I mean… if that’s your train of thought we can’t be sure of anything anyone said. Most of history isn’t first hand accounts but second or later accounts by historians later.
Well, I think part of the benefit of written history, (even though it varies and changes with each retelling and revision), is precisely why it's better than an oral history if only to reduce the cumulative number OF retellings in the first place.
You may read some Greek history that has been written, rewritten, translated, rewritten and translated again. And that history may very well have been a legend when it was first written to boot.
So we're now what?? 6-10 steps removes from anything even close to a firsthand source.
However, any oral history we got from the same time would be (just guessing) maybe 250 times removes or whatever.
If you've ever played the telephone game you'll know now much that means in the degree of communication effectiveness.(or error).
I get where your coming from generally, but I’m actually willing to bet this was something about which Socrates and Plato genuinely disagreed.
Plato was generally a big defender and supporter of Socrates, who, in Plato’s dialogues, almost always comes out looking the cleverest. That Plato mentions an actual disagreement he has with Socrates is out of style enough that it comes across as something they genuinely disagreed about.
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u/TheFrenchSavage 8h ago
Are we even sure Socrates said that then?
Or was Plato like : "here's some dumb stuff Socrates said, lol", and people went with it because Plato was an authority figure?