Episode Details

James Romm — Multi-Part, Part One: Professor James Romm, author of Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece, discusses the rise of the Dionysian dynasty in fourth-century BCE Syracuse, then the most powerful state in the Greek West. Dionysius the Elder consolidated power as a demagogue, using the defensible island fortress of Ortygia and practicing polygamy to secure his rule, though this created deep familial rivalries. Syracuse became famous for Syracusan tables, a lifestyle of extreme luxury and alcoholic excess. Plato, influenced by the execution of his teacher Socrates and the reign of the Thirty Tyrants, viewed Syracuse as a laboratory for his theory of Forms. After a failed initial visit, Plato returned to tutor Dionysius the Younger at the urging of the ruler's brother-in-law, Dion. Plato's goal was to transform the immature, hard-drinking tyrant into an enlightened monarch through lifestyle reform and abstract philosophy. (1)