A biography of the father of Western philosophy

In Plato’s Lysis, two boys, Lysis and Menexenus, argue about who is the elder. This seems odd, until one realizes that people back then did not have birthdays, but only birth years or birth cohorts.

Plato is likely to have been born in 428/427 BCE. His father Ariston claimed descent from Codrus, the last king of Athens (d. c. 1068 BCE), who himself claimed descent from Poseidon. His mother Perictione descended, more humbly but in a shorter line, from the law-giver Solon. She had Charmides for a brother and Critias for an uncle. Out of a desire to rehabilitate his mother’s family line, or hark back to happier times, Plato often featured his relatives in his dialogues: not only Critias and Charmides, but also his brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus.

Plato probably bore the name of his father’s father, Aristocles, but his wrestling coach Ariston of Argos took to calling him ‘Plato’ on account of his broad shoulders. Alternatively, the nickname derived from the breadth of his eloquence, or his large forehead. Had it not stuck, he might have been known to us as Aristocles of Collytus. According to some later writers, he was not the son of Ariston but of Apollo himself—earning him a couple more epithets, ‘Son of Apollo’ and ‘Divine teacher’. In another legend, as the infant Plato slept on Mount Hymettus, the bees settled upon his lips to augur the honeyed words that would one day flow from his mouth.

Childhood and Siblings

When Plato was still a boy, his father died, and his mother married Pyrilampes, her widowed maternal uncle. Pyrilampes already had a son, Demus, who was famed for his good looks, and went on to have another son, Antiphon, with Perictione—making Antiphon Plato’s half-brother. Shortly before marrying Perictione, Pyrilampes suffered a shoulder injury at the Battle of Delium, and it might have been from him that Plato first heard about Socrates and his bravery on the battlefield. Pyrilampes enjoyed a close friendship with Pericles, the de facto leader of Athens. After the birth of Antiphon, Pericles dispatched him to Persia to represent Athens. When he returned from the court of Darius with a pride of peacocks, scurrilous tongues accused him of breeding the birds to procure freeborn women for Pericles. Possibly, it is he who first introduced the peacock to Europe.

Plato no doubt took an engaged interest in the education of Antiphon [‘Responsive voice’, the root of ‘anthem’]. In Plato’s Parmenides, one Cephalus encounters Glaucon and Adeimantus in the agora and asks to meet Antiphon, who happens to be acquainted with the famous conversation that passed between Parmenides, Zeno, and the young Socrates. But Antiphon has, by now, given up philosophy for horses: when the party arrives at Antiphon’s house, they find him with a smith fitting a bridle.

Plato’s eldest brother Glaucon [‘Owl-eyed’, ‘Bright-eyed’, or ‘Grey-eyed’] enjoyed music and mathematics and naturally fell under the spell of the Pythagoreans. Both he and Adeimantus distinguished themselves in the Battle of Megara of 424, and in Plato’s Republic Socrates commends him for his ‘godlike virtues in battle’. In his mid-thirties, Glaucon suffered a minor injury, and thereafter devoted himself to finery, frivolling away his fame and fortune on a large estate that he filled with hunting dogs and pedigreed cocks.

In the Republic, Adeimantus [‘Without fear’] claims that most philosophers are ‘strange monsters, not to say utter rogues’ who are made utterly useless by their study (487d). When, in discussing the ideal state, Socrates proposes that the guardians be without property, he objects that they would be unhappy without luxuries.

Neither Plato nor his three brothers had any children, leaving the joys and burdens of family life to their sister Potone, who had no choice in the matter. Pyrilampes and Critias married her off at an early age to Eurymedon of Myrrhinus, whose greatest achievement was to father Speusippus, the nephew who would follow Plato at the head of the Academy.

