Plato

Timeline

1. c. -428–-407Athens · AtticaBorn into an Athenian aristocratic family, he received early training in poetry, music, and gymnastics, and once aspired to a political career. The political turmoil of Athens during the Peloponnesian War laid the background for his later reflections on justice in the polis and political order.
2. c. -407–-399Athens · AtticaHe met and followed Socrates, turning to philosophical inquiry. After Socrates was tried and executed, Plato grew deeply disillusioned with Athenian democracy and sophistic rhetoric, and his philosophical concerns expanded from personal virtue to the justice of the polis and the nature of knowledge.
3. -399–-387Athens · AtticaAfter Socrates' death he traveled to Megara, Egypt, Sicily, and elsewhere. Around 387 BCE he founded the Academy near the grove of Academos in Athens, with mathematics and dialectic as its core curriculum, making it one of the earliest institutions of higher learning in the West.
4. c. -387–-348Athens · AtticaHe taught at the Academy for about forty years, writing dialogues such as the Republic, Timaeus, and Symposium, systematically expounding the Theory of Forms, the tripartite soul, and the ideal of the philosopher-king. Later thinkers such as Aristotle studied there.