The “Symposium” is a series of drinking-party speeches on the nature of love, in which Socrates says the best thing to do with romantic desire is to convert it into amicable truth-seeking (an idea termed “Platonic love” by later writers).In the “Meno,” Socrates demonstrates that wisdom is less a matter of learning things than “recollecting” what the soul already knows, in the way that an untaught boy can be led to discover for himself a geometric proof.Such analyses pushed his students towards grappling with so-called Platonic forms—the ineffable perfect models (truth, beauty, what a chair should look like) by which people judge objects and experiences.In the middle dialogues Plato’s individual ideas and beliefs, though never advocated outright, emerge from the Socratic form.

Instead, archaeologists were taking advantage of a conservation effort at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, one of Christianity’s holiest sites, to look inside the shrine known as the Edicule (which is Latin for “little house”).

Following Socrates’ forced suicide, Plato spent 12 years traveling in southern Italy, Sicily and Egypt, studying with other philosophers including followers of the mystic mathematician Pythagoras.

He began a lifelong relationship with the ruling family of Syracuse, who would later seek his advice on reforming their city’s politics.

Plato’s recurring fascination was the distinction between ideal forms and everyday experience, and how it played out both for individuals and for societies. His mother Perictione remarried the politician Pyrilampes.

In the “Republic,” his most famous work, he envisioned a civilization governed not by lowly appetites but by the pure wisdom of a philosopher-king. C., during the final years of the Golden Age of Pericles’ Athens. Plato grew up during the Peloponnesian War (431-404) and came of age around the time of Athens’ final defeat by Sparta and the political chaos that followed.