Early Years and Socrates

The young Plato excelled in his studies, including in gymnastics; according to Aristotle’s student Dicæarchus, he was a well-known wrestler and competed at the Isthmian Games. It is said that Plato started out as a poet and tragedian, but burnt his works after meeting Socrates. Probably, it is Critias who introduced him to Socrates, who must have seemed like a breath of fresh air after his eccentric tutor, the Heraclitean Cratylus.

Socrates too would have been delighted to meet Plato: it is said that, the night before their first meeting, he dreamt of a cygnet on his knees, which at once sprouted feathers and flew up uttering a loud sweet note.

Socrates too would have been delighted to meet Plato: it is said that, the night before their first meeting, he dreamt of a cygnet on his knees, which at once sprouted feathers and flew up uttering a loud sweet note.

Plato frequented Socrates for, or over, several years. Had Athens been at peace, he might have spent all his days basking in his sunlight. He must have despaired of army life, which he likely looked upon as a rite of passage for a political career.

With the coming of the Thirty Tyrants (following Athens’ defeat by Sparta), Plato may have hoped for a new age of rational government by philosophical men such as Critias and Charmides who embodied the sound values of his aristocratic class. But when, in 404, Critias invited him to join their administration, he held back, repelled by its oppression and, more particularly, its attempt to implicate Socrates in the execution of the innocent Leon of Salamis.

Mercifully, the regime only held out for a matter of months before being routed by the democratic forces in exile, with both Critias and Charmides killed in the heat of battle. If the initial restraint and moderation of the restored democracy did fill Plato with renewed hope, the trial and execution of Socrates would have put paid to any remaining illusions that he might have entertained about Athenian politics.

Travels

After the fall of the Thirty Tyrants, Plato’s name turned from a major asset into a major liability, and his background, politics, and association with Socrates all sat uncomfortably with the mood of the times. In consequence, he retired with other Socratics to Megara in West Attica, where he resided with Euclid, a Socratic and Eleatic who had been present at the death of Socrates.

Euclid, under the influence of the Eleatics, argued in the manner of Zeno, lending force to his ideas by disproving or discrediting those of his opponents. Socrates thought poorly of such eristics and, in his living, had encouraged him to prefer the more cordial and constructive dialectic method. Despite Euclid’s antagonistic debating style, Plato, Euclid, and the other Socratics must have had many fertile conversations in Megara. By marrying the ideas of Parmenides and Socrates, Euclid would go on to establish the Megarian school of philosophy.

According to Diogenes Laertius, after a time in Megara, Plato crossed to Cyrene, the Libyan birthplace of both Aristippus and the geometer Theodorus. As he had a higher opinion of Theodorus than of Aristippus, he probably stayed with the former, who features as a friend and contemporary of Socrates in three of his later dialogues, the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman.

From Cyrene, Plato may have proceeded to Egypt, before, perhaps, being recalled to Greece to serve in a fresh anti-Spartan alliance.

Travels in Italy

If Plato did get embroiled in the so-called Corinthian War, he may have returned to Athens after the Battle of Coroneia in 394 BCE. Now in his mid-thirties, he no doubt received several marriage proposals, which he turned down in favour of philosophy. He may have started on his dialogues as early as Megara or Cyrene, but now he doubled down. By the time he left for Italy in around 388, he had already written several works, including the Apology, Laches, and Protagoras.

In Taras [modern-day Taranto] on the heel of Italy Plato visited the foremost Pythagorean philosopher Archytas, with whom he may have discussed the problem of doubling the cube, or so-called Delian problem.

According to Plutarch, the forever feuding Delians had turned in despair to the Delphic oracle, who advised them to double the size of their altar to Apollo. In obeisance to the oracle, they built another altar with sides twice as long—but, if anything, their problems only got worse.

When the Delians wrote to Plato for advice, he replied that the oracle may have meant doubling the volume of the cube, rather than simply doubling the length of its sides—in which case their new altar was four times too large. But since no one knew how to calculate the length of side required to double the volume of a cube, the god may in fact have been telling them to moderate their passions by taking up the study of mathematics and philosophy.

