The Eric Metaxas Show - Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy | Robin Waterfield

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

What do we really know about Plato, the philosopher whose ideas have shaped Western thought for over two millennia? Drawing on Robin Waterfield’s recent biography, Plato of Athens, the author and classical scholar joins Socrates in the City host, Eric Metaxas, to explore the life, context, and enduring influence of Plato. Using Waterfield’s biography as a foundation, the discussion delves beyond the familiar image of Plato as Socrates’ devoted student to reveal a more complex and compelling figure: a political thinker, literary craftsman, and spiritual visionary whose work continues to challenge and inspire us today. They discuss the Academy and Plato’s Republic, the many myths surrounding his life, and the legacy Platonic thought in society.

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to listen to a man of grace, sophistication, integrity, and whimsy? Well, so are we. But until such a man shows up, please welcome Eric Mat, Texas. Hey there, folks. It is Friday, August 1st, 2025. What happened? It's Friday. But listen, here's the good news. This summer, every Friday. We're calling it a Socrates in the city Friday. We're playing a Socrates in the city conversation. Today, we're going to play my conversation with Robin Waterfield. Robin Waterfield, he lives, actually he's from the UK, as you'll tell from his voice, but he lives in Greece.

And this summer, when we did our Greek cruise, some of you listen to this program, you were there, before we left on the boat for the cruise around the Greek islands and Istanbul and all that, we spent a few days in Athens. And I thought, Athens, wait a minute, didn't Socrates live in Athens? And we looked it up and turned out he had lived in Athens. And I thought, wouldn't it be great to do Socrates in the city event in Athens? And a lot of Socrates's relatives were there. Now, they didn't know they were Socrates's relatives.

but I'm just guessing that when you think about the gene pool, probably some of them were related to Socrates. In any event, Robin Waterfield is a scholar on Plato and therefore, of course, on Socrates. So I interviewed him in Athens, and we're going to play that for you both hours today. We're going to play my conversation in Athens with Robin Waterfield, who he's written many books on Plato. T-G-G-I-F-S-I-T-C. How about that? T-G-I-F-S-I-T-C, yes. Thank God it's Friday Socrates and the City.

Hurrah. So we're going to play that. Before that, before we get to the Socrates and the City conversation with Robin Waterfields in this segment right now, I want to remind you of our commitment to help the folks in Texas. So I want to play my conversation with Paul Jacob. with Food for the Poor. They're partnering with churches in Texas. It's urgent, as I keep saying, this is an emergency. So they reached out to us. So I want to play for you. And then after that, we have both hours, my conversation with Robin Waterfield about Plato. You're going to learn a lot.

I promise you, it was really fun. So here it is. Folks, welcome back. You know we've been doing a campaign with Food for the Poor. This is an emergency. so much so that I thought maybe we can get our friend Paul Jacobs on to help explain what is going on. Paul, welcome back. No, it's great to be back. You know, it's nearly three weeks since the devastating floods in central Texas, and the need has never been greater. What is food for the poor doing?

I mean, I've talked about this, but it's, you know, it's hard for people to get their heads around this because it's such a nightmare. You hear about these floods. You hear about children dying. But then I think most of us think, well, that's that. I don't know, you know, what is there to say? It's a horror. It's a tragedy.

But the reason you guys are there is because the tragedy is ongoing. There are people suffering right now and they need our help right now. Yeah, that's right. You know, more, but hundreds have lost their lives and probably almost the same amount that are still missing. I think this attention, this tragedy has caught our attention because of the children and the families and this community. This Guadalupe River was literally the center of these three communities where more than 30,000 people lived and it was the churches, the businesses, the ministries, and schools, and of course, these camps. And food for the poor, while there's thousands of people there in the response and the recovery effort,

food for the poor is working with the local church. Church partners on the ground that have been responding to help families with emergency relief kits, everything from tarps to cover their belongings, to women's care kits for women and girls to be provided for. And even something as simple as baby diapers for small children who have become very, vulnerable in this disaster. Well, so what is the area that's affected? I'm not clear. I haven't seen much video or anything of this.

