Plato wanted to be a poet but had to burn his poems - says Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy - to become the student of Socrates. But he regretted it, as evidenced by the massive appeal to the mythos that runs through all the dialogues to become central, from the Republic, in those of old age where legends and narratives play a foundational and cognitive function anything but accessory.
Alternating between structuralist passion and literary play, The Timaeus's account recounts the history of this repentance and of Plato's progressive and tormented reconversion to the imaginative and muslim knowledge presented - like the logos - as a way to lead us from the parts of truth and beauty.