Unpublished Notes on the Life of Plato May 2005 © Benjamin Bilski

This reconstruction of Plato’s biography was researched and written when I was at the London School of Economics Department of Government in 2005. As an attempt to reconstruct Plato’s life with more detail than had been done before, I hope it may be of interest. Although this biography is not complete and hasn’t been used for any publication, I do intend to use this material in the future in another form. I welcome any comments. Feel free to write me at benjamin.bilski@periclesfoundation.org. B.B. London 2015

The Early Life of Plato

Plato was born in the late spring of 4291 BCE to an aristocratic family and was

named Aristocles after his paternal grandfather. His father Ariston descended from

Codrus, the legendary last king of Athens of the 11th century BCE, and his mother

Perictione, daughter of Glaucon, is a sixth generation descendant of Dropides, the brother

of the great Athenian lawgiver Solon. Despite their aristocratic background, the story of

their beginnings is disturbing. When Ariston first encountered the young maiden and

“failed to win her,” he “made violent love to Perictione”2 from which she conceived.

1 In Lives of Eminent Philosophers Diogenes Laertius (DL) writes: “Apollodorus in his Chronology fixes the date of Plato’s birth in the 88th Olympiad, on the seventh day of the month Thargelion…For Isocrates was born in the Archonship of Lysimachus, Plato in that of Ameinias, the year of Pericles’ death,” (III 2-3) which is a contradiction. The 88th Olympiad suggests that Plato is born between 428-4, while the time of Pericles’ death was September of 429 and while the archonship of Ameinias is placed in 429-8. Assigning Plato’s year of birth to 427 has its origins in computing back from Socrates’ execution, based on another claim of Diogenes Laertius: “Then at the age of twenty-eight, according to Hermodorus, he withdrew to Megara…”, which is a view that has dominated almost every biography that appeared in the last century. According to Athenaeus, however, Plato was born during the archonship of Apollodoros (430-429) and states that he lived to be 82 (Deipnosophistae V 217e). The Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy (AP), written in 6th century Alexandria, contains the same contradiction as Diogenes Laertius: born in the 88th Olympiad and when Pericles was still alive (AP 2, 5-7). Both the AP (2, 5-7) and DL (III, 3) mention that Plato was six years younger than Isocrates (born 436-435), which further corroborates 429 as the year of Plato’s birth. Thargelion is the prior to last month of a twelve month cycle that has its new year in the summer on July 24th, so we can place Plato’s birth in the late spring or early summer of 429 BCE. See also Jeno Platthy, Plato: a critical biography (Santa Claus, IN 1990) pp. 18-22, who places the exact date of birth at May 22 of 429. Also, in Retrieving the Ancients (Blackwell, 2004), David Roochnik places Plato’s birth in 429. 2 Diogenes Laertius (III 2) cites three sources for the story of a rape, two of whom are Plato’s pupils: Speusippus from his (unfortunately lost) Plato’s Funeral Banquet, Clearchus of Heraclea’s (lost) Encomium on Plato; as well as the historian Anaxilaides, from his On the Philosophers. See also Platthy pp. 22-23.

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Though Perictione would later be forced to marry Ariston, he was not allowed to be near

her until the child was born, a detail that was mythologised in that he obeyed the divine

urging of Apollo, who “appeared to him in a dream.”3 It is more likely, however, that if

Plato is truly born in the early summer of 429 and the rape occurred in 430 – the time of

the Great Plague – that Plato’s mother and her family fled both the disease and disgrace.

Plato might therefore have been born out of wedlock outside Athens4 and was later

legitimised by his parents’ forced marriage. There were two brothers, Glaucon and

Adeimantus, who appear as protagonists in Plato’s Republic and were probably younger,5

as well as a sister Potone, the mother of Plato’s pupil and successor Speusippus. When

Plato was in his teens, his father passed away and his mother married a friend and

3 DL III 2 4 In the Anonoymous Prolegomena (AP) 2 10, it says that Plato may have been born in Aegina, an island south of Attica, but because “his father Ariston having been sent there at the time as a colonist by the city of Athens,” (2 9-10). If Plato was born in Aegina in company of his father, his parents may have married before his birth, but this version contradicts the abstention from Perictione forced on Ariston until the child was born, which was a part of the story attested by sources close to Plato. 5 John Burnet in Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle, (London, 1922) p.206, followed by C.G. Field in Plato and his Contemporaries (London, 1967) p.4, and by W.K.C. Guthrie in A History of Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. IV pp.8-38. (Cambridge, 1989), all take Glaucon and Adeimantus to be 13 or 14 years older than Plato, based on a line in the Republic book 2 368a of having served nobly at a battle in Megara. In the context of the Peloponnesian War, the major assault on Megara took place in 424, but this is not the only battle at Megara (there was a skirmish in 409). Another more convincing argument, though not a decisive proof, is that in the Apology 34a Adeimantus is mentioned before Plato, implying “that Adeimantos was so much older as to stand in loco parentis to his brother.” (Burnet, p. 206)

The argument for the age depends on a need to assign a consistent single dramatic date to the mis-en-scene of Plato’s Republic, which takes place when the cult of the goddess Bendis is introduced into the Athenian pantheon (we don’t know when, but this may have happened already in the early 5th century), after a battle in Megara for the brothers to have fought in (424 or 409), before the Thirty Tyrants (404-403) and during a peace interval (which can be either the Peace of Nicias of 421, or the peaceful interval for Athens in 411, when Sparta concentrated its assault on the Hellespont and Thracian regions). The only way to make this puzzle fit is to discard one of the pieces, namely the requirement that the dramatic date of the Republic is a single consistent moment in ‘time’. Debra Nails argues that given all the contrary theories and facts, there is not a single dramatic date when the Republic takes place (The Dramatic Date of Plato’s Republic, The Classical Journal 93.4 (1998) pp. 383-396), and one custom has been to place the Republic in the ‘range’ between 424 and 404. : it is enough to appreciate the drama when one knows the history of what will become of the interlocutors when Athens loses the war, or the irony that Socrates is curiously watching how the Athenians are introducing a new divinity to their cult, a charge for which he was executed. Even if Plato’s brothers served in some battle at Megara, the assumption that they are 13-14 years older than him would make their mother at least another 16-18 years older, which would mean that at the time of the 13th Letter, written in 366, where Plato discusses the finances needed for his mother’s tomb, she would have to be in her mid-nineties! The theory that the brothers are older than him is inconsistent with both the story of the rape, which is related by three authorities, including a kinsman and a pupil of Plato, as well as with the 13th letter, which is very likely genuine. Ironically, when Burnet argues (p.207) that Glaucon is the second son because he is named after his maternal grandfather, he inadvertently affirms that Plato, not Adeimantus, is the eldest, because his given name Aristocles is after his paternal grandfather.

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associate of Pericles, her uncle Pyrilampes. They had two sons, Demos and Antiphon,

and the latter appears as the narrator of Plato’s Parmenides.

