Birth
Place: Athens or Aegina
Time: 7th day of the month Thargelion (the birthday of Apollo), during the Archonship of Aminias, that is, in the 2nd year of the 88th Olympiad (April 30, 427 BC)

Municipality
Collytus

Tribe
Aegeis

Parents
Father: Ariston
Mother: Perictione

Siblings
Brothers: Adeimantus, Glaucon (older)
Sister: Potone (younger)

Financial Status
Affluent

Real Name
Aristocles. The name Plato was a nickname he had received either for the width of his interpretations or because he had a broad forehead or due to his athletic vigor (robustness) or because he had broad shoulders.

Relation to Solon
Solon had a brother named Dropides. Dropides was the father of Critias. Critias was the father of Callaeschrus. Callaeschrus was the father of Critias (who was one of the Thirty Tyrants) and Glaucon. Glaucon was the father of Charmides and Perictione (Plato’s mother).

Meeting Socrates
Socrates once saw in a dream at night that he had a small swan on his lap, whose wings grew, and it flew away while emitting a powerful and sweet note. The next day, when Plato was brought to him as a student, he said that this was the swan he had seen in his dream.

Plato was an athlete in wrestling, a painter, and a poet. He was about to participate in tragic competitions (a poetry contest) during the festival of the Dionysia, but upon hearing Socrates' teachings, he gathered his poems and burned them, saying: “Come, Hephaestus, now Plato needs you.”

It was during the second year of the 93rd Olympiad (407 BC) when the twenty-year-old Plato followed Socrates. After Socrates’ death, Plato traveled to various places in Greece and then abroad. Upon returning to Athens, he philosophized in the Academy, a wooded gymnasium near the city, which had taken its name from Hecademus.

His Teachings
Plato’s teachings were a mixture of the doctrines of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Socrates: the sensible from Heraclitus, the intelligible from Pythagoras, and the political from Socrates.

Plato had purchased three Pythagorean books from Philolaus for one hundred minae (an enormous sum). He was able to afford such a vast sum because he had received over eighty talents from Dionysius of Syracuse (a staggering amount). One talent was equivalent to sixty minae.

He supported the idea that those who wish to gain knowledge about the origin of all things (the universe) must first distinguish Ideas in themselves. Since Memory exists, Ideas also exist because there is a memory of something stable and permanent, and nothing (material) is more stable and permanent than Ideas.

Living beings could not survive if they did not innately perceive the Ideas of food (which are constant) and not food itself (which is changeable). All living beings perceive Ideas, with the only difference being Quality (see the book  ΠΡΑΓΜΑΤΙΚΟΤΗΣ - Η Δομή της Σκέψεως -REALITY - The Structure of Thought)

Plato taught that the soul is immortal and undergoes cycles (reincarnation). The soul has a numerical origin, while the body has a geometrical one. The soul moves by itself, whereas the body is moved by the soul, and it consists of three parts:

Logistikon (Rational part)
Thymoeides (Spirited part)
Alogiston – Epithymetikon (Irrational – Appetitive part - The part of the soul related to desire

In the work Timaeus [36d], he supports that the motion of the soul is the motion of the universe along with the revolution of the planets.

Travels
After Socrates’ death, he traveled to various places inside and outside Greece, including Egypt.

He went three times to Sicily. The first time, he went to see the island and its craters (Etna), and Dionysius, the son of Hermocrates (Tyrant), invited him for discussions. Plato was critical of him, and Dionysius handed him over to Pollis the Lacedaemonian as a slave. When Pollis took him to Aegina, he sold him as a slave.

However, Aegina had a law that stated that any Athenian who disembarked on the island would be sentenced to death, even without a trial. If someone had not declared that he was a philosopher, Plato would have been executed. Eventually, the assembly decided not to execute him but instead sold him as a slave. Anniceris of Cyrene, who happened to be there by chance, bought him for twenty minae (according to others, thirty).

When Plato returned to Athens, his friends sent the money, but he refused to accept it, saying that they were not the only ones who had the privilege of caring for a man like Plato. With this money, the site in the Academy was purchased, where he founded his School.

The second time he went to Sicily was under Dionysius the Younger in the third year of the 103rd Olympiad (366 BC) to establish a city and implement the ideal state. Dionysius, although he had promised it, did not make it a reality. Some say that Plato was accused of encouraging Dion (uncle of Dionysius the Younger) and Theodotes to overthrow Dionysius. Plato was in danger, but Archytas of Tarentum, the head of the Pythagorean School, intervened with a letter, thus preventing harm by sending him back to Athens safely.

The third time, he went to Sicily to reconcile Dion with Dionysius, but he failed. He returned to Athens in the fourth year of the 104th Olympiad (361 BC), where he devoted himself to his school and the writing of philosophical works.

Politics
He never engaged in the politics of Athens, even though he was deeply interested in these matters. The reason was that the Athenians had become accustomed to wrong regimes, whether Tyrannical or Democratic.


Hardship and Military Distinctions
He was an athlete in wrestling and participated in three campaigns:
Tanagra
Corinth
Delium (Dilesi), where he received an award for bravery.

Death
It was the second year of the 108th Olympiad (347 BC) when the eighty-year-old Plato began his journey toward the Elysian Fields, leaving behind a work that will eternally illuminate human nature.

Works of his:
(Tetralogies according to Thrasyllus)

1. Tetralogy
Euthyphron or On the Pious
Apology of Socrates
Crito or On the Practicable
Phaedo or On the Soul

2.Tetralogy
Cratylus or On the Correctness of Names
Theaetetus or On Knowledge
Sophist or On Being
Statesman or On Kingship

3. Tetralogy
Parmenides or On Ideas
Philebus or On Pleasure
Symposium or On the Good
Phaedrus or On Love

4. Tetralogy
Alcibiades I or On the Nature of Man
Alcibiades II or On Prayer
Hippias Major or On the Good
Lovers or On Philosophy

5.Tetralogy
Theages or On Philosophy
Charmides or On Temperance
Laches or On Courage
Lysis or On Friendship

6. Tetralogy
Euthydemus or The Eristic
Protagoras or The Sophists
Gorgias or On Rhetoric
Meno or On Virtue

7. Tetralogy
Hippias Major or On the Good
Hippias Minor or On Lying
Ion or On the Iliad
Menexenus or The Funeral Oration

8. Tetralogy
Clitophon or The Persuasive
Republic or On Justice
Timaeus or On Nature
Critias or On Atlantis

9. Tetralogy
Minos or On Law
Laws or On Legislation
Epinomis or The Night Gathering
Letters