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simplicity, are found to result in a perfect work of art, which is the 
portrait of Socrates. 

Yet some of the topics may have been actually used by Socrates; 
and the recollection of his very words may have rung in the ears of 
his disciple. The Apology of Plato may be compared generally with 
those speeches of Thucydides in which he has embodied his con- 
ception of the lofty character and policy of the great Pericles, and 
which at the same time furnish a commentary on the situation of 
affairs from the point of view of the historian. So in the Apology 
there is an ideal rather than a literal truth; much is said which was 
not said, and is only Plato's view of the situation. Plato was not, 
like Xenophon, a chronicler of facts; he does not appear in any of 
his writings to have aimed at literal accuracy. He is not therefore to 
be supplemented from the Memorabilia and Symposium of Xeno- 
phon, who belongs to an entirely different class of writers. The 
Apology of Plato is not the report of what Socrates said, but an 
elaborate composition, quite as much so in fact as one of the Dia- 
logues. And we may perhaps even indulge in the fancy that the ac- 
tual defence of Socrates was as much greater than the Platonic de- 
fence as the master was greater than the disciple. But in any case, 
some of the words used by him must have been remembered, and 
some of the facts recorded must have actually occurred. It is signi- 
ficant that Plato is said to have been present at the defence (Apol.), 
as he is also said to have been absent at the last scene in the 
Phaedo. Is it fanciful to suppose that he meant to give the stamp of 
authenticity to the one and not to the other?— especially when we 
consider that these two passages are the only ones in which Plato 
makes mention of himself. The circumstance that Plato was to be 
one of his sureties for the payment of the fine which he proposed 
has the appearance of truth. More suspicious is the statement that 
Socrates received the first impulse to his favourite calling of cross- 
examining the world from the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already 
have been famous before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle