_A._ Who’s that old fellow yonder, do you know? _B._ He looks a Hellene, wears a mantle white, A fair grey tunic, little soft felt hat, A well-tuned[581] staff, in fact, to put it short, ’Tis like a glimpse of the “Academy.”[582]
Of Plato himself, as he walked up and down among his pupils, wrestling with intellectual difficulties, several pictures survive in literature. A character in Alexis[583] remarks to a friend who has come to visit him:
You’ve come in the nick of time. I’m in a fix. Though walking up and down, like Plato, I’ve Found nothing clever: but my legs are tired.[584]
Plato, all you can do is to frown, drawing up your eyebrows severely, like a shellfish.[585]
The psychological yearning of the _Phaidon_, perpetually interrupted by cold currents of scepticism, must have found an echo in Plato’s school-teaching, as the following dialogues from Comedy show[585]:――
_A._ My mortal frame grew dry: My deathless part rushed forth into the air. _B._ Why, bless us, are we in the school of Plato?
_A._ You’re a man, clearly, and have got a soul. _B._ Like Plato, I don’t know but I suspect it.[585]
Of discipline in the Akademeia under Plato nothing is known: the following story[586] belongs to the school a little after his death. A certain Polemon agreed with some young friends of his, who attended the school, that he would rush into the room during the lesson, drunk and garlanded. This he carried out. But the teacher, Xenokrates, went calmly on with his lecture, which happened to deal with Sobriety. This conduct quite overcame Polemon, and he became a most diligent pupil, and finally succeeded Xenokrates as teacher.
Of Plato’s affection for his pupils, his own poems afford sufficient proof. One of them was named Aster, or Star. One day, as the lad was studying the heavens, his master wrote the following epigram about him:――
Star of my soul, thou gazest Upon the starry skies; I envy Heaven, that watches Thy face with countless eyes.
And when he died, Plato wrote his epitaph:
Thou wert the morning Star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled: Now, being dead, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendour to the dead.[587]
Additional evidence is given by his efforts on behalf of Dionusios and Dion, which led him into so many perils in Sicily.