Of Æsculapius, and of god-like Plato;
That one to heal the body, this the mind.
Now, from a marriage feast he’s gone to heaven,
To realize the happy city there,
Which he has planned fit for the realms of Jove.
These then are the epigrams on him.
XXXI. His disciples were, Speusippus the Athenian, Zenocrates of Chalcedon, Aristotle the Stagirite, Philip of Opus, Histiæus of Perinthus, Dion of Syracuse, Amyclus of Heraclea, Erastus and Coriscus of Sceptos, Timolaus of Cyzicus, Eudon of Lampsacus, Pithon and Heraclides of Æmus, Hippothales and Callippus, Athenians, Demetrius of Amphipolis, Heraclides of Pontus, and numbers of others, among whom there were also two women, Lasthenea of Mantinea, and Axiothea of Phlius, who used even to wear man’s clothes, as we are told by Dicæarchus. Some say that Theophrastus also was a pupil of his; and Chamælion says that Hyperides the orator, and Lycurgus, were so likewise. Polemo also asserts that Demosthenes was. Sabinus adds Mnesistratus of Thasos to the number, quoting authority for the statement in the fourth book of his Meditative Matter; and it is not improbable.
XXXII. But as you, O lady, are rightly very much attached to Plato, and as you are very fond of hunting out in every quarter all the doctrines of the philosopher with great eagerness, I have thought it necessary to subjoin an account of the general character of his lectures, and of the arrangement of his dialogues, and of the method of his inductive argument; going back to their elements and first principles as far as I could, so that the collection of anecdotes concerning his life which I have been able to make, may not be curtailed by the omission of any statement as to his doctrines. For it would be like sending owls to Athens, as the proverb is, if I were to descend to particular details.
They say now, that Zeno, the Eleatic, was the first person who composed essays in the form of dialogue. But Aristotle, in the first book of his treatise on Poets, says that Alexamenus, a native of Styra, or Teos, did so before him, as Phavorinus also says in his Commentaries. But it seems to me that Plato gave this kind of writing the last polish, and that he has therefore, a just right to the first honour, not only as the improver, but also as inventor of that kind of writing. Now, the dialogue is a discourse carried on by way of question and answer, on some one of the subjects with which philosophy is conversant, or with which statesmanship is concerned, with a becoming attention to the characters of the persons who are introduced as speakers, and with a careful selection of language governed by the same consideration. And dialectics is the art of conversing, by means of which we either overturn or establish the proposition contended for, by means of the questions and answers which are put in the mouths of the parties conversing. Now, of the Platonic discourse there are two characteristics discernible on the very surface; one fitted for guiding, the other for investigating.
The first of these has two subordinate species, one speculative, the other practical; and of these two again, the speculative is divided into the natural and the logical, and the practical into the ethical and the political. Again, the kind fitted for investigating has also two primary divisions with their separate characteristics, one object of which is simply practice, the other being also disputatious: and the first of these two is again subdivided into two; one of which may be compared to the art of the midwife, and the other is as it were tentative; the disputatious one is also divided into the demonstrative and the distinctive.