Aeschines and Socrates
According to Plato, Aeschines of Sphettus was present at the trial and execution of Socrates. We know that after Socrates' death, Aeschines went on to write philosophical dialogues, just as Plato did, in which Socrates was main speaker. Though Aeschines' dialogues have survived only as fragments and quotations by later writers, he was renowned in antiquity for his accurate portrayal of Socratic conversations. In this sense, he was probably superior to Xenophon and may have been closer to Plato in dramatic skill. (Some modern scholars believe that Xenophon's writings are inspired almost entirely by Plato's and/or by the influence of other Socratics such as Antisthenes and Hermogenes. On the other hand, there is no good reason to think that Aeschines' writings were not based almost entirely on his own personal recollections of Socrates.)
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