In Taras, Archytas is likely to have introduced Plato to his teacher Eurytus, who had himself been a pupil of Philolaus. Like Philolaus, Eurytus believed that numbers give limit to the limitless and form to matter, and that their odd and even values account for opposites such as rest and motion, light and dark, and one and many. The concept is not dissimilar to modern binary code.

Plato was deeply impressed by Archytas and the Pythagoreans, whose influence is evident in middle works such as the Meno and Phaedo. In Taras, Plato may also have met Timaeus, if there did exist a historical Timaeus. If not, he might have calqued the Timaeus of the Timaeus on Archytas and other Pythagoreans.

First Trip to Syracuse

At the invitation of a philosopher called Dion, Plato left Taras for the court of Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily.

Dion’s father Hipparinus had been instrumental to the rise of Dionysius, first to supreme military commander and then to tyrant. Dionysius had in turn married Hipparinus’ daughter Aristomache, making Dion his brother-in-law and, later, his adviser and close confidant.

Although taken by Dion, Plato had grave reservations about the dissolute Dionysius, who had made himself tyrant by staging an attack upon his own life and using the attack as a pretext to set up a ‘guard’—really, a private army. But Rome had recently been sacked by the Gauls and Plato may have been running out of places to go.

Dionysius sought to surround himself with lettered men to flatter his artistic pretensions and lend himself the aura of an enlightened despot. But he also had a predilection for turning upon them, so that when the dithyrambic poet Philoxenus declined to praise his verses, he condemned him to hard labour in the quarries. 

Plato’s criticisms of the sybaritic court of Syracuse angered Dionysius. Plato had argued, among others, that a slave with a just and ordered soul is happier than an unjust tyrant. To test this theory, Dionysius sold Plato into slavery!

According to Diogenes Laertius, the Cyrenaic philosopher Anniceris ransomed Plato from Dionysius for twenty minas. 

Upon returning safe and sound to Athens, Plato resolved to remain there once and for all.

The Academy

In 387, the King’s Peace, negotiated by all belligerents and underwritten by the Persian king Artaxerxes II, brought the eight-year-long Corinthian War to an end. Hoping that the Peace would last, Plato purchased a large house some six stadia (around half a mile) beyond the north-western Dipylon gate. The house gave onto the precinct of the Akademeia, named after the Attic hero Hekademos.

The Akademeia contained a sacred grove of olive trees that produced the oil for the victors at the Panathenaic Games. Hippias, the son of Peisistratos, had walled the garden and raised statues and temples. Cimon, the son of Miltiades, had diverted the Cephalus river for irrigation and planted large trees including oriental planes, poplars, and elms. By the time Plato arrived, a gymnasium had been added to one corner. Several athletic and religious events took place or ended within the garden, including the Dionysiac procession from Athens and the torch-lit night race to the altar of Prometheus.

Plato applied for the permission to establish a school—on paper, a thiasos, or religious confraternity. In a nod to the Pythagoreans, he inscribed on the lintel above the door, ‘Let none but geometers enter here.’ Scholars and students took up residence in neighbouring houses, and those of meagre means lodged with others or further out. When he arrived, Eudoxus of Cnidus could only afford an apartment in Piræus, and, each day, walked the seven miles in each direction. Later, his friends and colleagues raised the funds to send him to Heliopolis in Egypt to pursue his study of astronomy and mathematics.

Gatherings often took place in the garden or gymnasium. In many European languages, secondary schools that prepare students for higher education are still, for this reason, called gymnasia. Although Plato privileged the dialectic method, he also encouraged senior members to deliver the occasional public lecture. The Academy’s public lectures became popular, and, after some years, Plato obtained permission to construct a small amphitheatre in which to accommodate them. Plato himself once delivered a lecture entitled, ‘On the Good’, and it may have been the desire to speak to a lay audience that led him to invent striking metaphors such as the sun, line, and cave.

