Plato and the Tyrant
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Many people know something of Plato’s works, yet few are familiar with his life outside of his writings. In Plato and the Tyrant, acclaimed classicist James Romm uses a little-known set of Plato’s personal letters to introduce the man behind the ethereal image and to explore the formation of his most famous work, Republic. In the second half of his life, an already famous Plato involved himself in the affairs of the two Dionysii, a father and son who ruled Syracuse, at that time the greatest power in the Greek world. Plato’s interventions in the violent contest between Dionysius the Younger and his brother-in-law, Dion—with whom Plato may have had a long love affair—were the backdrop and perhaps the motivation for his masterwork. In a thrilling narrative, Romm captures how Plato’s experiment in enlightened autocracy spiralled into catastrophe and gives us a new account of the origins of Western political philosophy.
James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and editor of the Ancient Lives biography series from Yale University Press. He is the author of several other studies of Greek and Roman history, and his reviews and essays appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Review of Books.