a sister, Potone, and a half-brother, Antiphone. It is reputed that Plato’s birth name, Aristocles, was replaced by the nickname Plato, referring to his broad shoulders. As a child he studied music, rhetoric, mathematics and poetry at a gymnasium owned by Dionysios and Palaistra of Argos. He served and fought in the military three times between 409 and 404 bce. In 407 he met and became a pupil of Socrates (470/469–399 bce) who would be of central influence for the rest of his intellectual life, and whose thought is difficult to disentangle from his.
Peloponnesian War
In 404 bce, following the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta (431–404 bce), Plato witnessed an oligarchic revolution, led by his uncles Critias and Charmides. Many of these oligarchs, who became known as the ‘Thirty Tyrants’, blamed the system of democracy for the defeat. However, after their removal, Socrates was executed on the grounds of impiety and corrupting the minds of the youth. Plato abandoned politics and left Athens, travelling and studying for a dozen years or so. During his travels he first went to Megara, Theodorus in Cyrene, then to Sicily and lastly to Egypt. In Syracuse in Sicily, as well as under Archytas at Taras, in the south of Italy, he studied Pythagorean philosophy.
Steeped in politics Plato travelled to Syracuse on three occasions in the hope of educating its tyrants, Dionysius I and II, to become philosopher kings, and to facilitate an end to the malaise of the times by unifying Greece against Persian influence (Gouldner, 1967). His first visit had been arranged by Dion, cousin to Dionysius II, and a favourite disciple of Plato’s and possibly an object of his love. However, Dionysus I, unwilling to listen to his advice, sold him into slavery. He nevertheless returned to Syracuse several years later. In between these visits he established the Academy in Athens in 387 bce, one of the earliest places of higher educational learning. The Academy trained future statesmen, or ‘philosopher rulers’, in addition to those who would help create constitutions for future newly founded states – law-givers. Subjects taught there included mathematics, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, music, law and philosophy. Following the Pythagoreans, numbers and ratios possessed almost a divine quality for Plato. It is rumoured that the portals of the Academy were inscribed: medeis agometrtos esisito (‘let no one without geometry enter here’). Plato spent the rest of his years teaching and writing at the Academy. He died in 347 bce, at the age of 80, while attending a wedding.
The Ionian and Italian Schools of Natural Philosophy
In the sixth century there emerged two schools of natural philosophy, the Ionian and the Italian. The Ionian or Milesian School is represented by Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, who were all natives of the same city of Miletus. In their philosophies they sought something permanent and persistent through the chaos of apparent change. For Thales it was water, for Anaximenes it was air, while for Anaximander it was not a substance as such but the balance of opposite qualities – hot and cold, wet and dry. By contrast, the Italian School was associated with the name of Pythagoras. An early form of social movement, it sought to revive a pre-existent social order whose virtues centred on austere simplicity in the individual and social cohesion within the group. Pythagoreans argued that the soul passes through various reincarnations and, as the higher, exalted part of humans, remained imprisoned in the body.
Further intellectual influences on Plato included the arguments of Heraclitus (544–484 bce) for whom two principles were central: everything was born of strife, and everything was in constant flux.
The Ionian rationalists and Pythagoreans had focused on the natural world rather than the values of the human community. It was not until the close of the fifth century bce that a philosophy of human conduct based on a systematic co-ordination of knowledge and theory emerged. This arose from the work of the Sophists and Socrates. Central to the former’s perspective was the opposition between the concept of physis (nature) and nomos (convention). They questioned conventional beliefs and the notion of nomos, meaning both ‘law’ and ‘custom’. For the Sophists, the multiplicity of nomoi in different cultures revealed a diversity that suggested that local customs were the product of tradition rather than of abstract unchanging principles of right and wrong. Laws and moral codes were not divine, but human made and imperfect. Thus for Protagoras, the central figure in the Sophist school, ‘man was the measure of all things’.
Socrates (470–399 bce) was undoubtedly the greatest influence on Plato’s thinking and, as we noted above, it still remains unclear where the former’s work ends and the latter’s begins. Socrates was the son of a middle-class stonemason and a midwife who, as an Athenian citizen, fought as a hoplite soldier in the Peloponnesian War. His thinking delves into questions concerning action, morality and the best way to live for humans. According to Socrates, individuals cannot talk about acting wisely, justly or well, unless they know what wisdom, justice and goodness are in the first place, and this needs to be established. The best way to develop ideas was through the give and take of conversation – the dialectic – and the best way to educate people was to ask them a series of what appear innocuous questions (the method of elenchus). This usually began by pressing individuals for a definition of a term until they recognised that they did not really have an adequate answer.
A sharp critic of Athenian democracy as an ideal and actuality, Socrates argued that democratic government, in which anyone’s opinion counted as much as anybody else’s, could be swayed by rhetorical display within a volatile assembly. Just as an individual would ask a doctor about their health, so only he or she who knows about governing should govern. Taking the example of the useful crafts, Socrates argued that the arête (skill) of a shoemaker and what made them good at their job depended first and foremost on the knowledge of what a shoe was and what its use was. Given a proper understanding of the end, knowledge of the means would follow. If there was any legitimate sense in which individuals could talk about arête there must be an end or function which all humans have to perform. The first task was to discover what the function of man was.
Historical, Social and Political Context
Ancient Greece has often been regarded as the birthplace of Western civilisation (Rossides, 1998). However, there existed no single entity or country that could be called ‘ancient Greece’. Instead, between the second half of the first millennium bce and the first three centuries ce about 1,000 mostly small, independent city-states or poleis pertained (Cartledge, 2011: 4). Moreover, although cities play a central role in ancient Greece, the vast majority of the population, up to 90%, lived in the countryside (Cartledge, 2011: 2).
The Restrictions of Citizenship in Greece
By the time of Pericles (495–25 bce) the full power of the polis derived from the people, specifically male citizens, the demos, rooted in the Assembly. Greek democracy entailed each male having one vote. The basic principle underlying political leadership was that no one was better qualified than anyone else – by breeding, intellect or training – to direct public policy. The Assembly met regularly, usually four times a month but more in times of emergency, in the open air on the hill known as the Pnyx. During Pericles’ time, perhaps nearly every 10 days. Although initially a full-time bureaucracy did not exist, with much administrative work done on a voluntary basis, as the number of offices increased in public affairs it required the attention of about one-third of the citizenry: 500 boule, 6000 heliastai (jury members) sitting in people’s courts known as dicastries, 500 wardens of the arsenal and around 10,000 citizens who performed a host of other duties. Pericles initiated payment for carrying out these administrative political duties, for example paying citizens 1 obol a day for service on juries.
In such a context ordinary citizens did not think of the state abstractly as a distinct generic establishment standing over them, but rather as a community of male citizens. Nor were there any hard and fast distinctions between state and society or public and
