Plato and the Poets

When Plato was an infant, bees alighted on his lips and, nestling there, set about making honey. His parents had placed him, sleeping, on the summit of a mountain while they paid tribute to the gods, and when they turned their attention back to him, they found the infant’s mouth full of golden sweetness. Cicero provides our first surviving record of the legend, which is repeated with variations over centuries, always as a portent of the sweet style the infant would ultimately possess.