in it
was actually spoken by him. It breathes the spirit of Socrates, but has
been cast anew in the mould of Plato.

There is not much in the other Dialogues which can be compared with t