In other words, are there towns that have been wiped out? I mean, I know that there are individual businesses and homes. And where are the people who have been displaced? Where are they staying, many of them? The Guadalupe River is in the center of Kerr County. Curville, Ingram, and Hunt, number of six. cities in the surrounding areas. You could say it's probably just out, just about 45 minutes to an hour just outside of San

Antonio area, if you're familiar with the San Antonio area. But the thing about this is, while you may not have ever focused on this community on the map, it is for Texans, a very thriving community. One of our ministry partners, excuse me, one of our staff members here at Food for the Poor lives in the San Antonio area. used to work in Kerrville and this Kerr County area. Matter of fact, he was personally affected because the camp mystic, which was the camp where a lot of those children who were there in summer camp lost their lives.

One of the camp directors, a friend of his, also lost his life. So this is very personal for us. This is very personal for my colleague, Kevin Mayne, in San Antonio. But this area in the Guadalupe River has quite a few people that have been displaced, hundreds of homes, completely destroyed businesses, it's going to take a long time for them to get back on track. But right now, we're focused not necessarily on the long term, but really the immediate need of getting families,

the recovery efforts, and the recovery efforts, helping them with the emergency kits they need to just get through another day. Okay, so folks, if you want to help, you can go to my radio website, metaxis talk.com. Metaxistalk.com at the top of the page. There you see the banner. And we're asking you, every $50 purchases one of these emergency relief kits. So some of you can do multiples of that.

But whatever you can do, we need your help, desperately need your help. And what is the partner that Food for the Poor is working with on the ground there? Do you know the name of that, Paul Jacobs, the name of the partner? We, well, that's the great news. We work with the local church, church partners, ministries that are set up in San Antonio as a distribution site. We've already sent the first few pallets of emergency relief kits like the ones you just mentioned that these families for $50 could provide a family with emergency kits. And it's going through pastors, local ministries on the ground.

Matter of fact, I was supposed to right now be in an interview with them just to kind of get in a assessment of what's going on at this very moment, unfortunately, as you can well imagine, they are very caught up with meetings and a lot of things that are going on on in the ground. They could not change. So we've had to postpone that. But you can just imagine that's how busy things are and how frenetic and why you're needed right now to help our ministry partners and churches on the ground. I have a phone number here, which I want to give in case anybody prefers to call.

But folks, anything you can do, this is tax deductible and it is an emergency. So the phone number to call so you can give is 844-863-4673, 844-863-4673. I mentioned the radio website is metaxistalkys talk.com. You'll see the banner at the top of the page. Or if you want to text my name to this number, you'll get the link. Metaxus is M-E-T-A-X-A-S. You can text it to 5-1-55-5-5-5. Again, text Metaxis, M-E-T-A-X-A-S, text Metaxus to 5-1-55-5-5-5-5.

Text Metaxus to 5-1-5-5-5-5. The phone number, again, is 8-4-6-3-46-7-3, 8-6-7-3, Paul, any final thoughts? Yeah, very much. It's community effort. It is going to be a community effort in the response to help each and every one of these families. We have seen on the news. We've heard it through our ministry partners on the ground.

And we have seen thousands of dollars poured out through the Metaxus talk listeners. You know, those of you that are listened to this program. And maybe if you have not heard of this, maybe this is the very first time of hearing about food for the poor, or you're hearing about the efforts that through this radio program is going to help those families, we need you to join this community of those who are desperately in need, vulnerable children, families, just like you, who need your help right now. Folks, I'll just say it again. This is an emergency.

Metaxistocotocococop.com is the website Mettaxistocop.com at the top of the page. You see the banner, Help Texas. We're asking you to do what you can. If you can't do much, just do what you can. And it is direly needed right now. So God bless you as you give. Thank you. Folks, just to remind you, the flooding in central Texas has taken over 100 lives.