Plato likely received a first rate education growing up in an aristocratic family in

5th Century Athens. He also received athletic training, especially wrestling. When he was

in his teens, his instructor, Ariston the Argive wrestler coined the nickname ho platon,

the broad, “on account of his robust figure.”6 Plato might have competed at the Nemean

and Olympic Games,7 or at the Isthmian Games,8 which indicates that when the Republic

emphasises the importance of wrestling and physical education, Plato is speaking with a

measure of authority and not merely ‘academically’.

Aristotle tells us9 that Plato’s first philosophic studies in his youth were with the

Heraclitean philosopher Cratylus. According to Heraclitean doctrines, the sensible world

is in eternal flux, a permanent state of impermanence. Given that Plato’s writings focus

heavily on seeking permanence in abstract and mathematical entities, as well as on the

soul, we can say that the anti-empirical character of his corpus indicates that he never

gave up his Heraclitean view of the physical world. In addition, he studied Parmenidean

philosophy with Hermogenes,10 who also appears in the Cratylus.

He was educated in music by Draco, who belonged to the school of Megyllus, a

pupil of Damon, the most famous musical authority of the Periclean age and a music

teacher of both Pericles and Socrates.11 Plato’s views about the effects of music on the

soul12 have their likely roots in Damonian theory. Accordingly, the soul is in motion

when music or dance are produced, and conversely, it is noble and beautiful music that

create a noble soul.13 The philosophic point here is that the ethic has its grounding in the

aesthetic, ordering or the harmony, a view that will be central in Plato’s middle period, 6 DL III 4 7 AP 2 28 8 DL III 4, citing Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle. 9 “In his youth Plato first became acquainted with Cratylus and the Heraclitean doctrines.” (emphasis added) Aristotle Metaphysics I, vi, 987a. Though this version contradicts Diogenes Laertius III 6¸ who tells us that Plato studied with Cratylus the Heraclitean only after Socrates’ death, we can safely prefer Aristotle’s version. 10 DL III 6 11 AP 2 29-30. See also Warren D. Anderson, The Importance of Damonian Theory in Plato’s Thought, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association vol. 86 (1955) p.88-102. 12 Republic 424c, Laches 180c, 197d, 200a contain explicit mention of Damon and the Laws [sort out 20 refs to music] concern the effects of music on the soul. 13 Athenaeus XIV 628c [recheck]. Platthy p.36-37.

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especially in the Republic, where the ‘goodness’ of an individual soul is based on the way

its parts are arranged. In addition to music and music theory, he may have been educated

in painting, given the references to painting and the mixing of colours that appear in

several dialogues.14

Plato’s earlier writings are said to be tragedy, and he had composed poetry in the

form of epigrams, some of which are extant. A famous anecdote tells of how Plato was

twenty years old and on his way to submit a tragedy for competition in the Athenian

Dionysiac, when he encountered Socrates and was so taken that he consigned his poetry

to the flames and became his pupil15 – is likely spurious. There is ‘too much of a moral’16

to this story. It is not exactly known when Plato first encountered Socrates, and apart

from this account, there is a mythologised anecdote that a swan appeared in a dream to

Socrates on the day before Ariston introduced his young son to him [ref]. Given

Xenophon’s account17 of Socrates talking Plato’s brother out of politics, it is possible that

Socrates was an acquaintance known to Plato’s family when he was growing up.18

Though the presence of Socrates in the Platonic corpus is overwhelming and certainly

reveals Plato’s affection to his memory, we know little about the actual relationship

between Plato and the historic Socrates. In the Seventh Letter Socrates is referred to as his

“older friend,”19 but it is also possible that they weren’t as close as the Platonic corpus

might suggest.20 Socrates was certainly not Plato’s only teacher, though he may have

composed his first dialogue when Socrates was still alive: upon hearing Plato read from

the Lysis, Socrates exclaimed: “By Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is

telling about me!”21

14 Timaeus 68b-d, Philebus 12e, Phaedrus 275d, Protagoras 312c-d, Republic book 5, 472d 15 DL III 5 16 Field p.5 17 Xenophon, Memorabilia III 6. 18 Platthy, p.47 19 Seventh Letter 324e 20 Plutarch indicates a strained relationship between Socrates and Plato in [recheck ref, quomodo adulator ab amico c.32 70F] ‘…concerning harsh treatment of one of his acquaintances in front of the money-changers about which Plato complained and Socrates angrily replied: “Should you not have uttered your advice also in private to me?” ’ 21 DL III 35

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Early Political Involvements: Upheaval, Hope, Crisis and Inner Exile

Apart from wonders of the literature produced in Athens in the fifth century and of the

breadth of Plato’s education and associations, his youth was set against the tumultuous

political background of the Peloponnesian war. While growing up, Athens launched

offensives against Megara, Boeothia, Amphipolis and Thrace, followed by a fragile peace

– all before Plato was ten. In his teens, he witnessed the massive expedition to Sicily that

ended in disaster, followed by the betrayal and defection of Athens’ great general

Alcibiades, first to Sparta, then to the Persians; a brief oligarchic coup in 411; the

restoration of democracy in 410 and a resumption of the war that led to Athens’ final

defeat in 404. It is likely that Plato fought in several battles as well. According to Field,

Plato served “fairly continuously”22 in the Athenian military for five years from the age

of eighteen. Given his social standing and possible wealth, he would have been in the

cavalry. His service would have lasted until the final defeat in 404, when Athens lost all

of its imperial holdings and Sparta imposed a thirty-man tyrannical junta on Athens. The

Thirty Tyrants, who were made up of members of the anti-democratic Athenian

aristocracy, included Charmides, brother of Perictione and Plato’s uncle, and were led by

Plato’s great-uncle Critias. The rule of the Thirty lasted from the summer of 404 until the

summer of 403, a time in which they disarmed the populace, murdered prominent citizens

for their money, for revenge or out of rivalry, and ultimately died fighting the exiles, who

were based in Piraeus and responsible for the restoration of democracy. The decisive

battle between the army of the exiled democrats and the forces of the oligarchic tyranny,

in which Charmides was killed, took place near the temple of Bendis in Piraeus, the

location that is near the mis-en-scène of the Republic.

Though the bad reputation the Thirty had in hindsight, as an ambitious young man

of twenty-five, Plato received their rise to power with glee and great hope. With an

aristocratic pedigree, military experience and good education, he was expected to enter

political life at some point, and the rise of the Thirty had accelerated this possibility.

22 Field p.5, though he does not tell us his source for assuming he served for five years. Drawing on Apollodoros, Field assumes (p.3) that Plato is born in 428-427, but he acknowledges that “There was, however, another version preserved by later writers that put the date two or three years earlier”

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Plato tells us that the constitution of the old democracy had been “anathema to many”23 –

in the aristocracy. He admits with a measure of understatement that his initial attitude to

the Thirty was “not surprising, because I was young,”24 and followed them eagerly for he

believed that the Thirty would lead Athens “out of the unjust life she had been living and

establish her in the path of justice.”25 But disillusionment quickly set in when he

witnessed the brutality of their rule, and he tells us he “drew back from that reign of

injustice”26 – a line that may be interpreted as implying that he was more than an

observer. Perhaps he terminated an internship with his uncle?

