Plato

This is a good start page for Plato. Here, you'll find a detailed biography with embedded links and some links to other Plato pages on the web. It's a good place to start your internet research.

Here's a biography from ThinkQuest.org, which is split up into different thematic categories. It starts with a personal history and then examines how Plato viewed things such as freedom and morality. How trustworthy is the information here? How can you tell?

Wondering what the great philosopher might have looked like? Here's a photo of a bust of Plato in the Vatican Museum.

To understand a writer's work often it's important to understand something about where he or she lived and worked. To help you deepen your understanding of Plato in this regard, here's the homepage for a website dealing with ancient Athens.

If you'd like to zero in on one aspect of Athens and visualize it, here are some maps and drawings of the Acropolis and the Theater of Dionysus.

Interested in putting the writings of Plato into a political context? This is the Columbia Encyclopedia entry for the Thirty Tyrants. Did you click on the embedded links found there, too? How does Plato figure in here?

Here is a reproduction of The School of Athens by Raphael, as well as some info about the painting. Where are Plato and Aristotle found in the painting? What do you make of their placement?

Here's "The Cave " in e-text. This is the Jowett translation, and it includes links to related internet resources.

Here is The Dialogues of Plato in e-text, from the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library. Do you consider this a reliable text? Why or why not? How can you tell?

Hungry for more online reading? Well, here's a large list of Plato's works that can be found on the internet.