Note 76 — Chapter LXXXIII · SICILIAN AFFAIRS (continued). — FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CARTHAGINIAN ARMY BY PESTILENCE BEFORE SYRACUSE, DOWN TO THE DEATH OF DIONYSIUS THE ELDER. B. C. 394-367.

There are different statements about the precise year in which Plato was born: see Diogenes Laert. iii. 1-6. The accounts fluctuate between 429 and 428 B. C.; and Hermodorus (ap. Diog. L. iii. 6) appears to have put it in 427 B. C.: see Corsini, Fast. Attic. iii. p. 230; Ast. Platon’s Leben, p. 14.

Plato (Epistol. vii. p. 324) states himself to have been about (σχεδὸν) forty years of age when he visited Sicily for the first time. If we accept as the date of his birth 428 B. C., he would be forty years of age in 388 B. C.

It seems improbable that the conversation of Plato with Dion at Syracuse (which was continued sufficiently long to exercise a marked and permanent influence on the character of the latter), and his interviews with Dionysius, should have taken place while Dionysius was carrying on the Italian war or the siege of Rhegium. I think that the date of the interview must be placed after the capture of Rhegium in 387 B. C. And the expression of Plato (given in a letter written more than thirty years afterwards) about his own age, is not to be taken as excluding the supposition that he might have been forty-one or forty-two when he came to Syracuse.

Athenæus (xi. p. 507) mentions the visit of Plato.