上句见：Day221
The Story of Philosophy《哲学的故事》第1章Plato第3节III. The Preparation of Plato第5段第3句：

The difficulty in understanding Plato lies precisely in the intoxicating mixture of philosophy and poetry, of science and art; we cannot always tell in which character of the dialogue the author speaks, nor in which form; whether he is literal or speaks in metaphor, whether he jests or is in earnest. His love of jest and irony and myth leaves us at times baffled; almost we could say of him that he did not teach except in parables. "Shall I, as an older person, speak to you, as younger men, in apologue or myth?" asks his Protagoras.7 These dialogues, we are told, were written by Plato for the general reading public of his day: by their conversational method, their lively war of pros and cons, and their gradual development and frequent repetition of every important argument, they were explicitly adapted (obscure though they may seem to us now) to the understanding of the man who must taste philosophy as an occasional luxury, and who is compelled by the brevity of life to read as he who runs may read. Therefore we must be prepared to find in these dialogues much that is playful and metaphorical; much that is unintelligible except to scholars learned in the social and literary minutiae of Plato's time; much that today will seem irrelevant and fanciful, but might well have served as the very sauce and flavor by which a heavy dish of thought was made digestible for minds unused to philosophic fare.
7:Protagoras, 320
浙江大学译本： 他在《普罗泰戈拉篇》中这样问道：“请允许我这个年长之人用寓言和神话对你们年轻人说话，好吗？”③
③《普罗泰戈拉篇》，第320节

解析

这句是用柏拉图的原话来说明他的行文方式。
1、"Shall I, as an older person, speak to you, as younger men, in apologue or myth?" asks his Protagoras.7
在《普罗泰戈拉篇》他借普罗泰戈拉之口问道：“我这个年长之人用寓言和神话跟你们年轻人说话，可以吗？”
apologue: a moral fable, esp. one having animals or inanimate things as its characters. 寓言
People applauded his appearance because his apologue and apothegm were appealing. 人们欢呼他的出现因为他的寓言和格言非常吸引人。《潘潘》
his Protagoras：柏拉图的《普罗泰戈拉篇》主要通过苏格拉底与普罗泰戈拉Protagoras这位智者对话，来讨论道德是是否可教以及判定真理的尺度。

在《普罗泰戈拉篇》他借普罗泰戈拉之口问道：“我这个年长之人用寓言和神话跟你们年轻人说话，可以吗？”