PLATO AND THE TYRANT: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece

Romm draws on Plato's personal letters, documents long kept in obscurity, to show how a philosopher helped topple the leading Greek power of the era: the opulent city of Syracuse. There, Plato encountered two authoritarian rulers, a father and son both named Dionysius, and tried to steer them toward philosophy. Illus.