Note 70 — Chapter VII · PLATONIC CANON AS APPRECIATED AND MODIFIED BY MODERN CRITICS.
Reading edition
In the Apologia, c. 28, p. 38, Sokrates alludes to Plato as present in court, and as offering to become guarantee, along with others, for his fine. In the Phædon, Plato is mentioned as being sick; to explain why he was not present at the last scene of Sokrates (Phædon, p. 59 B). Diog. L. iii. 37.
The pathos as well as the detail of the narrative in the Phædon makes one imagine that Plato really was present at the scene. But being obliged, by the uniform scheme of his compositions, to provide another narrator, he could not suffer it to be supposed that he was himself present.
I have already remarked that this mention of Plato in the third person (Πλάτων δέ, οἶμαι, ἠσθένει) was probably one of the reasons which induced Panætius to declare the Phædon not to be the work of Plato.