Note 3 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.
Reading edition
See Dionys. Hal. Epist. ad Cn. Pomp. 756, De Adm. Vi Dic. Dem. 956, where he recognises the contrast between Plato and τὸ Σωκρατικὸν διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν. His expression is remarkable: Ταῦτα γὰρ οἵ τε κατ’ αὐτὸν γενόμενοι πάντες ἐπιτιμῶσιν ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα οὐδὲν δεῖ με λέγειν. Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 761; also 757. See also Diog. L. iii. 37; Aristotel. Metaph. A. 991, a. 22.
Cicero and Quintilian say the same about Plato’s style: “Multum supra prosam orationem, et quam pedestrem Græci vocant, surgit: ut mihi non hominis ingenio, sed quodam Delphico videatur oraculo instinctus”. Quintil. x. 1, 81. Cicero, Orator, c. 20. Lucian, Piscator, c. 22.
Sextus Empiricus designates the same tendency under the words τὴν Πλάτωνος ἀνειδωλοποίησιν. Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. iii. 189.
The Greek rhetors of the Augustan age — Dionysius of Halikarnassus and Kækilius of Kalaktê — not only blamed the style of Plato for excessive, overstrained, and misplaced metaphor, but Kækilius goes so far as to declare a decided preference for Lysias over Plato. (Dionys. Hal. De Vi Demosth. pp. 1025-1037, De Comp. Verb. p. 196 R; Longinus, De Sublimitat. c. 32.) The number of critics who censured the manner and doctrine of Plato (critics both contemporary with him and subsequent) was considerable (Dionys. H. Ep. ad Pomp. p. 757). Dionysius and the critics of his age had before their eyes the contrast of the Asiatic style of rhetoric, prevalent in their time, with the Attic style represented by Demosthenes and Lysias. They wished to uphold the force and simplicity of the Attic, against the tumid, wordy, pretensive Asiatic: and they considered the Phædrus, with other compositions of Plato, as falling under the same censure with the Asiatic. See Theoph. Burckhardt, Cæcili Rhet. Frag., Berlin, 1863, p. 15.