When the democratic exiles defeated the Thirty and overthrew their constitution,

Plato once again considered entering politics. This time he witnessed that “under the

cover of revolution too many old enmities were avenged,”27 though he admits that many

exiles “acted with great restraint.”28 Democracy was restored, but Plato was generally

abhorred that this new democracy was a far cry from the old democracy “since our city

was no longer guided by the customs and practices of our fathers.”29 Although the

Menenexus contains many references and swipes to Thucydides’ representation of

Pericles Funeral Oration,30 a paradigm of the values of the old democracy, and though the

in the Republic Plato places democracy only one step above tyranny in the ranking of

failed states, this complaint seems merely to illustrate not his love for the old democracy,

but that the old democracy was better than both the tyranny of the Thirty and the new

democracy that would follow.

In the midst of all this upheaval, Plato witnessed how Socrates refused to be

complicit in the tyranny of the Thirty, when he was called upon to participate in the arrest

Leon of Salamis – a metic or a general who served Athens,31 and simply went home. For

23 Seventh Letter 324c. 24 Ibid. 324d 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 325a 27 Seventh Letter 325b 28 Ibid 29 Ibid 325d 30 See S. Sara Monoson Plato’s Democratic Entanglements (Princeton 2000) pp. 181-205 for a discussion on how the Menenexus 31 Janet Coleman A History of Political Thought, from Ancient Greece to Early Christianity (Blackwell, 2000) p.58, describes Leon as a “wealthy metic”(resident non-Athenian Greek), whereas W. James McCoy

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this insubordination Socrates may have been executed himself, a risk to which Plato

describes him as indifferent in the Apology,32 and this uncompromising refusal to

participate in injustice of an illegal arrest must have made a deep impression on Plato.

The final blow to Plato’s faith in Athenian politics was witnessing how Socrates

was brought to trial, sentenced and executed by the state; but even more shocking was

Socrates’ behaviour in court in light of an unjust verdict. The trial was fair, the verdict

unjust, in the Crito Socrates is portrayed as unwilling to harm the laws by refusing to opt

escaping from prison, a decision that shocked Socrates’ friends and Plato even more.

Given that there were more than forty years between Plato’s authorship of the Apology of

Socrates and Crito, and the Seventh Letter, he seems to never have recovered from this

blow, when “certain powerful persons brought into court this same friend Socrates,

preferring against him a most shameless accusation, and one which he, of all men, least

deserved.”33 The trial of Socrates may rightly be called the paradigm of the direct conflict

or gulf between philosophy and politics for Plato, which he would struggle to correct for

the rest of his life.

“…Plato, I believe, was ill” – Phaedo

When Leszek Kołakowski was asked34 why there was so much disillusionment in

Poland in the 1990s about democracy, he responded that it is invariably true that post-

revolutionary periods are marked with disappointment, because of the exaggerated

expectations. But without these exaggerated expectations, it would not have been

possible to bring about the revolution in the first place. Unfortunately for Plato,

circumstance would have it that the only two moments in which he considered entering

Athenian politics were not in times of political stability, but in periods of post-

revolutionary chaos and disillusionment, which shattered his desire to ever attempt

in The Identity of Leon, The American Journal of Philology vol. 96, no.2 (1975) pp. 187-199, argues that the Leon of Salamis put to death by the Thirty might be the general Leon who served Athens in the Ionian War, who is mentioned by both Xenophon (Hellenica 1.5.16, 6.16) and Thucydides (8.23-24, 54-55, 73), and who was a signatory of the Peace of Nicias of 421. 32 Apology 32cde 33 Seventh Letter 325bc 34 Leszek Kołakowski delivered a lecture at the LSE on November 17th 2004 following the publication of his Two Eyes of Spinoza.

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entering again. He adds that he “refrained from action, waiting for the proper time,”35 but

he wouldn’t enter Athenian politics in the stable times of the fourth century, and the

‘right’ time would never come. Morrow tells us that since Plato believed he could not

accomplish anything by direct participation in the political life of Athens, he “hoped for

some crisis to occur that would lead the democracy of itself to seek a change of

constitution and entrust the making of its laws to him or some other wise man or group of

men.”36 Although a strong critic of democracy, it is not very convincing to suppose that

Plato had actually hoped for another collapse of the constitution just so that he could be

called on for help. As it would turn out, Plato would be thoroughly involved in the

politics of Greek cities, personally and through the proxy of his students, but never as a

politician.

In these early years, however, between the ages of twenty and thirty, the

formative period of any ambitious young man’s career and intellectual development,

Plato witnessed and participated in war; saw the military defeat of his city; a tyrannical

revolution, followed by great shock and disillusion; a chaotic democratic revolution,

followed by corruption and injustice and further disillusionment that led him to turn

inwardly to philosophy. He tells us that “the more I reflected upon what was happening,

upon what kind of men were active in politics, and upon the state of our laws and

customs, and the older I grew, the more I realised how difficult it is to manage a city’s

affairs rightly.”37 In the degenerative developments that followed the fall of the Thirty, he

observed that “the corruption of our written laws and our customs was proceeding at such

amazing speed that whereas at first I had been full of zeal for public life, when I noted

these changes and saw how unstable everything was, I became in the end quite dizzy.”38

Plato experienced all the bipolar extremities of extreme hope, disillusion and

shock, and internalised them philosophically, never ceasing to “reflect how an

improvement could be brought about in our laws and in the whole constitution.”39 Plato’s

condition can be compared to that of the many writers and thinkers who have experienced

35 Seventh Letter 326a 36 Morrow pp.137-139 37 Ibid 325cd 38 Ibid 325de 39 Ibid 325e-326a

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the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, and rather than expose themselves, they

turned inward, escaping into a voluntary inner exile.

Though Plato would never be a politician, he devoted himself to politics through

philosophy. But in order to be effective politically, one needs friends whom you can trust

and loyal followers, and “to find such men ready to hand would be a sheer piece of good

luck…while to train up new ones was anything but easy.”40 It seems that this hard route

of training up followers to be political leaders, or educators of political leaders, one by

one, though not uncommon for educators of the aristocracy, is precisely what Plato did

when he established the Academy a decade later.41 But first, Plato would get away from

Athens and travel, seeking out mathematicians, philosophers and priests around the

Mediterranean.

