Plato was born at Athens in 428/7 B.C.; thus he grew up in the throes of the Peloponnesian war. He died in 347 B.C., not long before the Hellenic lands fell definitively under Macedonian rule. Both of his parents were from families belonging to the old Athenian aristocracy: members of these families had been figures on the political stage. Plato himself left active politics severely alone. His family background allowed him to receive a catholic education: he studied literature, sciences, philosophy, and music. He was a pupil of Cratylus; and Cratylus had himself been a pupil of Heraclitus. He continued his studies with Socrates, the beloved teacher whose condemnation and death not only sickened and disillusioned Plato but significantly coloured his political thinking: it shook still further his belief in the institutions of the democracy.

After Socrates died, Plato left Athens for Megara. After a brief return to Athens, he embarked on a series of voyages to Sicily, Lower Italy, and Egypt and Cyrene. He was especially interested in Sicily, visiting it thrice, and his sojourn there was linked with experiments in organizing an ideal, perfect state. Every one of his journeys had study as its aim; and in the cities he visited he was able to meet important personalities in the political and scientific world.

In 387 B.C. he came home to Athens. He had a plot of land in the suburb of Colonos, near a shrine sacred to the hero Academus, and it was there that he set up his own philsophical school (named 'Academy', after the hero). This, the largest school in the ancient world, lasted until 529 A.D., when it was shut down by the emperor Justinian. The Academy taught astronomy, mathematics, and above all, philosophy. The governing principle was that the end of education is to orient the pupil's mind and soul towards the contemplation of what is stable and unchanging - that is, towards the world of ideas/the forms.

The influence of Plato's oeuvre, from his day to our own, has been enormous. Starting with St Augustine, and ending with Bacon, numerous authors were to be imitators of his, notably of his ideal state; and more recent trends in philosophy have been influenced by Plato's ideas. We can cite as typical the opposition between followers of Plato and Aristotle in the Byzantine world.

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