3 Plato 5 · On Death. Handed down at the Academy, from his Phaedo
From the Phaedo: the argument in the cell on the day Socrates was put to death, from morning until he drank. The whole of it labours to prove that the mind does not perish with the body. Plato records in the dialogue itself that he was not there that day, being ill. That is from his own hand, and the fifth chapter takes it for its title. For the man, see the Gospel of Plato. The Order does not take his proof of an undying mind. What it takes is the lyre of Simmias and the cloak of Cebes — what those two say is the Axiom of Dispersal. Plato did not strike out their objections, and the Order 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.