Plato’s Early Travels

After the death of Socrates, a small circle of his followers left Athens for Megara to study

with Eucleides,42 who had a school for mathematics there. This Eucleides appears in

Plato’s Theatetus and is present in the Phaedo at Socrates’ execution. If he was truly

there, it would make sense that Eucleides kept the group of Socrates’ followers together

by taking them with him. Diogenes Laertius gives us an itinerary of Plato’s journeying

after the death of Socrates in an improbable sequence: bouncing from Euclides of

Megara, to the mathematician Theodorus of Cyrene – contemporary Libya, to the

Pythagoreans in southern Italy, then to Egypt where he met “those who interpreted the

will of the gods.”43 The Anonymous Prolegomena tell us that after Egypt, Plato went on

40 Seventh Letter 325d 41 It is possible that Plato tried to establish a school and take over Socrates’ following after his death, but was rebuffed for his arrogance and youth. Athenaeus (Deipnosophistae XI, 507ab) tells us: “Hegesander of Delphi, in his Commentaries discussing Plato’s malice toward everyone, writes these words: ‘After the death of Socrates his intimate friends, gathered together on a certain occasion, were very despondent. Plato joined them, and taking up the cup he exhorted them not to be downcast, because he was competent to lead the School (της σχολης) himself, and proposed a toast to Apollodorus. But he said : ‘I would rather have taken the cup of poison from Socrates than this toast of wine from you.’ For Plato had the reputation of being jealous and having by no means a good name so far as his character was concerned.” 42 DL III 6 43 Ibid

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to Phoenicia “and met some Persians, from whom he learnt the doctrine of Zoroaster.”44

It would be more likely, therefore, that Plato travelled from Cyrene to Egypt and then

eastward, before returning home to Athens, rather than visiting Italy in between.

Where does Plato’s first encounter with the Pythagoreans of Southern Italy fit in

this picture? There is an interesting argument45 in the relatively unknown ‘critical

biography’ by Jeno Platthy, that Plato’s first visit to the Pythagoreans of southern Italy

took place when Socrates was still alive in 403, when Plato was twenty-seven; and that

the journeys to Megara, Cyrene, Egypt and the ‘East’ where made after Socrates had

died. Platthy points to corroborative evidence in an aside by Cicero and a Greek fragment

reconstructed from a burnt scroll of Herculaneum.46 This argument is compelling, but not

decisive, and I will leave in the middle which version is more plausible, but whether

before or after the death of Socrates, the important point about Plato’s early journeys to

44 AP 4 45 Platthy, pp. 94-97 46 In De Senectute Cicero tells us that his host in Tarentum told him that Plato the Athenian was present at a lecture by Archytas, “and, upon investigation, I find that Plato did come to Tarentum in the consulship of L. Camillus and Ap. Claudius.” (Cicero, De Senectute XII 41: “…locutum Archytam Nearchus Tarentinus hospes noster…cum quidem ei sermoni interfuisset Plato Atheniensis, quem Tarentum venisse L. Camillo Ap. Claudio consulibus reperio.”) This combined consulship took place in 349,( According to a footnote in the Loeb edition of Cicero’s De Senectute on p. 50) when Plato was about eighty years old, and known to have been in Athens. His last visit to Sicily was in 361, at age sixty-six, and he is not reported to have left Athens after returning from the Olympics of 360. Nonetheless, Platthy argues that Cicero might have mistaken the name, and that it was M, for Marcus, not L for Lucius –Camillus,( Platthy p. 94. The idea that Marcus not Lucius, is Camillus’ first name is based on Plutarch Camillus XXII 3 [check]) and that a different Ap. Claudius, namely Appius Claudius Crassus (or Crassinus), was consular tribune. And the only time that they could have held office at the same time was in 403, when Plato was twenty-seven. [recheck].

The second piece of evidence comes from the Academicorum Philosophorum Index Herculanensis, the collection of fragments that mention members of the Academy, recovered from burnt scrolls of a library in the village of Herculaneum that was buried along with Pompeii in the eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 CE. The anonymous fragment in question,

(…Π)λατων Σοκρατους (γεγ)ον(ως µαθ)ητης απ(ολ)ειφθ(ετο)ς ο(τ ην) ετων (ει)κοσι επτα απηρεν εις (Σι)κελι(αν) και Ιταλιαν εις τους Πυθαγ(ορε)ιους...”46

translates as: [“…Plato, student of Socrates, at the age of twenty-seven (eikosi hepta) undertook the journey to Sicily and Italy to the Pythagoreans…”]

The explicit mention of the age of twenty-seven, the year 403 or 402, is startling. Why would Plato have left Athens when Socrates was still alive? Platthy argues that in 403-402 he may have temporarily left Athens for Italy fleeing the popular backlash against his family’s involvement in the tyranny of the Thirty. If this is true, it would shed an entirely different light on the Seventh Letter, which Platthy takes to be a spurious vindication of Plato, written in the Academy by his successors. (Platthy p.95) Also startling is the fact that the Herculaneum fragment mentions Sicily and Italy, in that order. I am not convinced that the Seventh Letter is invalidated by these speculations, because Plato describes to the followers of his Sicilian friend Dion when he “first came to Syracuse,”(Seventh Letter 324b) which may not have been his first visit to the region. He may have simply paid a visit to Sicily to view the god in action from the craters of Mount Etna. (AP 4 12)

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the region is that they marked the beginning of a life-long friendship with the

Pythagorean philosophers of southern Italy.

Pythagoras of Samos left his native island in 540 during the rise of the tyrant

Polycrates, and travelled to Egypt and Babylon, before sailing to southern Italy and

settling in Croton, where he either lived out his life, or stayed until the tyrant of Samos

died in 525.47 In his wake, Pythagorean communities had arisen in Locri, Rhegium and

Tarentum by the time of Plato’s visit. At Locri he met with Echecrates, Arion and the

cosmologist Timaeus, after whom he would name a famous late dialogue; at Tarentum he

met Philolaus, his disciple Eurytus; and Archytas, a mathematician and leading statesman

of his city. These Pythagorean philosophers were a close-knit society, much like a

mystical cult, who guarded their doctrines very closely, but were also very involved

politically. Their communality as scholars and outward political activity were a decisive

influence on the manner in which Plato would later organise his Academy. As successful

scholars and successful statesmen, the Pythagoreans didn’t seem to have a problem

between philosophy and politics, as Field puts it: “in the Pythagoreans, particularly at

Tarentum, he found men who had developed a metaphysic of their own and applied it in

practice to the conduct of their lives and the affairs of the city.”48 This would have

impressed Plato, but we do not know exactly to what extent Pythagorean doctrine

informed Platonic philosophy. In the sparse accounts among the ancient sources about the

historic Pythagoras,49 however, he is credited for coining the phrase ‘philosophy’ and for

first introducing a doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

After his adventurous travels that had lasted several years, and his return to

Athens at the age of thirty-three, Plato served once more in the Athenian military, this

time as a cavalry officer. He either volunteered or was called up as a citizen, to fight in

47 Pythagoras of Samos, J.S. Morrison, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3/4 (1956) p.142 cites different classical sources about where Pythagoras’ life ended. 48 Field p.16 49 Early Greek Philosophy ed. Jonathan Barnes (Penguin, 1987) pp. 77-80 list all the extant ancient sources that discuss Pythagoras, and pp. 202-213 an account of 5th century Pythagoreanism and pp. 216-222 the extant fragments of Philolaus of Croton, whom Plato encountered.

