Q. Why did ancient Greeks like Plato and Socrates have only one name? A. You can search the history books forever and never find a single allusion to little Billy Socrates or his precocious playground ...

Born in 427 BC, Plato fled Athens in 399 BC after Socrates was executed, blaming democracy and the Peloponnesian War for his teacher's death. An aristocrat and an elitist, much of what we know about ...

This all-day Saturday session begins by briefly considering philosophy in the emerging Greek world, from Thales to Socrates. What does Socrates offer that is new and how? Discussion, debate, dialogue, ...

When Plato was an infant, bees alighted on his lips and, nestling there, set about making honey. His parents had placed him, sleeping, on the summit of a mountain while they paid tribute to the gods, ...

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Cultural critic Thomas Chatterton Williams examines the complex relationship between the classics and identity politics. And he is speaking to Walter Isaacson about racism, ...

Strictly speaking, there can be no biography of Plato — only what Carol Atack calls a “biographical tradition.” Exactly when he was born, exactly where he traveled, and to what extent his famous ...

The ancient world gave us lots of things: Democracy, science, literature. It also gave us the columnist. Before Fintan ...

In Plato’s cave, humans watch silhouettes flicker on the wall, unaware that fires just behind them are distorting reality into a shadow world – not unlike the world we find ourselves in today, aided ...

Detail from the Chigi vase. Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public domain While discussing philosophy in the public square, Socrates would also have been training as a hoplite, a heavily armed foot soldier ...