Note 36 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.

The Platonic dialogue was in this respect different from the Aristotelian dialogue. Aristotle, in his composed dialogues, introduced other speakers, but delivered the principal arguments in his own name. Cicero followed his example, in the De Finibus and elsewhere: “Quæ his temporibus scripsi, Ἀριστοτέλειον morem habent: in quo sermo ita inducitur cæterorum, ut penes ipsum sit principatus”. (Cic. ad Att. xiii. 19.)

Herakleides of Pontus (Cicero, ibid.), in his composed dialogues, introduced himself as a κωφὸν πρόσωπον. Plato does not even do thus much.