ONE night in the year 407 B.C., Socrates had a dream.
He saw a graceful white swan flying toward him with a melodious song trilling from its throat. The next morning Plato came to him and asked to become his pupil.
Socrates saw before him a handsome youth of twenty years, with the broad shoulders of an athlete, the noble brow of a philosopher and the limpid eyes of a poet. He knew that Plato belonged to one of the most illustrious families of Greece, being descended, on his mother’s side, from the house of Solon, and with the blood of the ancient Kings of Attica flowing through his veins.
This was the beginning of a tender and intimate relationship which lasted until the day of Socrates’ death. While other pupils formulated one-sided systems which but partially represented the ideas of Socrates, Plato used those ideas as seeds which he planted, nourished and developed in the rich soil of his own superior mind, making the full-blown blossoms a memorial offering to the simple nobility of his teacher.
After the death of Socrates, Plato went to Megara and joined the Socratic School of Euclid (not the famous geometer, who lived in Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy I, but a disciple of Socrates who excelled in logical disputation).
From there he went to Cyrene, where Theodorus instructed him in mathematics. Thence to southern Italy, where he studied the science of numbers under the three most famous Pythagoreans of the day. Then into Egypt, to
receive the instructions of the learned doctors and priests of that ancient land.
Some say that he visited Persia and Babylonia, where he was initiated into the Chaldean Mysteries. Others say that he went as far as India. [... continued]