Many people still missing. We on this program are asking you to join us in Food for the Poor as we rush. Emergency relief to devastated families. please call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 to give right now, or you can click on the banner, metaxistalk.com. Thank you. Mike Lindell and my pillow employees want to thank you, my listeners, for all your continued support. Mike has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. He didn't stop by creating the best pillow. He created the best bed sheets ever. Yes, Mike is offering the best deal on his percale bedsheets. You can get a set now for as low as 2498.

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Welcome to Socrates in the city in the city of Socrates. That's an unbelievable thing. I cannot believe that I'm finally able to say that. It's been a dream to do Socrates in the city, in the city. Anneros said that's where Socrates was born. It's also where he killed himself, but we're not going to bring that up tonight, are we? No, we're not going to

talk about that. But it is extraordinary to me to be here in the city, not just of Socrates, but it's the famous, famous city of philosophy. And so when we thought that we would do this event here, of course the question was whom to interview very difficult uh we try i thought you know in a in a city

is famous for Greek philosophy as Athens surely we should be able to uh you know dread up a famous a Greek philosopher and we tried we tried to get uh we tried to get Socrates as you know he's dead we try to get Aristotle dead uh try to get Plato dead they're all dead and I thought maybe there are some pre-Socratics because they're not as well-known and much less frequently spoken of or invited. And so we reached out to Thales's people, Zenos as people. Some of you, somebody gave me a phone number of Heraclytus. I had Avagadro's number, but he didn't pick up that phone. So, now by the way, I mentioned the pre-Socratics. Some of you may know this,

that none of the pre-Socratics knew that they were pre-Socratics. In any event, we settled, if we couldn't come up with an actual philosopher, we thought maybe we'd get an expert on one of these philosophers, and we've been very successful in doing that.

My guest, this evening, is Robin Waterfield. Now, Robin Waterfield, there's so much to say about him. I will simply say that he's very humble. I can say about him that he is, you know, one of the few living experts on Plato. And what a joy that we get to talk to him tonight. He's done a number of translations,

obviously from the Greek of Plato's symposium, the gorgeous, the Republic, all published in the Oxford World Classics series. He's written a number of other books. It's a big deal that we have Robin Waterfield tonight. He's written many books. The one I'm holding in my hand is called Plato of Athens, not to be confused with Plato of Chicago.

Different plato. He owns a diner. Great guy, but he's not, we're not going to talk about him tonight. And by the way, if you're Greek, it's not pronounced Chicago. It's pronounced the Chicago. So I just, I want you to be clear on that. And what you've eaten tonight is pronounced chicken. The Greek are calling this chicken.

Okay, because we don't have a ch sound in the Greek language. Tichen. This is Tziken. So I hope you enjoyed it. Let me say a little bit about the book which Robin Waterfield has written. Paul Cartlidge has said, if all Western philosophy is, as has been claimed, a series of footnotes to Plato of Athens. It's fortunate indeed that all his dialogues have

survived and attracted translators and interpreters of the caliber of Robin Waterfield. Brilliant, witty, profound, and perplexing Plato's, all those, and more. And it's no mean tribute both to him and to the author to say that Robin Waterfield has done him justice. So please join me in giving a Socrates in the city. Welcome to my guest for the evening, Robin Waterfield. Are you nervous? A little. Me too, yeah. It's a harsh crowd. Look at them. Look at them. Look at just the way they stare. I'm terrifying. They don't have to do a darn thing except judge us in their minds. It's not right. It's not right. Well, all right. They laugh because they're doing it.

They're doing it right now. They're judging us. Yeah. Harshly, very harshly. There's a lot of harsh, religious people in the room. I'd met some of them. But we're going to talk tonight. I didn't say this. I ought to have said it. We started Socrates in the city because Socrates, of course, famously said the unexamined life is not worth living. And I thought, what a wonderful, wonderful idea to think more deeply about the big questions. I have this crazy idea that if we think more deeply and honestly about the big questions of life, our lives will be better. It will lead us to truth. And I believe as a Christian that will lead us to God. And I believe as a Christian, And so we've been doing it in various ways for 25 years now.

