404 AND 399 297 aQ)(f)poavvT) ? In the result, of course, it appears that no one knows what this health of soul is. Charmides seems to be full of cyw^poavvq ; his friends are sure of it ; but his hold must be precarious of a thing which he does not really know. " The sorrow of it is to think how you, being so fair in shape, and besides that so sober in soul, will perhaps have no help in life from that Soberness." He determines to come to Socrates and try with him to learn the real nature of it. Critias agrees ; but Critias himself is an influence as well as Socrates, and ^^ when Critias intends to make some attempt and is in the mood for violence, no man living can withstand him!' In 399 came the event which shadowed all Plato's life, the execution of Socrates. We do not know what he did at the time ; the Phcsdo says that " Plato was away through sickness^' but that may be merely due to the artistic convention which did not allow the writer himself to appear in his work. For us Socrates's death means an outburst of passionate and fiery writing from Plato, and an almost complete disappearance of the light-hearted mockery of his earlier dialogues. His style was practically at its perfection by 399 : the linguistic tests seem to show that he had already com- posed his skit on Rhetorical Showpieces, the MenexenUs; his masterpiece of mere dramatic work, the Protagoras, with its nine characters, its full scenic background, its subtle appreciation of different points of view ; the Euthydemus, wath its broadly-comic satire on the Eristic sophists ; and the Cratylus, which discusses the nature of language in as serious a spirit as could be expected before the subject had become a matter of science. The Apology, Crito, EutJiypliro, Gorgias, Phcedo, are all directly inspired by Socrates's death. The first, the only
