Hi. Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you

with the support of King's College London and the Lever Hume Trust, online at

W.W. History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, Famous Last Words, Plato's Fido.

When a Swan is about to die, it sings. It sings more beautifully than it ever has before,

for it belongs to the god Apollo, and has the gift of prophecy. So the swan knows it will die and sings with joy because it is finally about to join its divine master.

Or so at least says Socrates, who likewise dedicated himself to Apollo and met death with hope rather than reluctance.

He says as much to his friends who gather around him in prison in Plato's dialogue, The Fido.

It dramatizes Socrates' swan song, his final philosophical discussion, and his death

upon cheerfully drinking down the hemlock.

The Fido is a great work of literature whose portrayal of bravery, even eagerness in the

phase of death, has inspired readers from the ancient world down to the present.

From a philosophical point of view, too, it is one of Plato's greatest dialogues, in part because

it is the first dialogue to set out the theory of forms.

The theory of forms is usually taken to be Plato's most important doctrine, so some listeners

may have been wondering how many episodes I was going to get through without mentioning it.

But as it turns out, forms are not mentioned explicitly in all or even most of Plato's dialogues.

They are absent from the dialogues we've looked at so far, like the Gorgias, Mino, and Theatitis.

And even in the Fido, the main topic of the dialogue is not forms, but the immortality of soul.

This is a matter of some concern to Socrates, since each page of the dialogue is bringing him closer to his death scene.

In what must be a swipe at Aristophanes, Plato has Socrates say that even a comic poet

wouldn't blame him for irrelevant prattling when he takes up this topic at this time and place.

It's typical of the way Plato handles the topic of forms that even here in one of the handful of dialogues

...