# Dialogues — Character guide

> Key figures in Dialogues by Plato.

- [Socrates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/socrates.md): Socrates moves through Athens as a self-described common man who only speaks the truth, cornering rhapsodes, generals, and sophists until their expertise collapses into contradiction. His irony cuts both ways: he insists
- [Plato](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/plato.md): Plato writes himself into the dialogues as both narrator and absent presence, the mind arranging the scenes in which Socrates speaks. In later works like the Philebus, his touch grows drier and more abstract, trading mys
- [Glaucon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/glaucon.md): Glaucon appears as the eager listener who catches Apollodorus on the road to Athens and demands a full account of the speeches at Agathon's feast, insisting the walk itself was made for conversation. He is impatient, cur
- [Adeimantus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/adeimantus.md): Adeimantus belongs to the intimate Athenian circle around Socrates, the brothers and friends who turn casual encounters into extended inquiry. He shares Glaucon's hunger for the speeches on love and his willingness to re
- [Phaedrus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/phaedrus.md): Phaedrus is the enthusiast of rhetoric, so captivated by Lysias's speech on love that he carries the scroll under his cloak and practices it aloud until Socrates catches him. His weakness is charming and transparent: he 
- [Callicles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/callicles.md): Callicles opens his home to Gorgias and to Socrates, playing the confident host who treats philosophy as a feast to be enjoyed and a fray to be entered. He is impatient with Socratic humility and champions a might-makes-
- [Protagoras](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/protagoras.md): Protagoras is the visiting celebrity of the dialogue that bears his name, a famous teacher from Abdera whose reputation draws Hippocrates to wake Socrates before dawn. He sells wisdom, and the tension is whether virtue c
- [Gorgias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/gorgias.md): Gorgias is the honored guest at Callicles' house, fresh from a public display of his rhetorical skill, and he agrees to answer any question put to him. His confidence rests on long experience and the claim that rhetoric 
- [Thrasymachus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/thrasymachus.md): Thrasymachus is the impatient challenger who refuses Socrates' usual question-and-answer politeness and demands a straight definition of justice. His thesis, that law is made by rulers for their own benefit and that inju
- [Crito](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/crito.md): Crito is a practical, well-connected Athenian who has stood by Socrates for decades and cannot understand why his friend will not let him arrange an escape. His love is genuine and his arguments are sensible, but they me
- [Phaedo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/phaedo.md): Phaedo of Elis is present at Socrates' death and later recounts the whole scene to Echecrates and his companions in Phlius. He is devoted, attentive, and still shaken, and his narration frames the argument about the immo
- [Theaetetus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/theaetetus.md): Theaetetus is introduced by Theodorus as a promising student of geometry, and he agrees to answer Socrates' questions even though he warns that he may tire. He is earnest, self-deprecating, and willing to follow an argum
- [Theodorus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/theodorus.md): Theodorus is the host and catalyst of the late dialogues, a mathematician from Cyrene whose conversation with Socrates sets the stage for the Eleatic Stranger's interrogation of the Sophist. He is deferential but firm, w
- [Parmenides](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/parmenides.md): Parmenides appears in memory as the noble elder who once argued with a youthful Socrates, his method of question and answer recalled with admiration and some unease. He represents a philosophical authority so formidable 
- [Timaeus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/timaeus.md): Timaeus is the principal speaker of the dialogue that bears his name, a visitor whose Pythagorean sympathies lead him to expound on physics, the nature of God, and the construction of the heavens. He is aware that his su
- [Critias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/critias.md): Critias is the narrator of the Atlantis myth, a figure whose political experience and family prestige lend weight to his account of an ancient war between Athens and a vanished island empire. He presents the story as bot
- [Alcibiades](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/alcibiades.md): Alcibiades arrives late and drunk at the Symposium, a charismatic general whose relationship with Socrates is as charged as it is complicated. He is both admirer and accuser, offering a portrait of Socrates that is intim
- [Aristophanes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/aristophanes.md): Aristophanes is the comic poet among the tragedians and philosophers at Agathon's feast, a man whose professional irreverence does not prevent him from offering a deeply moving account of love. His speech, delivered afte
- [Agathon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/agathon.md): Agathon is the celebrated host whose recent prize-winning tragedy occasions the gathering, and whose house becomes the stage for the evening's contest of speeches on love. He is youthful, beautiful, and self-consciously 
- [Eryximachus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/eryximachus.md): Eryximachus is the sober professional among the revelers, a doctor who takes charge of the symposium's practical arrangements and then takes charge of its intellectual agenda. He treats love as a force to be balanced lik
- [Pausanias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/pausanias.md): Pausanias speaks as a man with a personal stake in the question, defending a refined and lawful love while his relationship with Agathon sits visibly in the room. He draws careful distinctions between common and heavenly
