Why Was Plato Enslaved?

Plato came from the Athenian elite, and the only reason ancient writers give for his enslavement is a quarrel with a tyrant. According to Diogenes Laertius (III.19–20), when Plato visited Syracuse in Sicily, the ruler Dionysius I became angry with him and had him handed over to be sold as a slave on the island of Aegina, where Anniceris of Cyrene, who happened to be there, paid his ransom. That is the whole story. It is an anecdote written down centuries after the event, it does not appear in Plato’s own writings, and it should be presented as tradition rather than as established fact.

What do the ancient sources actually say?

The fullest account is in Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, written more than five centuries after Plato died. In Book III (sections 18 to 20) Diogenes says that Plato went to Sicily and met Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse. Their conversation turned to tyranny and to what is truly advantageous, and Plato argued that the tyrant’s own interest was not what mattered unless he was also outstanding in virtue. Dionysius took offence. In the best-known exchange Dionysius says that Plato’s talk smells of old age, and Plato answers that Dionysius’s smells of tyranny. Dionysius then handed Plato to a Spartan named Pollis, who was about to sail home, and Pollis sold him on Aegina.

Diogenes adds that Plato’s life was in danger on Aegina, because (he says) the Aeginetans had a law that the first Athenian to set foot on the island should be put to death without trial. He reports that Anniceris of Cyrene, who happened to be there, ransomed Plato for twenty minae (some said thirty) and sent him back to Athens. In one version Plato’s friends then sent the money to repay Anniceris, who declined it, saying they were not the only people entitled to look after Plato.

Plutarch, in his Life of Dion (5), tells a version with the same outline but different details: Dionysius’s anger, a passage home on the ship of Pollis the Spartan, and a sale on Aegina, where, Plutarch says, the Aeginetans had decreed that any Athenian caught on the island should be sold. Dionysius secretly asked Pollis to kill Plato on the voyage or else sell him, saying the sale would do Plato no harm, since a just man would be as happy as a slave as he would be free. Plutarch does not mention Anniceris or a ransom. He wrote around AD 100, closer in time than Diogenes, but still nearly five centuries after the supposed event. An earlier version, in the historian Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC, XV.7.1), has Dionysius himself put Plato up for sale in the market for twenty minae and a group of philosophers buy his freedom, with no mention of Aegina, Pollis or Anniceris. That these writers agree on the core, a quarrel with Dionysius followed by a sale and release, is some evidence that the story was established early. It is not evidence that it happened, since they could all be drawing on one earlier legend.

Does Plato mention it himself?

No. The Seventh Letter (324a–326d), which claims to be Plato’s own account of his dealings with Sicily, describes his first journey to Italy and Sicily at about the age of forty and says he found the luxurious life of the Italian and Syracusan tables distasteful. It also describes how he met Dion, a relative by marriage of Dionysius I, and its account of the later visits under Dionysius II is long and bitter. It never says he was sold or ransomed. Scholars disagree about whether Plato wrote the letter, although many accept that its account of his life is broadly reliable. A man explaining his record in Sicily might be expected to mention an episode as dramatic as this one, and that he does not is a real argument against the story.

None of the dialogues mention it either, and no source from Plato’s own lifetime does. The story first appears in the biographical tradition of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Why might the story be true, and why might it not be?

In its favour, ransom after capture was an ordinary hazard of travel in the Greek world, and sale at a slave market is the kind of misfortune that could befall a traveller in wartime. Aegina, close to Athens, was then a hostile base: Xenophon (Hellenica V.1.1-5) describes it as a base where Spartan commanders licensed raids on Attica around 389–388 BC, which is roughly when Plato’s first Sicilian visit is usually dated. A Spartan ship-captain and a danger to Athenians on Aegina fit that setting.

Against it:

• Plato is silent on it, and so is every source from his own lifetime.
• The shape of the tale, a philosopher speaks truth to a tyrant and is punished for it, is one that attaches itself to many famous thinkers.
• Its details look like the kind that grow in the telling: the conveniently present ransomer, the money returned and refused, the witty exchange with the tyrant.
• The surviving accounts differ in their details: where he was sold, who freed him (Anniceris or a group of philosophers), the ransom price, and whether the Aeginetan law threatened death or sale, which is what you would expect of a tradition rather than a record.

The fair summary is that a short, humiliating episode of this kind is possible but cannot be confirmed. Nothing in Plato’s philosophy depends on whether it happened.

Was Plato ever a slave in any other sense?

There is no ancient evidence that he was. Some popular retellings give other causes for his enslavement, such as pirates, family poverty, military capture, or political persecution in Athens after the death of Socrates, and some say that Dionysius bought his freedom rather than sold him. None of these appear in the ancient sources. They are modern or online embroideries, and several contradict the tradition they claim to explain.

Plato’s origins make most of them implausible anyway. Diogenes Laertius (III.1) says his father Ariston claimed descent from the legendary Athenian king Codrus and his mother Perictione from the family of Solon. That is a family tradition rather than a verified genealogy, but there is no doubt that Plato belonged to the Athenian elite.

Where does the story fit in Plato’s travels?

Diodorus, Plutarch and Diogenes place it during the first of Plato’s three visits to Syracuse, around 388 or 387 BC. The Seventh Letter fits this dating, with Plato going to Italy and Sicily at about forty and then returning to Athens, where on the usual chronology he founded the Academy shortly afterwards. He went back to Syracuse around 367 and again around 361 BC, to the court of Dionysius II, and on the last occasion he left only with difficulty (Seventh Letter 345c–350b). That part of the story is told in Plato’s own voice, which is why it is better supported than the enslavement. For the whole itinerary, and what it did and did not do to his philosophy, see how Plato’s travels influenced his philosophy; the list of sourced Plato facts places the sale alongside his other reported experiences.

Did the experience change his view of slavery?

There is no evidence that it did, which is another reason for caution in using the story to explain his thought. Plato accepted slavery as an institution. In the Republic (469b–c) he says Greeks should not enslave other Greeks, but he does not question the enslavement of non-Greeks, and in the Laws (776b–778a) he discusses how slaves should be acquired, managed and punished. He never calls for abolition, and no Greek thinker of his time is known to have done so, although Aristotle reports that some held slavery to be contrary to nature (Politics I.3, 1253b20-23). The idea of the “natural slave”, often credited to Plato, is Aristotle’s formulation in Politics I.4–6. For Plato’s own position, including its inconsistencies, see our essay on Plato’s views on slavery.

Summary

• The claim: Dionysius I of Syracuse had Plato sold as a slave on Aegina, and Anniceris of Cyrene ransomed him.
• The sources: Diodorus Siculus XV.7.1, Plutarch, Dion 5, and Diogenes Laertius III.18-20, all written centuries after the event.
• The silence: neither Plato’s dialogues nor the Seventh Letter mention it.
• The right way to state it: “according to ancient tradition”, not “Plato was a slave”.

Plato’s travels to Sicily are well attested, and so is his difficult history with the Syracusan court. The sale at Aegina may be a true episode or a legend that grew around that quarrel, and the sources do not let us decide.