Plato is recognised as one of the key shapers of western intellectual tradition. He was born around 428 B.C, shortly after Pericles' death, in one of the noblest families of Athens. He was (supposedly) related to the legendary kings of Athens by his father, and to Solon by his mother. His stepfather, an associate of Pericles, was an active participant in the political and cultural life of Periclean Athens. Among his close relatives were Critias and Charmides, famed for their infamous participation in the government of the Thirty Tyrants in 404 BC. In 407 B.C. he became a pupil and friend of Socrates.
Owing to his origins, he should have entered a political career, but, under Socrates' influence and disillusioned by what he saw of Athenian politics in his youth, including the tyranny led by his relatives, and culminating in Socrates' condemnation and execution, he came to the conclusion that mankind's fate was hopeless unless there was a deep change in men's education, and especially in the education of those intending to become statesmen, and that only what he called "philosophy" (etymologically, friendship with wisdom) could make them fit for their task.
So, as a democracy, Athens participated in a long and complex war with other Grecian states; it submitted to defeat in 404 B.C., falling victim to the reign of an oligarchy known as the `Thirty Tyrants'. Only a year passed before democracy's return, though it held its own terrors. For a while Plato lived in Megara; he moved there after Socrates' death. Now Plato began to develop Socrates' ethical ideas surrounding the nature of justice; he rejected politics, embracing philosophy as the healer of social ills, and formed his lasting conviction that philosophers must rule if these ills were to be abolished.
Accordingly, rather than taking chances in active politics at the risk of his life, sometime probably when he was about forty, After Socrates' death Plato retired from active Athenian life and traveled widely for a number of years. In c.388 he journeyed to Italy and Sicily, where he became the friend of Dionysius the Elder, ruler of Syracuse, and his brother-in-law Dion. There he most likely met with Pythagoreans and became friend with Archytas of Tarentum. The following year he returned to Athens, where he founded the Academy, an institution devoted to research and instruction in philosophy and the sciences), Plato decided to open a school in Athens, where he would educate future leaders of cities.The `Academy', its name derived from a nearby grove devoted to Academus, proved highly successful; its most renowned student was Aristotle who, for twenty years, worked under Plato.
Most of his time thereafter was spent in teaching and guiding the activities of the Academy Plato completed his life teaching and writing philosophical works. He wrote mostly in the form of dialogue between Socrates and other speakers, usually set in a moral framework.. When Dionysius died (367), Dion invited Plato to return to Syracuse to undertake the philosophical education of the new ruler, Dionysius the Younger. Plato went, perhaps with the hope of founding the rule of a philosopher-king as envisioned in his work the Republic. The visit, however, ended (366) in failure. In 361, Plato went to Syracuse again. This visit proved even more disastrous, and he returned (360) to the Academy. Plato died, aged eighty-one in Athens in 347 B.C.
When Plato died, he was succeeded at the head of the Academy, not by Aristotle, who, by then, had been for about twenty years student and then teacher at the Academy, but by his nephew, Speusippus. The Academy kept functioning, under different guises, for centuries after Plato's death.
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