Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. We must insist, then, that Plato''s was a great, all but the greatest, dramatic genius. The characteristics of that most noble of arts, including even the effacement'' of the artist''s own person, are seen at once from the fact, that all his works are — not didactic sermons, in form at least, but — realistic dia-i logues: and the chief interlocutor in most, a prominent figure in nearly all, is that most grotesque and most pathetic, most ugly and most fascinating of figures, whether in fiction or in real life, short of stature, stout of limb, satyr-faced and siren-voiced, Socrates the Athenian.