Latest / Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs / Season 4, Episode 11: James Romm, Plato and the Tyrant

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Season 4, Episode 11: James Romm, Plato and the Tyrant · Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Jeffrey Sachs.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Book Club, a monthly conversation with world-leading authors who have written scintillating, inspiring, and remarkably important books about history, social justices, and the challenges of building a decent world.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited today to be speaking with Professor James Romm, the James Ottaway Professor of Classics at Bard College, who has written an absolutely wonderful book, Plato and the Tyrant.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I loved this book, so I'm very excited to speak with you, James, about it and to let everyone in on this uh phenomenal story.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it goes back, I guess, uh 2,000 almost 400 years about the great philosopher that we know, Plato, getting into some real politics.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you tell the story beautifully, and I I want to learn more about it with you.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for joining today.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Jeff.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me on.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a a book uh about, of course, one of the most important thinkers of all time.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's been said that all of Western philosophy is but but a footnote to Plato.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I'm roughly quoting uh Alfred North Whitehead uh properly.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Plato uh is the great philosopher who invents the academy, uh, so we still are academics uh because of uh Plato's academy.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we think of Plato in very rarefied terms, I must say, of high theory, wonderful dialogues, the remarkable texts of the Republic and other great dialogues that you've written about and that we've all read and enjoyed throughout our lifetime.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I somewhat knew that he got involved a bit in uh policy advising, let's put it that way, uh, which always attracted me because I have spent most of my career doing uh some policy advising, failing on many occasions, and I always uh took uh some comfort in the fact that even Plato failed in a way, but I didn't really know the story until you brought it to life.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So could you set the scene for people uh where we have listeners from all over the world?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some may have read extensively uh Plato's dialogue, some may barely know who he is, but we want them to know, and we want them to know the uh the great drama uh of this story.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I'll add at the beginning, because we'll talk about it, what is so wonderful about your book is not only the rather thrilling discussion about these attempts of Plato to be engaged in quite real politics in a city-state of Syracusa, now uh Syracusa of uh in Sicily, but also that you relate his experiences to his writings, that there's a dynamic underway, that Plato is thinking about the Republic, probably the most captivating book of political thought in Western history, certainly so entertaining, stimulating, one of the most read books till today.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you tell the story that he's writing it as he's in the midst of this political process.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I won't say any more.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let me turn it over to you to set the stage for the book.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you again, Jeff, and thank you to your listeners.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's wonderful to be able to talk at length in a forum like this.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So Plato was an Athenian, he spent all his life at Athens, and Athenians were expected to take part in the politics of their city and even to help govern it, alternating by turns.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: But Plato decided not to do that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: He saw grave mistakes on the part of the democracy, and then terrible abuses on the part of a military junta that took control briefly from the democracy and then was overthrown.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So both what we might call the far right and the far left, both a pluralistic government and an authoritarian government, he thought Athens had failed.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: But during this same period, the early part of his adult life, his 30s and 40s, a new kind of government arose in Sicily, in the city of Syracuse, as you say, we know it today as Syracusa.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Greek city.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: The eastern half of Sicily was entirely settled by Greeks, and Syracuse was the superpower of that island and of what I call the Greek West, Sicily and southern Italy, all Greek colonized, Greek settled.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for people who will get out their map, of course, Sicily is the uh southern uh part of Italy today, but when you go to Syracusa, uh as uh my wife and I were lucky to do several years ago, it is Magna Grecia.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's really uh greater Greece.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing, uh actually, to see uh Greek civilization before your eyes, and it's uh wonderful to visit.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's absolutely uh there in uh in in real life, the Greek presence.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess at this stage it was not only a major Greek city, but really a powerhouse of of the time.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we're about ten or so years after the end of the Peloponnesian War, the war between Athens and Sparta on mainland Greece, which had greatly diminished both of those superpowers.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: They had bloodied each other and battered each other, and mainland Greece was in very much of a diminished condition.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Syracuse in the Greek West had not undergone that damage, had stayed intact, and had risen to a new position of dominance.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Really was the most powerful Greek state of its day, under the rule of an autocrat named Dionysius.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, had defeated the Athenians who came to attack Syracusa a few decades before Plato arrived.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: The start of their rise was the defeat of an Athenian invasion during the middle of the Peloponnesian War, an invasion described in great detail by Thucydides.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of a dumb move, one would say.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily dumb.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know if I'd characterize it that way, but but uh badly handled, badly managed, and uh poorly led.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And really uh did contribute uh to Athens' uh ultimate defeat to Sparta, didn't it?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, very much so.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was really the turning point of the war.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that expedition, uh I don't recall around 411 BC or something like that.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the uh Peloponnesian wars, if I remember correctly, are usually dated to uh have ended around 404 BC.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and now at this point, as wars often do, both sides, no matter whether they won, uh which was Sparta or supposedly lost, which was Athens, both were weakened, and Syracuse was now the big success story.