Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Plato, son of Ariston and Perictione—or Potone—was an Athenian who traced her lineage back to Solon. For Solon had a brother, Dropides, whose son was Critias, whose son was Callaeschrus, whose sons were Critias, one of the Thirty, and Glaucon; of Glaucon were born Charmides and Perictione, and from her and Ariston was born Plato, the sixth in descent from Solon. Moreover, Solon traced his lineage back to Neleus and Poseidon. They also say that Plato's father traced his ancestry to Codrus the son of Melanthus, who according to Thrasylus are recorded as descending from Poseidon.

​Speusippus in his work entitled Plato's Funeral Feast, Clearchus in his Encomium on Plato, and Anaxilaides in the second book of On Philosophers say that, according to a story current in Athens, Ariston tried to force Perictione, who was in the bloom of youth, but failed to attain his purpose; and that having ceased from violence he saw a vision of Apollo, whence he kept her pure from marital union until her delivery. And Plato was born, as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles, in the eighty-eighth Olympiad, on the seventh day of Thargelion, on which the Delians say Apollo was born. And he died—as Hermippus says, while dining at a wedding feast—in the first year of the hundred and eighth Olympiad, having lived eighty-one years.

​Neanthes, however, says that he died at eighty-four years of age. He is therefore younger than Isocrates by six years; for Isocrates was born in the archonship of Lysimachus, while Plato was born in that of Ameinias, in whose time Pericles died. He belonged to the deme of Collytus, as Antileon says in the second book of On Chronology. And he was born, according to some—in the house of Pheidindes son of Thales, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous History—on Aegina, after his father had been sent with others as a colonist and had returned to Athens when they were expelled by the Lacedaemonians who were aiding the Aeginetans. Furthermore, he served as choregus in Athens at Dion's expense, as Athenodorus says in the eighth book of Walkings.

​He had brothers, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a sister, Potone, from whom Speusippus was born. He was educated in letters under Dionysius, whom he also mentions in the Rivals. He trained in gymnastics under Ariston, the Argive wrestler; from whom he was also renamed Plato because of his robust physique, having formerly been called Aristocles after his grandfather, as Alexander says in his Successions. Some say, however, that he was so named because of the breadth of his style, or because he was broad of brow, as Neanthes says. There are also those who say that he wrestled at the Isthmian games, as Dicaearchus too mentions in the first book of On Lives;

​and that he applied himself to painting and wrote poetry, first dithyrambs, and then lyric poems and tragedies. They say that he was also thin of voice, as Timotheus the Athenian also says in his On Lives. It is related that Socrates saw in a dream a fledgling swan upon his knees, which immediately grew wings and flew up uttering a sweet cry; and on the following day Plato was introduced to him, whereupon Socrates said that he was that very bird. At first he studied philosophy in the Academy, and then in the garden near Colonus, as Alexander says in the Successions, following Heraclitus. Afterwards, however, when he was about to compete with a tragedy before the theater of Dionysus, having heard Socrates, he burned his poems, saying: "Come hither, Hephaestus; Plato now hath need of thee."

​Thenceforth, having turned twenty years of age, as they say, he became a hearer of Socrates; and when Socrates passed away, he attached himself to Cratylus the Heraclitean and to Hermogenes who followed the philosophy of Parmenides. Then, having reached the age of twenty-eight, as Hermodorus says, he withdrew to Megara to Euclides along with certain other Socratics. Afterwards he went away to Cyrene to Theodorus the mathematician, and from there to Italy to the Pythagoreans Philolaus and Eurytus. Thence he went to Egypt to the priests; where they say Euripides also accompanied him, and having fallen ill there, Euripides was cured by the priests through treatment with sea-water; whence he is also said to have uttered: "The sea washeth away all human ills."