Plato(428/427 Bce–337/336 Bce)
The philosopher Plato was born to an aristocratic Athenian family. His father Ariston was said to be descended from the legendary King Codrus; the family of his mother Perictione was prominent in more historical times. Dropides, an ancestor of Perictione, was a relative and friend of Solon (as Plato himself reports in the Timaeus, 20e). After Plato's father's death, Perictione was remarried to Pyrilampes, a political associate of Pericles and Athenian ambassador to the Persian king. Perictione's brother Charmides and her cousin Critias had a more sinister career, as members (and in Critias's case, ringleader) of the Thirty Tyrants who ruled Athens in a bloody junta, after the defeat by Sparta in 404 BCE.
Plato's family is well represented in the dialogues, perhaps to compensate for his own absence. In the Charmides, situated thirty years before the rule of the Thirty, Plato introduces his uncle Charmides as a promising young nobleman, under the influence of his older cousin Critias. The reference here to Charmides' family allows Plato to sing the praises of his own household, as the union of two outstanding families "than which no more noble union can be found in Athens" (Charmides 157e). The two families in question are those of Perictione and Pyrilampes, Plato's mother and stepfather.
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