I don't necessarily mean that Socrates is a totally fictional character. Just that basically everything we know about his "character" is made up. Like, he did

I don't necessarily mean that Socrates is a totally fictional character. Just that basically everything we know about his "character" is made up. Like, he did exist, but the Socrates that we know doesn't talk like that, didn't have those ideas, wasn't that clever, didn't do any of the stuff described, wasn't put to death in such a fashion, etc. Those were all just made up as a way for Plato to forward his ideas; because in those days you couldn't just dryly talk about ideas, you needed to have characters and a story and so on.