The dialogues are often grouped into three chronological periods—early, middle, late— which have attendant philosophical pre-occupations.
Generally, both Meno and Gorgias are placed among the early or early-middle dialogues. The significance of the chronological grouping to which a dialogue belongs is manifold: as Plato progressed in his writing of dialogues, a number of changes occurred.
For the purposes of this discussion, the two most important of those changes are: (1) the depiction of the character of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues seems to stray further and further from what are believed to have been the philosophical views of the historical Socrates; and (2) the dramatic form of Plato’s dialogues loses some of its vitality, e.g., the dialogue form becomes more purely formalistic, with most interlocutors serving as no more than “yes” men, and Socrates as a dramatic character is eventually eclipsed by the Athenian stranger, such that in Plato’s later dialogues, the Sophist, Statesman, and Timaeus, Socrates is present but plays no significant part in the dialogue, and is entirely absent from what is almost universally regarded as Plato’s last dialogue, Laws