Plato(428 av. J.-C. — 348 av. J.-C.)

A reconstruction of Socrates' defense speech at his trial. It is Plato's earliest work — an act of loyalty to his condemned master — and the first exposition of the Socratic philosophical ideal.

A dialogue devoted to love (Eros), presented as a series of speeches at a banquet. Plato sets out his famous theory of the ascent through love toward absolute Beauty — the foundation of what we call 'platonic love'.

Plato's masterwork in ten books, devoted to justice and the ideal city-state governed by philosophers. It contains the Allegory of the Cave, the most famous image in Western philosophy, used to illustrate the Theory of Forms.

A dialogue recounting Socrates' final hours before he drinks the hemlock. Plato develops his arguments for the immortality of the soul and offers an in-depth exposition of the Theory of Forms.

A dialogue on the nature of virtue and whether it can be taught. Plato develops his theory of recollection: learning is not the acquisition of new knowledge, but the remembering of what the soul contemplated before it took bodily form.

A late dialogue devoted to cosmology and the creation of the world. It was the most widely read of Plato's works in medieval Europe, deeply influencing Christian theology and the medieval vision of the universe.

Plato's last dialogue, left unfinished at his death. In it he revises the political ideal of The Republic, proposing a 'second-best' city — more realistic, governed by precise laws rather than solely by the wisdom of philosophers.

Imagine men living in an underground dwelling shaped like a cave... Throughout their lives they have seen neither their own bodies nor those of others — nothing but the shadows cast by the fire on the wall of the cave.

One who wishes to pursue this goal in the right way must begin from youth to seek out beautiful bodies... and then recognize that the beauty found in one body is akin to that found in another.

Is death anything other than the separation of the soul from the body? To be dead — is it not that the body, separated from the soul, subsists alone by itself, and the soul, separated from the body, subsists alone by itself?

The unexamined life is not worth living. This is what I maintain, men of Athens, and it is not easy to convince you of it.

Seeking and learning are, in sum, nothing but recollection. Virtue cannot be taught — it is remembered by the soul that already carries it within.

A garden located about 1.5 km northwest of Athens, dedicated to the hero Academus, where Plato founded his school around 387 BC. This place of teaching and collective inquiry remained active for nearly nine centuries.

The central public square of Athens where Socrates, Plato's teacher, would teach by engaging citizens in conversation. It was here that the young Plato first met Socrates — an encounter that changed the course of his life and the history of thought.

A Greek city in Sicily ruled by the tyrants Dionysius I and then Dionysius II. Plato traveled there three times in an attempt to realize his political ideal of a philosopher-king, but each visit ended in bitter failure.

The great commercial port of Athens, a cosmopolitan hub where cultures from across the Mediterranean world mingled. The Republic opens precisely at Piraeus, during the festival of the goddess Bendis — a detail not without symbolic meaning for a dialogue about justice and the ideal city.