[112] Compare the touching passage in Tacitus’s description of the death of Agricola, c. 44-45.
“Festinatæ mortis grande solatium tulit, evasisse postremum illud tempus,” &c.
CHAPTER V.
LIFE OF PLATO.
Scanty information about Plato’s life.
Of Plato’s biography we can furnish nothing better than a faint outline. We are not fortunate enough to possess the work on Plato’s life,[1] composed by his companion and disciple Xenokrates, like the life of Plotinus by Porphyry, or that of Proklus by Marinus. Though Plato lived eighty years, enjoying extensive celebrity — and though Diogenes Laertius employed peculiar care in collecting information about him — yet the number of facts recounted is very small, and of those facts a considerable proportion is poorly attested.[2]
[1] This is cited by Simplikius, Schol. ad Aristot. De Cœlo, 470, a. 27; 474, a. 12, ed. Brandis.
[2] Diogen. Laert. iv. 1. The person to whom Diogenes addressed his biography of Plato was a female: possibly the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus (see Philostr. Vit. Apoll. i. 3), who greatly loved and valued the Platonic philosophy (Diog. Laert. iii. 47). Ménage (in his commentary on the Proœmium) supposes the person signified to be Arria: this also is a mere conjecture, and in my judgment less probable. We know that the empress gave positive encouragement to writers on philosophy. The article devoted by Diogenes to Plato is of considerable length, including both biography and exposition of doctrine. He makes reference to numerous witnesses — Speusippus, Aristotle, Hermodôrus, Aristippus, Dikæarchus, Aristoxenus, Klearchus, Herakleides, Theopompus, Timon in his Silli or satirical poem, Pamphila, Hermippus, Neanthes, Antileon, Favorinus, Athenodôrus. Timotheus, Idomeneus, Alexander ἐν διαδοχαῖς καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον, Satyrus, Onêtor, Alkimus, Euphorion, Panætius, Myronianus, Polemon, Aristophanes of Byzantium, the Alexandrine critic, Antigonus of Karystus, Thrasyllus, &c.
Of the other biographers of Plato, Olympiodorus and the Auctor Anonymus cite no authorities. Apuleius, in his survey of the doctrine of Plato (De Habitudine doctrinarum Platonis, init. p. 567, ed. Paris), mentions only Speusippus, as having attested the early diligence and quick apprehension of Plato. “Speusippus, domesticis instructus documentis, et pueri ejus acre in percipiendo ingenium, et admirandæ verecundiæ indolem laudat, et pubescentis primitias labore atque amore studendi imbutas refert,” &c.