ABSTRACT
Plato returns to the pre-classical notion of the basanos as a proof of loyalty and truth. The Platonic use of the basanos refers back in time to the values of the aristocratic Theognidean symposium and the political and social situation of archaic polis culture. The symposium differs from the philosophical conversation, although it has great affinities with it, as we see in Plato's Symposium. The Symposium records the rather lengthy speeches of particular characters of the Platonic circle, arguments that preserve in some sense the theatrical flavor of the dialogue but that also have the character of brief treatises. The Platonic dialogues represent a doubled relation to truth. In the Meno, Socrates has a slave boy recall 'truths' he was unaware he possessed, by leading him carefully and slowly through a problem in geometry. The figure of the problem that must be dissolved and unknotted appears in the Meno as well as in the Sophist.