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it had its own problems in the form of the Carthaginians, the peoples of Carthage in North Africa, who had settled the western part of Sicily and were conducting very aggressive invasions in an attempt to capture the whole of the island for Carthage.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: So Syracuse was having first defeated the Athenian invasion, was under constant threat from a Carthaginian invasion.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And just to remind people, Carthage today is Tunis in Tunisia or nearby, but it was uh a major Mediterranean power, ostensibly originating uh from the Phoenicians with their home in the eastern Mediterranean, but it was a powerhouse that eventually was defeated by uh the Romans uh in several rounds of war.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: But at the time that we're talking about, this was still the time of Greek power.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was before the rise of uh Roman power in the region, and Sicily was divided uh between the West, controlled by Carthage, and the East, which was uh the Greek city-states.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And under this threat or um pressure from Carthage coming from west to east, the uh Syracusans, experiencing the kind of strain and social discord that happens in a city under threat decided to turn to a charismatic young man, a man only in his early twenties, who stood before them in their assembly and told them that their general staff was betraying them.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: They were all crooked and on the take, and their only hope of survival was to toss them all out and appoint him to their staff to lead their military effort.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And in a wave of enthusiasm, the assembly put him in control, and he used that position of power to solidify a military dictatorship.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Tyranus or uh Stratigos?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So his official title that was given to him by the Assembly was Stratigos Autocrator, a general with plentipotentiary power, the power to act on his own authority without consulting the government.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we might say commander-in-chief.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: But he went on to assume other powers beyond anything that the Constitution had provided for.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So how does Plato get into this story?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So all this took place right around 400.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, fast forward 12 years to 388.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Plato's now about 40 years old, and he's making his first trip outside of Greece, outside of mainland Greece, and visiting cities in southern Italy and Sicily.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: His first tour abroad.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: His first tour abroad that we know of.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he made a very short trip to the city of Megara, which is only, I don't know, a couple of hours from Athens.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: This was his first real trip abroad, we might say, even though he's visiting other Greeks, he's going across the sea.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And by then had he already established uh his academy?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh was he already an academician?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: But he had begun writing The Republic.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we know this because the uh early portion of the Republic, I argue in my book, and I think it's generally accepted, the Republic was written over the course of decades.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was a work that Plato just could not put down.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: He he kept adding to it, splicing pieces together, making a composite out of disparate pieces.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: The first piece we know was already in circulation before he left for Italy, because it's parodied in a comedy of Aristophanes that preceded this journey.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So wow.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that I didn't realize.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Already.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he's circulating a manuscript already.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Some early version or some piece that later became part of Republic, yes.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And for all the listeners, if you haven't read Republic, please find some time to do so.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I happened, I have to tell you, listen to it as an audiobook during the pandemic when we had time on our hands and uh I would walk for long hours.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And since it is a dialogue, it's so wonderful to listen to, actually, as a dialogue, also, but it's thoroughly mind uh bending, uh provoking, hilarious in parts, uh incredibly creative, I find it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's really his Magnum opus, it's the only work that he devoted that much labor to.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's an anecdote, probably apocryphal, but still revealing, that on his deathbed after he passed at age 81, a tablet was found next to him on which he'd been revising the opening sentence in every possible way.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So he still was hammering away at it in his last hours.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But all his life he was trying to figure out what is the successful city and what is the successful citizen that resembles the successful city, and how do the two fit together?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's really a passionate look at what could we aspire to in our political life and in our individual life to be uh balanced, just, sane individuals.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And just is the key word there.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: The alternate title for the Republic, probably already used of it in antiquity, is on justice.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because the question that starts the dialogue and that drives much of the discussion is what is justice?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can justice make us happy?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Is it better than injustice, even if you assume that you won't be caught doing crimes, you can get away with anything.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why would a person who can get away with anything still behave in a just manner?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's a little digression, but could you take us through that?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's Thrasomachis, is that right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: The cloak of invisibility.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's actually Glaucon who introduced the story of the ring of invisibility.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, sorry, please remind me.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: The ring of invisibility.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're all familiar with Tolkien's ring, right, that makes Frodo turn invisible.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So Glaucon was Plato's older brother.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Plato put his older brother as the main supporting character to Socrates in this dialogue, which is fascinating that he wanted it to pertain to his own family.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Glaucon tells a story that a shepherd in what is now Western Turkey had found a ring that when he put it on and twisted it made him invisible, and he could therefore get away with anything.