Book 3
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The third time he came to reconcile Dion and Dionysius, but, failing to do so, returned to his own country without achieving anything. And there he refrained from meddling with politics, although his writings show that he was a statesman. The reason was that the people had already been accustomed to measures and institutions quite different from his own. Pamphila in the twenty-fifth book of her Memorabilia says that the Arcadians and Thebans, when they were founding Megalopolis, invited Plato to be their legislator; but that, when he discovered that they were opposed to equality of possessions, he refused to go.Compare Aelian, Var. Hist. ii. 42. There is a story that he pleaded for Chabrias the general when he was tried for his life, although no one else at Athens would do so,
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and that, on this occasion, as he was going up to the Acropolis along with Chabrias, Crobylus the informer met him and said, What, are you come to speak for the defence? Don’t you know that the hemlock of Socrates awaits you? To this Plato replied, As I faced dangers when serving in the cause of my country, so I will face them now in the cause of duty for a friend.
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He was the first to introduce argument by means of question and answer, says Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History; he was the first to explain to Leodamas of Thasos the method of solving problems by analysisThe same statement that Plato made over to Leodamas the analytical method occurs in Proclus, On Eucl. i. p. 211, 19-23 ed. Friedlein. See T. L. Heath, Euclid, vol. i. p. 36, also p. 134 note 1, and p. 137; vol. iii. p. 246.; and the first who in philosophical discussion employed the terms antipodes, element, dialectic, quality, oblong number, and, among boundaries, the plane superficies; also divine providence.
