even reported to have prepared a tragic tetralogy, with the view of
competing for victory at the Dionysian festival. We are told that he
burned these poems, when he attached himself to the society of
Socrates. No compositions in verse remain under his name, except a few
epigrams--amatory, affectionate, and of great poetical beauty. But
there is ample proof in his dialogues that the cast of his mind was
essentially poetical. Many of his philosophical speculations are
nearly allied to poetry and acquire their hold upon the mind rather
through imagination and sentiment than through reason or evidence.

According to Diogenes (who on this point does not cite his authority),
it was about the twentieth year of Plato's age (407 B.C.) that his
acquaintance with Socrates began. It may possibly have begun earlier,
but certainly not later, since at the time of the conversation
(related by Xenophon) between Socrates and Plato's younger brother
Glaucon, there was already a friendship established between Socrates
and Plato; and that time can hardly be later than 406 B.C., or the
beginning of 405 B.C. From 406 B.C. down to 399 B.C., when Socrates
was tried and condemned, Plato seems to have remained in friendly
relation and society with him, a relation perhaps interrupted during
the severe political struggles between 405 B.C. and 403 B.C., but
revived and strengthened after the restoration of the democracy in the
last-mentioned year.

Whether Plato ever spoke with success in the public assembly we do not
know; he is said to have been shy by nature, and his voice was thin
and feeble, ill adapted for the Pnyx. However, when the oligarchy of
Thirty was established, after the capture and subjugation of Athens,
Plato was not only relieved from the necessity of addressing the
assembled people, but also obtained additional facilities for rising
into political influence, through Critias (his near relative) and
Charmides, leading men among the new oligarchy. Plato affirms that he
had always disapproved the antecedent democracy, and that he entered
on the new scheme of government with full hope of seeing justice and
wisdom predominant He was soon undeceived. The government of the
Thirty proved a sanguinary and rapacious tyranny, filling him with
disappointment and disgust. He was especially revolted by their
treatment of Socrates, whom they not only interdicted from continuing
his habitual colloquy with young men, but even tried to implicate i