But we really, as I've said, have never done one here in Athens. And it's sometimes good to be on the nose. And speaking about Socrates and about Plato, that's on the nose. So, Robin, we discovered you. Very happy to find you and very happy that you were willing to drive up here from Laconia. La Conia. Laconia? Yeah.

And you lived in Greece, I didn't say this, you've lived in Greece for a couple of decades. Yeah. And that's intentional. Yeah. Well, originally it was just because I wanted to see if I could make it as just a writer. When I lived in London, I was teaching and editing and doing some writing. Yeah. But I wanted to just be a writer.

And here I am, 22 years later. I hear you are. It works. Well, so I have to start with the most, you know, open, ended question, really. What led you to spend most of your life thinking about thinking and thinking about people who thought about thinking? Hmm. That's a very thoughtful question. It's also too general. I mean, I was attracted to ancient philosophy, much more than I was attracted to modern philosophy. By which I mean,

I think the chief difference that struck me then still. strikes me now is that, I mean, I was first distracted to the ethical side of philosophy, how to live, how to become a better person. And that, modern philosophers approached that question largely from a theoretical perspective, but what I really liked about the ancient philosophers was they were addressing real-life questions. I mean, even, you know, how do I become a better person? Even Stuffield Aristotle says at the beginning of his most important ethical treatise. He says, we are studying this not to know what goodness is, but so that we can become good people.

And it was that sort of living urgency of ancient Greek philosophy, I think, which grabbed me from the start. Well, I mean, that's a big reason that we have called this Socrates in the city and not, I don't know, Kierkegaard in the city, We did think of many more people, much more depressing philosophers than Kierkegaard. But the idea, that struck me in reading your book. And I thought it's so foreign to us, moderns, that it's really novel. The idea that one could think seriously and deeply about what does it mean to be a good person

or could I be a better person? And that, I think, I guess I wonder if more modern philosophers or people who study modern philosophy, if they maybe are a little bit cynical about that project, that they wouldn't take that so seriously? I think that's probably right, yeah. It's, I mean, modern philosophy is done in seminars and in classrooms. It's not, it's not done, you know, on the street and in the household. And that's the kind of difference. I was getting at. These were urgent real questions for these people.

Well, in the book you talk about, well, actually, let's go a little bit backwards before we go forward. For people who really know nothing of the biography of Socrates or Plato, because your book purports to be, of course, a biography, just tell us a little bit about who they were, the milieu in which they came to be who they were. Both Socrates and Plato. Well, yeah, just generally. You'll know that they're related somehow. So, yeah, so if you don't mind, like, a comment on that relationship.

Yeah, okay. Well, there's not a lot we can safely say about it. I mean, we know that, okay, Socrates had a group of largely young men, as you all know women weren't really loud much of an education in those days so young men and Plato joins that circle at some point maybe you know when he was 16 or 17 or so in other words around about the early 400s 407 4008 we don't know what went on though at these I think they were they were group meetings and I think people compared their experience

or discussed a philosophical text they'd been reading or something like that. But clearly, Socrates thought more highly of Plato than of many others in his group. We know that because at one point, Xenophon has Socrates say, because, you know, the Xenophon also wrote works about Socrates. So Zonifan has Socrates say at one point, the reason I'm interested in this is because of Plato and Karl Mavis say, Those were his two favorite students in his group. Folks, you're listening to a special summer Friday edition of this program where we play a conversation that I've had recently.

This is my conversation, Socrates is in the city in Athens with Robin Waterfield. He is a Plato scholar, and here it is. So I think he did probably see Plato as carrying on his work. And Plato definitely saw himself as carrying. on Socrates's work. And to go back to your first question, I think when I was first attracted to ancient philosophy, it was more to Socrates than to Plato. So we're still Socrates in the city, not Plato in the city.

