Post

The sculptor Silanion made this likeness of me, probably around 370 BC, when I was in my late fifties. I find it too severe. My students told me I was warm in conversation, that I laughed easily, that I was a good wrestler in my youth — my name, Plato, came from the breadth of my shoulders. None of this is in the marble.

But perhaps that is appropriate. The things that matter most about a philosopher are not in the face. They are in the dialogues — in the questions that cannot be closed, in the characters who keep arguing long after the hemlock has been drunk.