Background: The following passage is taken from the translator’s introduction to an edition of Plato’s dialogue, The Phaedo. For its combination of philosophical with literary genius the Phaedo has, indeed, no rival in Plato’s entire output, with the sole exception of the Symposium, which is thought by many scholars to have been composed at about the same time. As studies of two fundamental human realities, love and death, the two dialogues complement each other in many ways. (Plato, Phaedo. Translated and with an introduction and notes by David Gallop [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999], p. viii)