Fourth Letter (Plato)


The Fourth Letter, or Fourth Epistle, is one of thirteen letters which are traditionally attributed to Plato.

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Background

Unlike the large majority of Plato's major works, the Letters are not Socratic dialogues. Further, despite their traditional attribution to Plato, the Letters are variously held to be spurious or suspect by modern scholarship.
Collectively, the thirteen Letters are commonly grouped together as one larger item. In turn, this larger collection of Letters is traditionally the last item in the Thrasyllan tetraologies, a traditional grouping of the major works of Plato which divides them into nine tetraologies of four works apiece. In this arrangement, the Letters occupy the thirty-sixth and final place in the traditional Platonic corpus.