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PLATO.
CHAPTER I.
LIFE OF PLATO.
"Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb,—
To what sublime and star-y-paven home
Floatest thou?
I am the image of great Plato's spirit,
Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit
His corpse below."
—(Epitaph translated from the Greek by Shelley.)
To what sublime and star-y-paven home
Floatest thou?
I am the image of great Plato's spirit,
Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit
His corpse below."
—(Epitaph translated from the Greek by Shelley.)
Plato was born at Ægina in B.C. 430—the same year that Pericles died—of a noble family which traced its descent from Codrus, the last hero-king of Attica. Little is told us of his early years beyond some stories of the divinity which hedged him in his childhood, and a dream of Socrates,[1] in which he saw a cygnet
- ↑ Athenæus tells us of another dream, by no means so complimentary to Plato, in which his spirit appeared to Socrates in the form of a crow, which planted its claws firmly in the bald head of the philosopher, and flapped its wings. The interpretation of this dream, according to Socrates (or Athenæus), was, that Plato would tell many lies about him.
