Two points about Socrates

I've been reading Diogenes Laertius' LIVES AND OPINIONS.

Considered as a piece of writing, it is a terrible job. It is just one thing after another. "Another story told about X is that Q1 happened to him. But according to some sources, it was Q2 that really happened. And according to others, Q1 really happened to Y instead. Yet another thing said about X is... Here are three brief poems attributed to X."

Considered as a source on events of ancient times, that anti-stylistic formlessness is presumably its value. Laertius isn't inserting his own grand design into his account of lives and opinions of classical Greek philosophers. He is just passing along what he has heard.

As to Socrates, [and yes that is the cliched image of Socrates above, the David painting], Laertius has heard at least two things that I hadn't encountered in any other source, and that seem intriguing:

Socrates was taught by a philosopher named Archelaus, who was a philosopher of nature in the manner of the Ionians.

Another point: Socrates may have been a dramatist, who assisted in writing some of the works normally attributed to Euripides.

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