Note 203 — Chapter III · * OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES. (continued 2)

Several anecdotes are recounted about sayings and doings of Aristippus in his intercourse with Dionysius. Which Dionysius is meant? — the elder or the younger? Probably the elder.

It is to be remembered that Dionysius the Elder lived and reigned until the year 367 B.C., in which year his son Dionysius the Younger succeeded him. The death of Sokrates took place in 399 B.C.: between which, and the accession of Dionysius the Younger, an interval of 32 years occurred. Plato was old, being sixty years of age, when he first visited the younger Dionysius, shortly after the accession of the latter. Aristippus cannot well have been younger than Plato, and he is said to have been older than Æschines Sokraticus (D. L. ii. 83). Compare D. L. ii. 41.

When, with these dates present to our minds, we read the anecdotes recounted by Diogenes L. respecting the sayings and doings of Aristippus with Dionysius, we find: that several of them relate to the contrast between the behaviour of Aristippus and that of Plato at Syracuse. Now it is certain that Plato went once to Syracuse when he was forty years of age (Epist. vii. init.), in 387 B.C. — and according to one report (Lucian, De Parasito, 34), he went there twice — while the elder Dionysius was in the plenitude of power: but he made an unfavourable impression, and was speedily sent away in displeasure. I think it very probable that Aristippus may have visited the elder Dionysius, and may have found greater favour with him than Plato found (see Lucian, l. c.), since Dionysius was an accomplished man and a composer of tragedies. Moreover Aristippus was a Kyrenæan, and Aristippus wrote about Libya (D. L. ii. 83).