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the Corinthian War50 between the allied Greeks and the Spartans, which lasted from 397

until the Battle of Corinth in 394 that ended in defeat for Athens. We do not know much

else about his activities in the period between the death of Socrates and his first visit to

the Syracusan court, apart from his prolific authorship of the ‘early period’ dialogues. In

this time, his philosophic reputation undoubtedly grew and he maintained an active

correspondence with the philosophers he had encountered in his travels. Authentic or not,

we possess two letters to Archytas of Tarentum, whom Plato would set out to visit in 388,

when he was about forty years old. In this journey he was honoured by the Pythagoreans

of southern Italy, and through the contacts Archytas had with Sicily, and possibly by the

urging of a curious young admirer named Dion, he received an invitation to the court of

Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse.

First visit to the court of Syracuse: the Politics of Indulgence

On the east coast of Sicily, Syracuse was the wealthiest city-state in the Greek world and

greatest Greek power in the ‘west.’ The general Dionysius came into power at the end of

the 5th century when the Syracusan assembly gave him absolute powers as a war measure

during the time of a Carthaginian invasion of 407. This office of strategos autocrator51

overturned the previous democratic regime, and though he may have kept the institutions

of the previous democratic regime in place,52 Dionysius would never let go of his power

for thirty-eight years until his death in 367, when it was inherited by his twenty-year-old

son Dionysius II. As a military leader, the elder Dionysius proved very effective

“discarding traditional practices of the fifth century and anticipating the tactics of Philip

and Alexander,”53 and succeeded in stemming the rising Carthaginian tide, but not

eradicating it. Apart from the pretence of representation in the former democratic

50 DL III 8. Platthy pp. 45. There is a discrepancy in Platthy’s account on Plato’s service in the Corinthian War: on page 45 describing military service, he says that Plato was enlisted from 397-396, but on page 104, describing the journeys, Plato traveled until 395, after which he served at the battle of Corinth in 394. Let it suffice to say that Plato served in Corinth after he returned from his lengthy travels. 51 Glenn Morrow in Plato’s Epistles (Indianapolis, New York) provides a history of Syracusan politics. Morrow pp.145-155, on Dionysius the Elder and the young Dion. 52 Morrow (p.146) speculates that Dionysius kept the institutions of the former democracy in place, since he was ‘re-elected’ to his office by the assembly every year. 53 Morrow p.145

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assembly, his power seems to have rested on three pillars: money, mercenaries and the

manipulation of a perceived threat. Dionysius did not ‘anticipate’ Philip and Alexander in

every respect, as he would neglect the education of his son who would later inherit the

rule over a Syracuse that was strategically compromised.

His great wealth and the wealth of Syracuse allowed him to rely on a military that

was a large mercenary force, made up of native Sicilian, Italian and Gaulish barbarians.

His motives did not seem to involve anything other than to continue his hold on power

and to further enrich himself, and to that end, he sought to expand his empire not

westward, by consolidating his rule over Sicily, but eastward. When he ordered his

barbarian mercenaries to attack and conquer the Greek cities of southern Italy, not only

was his indifference to ‘Greekness’ an affront to many Hellenes, he also weakened his

strategic position vis-à-vis the Carthaginians. After he had succeeded in driving back the

Carthaginian invasion of Sicily, he had not driven them out of the island entirely, and the

north-west tip of Sicily, the Elymi region, remained under Carthaginian control, a base of

power that was allowed to grow. To some extent, apart from wealth and a foreign

military force that depended on this wealth, there was a measure of interest for the tyrant

in keeping a perceived threat from the Carthaginians propped up in order to justify his

continued martial rule. In later years, we know that these calculations would cost his son

dearly, when the younger Dionysius inherited a non-aggression arrangement that the

elder Dionysius had later made with Carthage, humiliatingly paying them tribute,54 about

which Plato would express great disapproval to his son, recommending policies aimed at

reversing his father’s strategic mistakes.

At the time of Plato’s visit, Dionysius’ power was at its height. And in between

his military and diplomatic adventures and energetic gorging at banquets, he found time

to pursue his literary pretensions and submitted his tragedies to Athenian theatre

competitions – apparently even winning on one occasion.55 A man in such high spirits of

wealth, power, indulgence and the occasional literary award would expect nothing but

sycophantic praise from everyone he encountered. Plato doesn’t tell us anything about

54 Seventh Letter 332e-333a 55 Morrow p.145.

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Dionysius the Elder in his letters, nor does he explicitly provide us with a little strategic

assessment, but from the policies that he would recommend to his son, his own words

from the Seventh Letter, we may conclude that the relationship between Plato and

Dionysius was cold.

Plato describes being appalled at the indulgent banqueteering he witnessed at the

Syracusan court. He was “profoundly displeased” when he witnessed “what they call

there “the happy life” – a life filled with Italian and Sicilian banquets, with men gorging

themselves twice a day and never sleeping alone at night.”56 From observing this

lifestyle, he draws a startling political conclusion: no matter how good the laws of a state

are, if its men are lax about everything “except the feasts and the drinking bouts and the

pleasures of love that they pursue with professional zeal,”57 then such cities “are always

changing into tyrannies, or oligarchies, or democracies, while the rulers in them will not

even hear mention of a just and equitable constitution.”58 In other words, if such excesses

are the norm, the state will always revolve in a cycle of tyranny and revolution, a cycle

that can only be broken by temperance, and the establishment of a constitution to which

everyone is subject.

The highpoint of this first visit however, was to meet a young man named Dion,

the twenty-year-old brother to Dionysius’ third wife Aristomache. Plato tells us in the

Seventh Letter, which is addressed to Dion’s friends and followers, that Dion was deeply

interested in Plato’s teachings, “quick to learn…and he listened with a zeal and

attentiveness I had never encountered in any young man, and he resolved to spend the

rest of his life differently from most Italians and Sicilians, since he had come to love

virtue more than pleasure and luxury.”59 With mutual affection, a shared conviction of

the political importance of philosophy and temperance, the meeting would be the

beginning of a life-long intimate friendship that would end disastrously with Dion’s death

at the hands of another pupil of Plato more than thirty years later.

“You talk like an old dotard!” “And you like a tyrant!” 56 Seventh Letter 326bc 57 Ibid 326cd 58 Ibid 326d 59 327b

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– an exchange between Dionysius the Elder and Plato60

Whatever Plato may have expressed to Dionysius by way of disapproval of the

extravagances at the court, disapproval of the tyranny and absence of a constitution,

disapproval of the misguided priorities in Syracusan expansionist imperial policies, or

perhaps literary criticism; and whatever lingering anti-Athenian sentiment may have

motivated Dionysius; when Plato boarded the ship to return to Athens, the tyrant had

secretly arranged with Pollis, the Spartan ambassador, for Plato to be sold into slavery on

the island of Aegina.61 His freedom was bought for twenty or thirty minae by Anniceris

of Cyrene, who sent him home to Athens. Plato’s friends scrambled to collect the money

to repay Anniceris, but he refused to accept it, saying “that the Athenians were not the

only people worthy of the privilege of providing for Plato.”62 When he returned to

Athens, Plato launched the most ambitious project of its kind in the ancient world.

Probably using the money that was collected for his ransom, he founded an institute

devoted to the highest learning, which was to train statesmen and men of science, and

would produce much more.

Founding the Academy63

Μηδεις αγεωµετρητος εισιτω !