In his forty years as scholarch [head] of the Academy, Plato must have seen through hundreds of students, not least Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Heraclides of Pontus, Hestiæus of Perinthus, and Philip of Opus.

Among all the men, he is known to have admitted at least two women, Axiothea of Phlius and Lastheneia of Mantinea—who were nevertheless required to dress like men so as not be mistaken for hetairai [courtesans].

Second Trip to Syracuse

In 367, twenty years after the foundation of the Academy, the tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius I competed with a play, The Ransom of Hector, which won first prize at the Lenaia festival. Dionysius celebrated by drinking himself to death.

Although Dionysius had married Dion’s sister Aristomache, he had also married Doris of Locri, and while Aristomache bore him four children it was Doris who produced his heir apparent, also called Dionysius. As the older Dionysius lay on his deathbed, Dion tried to talk him into anointing an heir born of Aristomache, who, unlike Doris, was Syracusan and popular with the people. Hearing of this, the younger Dionysius had his father poisoned by way of his doctors.

The paranoid Dionysius had kept his son and heir confined and uneducated, and Dion felt that education might transform Dionysius the Younger if not into a philosopher-king, then at least into a half decent ruler. On this pretext, Dionysius and the Pythagoreans persuaded Plato to return to Syracuse.

Plato did not have high hopes for Dionysius but felt bound to Dion and reluctant to pass over even the slimmest chance of putting theory into practice. When Plato’s trireme docked into Syracuse, Dionysius sacrificed to the gods. But Plato’s arrival, and his grip on Dionysius, did not please the tyrant’s jealous advisors, who accused Dion of plotting against their man.

As his advisors dripped poison into his ear, Dionysius grew suspicious of the able, experienced, and popular Dion, who behaved or acted as ruler in all but name. In 366, Dionysius walked Dion down to the beach and bundled him into a boat bound for Italy. To prevent Plato from protesting or leaving, he removed him to the citadel and placed him under a ‘guard of honour’. In time, Plato cajoled him into letting him go.

Third Trip to Syracuse

When Plato returned to the Academy, he found a new face in the teenage Aristotle, a man, at last, with real and lasting power. Making the most of exile, Dion soon re-joined them in Athens.

Dionysius did everything in his power to persuade Plato to return to Syracuse, even bargaining with the fates of Dion and his wife. In 361, Plato sailed to Syracuse for a third and last time.

Unsurprisingly, the trip did not go well. When Plato kept on advocating for Dion, Dionysius banished him to the barracks to live amid his hostile guards. Plato would have been reminded of Socrates, of his experience with Alcibiades and Charmides, and of his conviction that virtue cannot be taught.

Fortunately, Dionysius soon returned Plato to the palace. And after a time, Plato once again coaxed the tyrant into letting him leave—promising himself, this time, never to return. Later, Dionysius sent a letter to Athens in which he expressed the fear that Plato would complain about him to the other philosophers at the Academy. Plato curtly replied that he would never be at such a loss of subjects to discuss as to seek one in him.

When Dionysius sold Dion’s estate and forced his wife Arete to marry another, Dion led a revolt, ousting the tyrant and confining him to the citadel. Dion ruled chaotically for three years before being assassinated by Calippus, a close friend and student of Plato who had been bribed by Dionysius.

Although Dion had once been popular with the Syracusans, his failure as tyrant to pursue democratic reforms led them to turn against him—demonstrating the difficulties in setting up anything approaching Plato’s Republican ideal. The same could be said of the broader Syracusan adventure: Dionysius I had loved the arts, Dionysius II Plato, Dion wisdom… and yet.

Final Years

When Dion died in 354, Plato was in his seventies. He was still writing, now faster than ever, and had also developed a set of more mystical unwritten teachings [ágrapha dógmata]. Although predisposed to the highest abstraction, he was keen to show the practical significance of all his theorizing, which he did in his last and longest work, the Laws, which remained unpublished at the time of his death in 348.

See my related article, The Life of Aristotle.

Neel Burton is author of The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.