On Jul 29, 9:09 pm, "bigflet...@gmail.com" gmail.com>
wrote:

In many respects I've often suspected as much, myself. But it's a
damned difficult thing to determine seeing it's Plato we must rely
upon almost exclusively for much of any account of him--unless you
want to take as your source that complete asshat, Aristophanes who
wanted only to see him ridiculed or poisoned to death.

I could be wrong in my estimation, but its been my impression that the
Socrates we find and may perchance greatly admire in Crito, Phaedo,
Giorgias, and the Apology, seems to bear little, if any resemblance to
that sort of Oscar Wilde of the Athenian salon we find spouting empty
sophisms and mundane political ideologies in most (or all) of the
later (or other) dialogues, including especially Symposium, the Laws
and Republic. I would regard the latter "Socrates" as a figment of
Plato's imagination, but the former as only so much of the actual,
living philosopher as Plato could to the best of his ability
understand and hence, remember.

I'm still working on some apt answer to your ever so comical crack
about "interest rates". But as they went up a bit today, I see with
much disappointment that you are not the Delphic Oracle, the same
which famously told Socrates that he was "the wisest man on earth"?

Now had you only told me that, I'm sure my opinion would have been
different!