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he used this power to seduce the queen, insinuate himself into the palace, and kill the king and take his place and become the ruler of Lydia.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: So Glaucon asks Socrates, if a just man had this ring and an unjust man had another such ring, would they behave any differently?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: What is there about justice that would make us want to do it even if there's no danger of being caught?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that launches the whole discussion that leads to the creation of an ideal city, a city that's perfectly just because Plato's thesis is that the city, city-state, is just a blown-up version as an enlarged version of an individual's soul.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can find where justice is in a city, you can also define it in an individual and prove that it would make both the city and the person sublimely happy.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is interesting to ask what Donald Trump would do with such a ring.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it it it actually gets the story.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: He already has it.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't he?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we seem to understand what he does with it exactly.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it relates very much to uh Plato going off to Syracusa, in fact, doesn't it?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So part of the thesis of Republic, the ideal state, the perfectly just city-state, has to be ruled by a philosopher.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: A person with absolute power, but who understands the nature of justice and will therefore rule in a just manner because he or she knows that that will produce happiness both for the ruler and for the ruled.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: When Plato went to Syracuse, so going back to 388 BC, the starting point of my narrative, Dionysius has absolute power.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's the most powerful ruler in Greece.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's the first true dictator with complete power over a powerful city that the Greeks have seen in centuries, really, or at least a century.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Plato saw this as an opportunity to try to turn a person with that much power in a just direction and therefore create a more just society, a new model of government, really.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: The government of the philosopher king.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this was trying to figure out how to break this uh puzzle that Republic wants a uh a virtuous leader, but how do you get a virtuous leader if the public is not virtuous?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: They won't bring forward a virtuous leader.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: If the leader is not virtuous, the the public is certainly not going to learn the virtues, uh, and you get stuck.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you have to break that vicious circle of leaders and citizens, uh, both behaving unvirtuously and reinforcing each other in that.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow, into that mix, somewhere, justice has to appear.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is the Deus ex machina or the Plato ex machina that somehow uh somebody lands uh in power that will break the vicious circle and actually rule justly and instill justice in his city.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: In Republic, Plato lays out two paths where politics could be transformed in a positive direction.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Either a philosopher has to be put in power, or someone in power has to be converted to philosophy.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of the two.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're still waiting.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: So does Plato wangle an invitation for himself, or how does it happen that he uh arrives in Syracuse to try out his approach?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we have different accounts of how he got in in the first visit.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: He makes three visits over the course of his life, and the first one in 388 is explained differently by Plato himself, who in one of his letters he says that more or less it was a destiny, a kind of fate that drew him on.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: He leaves it very vague.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Other sources tell us that he was invited by a man named Dion, who was the brother-in-law of the ruler and a great fan of Plato's philosophy.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: He already had read something or knew something of Plato's thought and admired it and wanted to learn more.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it was he who engineered Plato's invitation to court.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a writer and someone reads your book and likes it, you might get a call to show up someplace.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, uh, you might get a call, come to Syracusa.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: My brother-in-law has uh become the all-powerful leader, do something to help.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting is that um Dion was not in the royal family per se.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: That is, he was not a blood relative of the ruler Dionysius.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: His sister is the wife.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: His sister had married Dionysius.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was one of his two wives.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: He had decided he was um permitted to have more than one wife, which was a new thing for the Greeks, but he was experimenting with the powers of Eastern monarchs, Persian monarchs who were traditionally polygamous.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Not being in the royal family per se, but also having a very high position at court, being a trusted advisor of the ruler, he was in a unique position and also was deeply attached, both ideologically and emotionally, to Plato.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we know this from Plato himself, who writes about Dion in his letters, and also wrote a poem about him after his death, in which he expresses really intense romantic feelings.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's quite possible the two were lovers, but in any case, they were deeply bonded at the level of values and ethics.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Plato arrives to the court.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't know it a lot about this first of the three visits.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: We only have legendary accounts.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have Plato's own version.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have several legendary accounts in which uh there was a dialogue between the two, a conference, and Plato said some ethical things, there are different versions in different sources, basically saying you're not behaving like a just man.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the uh ruler Dionysius got furious, had him tossed out of court, and then had him sold into slavery on the way back to Greece on the island of Egena, just off the coast of Athens.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's quite possible that this actually happened.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: We we have no way to confirm the legends, but they're consistent on the point that Plato was sold as a slave briefly before his friends got him out and freed him, at the command of Dionysius of Syracuse.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I would have told him to be careful what he says at the court, actually.