Plato was born into Athenian aristocracy at the height of the Peloponnesian War. As a young man he became a follower of Socrates, and his teacher's execution by hemlock in 399 BCE shaped his life's work. Around 387 BCE Plato founded the Academy in an olive grove outside Athens — Western philosophy's first organised school. There he wrote the Republic, with its allegory of the cave, the theory of Forms, and the just city; the Symposium on love; the Timaeus on cosmology; and over thirty other dialogues. His most famous student, Aristotle, joined the Academy at seventeen. The Academy itself outlived Plato by nine centuries, closing only in 529 CE under Justinian.
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Philosopher · Founder of the Academy
Plato
428 BCE – 347 BCE
Athenian aristocrat whose Academy thought for nine centuries — and whose Republic still asks: what does justice look like?
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