disputed the Isthmus with Epaminondas, would make the age of Theaetetus at
his death forty-five or forty-six. This a little impairs the beauty of
Socrates' remark, that 'he would be a great man if he lived.'

In this uncertainty about the place of the Theaetetus, it seemed better, as
in the case of the Republic, Timaeus, Critias, to retain the order in which
Plato himself has arranged this and the two companion dialogues. We cannot
exclude the possibility which has been already noticed in reference to
other works of Plato, that the Theaetetus may not have been all written
continuously; or the probability that the Sophist and Politicus, which
differ greatly in style, were only appended after a long interval of time.
The allusion to Parmenides compared with the Sophist, would probably imply
that the dialogue which is called by his name was already in existence;
unless, indeed, we suppose the passage in which the allusion occurs to have
been inserted afterwards. Again, the Theaetetus may be connected with the
Gorgias, either dialogue from different points of view containing an
analysis of the real and apparent (Schleiermacher); and both may be brought
into relation with the Apology as illustrating the personal life of
Socrates. The Philebus, too, may with equal reason be placed either after
or before what, in the language of Thrasyllus, may be called the Second
Platonic Trilogy. Both the Parmenides and the Sophist, and still more the
Theaetetus, have points of affinity with the Cratylus, in which the
principles of rest and motion are again contrasted, and the Sophistical or
Protagorean theory of language is opposed to that which is attributed to
the disciple of Heracleitus, not to speak of lesser resemblances in thought
and language. The Parmenides, again, has been thought by some to hold an
intermediate position between the Theaetetus and the Sophist; upon this
view, the Sophist may be regarded as the answer to the problems about One
and Being which have been raised in the Parmenides. Any of these
arrangements may suggest new views to the student of Plato; none of them