PLATO (428-347 B.C.)

Plato was born into a wealthy and aristocratic family (his father, Ariston, was reputed to be descended from Codrus, the last king of Athens; his mother, Perictione,was related to Solon, the first architect of the Athenian constitution). He had two brothers, Adeimentus and Glaucon, and a sister, Potone. While he was young his father died and his mother married Pyrilampes, a friend of Pericles, the great Athenian statesman. He probably served in the Peloponnesian war with Sparta. He may have served in the war in 395 with Corinth.

    Plato would have been expected to enter political life in Athens. However, in his autobiographical Seventh Letter, Plato relates that two experiences made him abandon politics. First of all, there was the terrible eighth-month rule of Athens by the Thirty Tyrants (many of whom he knew or was related to), and in particular, their ordering of Socrates to assist them in their murder of Leon of Salamis. Secondly, there was the trial and execution of Socrates by the newly restored Athenian democracy. Plato concluded that "the constitutions of all actual cities are bad", and that "the human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really and truly philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in cities become real philosophers."

    After Socrates's death in 399, Plato and some other followers of Socrates appear to have left for Megara. However, he returned to Athens. He left again in about 388 to go to Italy and Sicily to visit the Pythagoreans. In Sicily be made friends with Dion, brother in law of the tyrant ruler Dionysius I. Dion was influenced by Plato, but Plato was later banished by Dionysius I.

    When Plato returned to Athens he bought land in the precinct of the hero Academus, and, in about 385, he founded the Academy, which lasted until 529 A.D. Plato spent the remainder of his life teaching there as head of the Academy. The Academy was a center of research in both theoretical and practical subjects. Aristotle was a student of the Academy.