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human
Where there any texts/works that referenced Socrates before Plato existed?
gpt
The playwright Aristophanes satirized Socrates and other philosophers of the time. Most of these plays, most notably *the Clouds*, were written around the time of Plato’s birth and before he started writing. Plato would later describe *the Clouds* as slanderous, and claimed it contributed to Socrates’ execution.

One notable feature of Aristophanes’ plays is that he doesn’t seem to distinguish between Socrates (and philosophers in general) and the rhetoricians such as Gorgias. This is notable because several of Plato’s dialogs pit philosophy against rhetoric as two fundamentally incompatible approaches. This may reflect the fact that the divide between philosophers and rhetoricians was an intercommunity fight and Plato is exaggerating the differences, or it could reflect the fact that the typical Athenian wasn’t knowledgeable enough about schools of philosophy and schools of rhetoric to know the difference.

The other pre-Platonic source is fragments of Ion’s *Travel Journal* which provide some bibliographic info about his childhood but little about his adult life or intellectual thought. Ion died around the time of Plato’s birth.

There’s only one other primary source of information about Socrates: the writings of Xenophon. Xenophon was a student of Socrates and a contemporary of Plato. While the exact date of authorship of his and Plato’s writings are unknown, his writings do not significantly predate Plato’s. While Xenophon certainly knew Socrates and some of his writings are primary sources, others are known to not be. He claims to be present for the dinner party featured in his *Symposium*, despite being nine at the time. It’s believed that *Symposium* was written about sixty years after the date it is set and is a fictionalization and composite of real events. Another example of this is his *Apology*, which cannot be a primary source because Xenophon was not in Athens at the time of Socrate’s trial.