43. Plato has been greatly praised, because in his book “on the State,” Plato, de Repub. II. 2. he has made the person who undertook the part of objector against justice to ask pardon for his words, of which he himself did not approve; and to say that that character was only assumed for the sake of finding out the truth and to investigate the question at issue. And Cicero so far approved of this, that he also, in his book which he wrote “on the Commonwealth,” thought something must be said against that idea.