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After a few weeks in Philosophy 101, the average undergraduate can rattle off the names of the three “great” philosophers of the Hellenic world: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Though each of these Greeks proffered their own brand of intellectual gifts shaping Western thought for centuries, it is the middle man who has been written into the pantheon of queer history.
But should Plato’s name be written in marble (which seems appropriate to the time period he dominated) or written in pencil? After all – Plato has already lent his name across the ages to the very notion of “platonic love” despite his supposed romantic and perhaps sexual connections to other prominent men around him. Even if these purported affairs were the stuff of imagination, platonic inclinations are hardly outside the bounds of the queer experience historically or today (as the aroace writing this can attest).
Where, then, does the evidence take us? What were Plato’s (extensive) musings on the subjects of love and lust? Was he the arbiter of “platonic” affection as his writings might suggest, or was he preaching to himself and failing his own ideals simultaneously? The tentative answers to these queries take us through the tumultuous classical world of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, at the arguable height of Greek culture, and land us on the island of Sicily where Plato once envisioned a “Republic” shining in the Mediterranean. Sicily is where Plato’s dreams went to die, perhaps alongside the man reputed to have been his lover.
Plato’s Greece
The great philosopher at the heart of this discussion lived at the apogee of an ancient world in transition. Few other men were as aware of the fact, and few could have claimed to have sacrificed as much as he in an effort to shape that brave new world ahead.
Plato was born in or around 427 BCE, most likely in Athens, into a family at the heart of that city’s seemingly endless power struggles.[1] During Plato’s youth, the “cradle of democracy” was rocked by internecine strife as the infamous “Council of Thirty” – some of whom were among Plato’s close relations – instigated a brutal oligarchy.[2] In 399 BCE, Plato’s own mentor, the philosopher icon Socrates, was executed by a vengeful democratic leadership keen to punish its perceived enemies. Among Socrates’ charges was corrupting the Athenian youth through his teaching; little wonder, then, that Plato would harbor a deep hatred for those men and their notion of populism which destroyed the life of a man who shaped his own.[3]
Despite these scars, Plato could never quite escape politics – however violent, vile and self-interested they became in his Athenian homeland. Though he devoted himself to philosophical inquiry, Plato considered (as was probably expected by his aristocratic circle) adopting a political role in the city as a young adult.[4] For whatever reason, or many interlayered reasons, Plato grew despondent of any hope for meaningful sociopolitical change in the city which raised him.
But Plato certainly kept busy. By the time he neared middle age, Plato was already a recognized intellectual heavyweight of the Hellenic world; his essential works, including the Symposium, his various Dialogues, the Apology, and later Republic, reveal the depth and breadth of his views on human nature, societal betterment and the nature of honorable leadership. Plato may have despised the venality of Greek political strife – but he had robust opinions on the proper nature of government.
The OG Republican
What, then, were these views, which held such powerful pull on the philosopher’s imagination that he would search the known world for men to exemplify them? One analysis of Plato’s politics summarizes with deceptive simplicity: “political justice and human happiness require kings to become philosophers or philosophers to become kings.”[5] Plato’s Republic, likely written around 375 BCE, provides the foundation of this worldview and the impetus for his voyages to Sicily which are at the heart of this story.
His idealized “Philosopher-King” rules in a form of absolutism but provides justice and prosperity to his citizenry from the fount of his deep learning in both goodness and justice. By extension, the rest of the citizenry dutifully fulfills their roles in society (and to each other) by not seeking to usurp prerogatives. Rather, each class of mankind – from slaves to farmers to aristocrats to the tyrant himself – gratefully accepts the Philosopher-King’s moral leadership. In turn, all stakeholders respect and tolerate sharp limitations on individual freedom.
Classicist Dr. Daniel Graham notes that Plato is aware of the difficulties in finding, then nurturing, a true Philosopher-King capable of enforcing this “just” political dynamic upon a community. Plato knew as well as any man that, whatever his musings, the real world is messy. Despite his idealism, Plato’s varied life experiences had made him all too aware of the vagaries of human nature. The solution, at least as he relays it in Republic, is to systematically breed promising young leaders amongst a community’s most upstanding males and females, then rigorously hone those birthed within the confines of upright philosophical education.[6] Such strange social engineering strikes modern readers as ludicrous, and problematic, for good reason.
Ultimately, however, Plato would have a chance to test his theory: that a suitable noble youth, born into the “leadership” class destined to rule just societies, could be taught the art of good governance through intensive discipline and self-control. Such a leader would never be given to emotionality or passions; indeed, Plato’s other works (notably Symposium) affirm his dim view of the spectrum of human feeling which so often produced strife, conflict and disunity throughout society. Louis Crompton writes, “Plato’s ideal is wholly asexual; a Spartan at heart, he worships discipline, not liberty and spontaneity,” especially with respect to romantic love and sexuality.[7]
All of Plato’s moral and philosophical grounding would be tested – in more ways than one – during his notorious sojourns in Sicily.
Tyrants
So who were the men destined to be among Plato’s unwitting political experimentation? If classical Athens was a mess of internecine violence and ambition, the city of Syracuse was hardly better by the time Plato wound his way back there around 367 BCE. Plato had in fact visited the city’s royal court once before – a visit which ended in his own temporary imprisonment. Following that ignominious first impression, Plato’s contemporaries puzzled over why he should ever again visit the island of Sicily for any reason at all. After all, Plato had already founded the Athenian Academy many years before his return to Syracuse, presiding over its rise to fame and burnishing its scholastic reputation. The cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope quipped of his seabound colleague, “What was the need to sail to Syracuse? Wasn’t Attica producing olives by then?”[8]
But neither the olives nor the wine drew Athen’s finest son back to the shores of Sicily: he had sensed an opportunity. Or perhaps it was the invitation (one presumes on a fine royal letterhead) which compelled him first.
