SPECIAL WAS THIS FAMOUS PHILOSOPHER ALSO A SLAVE?
In the spring of 384 BC Plato was on his way home from Syracuse, the greatest Greek city in Sicily. He had left Athens the previous year for an extended visit to southern Italy and Sicily. Several ancient biographers tell us that at least one of his purposes was to explore the volcanic terrain of Sicily, and especially Mount Etna. That seems likely in itself, and some familiarity with Sicily's turbulent landscape is reflected in the fantastic geography with which Plato concludes the dialogue . But his main purpose was to get better acquainted with Pythagoreans and Pythagorean thought. Greater Greece, as it was known – Magna Graecia, southern Italy, and Sicily – had been the centre of Pythagoreanism for well over 100 years. So, he stayed for weeks at a time in Taras (Tarentum) – where he got to know Archytas, one of the most important mathematicians of the time – and in Locri, before moving on to
