 In arguing for a basic heuristic split between Plato and the contemporaries of Democritus , Havelock was directly contradicting a very long tradition in philosophy that had painstakingly assembled innumerable connections between Plato and the pre @-@ Socratics , to reinforce the position that Plato , as his own dialogues imply , was primarily informed by his teacher Socrates , and that Socrates in turn was a willing participant in a philosophical conversation already several hundred years old ( again , with a seeming endorsement from Plato , who shows a young Socrates conversing with and learning from the pre @-@ Socratics Parmenides and Zeno in his dialogue the Parmenides — a historical impossibility that might represent figuratively an intellectual rather than direct conversation ) . The book was intriguing to some philosophers but was poorly received among classicists , with one reviewer calling Havelock 's argument for basic difference between Plato and the pre @-@ Socratics " a failure " and his analysis of Plato and Aristotle " distortion . " 