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I could have given him some practical advice, even if you don't quite like what you hear.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: At least get home intact, you know.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he may have very well gone out on a limb.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: He was inexperienced.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: This was his first foray into practical advising.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly so.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a quick, uh pretty quick uh trip, in fact.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: It seems that they had one conversation at most, if it even took place, we can't say for sure that it did, but he was quickly booted out, perhaps I think likely sold as a slave.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then his friends freed him and got him back to Athens, and it was shortly thereafter he established the academy, his institute of higher learning, and began attracting students from all across the Greek world.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a probably a close connection between those events.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: What he had seen in Syracuse convinced him that he had to He had to scale up.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: He had to scale up, exactly.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: He had to start training ambitious young men.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: They were mostly men, although two women did study at the academy, to be the future leaders of Greece.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: The Academy, in addition to being a scientific and you know, a think tank with theoretical ideas, also had practical goals, training the future leaders who could then go back to their own cities and try to influence government.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: At Columbia, we would call it SEPA, uh the School of International and Public Affairs.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at Harvard, it would be the Kennedy School.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea was uh we need to get people who know how to run the business of government.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Another writer, person in my field has compared it to the Rand Corporation.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Taking the best and the brightest, trying to train them for future leadership.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that uh starts uh soon after he returns from the first visit.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's very interesting.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, directly after, as far as we know.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Did Dion ever come actually to the academy?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, he did.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we can get to that.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that happens after the second visit, which is 20 years down the road.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: So how does that go?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh no doubt reflecting, okay, I was almost sold into slavery.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm maybe not the most prudent thing to go back, but 20 years later, in 367, yeah now, he takes his second trip to Syracuse.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: I like that again, as you know, someone who's failed many times in economic advice, you try and you try again.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh what what happens the second time and what brings him there?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or how does it work out?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So in 367, Dionysius the Elder, so now we have to start calling him Dionysius the Elder because his son is also named Dionysius and therefore the younger.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So Dionysius the Elder, after a 38-year reign.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, it's a long reign as an autocrat.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: As a successful autocrat, having built up an immensely powerful and uh both militarily and in terms of state security apparatus and financially, he had fortified his rule with everything he knew how to do.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: He died in 367, and rule passed to his son, Dionysius the Younger, who at that time was only 30 years old, and from what we hear had not been very well trained or educated.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: His father had regarded him with a certain mistrust or maybe even dislike, not seeing him as having you know the right stuff, perhaps maybe thinking he'd eventually replace him with a different successor, but that never happened.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Dionysius the Younger came to power with Dion, who is his uncle by marriage, still very much a power at court, that now the senior statesman, senior advisor, some 20 years older.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um Dion comes to this young man and says, I have the solution for you.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: You can be a beloved, successful, and admired monarch if you get some education from Plato.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Some tutoring.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Dionysius the younger, now I'll just call him Dionysius, we were only talking about the younger, bought into this and insisted that Plato be invited to court.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we have the words that Dion wrote to Plato, because Plato recorded them, quoted them in his own letter, saying essentially, this is our big opportunity.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked, we we've written about philosopher kings, about the chance to make a ruler philosophic, and here's our opportunity.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Plato went a second time with those hopes in mind.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: I understand it.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's the moment.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty years ago didn't work, but now we're back.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: The kid's gonna do it.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we're uh now Dionysus uh the younger.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's 367.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Plato arrives again in Syracusa, and what happens on this second round?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it seems that this younger Dionysius was actually quite interested in philosophy and really did see Plato as an asset to his rule.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Someone who could educate him, make him a more serious person, and give him a firmer foundation for his power.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is, he could rule based on the love of his people, not uh fear.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: But there was the problem of Plato's relationship to Dion.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: The two of them were much closer in temperament and much more emotionally bonded than Plato could ever be with this 30-year-old despot, who, by the way, was also alcoholic.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: The whole family, it seems, were big drinkers, and he was especially big.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: You make a big point about the Syracusan table, meaning uh the luxury of court life, yes, as uh actually being uh legendary in the extremes of pleasure that that attended to life, drink, food, and the rest.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Plato's first visit to Syracuse, he was horrified at the level of hedonism, the banqueting, the sex, the drinking, especially really put him off.