Kitap 3
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and that he applied himself to painting and wrote poems, first dithyrambs, afterwards lyric poems and tragedies. He had, they say, a weak voice; this is confirmed by Timotheus the Athenian in his book On Lives. It is stated that Socrates in a dream saw a cygnet on his knees, which all at once put forth plumage, and flew away after uttering a loud sweet note. And the next day Plato was introduced as a pupil, and thereupon he recognized in him the swan of his dream.Compare Apuleius, De Platone, p. 64 Goldb. It has been proposed to emend the next sentence by bracketing the words ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ, εἶτα ἐν τῷ κήπῳ τῷ παρὰ τὸν Κολωνόν, as a note inserted by Diogenes Laertius from a different author.
1.5
At first he used to study philosophy in the Academy, and afterwards in the garden at Colonus (as Alexander states in his Successions of Philosophers), as a follower of Heraclitus. Afterwards, when he was about to compete for the prize with a tragedy, he listened to Socrates in front of the theatre of Dionysus,Aelian (V.H. ii. 30) has πρὸ τῶν Διονυσίων, before the festival of Dionysus. and then consigned his poems to the flames, with the wordsHom. Il. xviii. 392.: Come hither, O fire-god, Plato now has need of thee.ἔπειτα μέντοι . . . τι σεῖο χατίζει. It is suggested that this sentence also is an insertion by Diogenes, which interrupts the real sequence of the narrative.
