http: bAt¢) Goo Bo nldad Bemo ion http: wha Mpedkledntierbat. Gar. KS Google Books Download Demo Version aa http:/Awww.ebook-camverter.com Google Books Download Demo Version EDITED BY JOHN M. Cooper ASSOCIATE Epitor D. $. HUTCHINSONCopyright © 1997 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Alll rights reserved ipted in the United States of America http:/Awww.ebook-converter.com 08070605 5678910 For further information, please address Google Books Dewnlead-Deme Version P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 http:/www.ebook-converter-com Jacket design by Chris Hammill Paul Text design by Dan Kirklin Google Books Download Demo Version Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plato. http://www.ebook-gen verterrc com eaited, with introduction and notes, by John M. Cooper; Google Books Downiwat:berno Version Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87220-349-2 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Philosophy, Ancient. 2. Socrates. I. Cooper, John M. (John Madison). Il. Hutchinson, D. S. IM. Title. B358.C3_ 1997 184—de21 96-53280 cIP The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. eviii Introduction and describe the principles on which the translations in the volume have been prepared (V). But first, a few basic facts about Plato's life and career. Plato, a native Athenian, was born in 427 pc. and died at the age of eighty-one in 347.’ He belonged, on both his mother’s and father’s side, to old and distinguished aristocratic families. Atsome point in his late teens : i 10) i nces), he htt pez Mais CHOM RON VETER COM corner who appears as the central character in so many of his dialogues and whose trial and death he was to present so eloquently in his Apology and Godglé Books Danlgad Bema Version Athens, for example, in Greek-inhabited southern Italy, where he seems to have met philosophers and scientists belonging to the indigenous “Py agorean” phil hical school, some of whose ideas were taken up httpiiaand eboak-Gonwerler,convic: is Piss 388 he visited Syracuse, in Sicily—the first of three visits to the court of the “tyrants” Dionysius I and II during his thirty-odd-year-long, engagementin Syracu: litics. This involvements reported onat length odgglé RodkePowtidin-Deme,ersion grove of Academus, in the Attic countryside near Athens, apparently offer- ing formal instruction in mathematical, philosophical, and political studies. httpageenrebOOk OR VETeCROM a: emy became a major center of research and intellectual exchange, gathering to itself philosophers and mathematicians from all over the Greek world. Go gle: Bak eHow 3 Sa-Dermnio. student eteion og right up to the time of Plato's death twenty years later. I. The ‘Canon’ of Thrasyllus These Complete Works make available a single collection of all the works that have come down to us from antiquity under Plato’s name. We include all the texts published in the early first century av. in what became the definitive edition of Plato’s works, that by Thrasyllus, an astrologer and Platonist philosopher from the Greek city of Alexandria, in Egypt.‘ From Thrasyllus’ edition derive all our medieval manuscripts of Plato—and so almost all our own knowledge of his texts. Apparently following earlier 3. Several ‘lives’ of Plato have survived from antiquity, of which the earliest, that by Diogenes Laertius (translated by R. D. Hicks, Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1925), dates perhaps from the third century a. 4. For the sake of completeness, we also print translations of the short poems (’Epi- grams’) that have come down to us from antiquity with Plato’s name attached.