TIMAEUS or ON NATURE: Platonic physics. The universe, the soul of man, the soul of the world. An exposition of the cosmological, physical, medical, and anthropological views of the philosopher, sometimes closely resembling mythological narrative and at other times strictly scientific.

CRITIAS or ATLANTIS: An unfinished dialogue in which Critias narrates how the city of Athens was organized nine thousand years ago and how it repelled the invasion of the inhabitants of Atlantis.

Plato was born in 427 BC, a scion of a prominent Athenian family. He received an excellent education and was exposed to the Greek philosophical currents. However, it was the influence of Socrates, through his life, philosophy, and death, that decisively shaped Plato's moral and spiritual essence. The great philosopher was the reason the young Plato turned to philosophy, and the Socratic conceptual framework became the foundation for the later Platonic theory of Ideas.

Plato deeply interpreted Socrates as a man and teacher, capturing his personality in many of his works. He traveled to Egypt, Cyrene, and Greater Greece, where he unsuccessfully attempted to implement his political principles in organizing the Greek cities of Sicily.

In 387 BC, he founded the Academy in Athens, a renowned center of philosophy and the Muses, which lasted almost ten centuries, until the time of Justinian. Plato dedicated himself to teaching and writing until his death in 348 BC.

His works, all of which have survived, were classified by Thrasyllus into nine tetralogies. Almost all belong to the genre of dialogue, through which Plato emerged not only as a leading philosopher but also as a true poet. His teaching stems from the doctrines of Greek thought, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Ionian philosophy, and of course, the Socratic discourse, ultimately taking shape as Plato's personal creation in a colossal philosophical system.

His philosophy—ethical, ontological, political—is the foundation of global Idealism and perhaps influenced the thoughts of all eras more than any other.