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Plato 's Classical Athenian Architecture, Drama, And Arts

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Plato
Plato was born around 428 B.C., Both of Plato’s parents were from distinguished aristocratic families. Besides being born into an illustrious family, Plato was born into an illustrious city. He was born in the wake of Athens’s Golden Age, the period that had witnessed Athens’s the beginning of the strongest Greek power, the birth of classical Athenian architecture, drama, and arts. His father Ariston died when he was a child. His mother Perictione remarried the politician Pyrilampes. He was educated in philosophy, poetry and gymnastics by distinguished Athenian teachers including the philosopher Cratylus.
It was also at an early age, probably in adolescence, that Plato began to hear Socrates, who engaged a variety of people in Athens …show more content…

Plato what is at stake is a clash between what we might call comprehensive world-views; it seems that matters of grave importance in ethics, politics, metaphysics, theology, and e are at stake. Plato agrees that Homer is indeed the educator of Greece, and immediately adds that Homer is “the most poetic and first of the tragic poets.” Plato is setting himself against what he takes to be the entire outlook in contemporary. Since Homer shaped the popular culture of the times, Plato is setting himself against popular culture as he knew it. Plato has in his sights all of “poetry,” contending that its influence is pervasive and often harmful, and that its insite about nature and the divine are mistaken.
It is not easy to understand what Plato means by poetry, whether it is dangerous because of its form or content or both. These questions are complicated by the fact that Plato was not thinking of poetry as a written text read in silence; he had in mind performances, often experienced in theater. When Socrates and Plato conducted their inquiries, poetry was far more influential than what Plato calls “philosophy.” Few people today would imagine that there is any interesting relation between poetry and rhetoric. To think of great poets as “rhetoricians” seems weird, and most rhetoricians do not seem to know the first thing about poetry. Yet Plato himself associates the two very closely: at Gorgias he characterizes

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