Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Household goods <.....> as written down, of which Demetrius has the duplicates. I owe nothing to anyone. Executors: Leosthenes, Speusippus, Demetrius, Hegias, Eurymedon, Callimachus, Thrasippus." In this way, then, he made his will. And the following epigrams were inscribed on his tomb. First: "Surpassing mortals in temperance and righteous character, here indeed lies divine Aristocles; and if anyone ever gained great praise for wisdom among all men, he holds it in the highest measure, nor does envy attend him."

​Another: "Earth indeed hides this body of Plato in her bosom, but his soul holds an immortal station among the blessed, the soul of the son of Ariston, whom even a noble man dwelling far off honors, one who has beheld a divine life." And another, of more recent date: "Eagle, why ever hast thou perched upon the tomb? Say, dost thou look off toward the starry home of the gods on behalf of someone? —I am an image of Plato's soul, which has flown away to Olympus, while Attic earth holds his earthborn body."

​There is also one of our own, which runs as follows: "And how, if Phoebus had not brought forth Plato for Greece, could he have healed the souls of men with his writings? For Asclepius, whom he begot, is the healer of the body, as Plato is of the immortal soul." And another on how he died: "Phoebus brought forth Asclepius and Plato for mortals, the one that he might heal the soul, the other the body. And having feasted at a wedding, he went to the city which he once founded for himself and established upon the floor of Zeus." These, then, are the epigrams.

​His disciples were Speusippus of Athens, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Aristotle of Stagira, Philippus of Opus, Hestiaeus of Perinthus, Dion of Syracuse, Amyclus of Heraclea, Erastus and Coriscus of Scepsis, Timolaus of Cyzicus, Euaeon of Lampsacus, Python and Heraclides of Aenus, Hippothales and Callippus of Athens, Demetrius of Amphipolis, Heraclides Ponticus, and many others, among whom were also two women: Lastheneia of Mantinea and Axiothea of Phlius, who also wore men's clothing, as Dicaearchus says. Some also say that Theophrastus attended his lectures; and Chamaeleon says that Hyperides the orator and Lycurgus did so as well;

​Polemon recounts similarly. And Sabinus, citing Mnesistratus of Thasos in the fourth book of his Materials for Rhetorical Exercises, says that Demosthenes also did; and this is likely. Now, since you are rightly a lover of Plato and zealously seek the philosopher's doctrines above anyone else, I thought it necessary to sketch both the nature of the discourses, the order of the dialogues, and the method of induction, as elementarily and summarily as possible, so that this collection concerning his life should not lack his doctrines; for it would be 'owls to Athens', as they say, if one had to narrate the details to you.

​Now, they say that Zeno of Elea first wrote dialogues; but Aristotle, in the first book of On Poets, says Alexamenus of Styra or of Teos did so, as Favorinus also says in his Memorabilia. But it seems to me that Plato, having perfected the genre, would justly carry off the first prize both for its beauty and for its invention. A dialogue is a discourse composed of question and answer concerning some philosophical or political subject, accompanied by the appropriate character portrayal of the persons introduced and rhetorical arrangement of the diction. Dialectic is the art of discourse by which we refute or establish something through the question and answer of the interlocutors.

​Of the Platonic dialogue, there are two highest character types: the expository and the inquisitive. The expository is divided into two other character types: the theoretical and the practical. And of these, the theoretical is divided into the physical and the logical, and the practical into the ethical and the political. Of the inquisitive, there are likewise two primary character types: the gymnastic and the agonistic. And of the gymnastic, the maieutic and the peirastic; of the agonistic, the endeictic and the anatreptic.