Accordingly, in the seventh book of the Republic, where Plato propounds his scheme of Academic education, he directs the attention of studious youth primarily, if not exclusively, to the concurrence of inconsistent attributes; and in the Phaedo, 102 B-103 A, taking as an instance the tallness and the shortness simultaneously discoverable in Simmias, he offers his own theory of the immanent idea as the solution of the paradox.
Its characteristics are exceptional tallness combined with slenderness and elegance of figure; a face somewhat long, without any special prominence of the cheekbones but having more or less oblique eyes; an aquiline nose; a slightly receding chin; largish upper teeth; a long neck; a narrow chest; a long trunk, and delicately shaped, small hands with long, slender fingers.
Moreover, the tallness and dolichocephaly which now specially mark the more northern peoples of the group appear very prominently in cemeteries of the migration period in Switzerland and other neighbouring countries.
