Life & Times
Athens, family, war, and the travels that shaped him.
Plato was not a cloistered theorist. He was an aristocrat of a city that executed his teacher, a veteran shaped by war service, and a traveller whose years abroad — Egypt, Italy, the Pythagoreans, the disastrous adventures in Syracuse — left visible marks on the dialogues.
The essays here put the philosophy back in its life: the family, the city, the wars, and the journeys that made the arguments urgent rather than academic.
20 essays, listed alphabetically.
