INTRODUCTION. I. THE dialogues of Plato, which I chose, from time to time, for the school work of my Sixth Form, were chiefly the Protagoras, the Euthydemus, and the Hippias Major; since this last, if not Platonic, is very amusing and instructive. But I seldom allowed any of my foremost boys to leave school without reading with them privately in the evenings the Theaetetus also, as the best preparative for their deeper study of Plato and of Greek philosophy in general: often adding to it the earlier books (1-4) of Aristotle's Ethics. In the past year, 1880, I took it for the subject of my Cambridge Lectures, reading a translation to my class, and commenting as occasion required. This was executed in the first instance quite independently, without reference to Professor Jowett's version; but in revising my translation for the press I have compared the two, with frequent advantage, as might be expected, to the correction of my own work. Still the result is, that I have generally departed less widely from the literal Greek than my confrère in the Sister University: and the reason of this is evident: the Master of Balliol has translated for the instruction of all English-speaking students of Plato, whether Greek scholars or not: I for the special convenience of Greek students in Universities. II. The order of Plato's writings, and the genuineness of many, are questions respecting which the varieties of opinion and the controversies resulting, chiefly within the present century, have been so many and so discordant, as to prove that no certainty can. be reached on either point. Schleiermacher's translation with its prefaces (first published 1804-1810) was the trumpet-call of the warfare which has gone on ever since. His elaborate attempt to arrange the dialogues on a systematic principle of nascent and ever growing philosophic doctrine has not been fully accepted by any of the scholars who have since published their views, Ast, Socher, Stallbaum, K. F. Hermann, Steinhart, Susemihl, Suckow, Munk, Bonitz, Ueberweg, Schaarschmidt and others: while Ritter Brandis and Zeller, historians of Greek philosophy, are less unfavourable to the principle of Schleiermacher, though not admitting it in its details. Out of 35 or 36 dialogues usually set down as Plato's, Ast will only accept 14 as genuine; viz. (1) Protagoras, Phaedrus, Gorgias, Phaedo: (2) Theaetetus, Sophista, Politicus, Parmenides, Cratylus: (3) Philebus, Symposium, Respublica, Timaeus, Critias: in this order. Thus he even rejects the Leges, though cited by Aristotle. This may be considered the extreme opinion on the sceptical side, as Grote in his work on 'Plato and the other companions of Socrates' represents the extreme credulous. |
