Plato, whose parents were both from distinguished Athenian families-his stepfather, an associate of Pericles, had been an active participant in the political and cultural life of Periclean Athens-had apparently been destined for an aristocratic political career.

The excesses of Athenian political life seem to have led him to abandon these ambitions, however.

Socrates, who had been a close friend of Plato's family, had a profound influence on the young man (as his writings will later attest).

Following Socrates' ingestion of a lethal dose of hemlock, his twenty-nine-year-old pupil retires from active Athenian life to begin traveling around the Mediterranean.