Because he was more, I don't know, that urgency seemed to be more present in Socrates than it doesn't Plato. I think something. It was, I mean, it's fascinating. And having just read your book, it's, fresher in my mind, but that it was, for each of them, a life's calling. Where did Socrates come from that he suddenly would be doing what he did? I mean, I, yeah. He wasn't out of the blue.

There was an intellectual environment. There were the pre-Socratics who you've mentioned. The kind of work they were doing was more proto-scientific rather than what we think of philosophy. There was a group of people, again, lumped awkwardly together. we lumped together, we call them the sophists. And they were doing a lot of interesting work in fields that we would now call psychology and sociology and political science and things like that.

So there was an intellectual environment, and Athens was the place to be, because Athens was the largest, wealthiest and most important city in Greece at the time, rivaled in certain ways by Sparta, of course, but not in cultural ways. Sparta had turned its back deliberately on culture at a certain point in its history. So a lot of intellectuals spent time in Athens either permanently. I mean, Socrates is one of the actual, Socrates and Plato, two of the very few native Athenian philosophers. Everybody else you can think of came from outside of Athens. But they spent time in Athens, like Aristotle spent 20 years in Plato's school, the academy.

but he came from Macedon. He came of a Stagirom. So there was a good environment. And in his day, Socrates would undoubtedly have been thought of as a sophist. That is, as a professional teacher, because that's what the sophists were doing. So sophistry didn't have the pejorative connotation

that it has for us today. It has it for us today because of Plato in the first place and because of Aristotle after him. Plato wanted to distinguish Socrates, his teacher, his mentor, from the sophists. And he did that in, well, two ways chiefly. One was to point out the Socrates wasn't a professional in the sense that he didn't take money for his teaching. He saw his job as arousing curiosity and interest in people, rather than putting information in which they then had to pay for like a commodity.

and Plato was always against the commodification of wisdom. And I think the other distinction that Plato was trying to draw was simply that Socrates was a good man. He cared about the people he was teaching and he wanted to see them become better people, whereas the sophists just wanted them to... I think the easiest way to put the distinction is that sophists were trying to teach worldly success.

They were teaching subjects like rhetoric, things that you needed to get ahead in the political climate of Athens or other Greek cities at the time. But Socrates wasn't interested in worldly success. He was just interested in turning out better people and people who could, this was a particular project of Socrates, people who could rule Athens,

the next generation of people who would steer Athens politically. He wanted to make sure they were the right kind of people rather than people who are, well, as Plato himself puts it in the Republic, the last person you want to have in power is a person who wants power. So Socrates was trying to train people who would be in power, but wouldn't be abusing it, wouldn't be doing it for selfish reasons and so on. You said Socrates killed himself. I knew when I said that, someone might pick up on that.

It is exactly right. I mean, it's easy to say he was content to death and executed by the Athenian state, because in a sense he was. But the Athenian state at the time used this poison hemlock. And the point about giving prisoners who were going to die hemlock was, well, first, it wasn't too bad a way to go. There are the source of hemlock, which are, but this particular kind of hemlock wasn't. but secondly, because it was self-administered. And so that absolved the state of any blood guilt. So they deliberately got Socrates and others at the time to kill themselves like that.

Huh. Yeah. Inside into Athenian society. Yeah, yeah. What's the line about a cock for Asclepius? Only since we're talking about Socrates, he's killing himself. In an article I wrote some years ago, I said, I've read 23 interpretations of that.

And somebody emailed me and said, Robin, there are 35. Can you give us the top two? I can't remember what I said in the book I wrote about. But I mean, actually, just give the context for the cut, because most of the phone. As his last words were, he said to a friend, Critians, we owe a clock, a cock to Asclepius.

In other words, they needed to sacrifice a cock. To Asclepius, who was the god of healing. So I think one of the most plausible interpretations is that it was being healed of life. Folks, as you know, this is a real crisis. Over 129 are confirmed dead. Dozens still missing in Texas. Eric Mattaxas here urging you to help us get emergency supplies to flood victims. Partner with us and food for the poor. Call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to five. or click on the banner at metaxis talk.com. Metaxistalkis talk.com. Thank you.

