Note 137 — Chapter XXVIII · THEÆTETUS. (continued 2)

Plato, Theætêt. p. 172-173.

I give only an abstract of this eloquent passage, not an exact translation. Steinhart (Einleitung zum Theætêt. p. 37) calls it “a sublime Hymn” (einen erhabenen Hymnus). It is a fine piece of poetry or rhetoric, and shows that Plato was by nature quite as rhetorical as the rhetors whom he depreciates — though he had also, besides, other lofty intellectual peculiarities of his own, beyond these rivals.