- [Meno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/meno.md): Meno is wealthy, well-connected, and accustomed to getting answers, which makes him an ideal interlocutor for Socrates and an ideal target for his questions. He wants to know whether virtue can be taught, and he wants to
- [Euthyphro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/euthyphro.md): Euthyphro is a man of strong convictions and stronger confidence, prosecuting his own father for murder on religious grounds and certain of his own righteousness. Socrates' request for a definition of piety exposes the g
- [Ion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/ion.md): Ion is a professional reciter of Homer, proud of his craft and genuinely puzzled by his own uneven powers, which Socrates seizes on as evidence that poetry works by divine inspiration rather than knowledge. He is vain, c
- [Hippias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/hippias.md): Hippias is the touring celebrity of the sophistic circuit, a man whose memory, craftsmanship, and self-assurance have made him famous across Greece. His confidence is genuine but brittle: he needs an audience, and Socrat
- [Euthydemus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/euthydemus.md): Euthydemus arrives in Athens with his brother and a chorus of admirers, offering to improve young Cleinias through debate. His method is dazzling and hollow: he asks whether the wise or the ignorant learn, then refutes w
- [Dionysodorus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/dionysodorus.md): Dionysodorus works the room alongside Euthydemus, leaning in close with a face beaming with laughter to predict a boy's refutation before the boy has finished answering. Where his brother opens the exchange, Dionysodorus
- [Ctesippus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/ctesippus.md): Ctesippus is the friend who says out loud what everyone else is thinking, mocking Hippothales for composing hymns to a boy he has not yet won and reciting the family's horses and victories instead of anything a lover mig
- [Cleinias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/cleinias.md): Cleinias is young, well connected, and newly the object of adult hopes: his family fears he will be turned in a wrong direction before his mind is formed. When Euthydemus asks whether the wise or the ignorant learn, Clei
- [Cratylus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/cratylus.md): Cratylus holds that names belong to things by nature, the same for Greeks and barbarians, and that correctness in language is a real standard rather than a convention. His position is uncompromising and a little unnervin
- [Hermogenes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/hermogenes.md): Hermogenes moves through Athens as the brother of the wealthy Callias, which places him at the edges of the city's intellectual circles without ever quite commanding them. His defining trait is a willingness to be refute
- [Lysimachus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/lysimachus.md): Lysimachus belongs to the generation of Athenians whose fathers were famous and whose own lives feel diminished by comparison. He and his friend Melesias approach Socrates with a practical worry — how to raise their boys
- [Melesias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/melesias.md): Melesias stands beside Lysimachus as one of two older Athenians who feel their sons deserve better teachers than they themselves had. His concern is not abstract: he wants Thucydides to grow into something he never becam
- [Nicias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/nicias.md): Nicias arrives in the Laches as one of Athens' most respected commanders, a man whose caution is both his strength and his reputation. Where his fellow general Laches speaks from instinct and battlefield experience, Nici
- [Laches](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/laches.md): Laches is a soldier's soldier — direct, impatient with cleverness, and proud of a life spent in the field rather than the assembly. He agrees to define courage but keeps running into the problem that his examples are not
- [Charmides](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/charmides.md): Charmides enters the dialogue like a vision — every head turns, lovers trail behind him, and Socrates admits he is undone by the sight. He is Critias's cousin and Plato's relative, a youth whose beauty and lineage have a
- [Critias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/critias_charmides.md): Critias moves through the early dialogues as a polished aristocrat with a taste for poetry, politics, and definitions, and in the Charmides he presses Socrates to say what temperance really is. His confidence in his own 
- [Chaerephon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/chaerephon.md): Chaerephon is the kind of companion who runs ahead of the conversation, eager to fetch Socrates, introduce strangers, and keep the argument moving. His famous visit to the oracle, asking whether anyone was wiser than Soc
- [Apollodorus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/apollodorus.md): Apollodorus walks the road to Athens retelling the speeches on love, insisting he knows them by heart because he has made it his daily business to know everything Socrates says and does. He calls his former self wretched
- [Simmias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/simmias.md): Simmias arrives at Socrates' cell with his friend Cebes, bringing Pythagorean interests and a willingness to argue rather than merely mourn. He offers the image of the soul as a harmony of the body, then worries that thi
- [Cebes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/cebes.md): Cebes sits with Simmias in the Phaedo, steady and persistent, and puts the objection that even if the soul survives many bodies it might still wear out in the end. His weaver analogy is cautious rather than hostile, the 
- [Echecrates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/echecrates.md): Echecrates opens the Phaedo by pressing Phaedo for the whole story, admitting he has heard only vague reports and wants to know exactly what was said. His eagerness is the frame that turns a private death into a shared i
- [Xenophon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/xenophon.md): Historian and soldier who wrote about Socrates.
- [Aristotle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/aristotle.md): Philosopher frequently cited in the introductory material.