In 387 Plato purchased a property on the outskirts of Athens between the Cerameicus and

the Colonus Hill, along the banks of the Cephisus river, approximately one kilometre

north-west of the Dipylum Gate. Named after a hero Hecademus, the Academy was an

estate previously used as a gymnasium,64 contained a lecture hall, was surrounded by a

60 DL III 18 61 The story of the slavery is reported with some variations in a variety of sources with a variety of detail: DL III 19-21, Plutarch Dion V 2-3 and hinted at in Aristotle Metaphysics IV 25, 1025a, Physics II 199b. Anniceris is also described in Aelian’s Varia Historia, 2.27 as circling the Academy on a horse. 62 DL III 20 63 Modern accounts of the Academy and its activities can be found in Platthy’s biography pp.131-149 ; Anton-Hermann Chroust Plato’s Academy: the first organised school of political science in antiquity, Review of Politics, Vol. 29 (1967) pp.25-40 ; Plato’s Academy and Democracy Polis, Vol. 19, No.1-2, (2002) pp.7-27 ; Plato’s Democratic Entanglements, S. Sara Monoson, (Princeton, 2000), pp. 137-145 ; Morrow’s Plato’s Epistles pp.137-142 ; Field pp. 30-48 ; Burnet pp.219-230 64 DL III 7

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wall and adorned with fountains, a walk and grove.65 Plato erected a shrine of the nine

Muses, to which his successor Speusippus would later add statues of the three Graces.66

Apparently, an oriental admirer commissioned a statue of Plato in his honour, to be

placed in the garden of the Academy with the inscription: “Mithradates the Persian, son

of Orontobates, dedicated to the Muses a likeness of Plato made by Silanion.”67 Prior to

Plato’s ownership, the estate may have contained a statue of Eros, an altar to the Morian

Zeus, and a shrine to the hero Academus.68 Most of Plato’s disciples would live in huts

on the estate of the Academy,69 but while it seems that while Plato kept his library at the

school,70 he had his residence nearby,71 living close to Timon the Misanthrope, with

whom only Plato was on good terms.72

Plato may have been influenced by the school of rhetoric of Isocrates, established

a few years earlier, in around 390, for political role of the Academy; and by the schools

of mathematics of Eucleides of Megara, Theodorus of Cyrene, as well as a medical

school that had existed in Sicily under Philistion,73 for its scientific role. The close-knit

Pythagorean societies of southern Italy had served as examples of communities of

scholars, who are devoted to mathematics and discovering truth in numbers, but are also

thoroughly involved in political and military affairs, like Plato’s long standing friend

Archytas of Tarentum, who was a mathematician, statesman and general. The Academy,

65 Platthy p. 131, after the Index Suidas: the wall was built by Hipparchus, and the garden was adorned with fountains, a path and a grove by Cimon (Plutarch, Cimon 13). 66 DL IV 1 67 DL III 25 quoting the Memorabilia of Favorinus, this comment in Diogenes Laertius is also understood as further evidence for Plato’s travels to ‘the East.’ Favorinus is believed to be a member of the Academy in the first century BCE, though all his works are lost. See The Academic Position of Favorinus of Arelate, Phronesis Vol. 18 No. 2 (1993) 183-213. 68 Platthy p.136 69 DL IV 19, on Polemo, student of Xenocrates: “Nevertheless would he withdraw from society and confine himself to the Garden of the Academy, while close by his scholars made themselves little huts and lived not far from the shrine of the Muses and the lecture hall.” 70 Because Plato’s library is not mentioned in his will, we may conclude he maintained it at the Academy. Plato’s will is reproduced in full in DL III 41-43. 71 It is not clear in which estate Plato lived, because he mentions two in his will: between the estate at Iphistiadae, which is north-east of Athens, and one at Eirestidae, to its west, the latter is probably closer to the Academy. 72 AP 4 14-18 73 The Sicilian doctor Philistion is mentioned in the Second Letter 314e.

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therefore, was not the first centre of learning for any of these fields, but it was the first to

encompass them all.

We do not know how exactly Plato recruited his students, but circumstantial

evidence does give us some clues. His students came overwhelmingly from northern

Greece. Apart from contacts between Athens and its former colonies, this may be due in

part to the pupil Eudoxus of Cnidus, who ran a school of mathematics in Cyzicus on the

Propontis, and merged his school, and his pupil Helicon, into the Academy.74

Managerially, Eudoxus may have been more of an equal to Plato, as he was appointed

acting head of the Academy in Plato’s absence during his second visit to Syracuse in 367,

a time during which Aristotle joined the Academy at the age of seventeen.75 Following

Socrates’ criticism of the sophists’ measuring wisdom in currency, Plato didn’t seem to

have charged the fellows for tuition, but in order for them to live there full time, they

would have to be self-supporting to some degree and provide their own slaves.

The days would follow a set routine of a prayer and offering to the Muses upon

awakening in the morning, followed by attendance to the individual or joint projects that

the members were engaged in. In the afternoon, they would gather communally in the

garden or the lecture hall for a meal, an occasion at which Plato would give a daily

lecture without notes.76 Though much has been made of Plato’s esotericism, his theory of

the Thaetetus of knowledge in the soul and the impossibility of writing wisdom down,

views he will repeat in the Seventh Letter; here, the lectures would have contained his

esoteric ‘unwritten doctrines,’ and may have meant just that: lectures without the aid of

notes. Burnet tells us that Plato’s students took notes from his lectures, and that “we

know from Simplicius that Aristotle, Speusippos, and Xenokrates had all published their

notes.”77 We may add to this that if Plato had notes of his lectures, his revering students

would have preserved them, but no notes of Plato have been published, nor are any ever

mentioned or cited in the ancient sources. And if lecturing was his principal interaction

74 Burnet p.214 75 Field p.37, Platthy p.146. We may assume that Eudoxus was appointed the temporary scholarch, because Speusippus accompanied Plato in the second visit to Syracuse of 367 (Second Letter 314e). 76 Platthy pp.140-141 ; Burnet 220-222 77 Burnet 220-221

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with his students, it may have been the means by which he thought through many of the

problems he worked on in dialogue with his students before committing them to papyrus.

The curriculum of the studies at the Academy can be divided into mathematical

studies (arithmetic, plane geometry, solid geometry, astronomy and harmonics), political

studies (theory, legislation, jurisprudence, constitutional studies), biological studies

(taxonomy of flora and fauna), ethical and logical studies, which prepare for the highest

discipline: dialectic – all of which can be classified under what Plato considered to be

philosophy. (We will discuss dialectic in the context of the Republic in the next chapter.)

Philein Sophia, the loving of wisdom, meant not teaching a course on Putnam’s late

political epistemology, but a complete and unconditional pursuit of knowledge and

wisdom at the highest level, acquired by study, experiment and speculation. And for this,

the Academy would be very high repute throughout the Greek world, and was frequently

called on to solve problems from the mathematical to the political.

