Plato

Plato (427–348 BC), Greek philosopher, member of a highly aristocratic family. In his youth he was a dramatist, but on coming under the influence of Socrates he burnt his plays and devoted his life to philosophy and mathematics. Much of his written work was in dialogue form—a development of the mime—and although in the more abstruse works, and in most of the Republic, the dialogue is only nominal, elsewhere it is consistently dramatic, with occasional passages of astonishing vividness and power. The character sketch of Ion, and the opening scenes of the Protagoras, are good examples of Plato's dramatic skill; his mastery of ironic comedy is shown by his picture of the Sophists in the Euthydemus; of tragedy by the scene of Socrates' death in the Phaedo. His theories of literature and drama have had an immense influence. His ‘inspirational’ theory of poetry is the direct source of the idea of the furor poeticus, through a 16th-century translation of his Ion which greatly influenced French poets of the time. In other dialogues Plato is much less sympathetic to literature, and it is evident that he would admit poetry into his ideal society only under a paralysing censorship. He objects in particular to drama because it appeals especially to the ignorant, debilitates the community by appealing to the emotions and not to reason, and propagates blasphemous and impossible ideas about the deity (e.g. by repeating stories of strife between gods). These criticisms are important chiefly for the reply which they drew from Aristotle.