Folks, you're listening to a special summer Friday edition of this program where we play a conversation that I've had recently. This is my conversation, Socrates, he's in the city in Athens with Robin Waterfield. He is a Plato scholar, and here it is. I was not only not planning to bring it. up but I was thinking I shouldn't bring it up but the way you've just put that there there are often many parallels drawn between Socrates and Jesus because either of them could have gotten out of dying if they had wanted to fairly easily yeah and there's something obviously noble about not getting out of one's death

something courageous yeah about it and so when you're talking about about Socrates, because without Socrates, I don't know, that we would have Plato, he really was, there was an authenticity. In other words, I think that what's interesting to me, particularly about Socrates, and of course, there's something to Plato, is that they took the whole thing seriously, that there was such a thing as truth that might be sought. There was such a thing as the good.

where do you think that idea came from? Because of course there are many people, cynical people, who would say there is no such thing. So when Socrates or Plato would ask the question, what is truth, they weren't asking it the way Pontius Pilate asked it. Why do you suppose they had some innate sense that there was such a thing as truth or goodness or virtue? Because there is?

That's a very good answer. No, it is. It's a great answer. But the other half of your question is why do people ignore it? Yes. I'm not sure I can answer that. Are you familiar with the doctrine of the fall? Rings a bell. Yeah, it's theological doctrine. It's obviously true.

Well, I... But I mean, they were falling as well, later than Socrates. They were well past... the full. That's right. So there's the mystery, right? It can make Calvinists of us all. With, if you didn't get that, see me later. I have a question written down and I did want to ask this. When I first looked at your book, I thought to myself, my goodness, what firsthand sources are there for writing a biography of Plato? What is out there? and so how are you able to untangle the theory from the fiction, from the facts, or was that, is that something that you've been doing for a very long time,

or is it something you set your mind to do recently when you wrote this book? Particularly for this book. Yeah. I mean, one of the main sources is some letters that are written on the plate's name, and I hadn't really studied them as closely as I needed to for this book. But it's a good question. The sources are difficult, and that's why Plato is a household name. Everybody's heard of Plato.

This is the first book-length biography ever. And I think the reason for that must be the difficulty of the sources. There are three types of source. All right, we've got Plato's works themselves. There's dialogues, as we call them, even though some of them aren't dialogues. But they're a very poor source for his life. As you know, if any of you've read, as you know, well. Plato never writes in his own name.

He writes like a playwright. So is it right to attribute what false staff says to Shakespeare? Or Ophelho's says to Shakespeare? So Plato writes like that. He never writes in his own name. He mentions himself on three occasions, but on two issues in the dialogues, but both of them are trivial. One is that he was present at Socrates's trial,

and the other is that he was absent on the day of Socrates's death in prison when he drank the head of hemlock. There's the only two things he mentions, which are obviously of trivial use to a biographer. The other two sources are, well, first ancient biographies of Plato, who was famous, and he attracted a lot of biographical attention in ancient times, and we have surviving four and a half of the biographies. The half is very fragmentary.

but the earliest of those was written about 300, 350 years after Plato's death and the later of them about a thousand years after Plato's death and they also belonged to this extremely peculiar genre of writing which was ancient biography which isn't biography as you and I understand it at all it was very soon after Plato's death people were eulogizing him they were calling him the son of Apollo

not the son of a human parent so all these very positive and affirmative adjectives being used to describe him that generated a response and there were a lot of hostile writers shortly after Plato's death also coming up with saying he was

a plagiarist and a sodomite and whatever else. And the biographies basically are all at that level. Some of what they, Plato attracted a lot of attention in comic poets. The comic poets and the comedies being written in his time were sort of very light situation comedies, not like the ribald stuff of Aristophanes or something like that, but much more like easygoing. But he and his ideas come up in quite a lot of the fragments. We have fragments, quite a lot of the fragments of those comedies.

