Plato

Birth and family

The exact birthdate of Plato is unknown. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars estimate that he was born in Athens or Aegina[b] between 428 and 427 BC[a] His father was Ariston. According to a disputed tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia, Melanthus.[4] Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon.[5] Perictione was sister of Charmides and niece of Critias, both prominent figures of the Thirty Tyrants, the brief oligarchic regime, which followed on the collapse of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war (404-403 b.c.e.).[6] Besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children; these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato as head of his philosophical Academy).[6] According to the Republic, Adeimantus and Glaucon were older than Plato.[7] Nevertheless, in his Memorabilia, Xenophon presents Glaucon as younger than Plato.[8]

According to certain reports of ancient writers, Plato' s mother became pregnant through a virginal conception: Ariston tried to force his attentions on Perictione, but failed of his purpose; then the ancient Greek god Apollo appeared to him in a vision, and, as a result of it, Ariston left Perictione unmolested.[9] Another legend related that, while he was sleeping as an infant, bees had settled on the lips of Plato; an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse philosophy.[10]

Ariston appears to have died in Plato's childhood, although the precise dating of his death is difficult.[11] Perictio...

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...although tradition tends to see Plato as writing a kind of "pseudo-history" of the life of Socrates, the chronologies of the characters are inconsistent. For example, in the Protagoras, Alcibiades and Agathon are teenage boys growing beards (and are the respective beloveds of Socrates and Pausanias), and Apollodoros and Glaucon are fathers of teenage sons. When the Symposium allegedly took place, however, Glaucon and Apollodorus were infants and Alcibiades and Agathon were full-grown men (and Alcibiades is said to be older than his beloved Agathon). This chronological discrepancy, which does not appear to be inadvertent, suggests that Plato is not a historical writer.

Plato's dialogues bear at least some similarities to the classical plays, in having no more than three speakers "on stage" (speaking) at one time, and in often having "a chorus" of (silent) listeners.