That Plato's criticism of reading and writing comes down to us through his composed dialogs (and who furthermore abandoned his aspiration to become a playwright

That Plato's criticism of reading and writing comes down to us through his composed dialogs (and who furthermore abandoned his aspiration to become a playwright) was the surface-level irony that caught my attention. That Plato didn't want people to read and write in order to keep them out of philosophy because he was an elitist seems very doubtful. In fact, wouldn't the literate, educated, paying students of the sophists constitute an elite? The concept of elitism itself, I find a bit anachronistic here. I think there's something more interesting going on, and it has to do more with epistemic concerns than gate-keeping.