Plato is often referred to as a Greek, and indeed his native language was Greek, and he was born in the part of Europe that is today the country of Greece. In Plato's time, however, there was no such country. Instead, on the peninsula and islands of today's Greece, there were a number of city-states (walled cities and the outlying rural areas and villages that each could defend) that were governed independently of each other, although groups of them were formed into alliances, variously strong or weak, and were governed in vastly different ways, according to the history of each. In Plato's day, the greatest of the city-states (if greatness may be defined by level of learning, art and architecture, music, and general quality of life) was Athens. Plato was an Athenian.
If Athens represented a degree of humanistic civilization that had not been seen before in European and Mediterranean culture — and strong arguments can be made that it did — still it was in many ways different from what we today are likely to think of as an enlightened culture. During its relatively brief period of democracy, Athens was governed by its citizens. However, women were not citizens of Athens, nor were slaves. Boys were educated (even some slaves were educated); girls, of course, were not. Most Athenian citizens were literate, but books (handwritten scrolls) were few. Medical knowledge and sanitation were advanced — compared to conditions, for example, in the Europe of the middle ages — but the life span of most people was relatively short. Travel was possible, but was very slow; navigational instruments were relatively primitive, so that ships were forced to sail close to islands and coastlines, and travelers on land (most of whom went by foot) were in constant danger of attack by robbers, for the mountainous country between walled cities was wild and lawless.
