PLA'TO (Lat., from Gk. HXO.rwp, Platon) (c.427-347 n.c.). A Greek philosopher, born probably May 7. B.C. 427, on the island of ..Eg.ina, a dependency of Athens. where his father held an estate. His real name was Aristocles. His father claimed descent from Codrus: his mother, Peric tione. from Solon. The known facts of his life are few-. He received the education in music and gymnastics of a well-born Athenian youth, under the limitations imposed by the virtual state of siege created for Athens by the Peloponnesian War. His writings are sufficient evidence that he absorbed all the cntture of his age: poetry, art, pre-Socratic philosophy, the Sophistic enlighten ment (see SoPHisz.$) in a synthesis, as Emerson says. "without parallel before or since." We may believe the tradition that he distinguished him self in gymnastics and wrote poetry. The poems he is said to have burned when, at the age of twenty. he experienced the higher inspiration of the philosophic muse through Socrates.
For a youth of Plato's birth and endowments, politic- would have been the natural career. Two of hi, dialogues are named from his kinsmen Charmides and Critias, who were prominent in the oligarchy of the so-called Thirty Tyrants which dominated Athens in the year 404-03. The experiences of that year disenchanted him for ever with regard to the rule of the 'Fair and Good,' as they called themselves. The judicial murder of Socrates by the restored democracy in the year 399 and the increasing license and weakness of popular rule through the fourth cen tury further embittered his spirit and developed the conviction that all existing forms of govern ment were mere partisan factions. and that there was no hope of salvation for the cities of Greece until "either philosophers should become kings or kings philosophers." The philosopher whose lot was cast in fourth century Athens could exer cie active citizenship only in the city of the ideal. "of which a pattern is laid up in heaven"— the City of God of later Grieco-Roman and early Christian idealism. The powers and social aspi rations that might have made a statesman and leader of men found expression in the Re public and Laws, the masterpieces of Plato's ma turity and old age. After the death of Socrates Plato is said to have left Athens and to have traveled extensively in Greece. Southern Ttaly, Sicily, and even Egypt and Northern Africa. About the year 3SS he i= said to have visited the court of Dionvsius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse, who. offended by his freedom of speech. contrived to have him sold into slavery at on his voyage home. The story adds that he was at once ransomed by friends. Modern conjectural schol arship tries to trace in Plato's writings the chro nologieal succession of Megarian. Italo-Pythaoo rean, Egyptian. and Sicilian influences experi enced in these voyagings. But we really know nothing beyond the presumption that lie was much absent from Athens during the ten years that followed Socrates's death. At the age of forty. about the year 387, lie established the 'Academy,' which, with the rhetorical school of Isocrate. made Athens in very deed the 'educator of Hellas,' and was the beginning of that 'univer sity life at Athens' which continued for eight centuries. The name is derived from the hero
Academus. adjoining whose shady precinct and gYmnasium on the road to Eleusis, one mile from Athens, was the small estate which Plato dedi eated to the uses of the school. By Plato's will. the institution was probably perpetuated as a re ligious foundation sacred to the Muses. and this organization was imitated in the Lyceum of Aristotle, the 'garden' of Epicurus, and the Mu seum of Alexandria. Here for forty years he taught, debated high and subtle questions with his favorite pupils, and "curled and combed the style of his dialogues" until his death in the year 347. Among his most famous pupils were Speu sippus, his nephew, who succeeded him as scho larch; Xenocrates, the successor of Speusippus: Aristotle (from the year 367), the orators De mosthenes, Hyperides, and Lycurges, the astrono mer Eudoxus of Cuidos, and many other eminent men from all parts of Greece. The inner life of the school we can only divine. From Plato's sneers at the Sophists, who took pay for spiritual gifts, we may infer that no tuition fees were ex acted. We may conjecture that some of the most abstract and metaphysical dialogues, as the Parmenides, the Sophistes, the PoWiens, the Philebus, are idealizations of actual in the school, as the Charmides, Lysis, Protago ras, and Gorgias are reflections of real conversa tions in the gymnasia and public resorts fre quented by Socrates. A famous pa-age of the exalts the spoken above the lifeless writ ten word, and Plato. like those two other great artists in language, Renan and Ruskin. affected to hold mere literary virtuosity in light esteem. Con temporary writers of comedy represent the stu dents of the Academy as dandified youno cox combs. and jest about the obscure 'idea of good.' and the scientific definition of the cucumber by dichotomy, much as the paragraphist of the mod ern newspaper alludes to transcendentalism and the 'healthiness of the bean.' From this remote and sphered course, Plato was drawn into the turmoil of real life by his two visits to Syra cuse in the years 367 and 366 and shortly after. The younger Dionysius bad succeeded his father as tyrant of Syracuse, and Dion. his kinsman by marriage. whose friendship Plato had won in his first visit, cherished the illusion that, tinder suitable guidance, the youthful ruler might develop into the philosopher king postu lated in the Republic. The failure of the experi ment, the banishment of Dion as its result, the expedition organized in the year 359 by Dion with the aid of pupils of the Academy against Dionysius. whom he drove into exile in turn, his assassination by his pupil Callippus. and the anarchy into which Syracuse was plunged as a consequence. furnished abundant matter for those inclined to blaspheme philosophy and scotT at the scholar in polities. and may plausibly Ile conjectured to have contributed to the mood of embitterment and disillusion that in the great work of Plato's declining years, the Lairs.