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this young ruler had grown up in that environment and had become addicted to these pleasures, and Plato had scant hope of reforming him, although he was determined to try.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Dionysius saw this close bond between his uncle and Plato, and it made him fiercely jealous.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Possibly even with romantic overtones, as I mentioned, there was quite possibly a romantic bond between Plato and Dion.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: In any case, those around the ruler and we're familiar with this pattern in modern autocracies, that the court divides into factions, those who want to be close to the ruler and get his favor, badmouth others who are not so close and try to make them the enemy.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what happened to Plato and Dion.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Those who were in the inner circle of the ruler and wanted his approval, wanted to be close to him, whispered in his ear, these guys are a conspiracy.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're out to uh topple you.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're out to overthrow you and take your place, put Dion in your place.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Which was not that far-fetched.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not wildly implausible because he was very senior and the uncle of this kid, but the brother-in-law of the longtime uh ruler.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and also the brother-in-law of the younger ruler.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's complicated.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's a genealogical chart to help you with this in.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: We can just call him the uncle, we'll save ourselves some trouble.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: I missed that fine point.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, because he had also married Dionysius's Dionysius the younger's sister.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's correct.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: So he was connected to the tyrant house in two ways.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: He was brother-in-law twice over.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there was good grounds for suspecting him of designs on the throne.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it wasn't a throne really, but it was, you know, position of absolute power.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: And those who wanted to demonize Dion made great hay out of this, and eventually got Dionysius so mistrustful, so paranoid, that he found a pretext to banish Dion from Syracuse and hold hostage his estate and his family so that he couldn't do any harm to the regime.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And was Plato there when Dion was banished?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because that would be rather uncomfortable.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was very uncomfortable.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Plato was left more or less stranded at court, very much under suspicion, but at the same time sought after by the ruler, trying to get his approval and show him to be a supporter of the regime, which Plato was very reluctant to do.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: He held the young man at arm's length and tried to argue the case for Dion, who he felt had been very badly treated.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: So a very tense relationship developed.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that digs you deeper into the hole, actually, under the circumstance.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: It digs you deeper, exactly.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Plato stranded.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: What happens?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing good.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's very much at the mercy of this all-powerful ruler who now deeply mistrusts him at the same time as is unwilling to let him go, because to see him depart would cast doubts on Plato's support for the regime and make Dionysius look bad.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: So Plato was effectively under house arrest for a short time, until a war broke out in which the ruler felt he needed to be rid of this problem and sent Plato home, but only on the promise that he would come back again when the war was over.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: First time almost in slavery, second time house arrest.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now uh six years later, if I have it right.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's called back.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is he summoned back by Dionysus again?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Dionysius is determined to get Plato on his side and use him as a uh bolster for his moral authority.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Plato was reluctant to go, but Dion, who's now in Athens with Plato, made the case that this is the best way to help me, help me get back to my home and my family.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you go, you can plead my case in person with the tyrant.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: And on that basis, Plato agreed to go.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, pleading Dion's case, as you say, was just a way to tick Dionysius off and make matters much worse.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And things started to go downhill very quickly as soon as Plato arrived, even more quickly than they did uh the previous time.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's actually political turmoil that occurs.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we're only at about the halfway point of my story, but I will try to telescope some of the events in the second half.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, I'd love to spend hours, but yes.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a long story.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: It spans about 30 years.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually, Dion, who has been dispossessed of home and family and his estate, decides he has to redress the situation by invading Sicily and overthrowing the tyrant.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: So he really does try to take over.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: He really does.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he succeeds remarkably, but not totally, because the tyrant has a secure base, a fortress on Sicily in Syracuse, which makes him almost impregnable.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is that Ortigia, actually?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Ortigia, which is now a very beautiful.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's where we stayed.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's where everyone stays.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's the the great tourist tourist locale.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh beautiful and still has some ruins from Greek antiquity.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at the end of the island.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: This was a redoubt in which the tyrant had taken up position with his troops and his armory and could not be dislodged.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, the city becomes split and a terrible civil war develops that really almost wrecks the entire city.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: In the course of about six years, it was mostly in ruins.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Plato is watching all this from Athens in uh what must have been uh horror at seeing events which he had helped set in motion play out in this horribly destructive way.