Plato and the Thirty tyrrants

One of the main characters in Greek history is Plato the philosopher.

Here's an attempt at understanding Plato and the thirty tyrrants who ruled Athens after the Peloponnesian war ended.


Some notes come from AE Taylor (1869-1945) - British philosopher, writer and educator, Oxford educated. Books include

• elements of metaphysics
• Plato
• The Mind of Plato
• Platonism and its influence
• Plato and the Authorship of the Epinomis
• The Faith of a Moralist
• more

About Plato he writes that the life story of the Greek philosopher is recounted by Apuleius in about 200 AD and then by Diogenes of Laerte in about 250 AD. Further attempts at writing biographies about Plato come in about 600 AD with the neo-platonic age.

Plato himself only writes two facts about his life, states Taylor.

1. In Apology, Plato states “ present in the court of my master Socrates and he was one of the friends who offered to be surety for payment of any fine which might be imposed on the old philosopher.
2. In Phaedo, “ absent from the famous death scene in the prison, owing to an illness....

Xenophon, the contemporary of Plato, states that the philosopher was a member of the inner Socrates circle.
Aristotle tells that Plato had been a pupil of Cratylus the Heracitean philosopher before meeting up with Socrates.

Plato is born at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, in 427 BC. He dies at the age of 81 in 346 BC. (mentioned in the work of Diogenes).

The Peloponnesian war was fought in three stages from 431 BC to 404 BC and reshaped the Greek world. It was a war fought with the empire of Athens going up against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta.

Wars
Phase One - Archidamian war ends with the Peace of Nicias treaty ( 431-421)

• Sparta invades Attica more than once
• Athens mighty navy raids the Peloponnese coast in the hopes of putting an end to civil unrest  

Phase two - not named by Taylor starts in 415 BC

• fighting breaks out in the Peloponnese
• Athens attacks Syracuse in Sicily and lose the entire fleet by 413 BC.

Phase three - Decelean war - aka. Ionian war

• Persian forces ally with Sparta and subdue Athens
• Persian and Peloponnese League destroy Athens fleet

Plato and Aristotle
________
Interesting long bearded Plato
maybe he was an early lombard
???

At the beginning of the war Athens is one of the most powerful city-states in Greece. By the end of the war Athens is left nearly powerless and suzerains to the now powerful Spartans.

Athens had been attempting to live in a democracy.
Sparta meanwhile was going to lead  by the rules of oligarchy.

The Athenian democracy had started some 50 years earlier when the Delian league, a group of city-states who’d fought for sovereignty against the Persian and who’d chosen to keep their treasury on the island of Delos, began to conquer and influence all of Greece. However they Delian league never got into the politics of the Spartan who were themselves working with the Peloponnesian league.

Greece had been invaded by Persia in 480 BC.


Plato and the thirty tyrants is a story that unfolds when the golden age of Greece is said to end.

Who were the thirty tyrants ? 

Did Athens recover from the might of the oligarchs from Sparta who were known as the Council of Thirty ?

We look at that in a future post....