Plato was born in 428 or 427 b.c. Both his mother and father were members of wealthy and politically powerful families in Athens, which was at the time of Plato’s birth embroiled in a political upheaval involving the city-states of Athens and Sparta and their allies. This political unrest had recently manifested itself (431 b.c.) in the outbreak of armed hostilities and the commencement of a disastrous civil war, the Peloponnesian War (431–404 b.c.). This war shattered the Athenian Empire, practically destroyed the governments of all the Greek city-states, and resulted in anarchy (a kind of mob-rule) in 404–403 b.c.
Thus Plato grew to young adulthood surrounded by the strife of civil war, and he witnessed several revolutions in Athens: He saw a government of democrats (the rule of the many) replaced by an oligarchy (the rule of the chosen few), which was then again replaced by the democrats. Plato tells us in a letter he wrote when he was 60 that, in his youth, he had hoped to become actively involved in politics, chiefly because he thought it was his social responsibility, but also because many of Plato’s friends and relatives had invited him to help them to govern the Athenians and to share in the exercise of political power. But the young Plato decided to defer his political allegiance until he could observe his friends and relatives in action. Once the young Plato had seen the various political factions conducting what seemed to him nothing more than self-serving policies, motivated by simple greed and an appetite for absolute power over the people—rather than exercising government for the people and their welfare—Plato was disappointed, shocked by the violence he saw done to the people, and finally disgusted with all the parties involved.
