invoked to ultimately explain his absence. In Phaedo, the dialogue which recounts the death of Socrates, for instance, we are told that Plato was not present because he"was ill'. I t is fascinating that Plato chooses to highlight his absence from the scene which could lay claim to be the founding moment of western philosophy. It is this elusiveness which has earned Plato, as much as Socrates, the reputation for being a master of irony. So although Plato's position in the philosophical canon is undisputed, some would say unrivalled, he remains one of the most self-effacing figures in the history of thought. European philosophy may be, in the words of the twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, nothing more than"a series of footnotes to Plato, but his own writings keep us guessing who and what Plato minght be.