Plato would never cease to think about how laws could be improved78 and the role

of the Academy was political since its founding. Platthy gives the number of members of

the Academy at twenty-eight,79 known as philoi, or close friends, and if this includes

Plato, then his disciples would be seated on three tables of nine muses during the garden

lunch. According to a fragment by Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle, unravelled from

Herculaneum in 1981, the students seem to have been divided between an Inner and

Outer circle.80 It would make sense to consider the inner circle to be the permanent

disciples, whose career was their life at the Academy, whereas the outer circle –the

exoteric members, were politicians, legislators, rhetoricians or those sent by rulers for

help in drafting constitutions. It is likely that these commissions were a source of income

for the Academy or for its members. The dichotomy between the inner and outer circle,

or the esoteric and exoteric members, seems to be Plato’s unique balance in combining

within the same institution, an older tradition of educating aristocratic men for public life

on the one hand, and a close-knit society modelled on the Pythagoreans on the other.

78 Seventh Letter 325e 79 Platthy p.140 80 Platthy p. 145 cites an article by Konrad Gaiser in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on Nov. 7/8 1981, No. 259 as the source of the analysis of a lengthy fragment from Dicaearchus’ previously lost Life of Plato.

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Plato would dispatch his pupils to their cities of origin to write constitutions and

legislation for them: Phormio was sent to Elis, Menedemus was sent back to Pyrrha on

the island of Lesbos, Aristotle was sent home to Stagira, Xenocrates back to Chalcedon,

Eudoxus to his native Cnidus, and Aristonymus to the Arcadians. Euphraeus of Oreus

stayed for a few years in the court of Perdiccas III, King of Macedon (and elder brother to

Philip), to whom the Fifth Letter is addressed. In the Thirteenth Letter, Plato sends

Helicon of Cyzicus, disciple of Eudoxus, to tutor Dionysius II of Syracuse. The Sixth

Letter is addressed to Hermias, prince of Atarneus (whose daughter would marry

Aristotle), and Erastus and Coriscus, two members of the Academy, urging friendship

and cooperation, adding that if anything were to go wrong, Plato be notified

immediately.81 Of the thirteen extant letters by Plato, authentic or not, eleven pertain to

politics and nine are addressed to rulers in power. From his students acting as his proxies,

to his personal ill-fated involvement in the politics of Sicily, we may be justified in

concluding that Plato tried to influence every king and tyrant that he came in contact

with.82

Conspicuously absent from the list is his native Athens. A centre of learning of

the type and calibre of the Academy could not have flourished in any other regime in the

same way. And though none of his inner circle are reported to be involved in Athenian

public life, some ‘outer circle’ affiliates of the Academy include very prominent

Athenian statesmen who participated in democratic politics: “Phocion as an elected

military general and orator, Lycurgus as an orator and elected financial magistrate,

Hyperides as an orator, and Demosthenes as a particularly powerful orator. Although

these individuals often opposed the specifics of Athenian military power towards

Macedon, none is reported to have challenged the fundamental legitimacy of

democracy.”83 Not a fan of democracy, Plato’s participation was indirect, but not absent.

81 Sixth Letter 323b 82 [Some anecdotal evidence points to two exceptions to this generalisation.] [Aelian and..?] 83 S. Sara Monoson Plato’s Democratic Entanglements (Princeton, 2000) p. 141

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The Academy, therefore, was instrumental in creating and intellectually

supporting all kinds of leaders, men of science, and amongst its inner circle, produced

philosophers of unprecedented polymathy like Aristotle. But if we are to draw up a net

assessment of the politics of all of Plato’s pupils, we are not permitted to ignore those

who turned into tyrants, revolutionaries and assassins. Athenaeus, a second century Greek

author from Naucratis, Egypt, writing in the anti-Platonic tradition that has its origins in

the rival school of Isocrates, points out that Euphraeus of Oreus was behaving so

insolently at the court of Macedon, that he was killed as soon as Philip rose to power.84

When Dionysius II was overthrown by Dion, three years later he was murdered by

Callippus of Athens, who took power in Syracuse and was assassinated thirteen months

later by Eudemus of Cyprus – all of whom had been pupils of Plato. Hermias of

Atarnaeus, Chlearchus of Heraclea, Dionysius II and Dion of Syracuse, all became

tyrants when they rose to power, and all –save Dionysius, were assassinated while in

power. The activities and consequences would have far exceeded Plato’s control, but in

addition to all its virtues, the record is mixed, because the Academy had also been a place

where revolutions and political assassinations were planned.

Second Visit to Syracuse: The Political Ambition of Philosophy

“When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; now that I am in need of money, I come to you.”

– Aristippus to Dionysius II85

The limitations of the political ambitions of his philosophy, however, would be tested

most strongly in his personal involvement in the politics of Syracuse that started on the

occasion of the death of Dionysius the Elder in 367, around twenty years after his first

visit to the court, when Plato had reached the age of sixty-two. The tyranny over

Syracuse was inherited by a twenty-year-old Dionysius II, and the biggest opportunity for

influencing positive reform seemed within reach, and Dion succeeded in persuading Plato

to come personally. Against misgivings, and downplaying his ambition, Plato went 84 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae xi 508e 85 DL II 78

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because he was “above all ashamed lest I appear to myself as a pure theorist, unwilling to

touch any practical task.”86

In the Seventh Letter Plato deplores that he came to the conclusion that “all existing states

are badly governed and the condition of their laws practically incurable”87 and he was

forced to further conclude that only the philosophical perspective is the perspective of the

whole, “that from her height alone was it possible to discern what the nature of justice is,

either in the state or in the individual, and that the ills of the human race would never end

until either those who are sincerely and truly lovers of wisdom come into political power,

or the rulers of cities, by the grace of God, learn true philosophy.”88

This exclamation certainly sends bells ringing to anyone who is familiar with the

philosopher-kingdom of the Republic, and since the Seventh Letter is written in the

context of Syracusan politics, it can easily lead one to conclude that Plato tried to

establish a ‘Republic’ in Sicily. But on closer examination, the policies that Plato and

Dion would recommend had little in common with the ideal state described in his seminal

work that was written in a period before and after the founding of the Academy,89

whereas the second visit is about twenty years later, and the Seventh Letter is written

more than thirty years after the Republic. Nonetheless, the policies he recommends reveal

his pan-Hellenistic political aims that are actually even more ambitious.

Not only did he want to change the tyranny of Syracuse into a kingship –to install

a constitution, making everyone equitably subject to law, he also advocated resettling the

Greek cities.90 This latter policy meant recolonising the Greek cities of Sicily that had

been destroyed by the Carthaginians, installing local rulers, and the next step would be to

drive the Carthaginians out altogether. The goal in effect, was not only to consolidate an 86 Seventh Letter 328. The translation in the Hackett edition by Glenn Morrow omits the line that follows: – αλλ’αισχυµενος µεν εµαυτον το µεγαστον, ‘– but dreading self-reproach most of all.’ 87 326a 88 326ab 89 Book 1 of the Republic is believed to have been written in Plato’s early period, later revised, and the rest of the Republic in his middle period. The stylometric investigations found only in book 1 expressions characteristic of his early period, combined with phrases characteristic of Sicilian Greek. Since the early and middle periods are divided by Plato’s first visit to Syracuse and the founding of the Academy, the presence of Sicilian Greek is characteristic of his middle period. See Stylometry and Chronology in the Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge, 1990) pp. 90-120. 90 Third Letter 315d, 319b, 319d.

