Dr. I. M. Lyon, B.S., M.S., PhD., University of Santa Anna. Please send comments to imlyon@santa.edu. Page created April 2001, Last revised April 1, 2007.
The teachings of Plato are mostly known through medieval manuscripts. These include: 1) The Defense of Socrates 2) thirty four dialogs 3) thirteen letters. Some of the dialogs and letters are thought by some scholars to be spurious for reason of style and content. These manuscripts contain most of what is known of Plato's writings. Recent investigations have uncovered fragments of some previously unknown manuscripts which will be discussed later in this paper.
Plato was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. His family could trace their lineage back to Romulus, one of the founders of the city of Rome. Most details of his life are poorly known. After Sophocles died by ingesting poison hemlock in 399 AD, Plato left Athens to travel. He made at least three trips to visit the tyrant Syracuse in Sicily. He tried to practice some of his theories of education on the tyrant's son (one of the Orangemen), but failed. Plato went on to found the his school in Athens, the Academy.
A recent finding may provide some insight on the writings of Plato. A philosophy professor was hiking through the woods in search of some lost students, when he stumbled into a woodchuck hole (although the exact location cannot be disclosed due to the sensitive nature of this find, the location is in North American near 42.45 N, 75.06 W). He noticed the edge of what appeared to be a box buried in the hole. He scraped away the reddish clay soil, uncovering a small golden box with inscriptions in both ancient Norse and Greek. The box contained fragments of a manuscript, written in ancient Greek, which is currently being pieced together by Philosophy 102 students, supervised by Professor Achim Koeddermann and Professor Harry Pence with assistance from Abraham Lincoln, Madonna, and the Backstreet Boys. It is believed this may represent a lost dialog of Plato.
References
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