The work probably dates from the fourth century BCE, and the author was presumably a pupil of Plato.
[1] The dialogue seems to engage with an idea of good deliberation (euboulia) for which Isocrates was a noted exponent.
[1][2] The author uses the term dialegesthai[3] in an un-Platonic fashion to refer, not to dialectic, but to what Plato considered eristic.
[6] Francesco Aronadio also dates the work to Plato's lifetime and places it within the circle of the Academy.
[8] The dialogue is freely paraphrased in Dio Chrysostom's On Deliberation (oration 26), the earliest instance of a famous author making reference to a work of the Appendix Platonica (notheuomenoi).