Note 52 — Chapter VI · PLATONIC CANON, AS RECOGNISED BY THRASYLLUS.

The Axiochus, Eryxias, Sisyphus, and Demodokus, are printed as Apocrypha annexed to most editions of Plato, together with two other dialogues entitled De Justo and De Virtute. The Halkyon has generally appeared among the works of Lucian, but K. F. Hermann has recently printed it in his edition of Plato among the Platonic Apocrypha.

The Axiochus contains a mark of time (the mention of Ἀκαδημία and Λυκεῖον, p. 367), as F. A. Wolf has observed, proving that it was not composed until the Platonic and Peripatetic schools were both of them in full establishment at Athens — that is, certainly after the death of Plato, and probably after the death of Aristotle. It is possible that Thrasyllus may have proceeded upon this evidence of time, at least as collateral proof, in pronouncing the dialogue not to be the work of Plato. The other four dialogues contain no similar evidence of date.

Favorinus affirmed that Halkyon was the work of an author named Leon.

Some said (Diog. L. iii. 37) that Philippus of Opus, one of the disciples of Plato, transcribed the Leges, which were on waxen tablets (ἐν κηρῷ), and that the Epinomis was his work (τούτου δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἐπινομίδα φασὶν εἶναι). It was probably the work of Philippus only in the sense in which the Leges were his work — that he made a fair and durable copy of parts of it from the wax. Thrasyllus admitted it with the rest as Platonic.