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the letters that we have of his, and we can talk about those if you like, uh, because they're controversial, but the letters that I believe are his genuine letters are his attempts to try to rectify the situation, get Syracuse back on track, and also extricate himself, made clear that he'd be.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my fault.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my fault.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: I behaved perfectly well, and things just got totally out of hand.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is absolutely fascinating, and I wish we had time uh in our talk right now, which unfortunately we don't, to go into the question of which letters are really Plato's.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Letter seven, I think, is uh absolutely central to the story, which you and other scholars think is is uh at Plato's hand, and it's absolutely fascinating, also, and many others are disputed.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to go into that, and I and the book does uh wonderfully, so it's very fascinating.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Just to ask one question this story, Syracuse itself, I should say, was so important that this story really was told in enough times in the ancient world that you have multiple sources that you can kind of get a uh a view of this from a number of different writers.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, unfortunately, the best sources, the two contemporary writers who were witnesses, have both perished, Philistis and Timaeus, and we only have the accounts derived from theirs in subsequent writers.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: We also have Plutarch's Life of Dion, which is a hugely important source, and was based on largely on those earlier writers.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how interesting.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't read the Plutarch, but he's paired with Cicero, is that right, in the parallel lives?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, with Brutus.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry, with Brutus.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: With Brutus.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry, even more to the point.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: With Brutus, because both were thought of as philosophers who then became political leaders and who bumped off or ousted tyrants.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the parallelism.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, I have to go run to read that, which which I have not uh done.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: But to come back now to Athens, Plato's gone three times.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit of a mess.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: He has his story, and towards the end of his life, he writes a very long tract, which is not a great dialogue, but is another attempt at statecraft, the laws, uh a very different kind of book, much more sober, uh, not the perfect state, but rather a seasoned, I would say, uh mature view.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what can we really do?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what does he say in the laws is different from the republic?
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the laws concerns what Plato calls in that work the second best state.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: He says the best state was essentially the one I described in Republic, but that's out of reach by this time.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a little hard.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: I try I tried three times.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: He says it could only be inhabited by the by gods or the children of gods.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's superhuman.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: For humans, we have to simply have a very detailed, very strict law code, and the laws lays out that code.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically a list of precepts by which the second best state will be run.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't thought about it, but no doubt Plato's student Aristotle had watched this and had taken note.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because, of course, famously, Aristotle is much more down-to-earth than his teacher.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't write quite as well.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: He probably lectured and someone took the notes down.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Plato is just glorious in the writing.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: But Aristotle probably learned some lessons from this, didn't he?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because the politics is a a rather straightforward, very practical account.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Things can go wrong.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how things can go less wrong.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Here is the better way to do things.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: He has one line in I think in The Politics where he says if a perfect, virtuous leader arises, they should have all the power.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: But most of the book is nothing about that.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the book is very practical, division of labor, mixed government uh of a practical kind.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the laws is in a way a prelude to Aristotelian political thought.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing story.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I came to all of this, I have to say, James, you know, later in life, because when you're trained as an economist, it's uh kind of a it's not the right training, I would say, uh, to uh get the appreciation.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: But once you get pulled into this world, there's no end of fascination and how remarkable it is that these issues uh that Plato and then Aristotle considered with this burning passion.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: We feel that passion today, and we feel the incredible relevance of it today because you don't read this as ancient literature, you read this as a drama of today.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible how relevant it is.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the Republic, as you said at the outset, is still one of our most widely read ancient works.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's the most widely assigned text in the top universities of the U.S., according to a recent survey.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: So this I hope opens some windows.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is a fitting message as we leave this discussion all too soon.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: But for everyone listening, if you haven't read The Republic, you just heard it's the most read and assigned text.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Get The Republic, please get this book alongside so that you're not reading The Republic as uh a rarefied text, but as a drama of one of the greatest thinkers of all time and one of the greatest stylists of all time in writing.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do, you will also find great thinking and uh great style in Professor Rahm's book on Plato and the tyrant.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let me thank you so much for joining Book Club today.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've enriched my understanding and everyone that is listening, and we're really grateful to you for being with us and also grateful for this wonderful book.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Great to be with you.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining in the conversation.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe, rate, and write a review on whatever platform you listen for your podcast.