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empire west of Syracuse over all of Sicily, but also to ensure a Greek character over all of

Sicily, and consolidate some form of constitutionalism over all of Sicily, and bringing in

friends whom he trusts to be the local leaders of these cities. In this light, Dionysius II

had to reverse the impulsive tyrannical policies of his father that were focused eastward,

improve the weak strategic position that he had inherited and compromise his absolute

power with constitutions and localisation. Although Plato does mention that Dionysius

had “united all Sicily into a single city,”91 his control was weak, because he lacked

trusted friends who could share localised leadership. Plato also disapproved of the

weakness against the Carthaginians, because if Dionysius would have resettled the

Greeks, his empire could have grown many times more powerful than that of his father,

and he would be able to deliver the Carthaginians a crushing defeat. In stead, the

Dionysius II would continue to pay them tribute for a non-aggression arrangement he had

inherited from his father.92

The ministerial holdovers that Dionysius II had also inherited, however, were

already coiling around him with flattery and slander against Dion. When Plato arrived in

Sicily, he discovered that the court was “full of faction and of malicious reports to the

tyrant about Dion.”93 And before reaching the beginning of their ideas, they were

suddenly the beginning of the end, when within a few months time Dion was banished

from Sicily on the charge of plotting against the tyranny.

Plato tried to leave, but the tyrant pretended to beg, “but we know that the

requests of tyrants are mingled with compulsion.”94 Dionysius seemed to have been

obsessed with garnering Plato’s favour, and being more liked than Dion. Plato tried to

stick to the plan of educating the boy-tyrant in philosophy. How Dionysius would

succeed, “if at all, was through his becoming my disciple and associating with me in

discourse about philosophy,”95 but the boy was ensnared in court intrigue making him

fear that listening to Plato would trick him, and so Plato never succeeded in overcoming

Dionysius’ resistance. Not long after the failure to bring philosophy to the polity, with

much pleading, Plato was allowed to return to Athens. 91 Seventh Letter 332c 92 332e-333a 93 Ibid 329b 94 Ibid 329 d 95 Ibid 330ab

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Plato’s tone in the Thirteenth Letter, written shortly after Plato returned, is

friendly and businesslike, assessing his and the tyrant’s property assets in Athens, and

gently suggesting that Dion’s “attitude towards you, as shown in words and actions, is

quite temperate.”96 The Third Letter, however, written a few years later when the break

between Dion and Dionysius was complete, is full of sarcastic rancour; and Plato

admonishes the boy-tyrant that he was “a ruler only in his own imagination, in reality

being ruled by the crowd of unscrupulous men around him.”97

Dionysius II, however, did not take Plato’s departure lightly, and driven

principally by a desire to be honoured by the most famous philosopher in the Greek

world, combined with a jealousy of Plato’s friendship with Dion, he immediately began

stalking him, entreating Plato to return, calling on all of Plato’s friends, including Dion,

that he had made great progress in philosophy, sending a trireme to fetch him, which had

Plato’s Sicilian and Italian friends aboard, letters kept coming in from Plato’s

Pythagorean friends of Tarentum and a notice that “If you come at once to Syracuse as

we have requested, first of all that issues that concern Dion will be settled in whatever

way you desire…; but if not, none of these questions, whether touching Dion’s person or

any other matter, will be settled to your liking.”98 More than merely giving in to

blackmail, Plato wanted to decisively judge for himself whether the tyrant of Syracuse

had made a genuine turn to philosophy.

Third Visit: Tyranny and the Pretence of Philosophy

The third and final visit to the court of Syracuse in 361, when Plato was sixty-eight,

concerned two affairs: to test the tyrant on philosophic progress, and to attempt to patch

up the relationship between Dionysius and Dion. Both would fail. Not only did the tyrant

break his promises concerning Dion’s return, and promised to maintain the integrity of

Dion’s property, he turned around and sold it, then promised Plato he could take the

revenue with him to Dion, but failed to honour that as well.

96 Thirteenth Letter 362e 97 Third Letter 316d 98 Seventh Letter 339c

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Concerning philosophy, Plato came ready to test whether Dionysius was “really

on fire with philosophy,” or merely pretending with a head “full of half-understood

doctrines, which I saw at once upon my arrival.”99 The tyrant Dionysius was a phoney

whose pseudo-philosophy Plato describes as “those who are not really philosophers but

have only a coating of opinions, like men whose bodies are tanned by the sun.”100

So what is genuine philosophic activity? The extent of the undertaking, the many

difficulties, and the labour it involves would only be attractive to a “true lover of wisdom,

with the divine quality that makes him akin to it and worthy of pursuing it, thinks he has

heard of a marvellous quest that he must enter upon with all earnestness, or life is not

worth living.”101 In the context of his complaints about the lack of appreciation of the

tyrant of ‘true’ philosophy, Plato describes an epistemic framework that contains five

levels of ‘ontological ascent’ in understanding of any being, or form. The first is the

name, the second the definition, the third the instance, the fourth the knowledge and the

fifth is the ‘Thing itself’.102 Language is only capable of capturing the first three of these

elements, and it is therefore not possible to write down ‘your best thoughts’, but

“whoever does not grasp the four things will never attain knowledge of the fifth.”103 The

lover of wisdom would be genuine only if he was pained by not pursuing wisdom, and

his life must be disciplined and orderly, because the commitment to philosophy is

maximal and absolute. Is it possible to square this with a political life? We will return to

the specifics of the dialectic and education of philosophy, in the next chapter on the

Republic.

Plato would be held prisoner for several months on the palace grounds of Syracuse, and

his pleading for Dion’s case came to nothing, his attempts to turn over to Dion’s the

money from his sold property failed, and he accepted the first possibility of leaving the

island and the tyrant. Back in Greece, he met with Dion at the Olympics of 360, and

related to him what had happened, which so enraged Dion that he vowed revenge and to

overthrow the tyranny of Dionysius II. Plato wanted no part of it, and returned home. 99 Seventh Letter 340a 100 Ibid 340d 101 340bc, emphasis added. 102 343d 103 Ibid.

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Three years later, Dion succeeded in overthrowing the tyranny and he rose to power and

Sicily descended in factional strife. Another three years later, Callippus, a pupil of Plato

murdered Dion. This great shock prompted Plato to explain his role in Syracusan politics

to Dion’s followers in the Seventh Letter, and thirteen months later, Callippus was

assassinated by Eudemus of Cyprus, another pupil of Plato. In a last-ditch effort, in the

Eighth Letter Plato tries to contribute to ending all factional strife between Dion’s pro-

democracy followers, and the tyrannical-oligarchical faction of Dionysius II, and

recommends a constitution of three kings with an assembly of the ‘guardians of the laws’.

Plato’s last years

• Lecture on the Good

• Aristotle, Xenocrates and Speusippes

• The Laws

• Death and Succession