- [Homer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/homer.md): Epic poet frequently quoted and discussed by Socrates.
- [Hesiod](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/hesiod.md): Poet and contemporary of Homer, cited in dialogues.
- [Pindar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/pindar.md): Lyric poet whose works are referenced in the dialogues.
- [Anaxagoras](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/anaxagoras.md): Pre-Socratic philosopher whose ideas are discussed by Socrates.
- [Heracleitus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/heraclitus.md): Pre-Socratic philosopher known for the doctrine of flux.
- [Protagoras](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/protagoras_old.md): Protagoras is the professional teacher of wisdom whose arrival in Athens draws Hippocrates before dawn and Socrates along as wary chaperone. He trades in the most dangerous commodity of all — the shaping of souls — and c
- [Prodicus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/prodicus.md): Sophist known for precise linguistic distinctions.
- [Polus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/polus.md): Polus is the youthful understudy in Callicles' house, quick to volunteer when Gorgias has spoken long enough, certain his own answers will satisfy. He mistakes rhetorical skill for wisdom and treats argument as performan
- [Cephalus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/cepalus.md): Wealthy elder who discusses justice in Republic Book I.
- [Polemarchus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/polemarchus.md): Son of Cephalus who inherits the discussion on justice.
- [Thrasymachus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/thrasymachus_republic.md): Thrasymachus bursts into the Republic's conversation like a wild beast, impatient with polite hedging and determined to say what everyone else only whispers. He argues that justice is a convention imposed by the powerful
- [Glaucon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/glaucon_republic.md): Glaucon is the young Athenian who refuses to be satisfied with easy praise of justice and instead revives Thrasymachus' hardest challenge in his own voice. He wants to hear justice honored for itself, stripped of reputat
- [Adeimantus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/adeimantus_republic.md): Adeimantus joins Glaucon in demanding that Socrates defend justice without appealing to the rewards of reputation that parents and poets dangle before the young. He is the more patient of the two brothers, but his challe
- [Protarchus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/protarchus.md): Protarchus takes up the case his older companion Philebus abandons, arguing that pleasure is what all living things pursue and the good itself. He is less doctrinaire than his predecessor, willing to follow Socrates into
- [Philebus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/philebus.md): Philebus opens the dialogue by handing his position to Protarchus and letting others fight for it, a move that reveals both his certainty and his reluctance to defend it under pressure. His wager—that pleasure, not wisdo
- [Athenian Stranger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/the_athenian_stranger.md): He arrives as a visitor among Cretans and Spartans, yet quickly becomes the guiding voice, drawing out his companions' institutions and then pressing them to justify what they have always taken for granted. His method is
- [Megillus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/megillus.md): Megillus represents the Spartan way of life at its most dignified: terse, disciplined, and suspicious of long speeches, yet willing to hear them when the occasion demands. His instinct is to defend his ancestral lawgiver
- [Cleinias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/cleinias_laws.md): Cleinias brings the perspective of a man who will have to implement whatever is decided, which makes him both more receptive to the Athenian's ideas and more insistent on their feasibility. He is pious, traditional, and 
- [Diotima](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/diotima.md): Diotima appears in the Symposium only through Socrates' recollection, yet her voice reshapes the entire dialogue, replacing the flattery of lovers with a ladder of ascent from beautiful bodies to Beauty itself. She is a 
- [Menexenus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/menexenus.md): Menexenus is the kind of young man Socrates enjoys teasing: earnest, impressionable, and pleased to be included in serious conversation. When he asks Socrates to deliver a funeral speech, he gets more than he bargained f
- [Lysis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/lysis.md): Lysis is the beloved of the excitable Hippothales, who has been serenading the whole palaestra with verses about him until everyone's ears ache. Modest and quick, he is drawn into Socrates' questioning about friendship, 
- [Hippothales](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/hippothales.md): Lover of Lysis who sets up the conversation.
- [Meletus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/meletus.md): Prosecutor of Socrates in the Apology.
- [Anytus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/anytus.md): Powerful Athenian who prosecutes Socrates.
- [Lycon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/lycon.md): One of Socrates' accusers in the Apology.
- [Eryxias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/eryxias.md): Character in the spurious dialogue Eryxias.
- [Erasistratus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/erasistratus.md): Character in the spurious dialogue Eryxias.
- [Antiphon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/antiphon.md): Brother of Plato who recounts the Parmenides.
- [Pythodorus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/pythodorus.md): Follower of Zeno who narrates the Parmenides.
- [Zeno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/zeno.md): Eleatic philosopher known for paradoxes, appears in Parmenides.
- [Young Socrates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dialogues_se/characters/the_young_socrates.md): This younger Socrates appears among Plato's later dialogues, a figure whose first taste of dialectic has left him delighted and relentless. He turns every conversation into a hunt, rolling many things into one and splitt

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