Plato

Plato is the classical Greek philosopher who laid the foundations for modern Western Culture. He was a great man that studied mathematics and wrote philosophical dialogs, he was even the founder of the academy of Athens which was, by the way, the very first institution of higher learning. He was quite a personality and his merits are significant.
You can see Plato’s brilliance for yourself just by reading some of his Socratic dialogs; even though it is not known how much they were used during Plato’s time, these days his written works ore used to teach philosophy, logic and a variety of other subjects about which Plato wrote.
Although his exact birth date is not known, many people think that Plato was born in Athens somewhere around 424 BC, his father Ariston supposedly traced his descent down from the King of Athens; Plato’s mother’s name was Perictione, they had three other children other then Plato, two sons and a daughter.
There are stories about how Plato’s mother came to be pregnant by a virginal conception. Ariston had attempted to force his intention on Perictione and failed, it was then when the Greek god Apollo appeared to him and Ariston decided to leave the women alone…interesting.
There is another legend that states that bees came to Plato when he was an infant and rested there, supposedly giving him the sweet style that he had in philosophy.
Plato’s father, Ariston, died when Plato was just a child; even though the exact date of his death is not known, it was then that Plato’s mother married her mother’s brother (her uncle)…this man had served in the Persian court and was a friend to the leader of the democratic faction in Athens, the result of this marriage was a son by the name of Antiphon.
You can find Plato’s family in his dialogs as he was very proud of his family and often named characters after them. This not only helps to reconstruct Plato’s family tree but to also get a look at what he really felt about them.
As a boy, Plato was a very modest but intelligent child, he was hard working and on top of that, he loved to study. Sounds like we need more like him these days. He was taught in grammar, music and gymnastics by the best teachers of the time, he had the highest that education could offer.
During his lifetime, Plato traveled to Italy, Egypt and Cyrene, it was when he was around the age of forty that he returned to Athens and started one of the earliest organized schools in Western Civilization; this school went on for many years and taught many people (including Aristotle), but in 529 AD it was closed down by Justinian I who saw it as a threat to Christianity.
Plato is best known for his dialogs, but the one event that brings all of his many dialogs together is the trial of Socrates. Socrates is accused of not believing in the gods and of corrupting the youth so he defends himself saying that slander will be the cause of his demise and that it was the oracle at Delphi that sent him on a quest. It was Socrates on this quest attempting to solve the riddle that put him at odds with his fellow man, Socrates went on to say that the legal charges were false.
Plato used his dialogue to teach people and to let the world know what his views were and I think that everybody can say that he did succeed in that respect. He lived in a difficult time that had a lot of things about it that were false and a lot of things that were believed that were simply pagan. In one way or another, we are all products of the time that we live in, society molds us and tries to turn us into something that is not always good or right. Why do you think that there are so many criminals on the streets?
The one little seed that it all stems from, the name of that seed is sin, sin is the seed that sits at the very bottom of the pit of society and gives birth to all that is so terrible and confusing, it did during Plato’s day it does during ours…