3 Plato 5 · On Death. Handed down at the Academy, from his Phaedo
This book records the argument on the day Socrates died. In it Plato sets out to prove that the mind does not perish with the body. This scripture does not take that proof. What it takes is Simmias’ lyre and Cebes’ cloaks — what those two said is the axiom of dispersal. Plato did not strike out their objections, and this scripture does not strike out his proof.
5.1This book records the day my teacher died.
5.2I must say one thing at the end. Once it is said, you will know how to read what came before.
5.3I was not there that day.
5.4I was ill.
5.5It took me many years to write those words.
5.6I did put them in the book, in an inconspicuous place near the beginning, where almost nobody notices them.
5.7Now I move them here and write them larger: I was not there that day.
5.8Everything above was told to me by others.
5.9What Simmias said, what Cebes said, what my teacher answered — I did not hear one word of it with my own ears.
5.10Xenophon wrote: I was there. (cf. Gospel of Xenophon 6.14)
5.11What he wrote and what I wrote are not the same. You have seen that already.
5.12Someone asks me: if you were not there, why write at all?
5.13I answer: a man who was not there should still give what he knows, provided he says plainly how he came to know it.
5.14The man who leaves that sentence out is writing a handsome book.
5.15The man who writes it down is writing a book that can be checked.
5.16You are free not to believe me. But you now know where to go and look.