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Logic IV 42
so far forgot himself as to call Plato an "old dotard" he himself being forty years old and Plato two or three years younger. He simply caused Plato to be sold as a slave in Aegina. Plato's friends ransomed him and purchased the Academy on the outskirts of Athens for his school which was founded 307 BC and for use in that school, I suppose, he composed in rapid succession four dialogues of which the last as shown by an allusion in it must have been composed in 385 or 384 BC. They are all superior to any he had produced.
The Gorgias is highly characteristic of Plato in not being confiend to any one subject. We note for one thing that his opinions about tyrants have become very unfavorable. The very word tyrant connoted evil for him thence forth. The dialogue is famous for its paradoxes that is is better to suffer wrong than to commit it; that it is better for a sinner to be punished then to go free; that pleasure is not a good;