Already in Antiquity, the interest in Plato's philosophical and literary work evoked and maintained also interest in Plato's personality. A serious evidence of this interest can be observed first in the generation of Plato's direct disciples in the period following his death. To the living Plato there is no reference to be found in any of the contemporary writers save that Xenophon mentions him once. According to F. Novotný Aristophanes alludes to him in the Frogs without mentioning his name, where the reasonable man Aeschylos is compared with the unreasonable one: "Right it is and befitting not by Socrates sitting idle talk to pursue, stripping tragedy art of all things noble and true. Surely the mind to school fine-drawn quibbles to seek, fine-set phrases to speak, is but the part of a fool."¹