We have no clue, beyond a casual reference in Xenophon, as to what part Plato took in subsequent events. His own tastes and sympathies lay with the few; and all his intimate friends were among the oligarchs (the "good men and true," as they termed themselves), who, by a coup d'état, effected what is known as the Revolution of the Four Hundred. A section of these formed the execrated Thirty Tyrants. Critias, the master-spirit of this body, was Plato's uncle, and probably had considerable influence over him. But be this as it may, we find Plato attracted by the programme in which the oligarchs pledged themselves to reform abuses and to purge the state of evil-doers; and for a time, at all events, he was an avowed partisan of the Thirty. But they soon threw off the mask, and a Reign of Terror followed, which made their name for ever a byword among the Athenians. Plato was probably in the first instance disgusted by the jealous intolerance of this new party, which drove the aged Protagoras into exile, and proscribed philosophical lectures; but when this intolerance was followed by numerous assassinations, he was utterly horrified, and at once withdrew from public life, and from all connection with his former friends.
There was little indeed to tempt a man of Plato's spirit and principles to meddle with the politics of his day. The great statesmen, and with them the bloom and brilliancy of the Periclean age, had passed away; and the very name of Pericles, as De Quincey says, "must have sounded with the same echo from the past as that of Pitt to the young men of our first