And some of the things that the comedians were saying seeped into the biographical tradition as well. So that is really unreliable and almost totally useless for me as a biographer. They get the general trajectory of his life, correct, but most of the stories they tell are rubbish. They tell stories like Plato died of embarrassment when he couldn't answer a riddle, right? Or students in the academy blinded themselves so that they could attend to philosophy more or things like that, right?

And it's rubbish. So you have to discard all the rubbish, try to find out if there's any element of truth in that. For instance, that last one, Plato's students in the academy blinded themselves so they could focus on philosophy. immediately implies that philosophy is internal work, not external work. So, you know, there may be a little nugget in there, so the bagram has to sift out the nuggets. And the third source are these letters. By, I don't know, the first century AD,

there were a lot of letters in existence claiming to have been written, you know, signed Plato at the bottom, yours sincerely. And you think that these are the same, you know, These are genuine. Well, almost all of them are rubbish and certainly not genuine. But there are 13 which you find in the corpus of Plato's works, as they were established by the end of the third century, BC. Summer Friday edition of this program where we play a conversation that I've had recently.

This is my conversation, Socrates, he's in the city in Athens with Robin Waterfield. he is a Plato scholar, and here it is. Some scholars think all the letters are spurious. Some scholars think a few of them are genuine, and that's the camp in which I fall. I think you can use stylometric, mean stilometry is a way of assessing developments in a person's style by unconscious features of his writing.

You can only use unconscious features, obviously, because, as you know, as a writer, although everything deliberate is deliberate, but we all have little quirks. So by tracing Plato's quirks, you can trace a kind of a sequence. And by stylometric testing, I think three of these letters pass the test,

letters three, seven, and eight. And of those, letter seven, is incredibly important. It is a, I mean, more than important, read as written by Plato, it's thrilling. You're actually reading something directly from Plato's hand, some of his personal thoughts, and it's wonderful. And I do think it's genuine. And it's also, it's important because it's very long. It's longer than 11 of Plato's shorter dialogues. It's a

long letter. It's very complex. It's very intelligent. It's very well written. And it tells us an awful lot about certain aspects of Plato's life, his youth, and particularly what he was trying to do in Syracuse, which I'm sure will come to at some point. Yeah. Well, because I have myself written biographies, it's fascinating to find things that everyone says about someone that are not true. Yeah. And the subjects of my three biographies are, of course, very recent compared to what you're

writing about, but you read something that everybody says it, and then you find out as you trace it back, it's absolutely not true. The tracing bank is important. And they're very sloppy about moving it along and it thrills me when I can put an end to something like that. But with regard to Plato and Socrates, there are these things, there's a mythic quality to them. I mean, because they're so far removed from us, chronologically, that, as you've been saying, much of what we know of them is hagiography or its commentary on them.

And one of those things, I encountered it literally today, well, I'm sorry, literally yesterday, somebody said to me that, oh, yes, Plato was named Plato because it means this, it means, yeah, to be stout or wide or something like that. And I had just read in your book, that's not true. And so Plato was a common name,

them. But that idea, I mean, is there anything to that idea that of his name? I don't know. Well, I can't, I can only guess as to why the idea originally arose. One of the reasons might have been that they

wanted Plato to be his mother's first born. His grandfather was called Aristocles. And same system in modern Greece nowadays, as you know, the grandfather's name becomes the grandson's name. And that was the same in ancient Greece as well. Not 100%, but let's say 85%. So because they wanted Plato,

I'm guessing as I say, to be the firstborn, they gave him the grandfather's name. But yeah, Plato was not a common name, but certainly a familiar name. And there's a nice story about Plato later in life which kind of illustrates this, that once he was, where was he? I think it was it the Olympic Games, attending the Olympic Games in Olympia. And he was chatting with some foreigners from Sicily or somewhere.

And introduced himself as Plato and they got on, bloody blah. And then later, when the Sicilians came to Athens, they met Plato again. They said, oh, but we want to meet Plato the philosopher. be saying.