Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC) was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher, of the western ethical tradition of thought - wikipedia 
Bust of Socrates. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek original from the 4th century BC. From the Quintili Villa on the Via Appia.
- wikimedia.org
An enigmatic figure, he authored no texts, and is known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers composing after his lifetime, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. Other sources include the contemporaneous Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Aeschines of Sphettos. Aristophanes, a playwright, is the main contemporary author to have written plays mentioning Socrates during Socrates' lifetime, though a fragment of Ion of Chios' ''Travel Journal'' provides important information about Socrates' youth.
Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, from which Socrates has become renowned for his contributions to the fields of ethics and epistemology. It is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method. However, questions remain regarding the distinction between the real-life Socrates and Plato's portrayal of Socrates in his dialogues.
Socrates exerted a strong influence on philosophers in later Ancient philosophy and in the Modern philosophy. Depictions of Socrates in art, literature and popular culture have made him one of the most widely known figures in the Western philosophy.
# Covertness
In Plato's writing, Socrates sometimes seems to support a mystical side, discussing reincarnation and the Greco-Roman mysteries. Further confusions result from the nature of these sources, insofar as the Platonic Dialogues are arguably the work of an artist-philosopher, whose meaning does not volunteer itself to the passive reader nor again the lifelong scholar.
According to Olympiodorus the Younger in his ''Life of Plato'', Plato himself "received instruction from the writers of tragedy" before taking up the study of philosophy. His works are, indeed, dialogues, as give rise to the epithet the "dramatist of reason".
The covertness we often find in Plato, appearing here and there couched in some enigmatic use of symbol and/or irony, may be at odds with the mysticism Plato's Socrates expounds in some other dialogues. These indirect methods may fail to satisfy some readers - wikipedia
Perhaps the most interesting facet of this is Socrates's reliance on what the Greeks called his Daemon (classical mythology) sign, an averting (apotreptikos) inner voice Socrates heard only when he was about to make a mistake.
It was this ''sign'' that prevented Socrates from entering into politics. In the ''Phaedrus'', we are told Socrates considered this to be a form of "divine madness", the sort of insanity that is a gift from the gods and gives us poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy itself.
Alternately, the ''sign'' is often taken to be what we would call "intuition"; however, Socrates's characterization of the phenomenon as ''daimōnic'' may suggest that its origin is divine, mysterious, and independent of his own thoughts.
# Sections
# See also - Politics of Socrates - Aristotle's Wiki - Plato