Plato and Socrates

Meaning

In the dedication, Plato’s borrowing of sacred relics from the temple of Socrates is a figurative precedent for Nuysement’s own acknowledged debt to Candale. The borrowed flowers and philosophical temple justify compilation and intellectual inheritance, not merely patronal praise or the existence of a physical temple. I.2 then calls Virgil a follower of Plato’s doctrine in the account of soul, spirit and body: that is the treatise’s asserted lineage, not an independently established attribution.

II.2.10 uses Plato for several distinct ends: his soul is called the end of his generation, blessedness the purpose of learning virtues, and wisdom the purpose of travelling from Greece to Egypt, whereas Egypt is the journey’s immediate endpoint. These are the author’s philosophical examples, not newly verified biographical events. The printed Plato and Platon are both retained in native access.