Plato, born in Athens around 427 BC, was considered to be one of the earliest philosophers. He lived during the Age of Synthesis. After his father\'s death his mother married a friend of Pericles so he was politically connected to both the oligarchy and democracy. After the Peloponnesian War, his mother\'s brother and uncle tried to persuade him to join in the oligarchical rules of Athens. Instead, Plato joined his two older brothers in becoming a student of Socrates. Socrates forced them to challenge then to examine their ideas and beliefs critically, which was annoying and antagonizing many in the process. Socrates seems to have adopted as his own the motto of the Delphic Oracle, \"Know thyself\"; and, while trying to dissociate himself from the sophists\' brand of instruction for hire, he taught his students that, \"it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the......
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