By the mid-4th century BCE, Syracuse was a traumatized city. Like many Greek cities of the era, it was lorded over by a tyrant, Dionysius I, and his upper cadre of grasping relatives and generals. Tyranny, in this era, was a normal arrangement (flickers of democracy were the exception, not the norm) and many tyrants ruled justly over prosperous and willing polities throughout the Greek islands and mainland. Dionysius I, however, was an entirely different matter: beginning in 405 BCE and through his death in 367, Dionysius had waged brutal military campaigns against other Greeks as well as Carthage.[9] In the process, he empowered his island home to dominance in Western Greece, but his visage became synonymous with military despotism and megalomania. Unsurprisingly, Syracuse and its tyrant was branded with a vile reputation in much of the rest of Greece, to the point that the Syracuse delegation was chased out of the 388 BCE Olympic Games.[10]
The death of Dionysius I, then well into his old age, in 367 was greeted with little sincere mourning; indeed, Syracuse looked forward to a bright new dawn with his passing into the long night. His son, Dionysius II, was in his early 30s when he ascended to his father’s tyranny. Dr. Graham writes that, despite his relatively mature age, the new tyrant “[l]acking in the experience and ruthlessness of his father…was a spoiled but insecure figure.”[11] He was not, however, without mentors. The principal advisor in the young ruler’s life at this stage was his uncle by marriage and apparent step-brother[12], Dion of Syracuse.
Dion, described later by Plutarch as possessing a “lofty character, magnanimous, and manly” was one of the island’s leading men through his close relationship with the former tyrant.[13] He was already a devotee of Plato and had been profoundly moved by the latter’s political idealism. Dion and Plato first met twenty years prior to the fateful ascension of Dion’s brother-nephew. Plato had paused in Syracuse for a shorter sojourn in 388 BCE amid a wider Mediterranean tour, then aged about forty – the trip which ended in his unlawful detainment and then brief enslavement. What he saw of the Syracuse royal court under Dionysius I hardly inspired him: one source argues “[t]he court at Syracuse was rife with suspicion, violence and hedonism” abetted by the then-tyrant’s obsessive and jealous monarchy.[14]
Certainly, the belligerent Dionysius I had little use for a whining, buzzkill intellectual and his notions of a “philosopher-king.” The ruler’s disgust with Plato brought about the latter’s detention, from which Plato ultimately freed himself and, one presumes, determined to put Sicily firmly in his personal rearview mirror. Unlike his monarch, however, Dion fell under Plato’s intellectual and personal influence during this turbulent period of his life. Undoubtedly, he was well aware of the bad blood between Dionysius I and the Athenian philosopher. Nevertheless, Plato and Dion remained in close contact for the next two decades as both men grew older and the opportunity for a political transition in Syracuse drew nearer. Little wonder, then, that Dion issued a missive to his friend once the old king was dead and a younger, more promising, ruler sat on his throne.
But the chance to mold a just monarch was perhaps not the only reason Dion sought to bring Plato back to the island, and the succession may not have been Plato’s only reason for returning. Plato himself later expressed little optimism for his second sojourn to the island:
“I took my departure, therefore, acting, so far as a man can act, in obedience to reason and justice, and for these reasons leaving my own occupations, which were certainly not discreditable ones, to put myself under a tyranny which did not seem likely to harmonize with my teaching or with myself.”[15]
Platonic Love?
However Plato felt about the regime-building project ahead of him, and whatever the odds stacked against him returning to the Syracuse court, Plato answered the call. This renewed Sicilian adventure would ultimately end as importunely as had his first, as the quote above from the infamous Letter 7 foreshadowed. Which begs the question: why return at all? It is here that the question of deeper motivations, and Plato’s relationship with Dion, comes into sharper focus.
Historians have argued for years on the nature of the relationship between Dion and Plato: interpretations range from a close, mutually beneficial political alliance to outright romantic and sexual lovers.
But if Plato “loved” Dion, what did that love mean or entail? “Platonic” has, after all, descended to our modern vernacular from the very man at the center of this discussion. That is not by accident: as noted, Plato’s ideal “philosopher-king” and indeed, a proper civilized man of any station, was defined by discipline. Such a man could never be driven by any passions, let alone physical lust, regardless of that lust’s orientation or object of desire.
Plato’s writings which consider homosexual love, in light of his possible emotional or otherwise affair with Dion, become especially notable in this context and merit further elucidation. True to form, Plato’s perspective on male love is complicated, nuanced and greatly shaped by the mores of the classical era to which he belonged. Those mores themselves were equally complex as attitudes toward homosexuality among men varied considerably throughout the Greek city-states and no singular cultural or legal prescription prevailed (a topic which my post on the Sacred Band of Thebes discusses in further detail).
At first glance, Plato seems to deride any “non-procreative sexual behavior,” in the final treatise he wrote, Laws, which were likely unfinished at his death.[16] This sentiment largely boiled down to Plato’s obsession with societal order and control, starting with the individual man. As he eloquently argued elsewhere in this volume, “[t]he first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.” This was especially central to his understanding of love, romance and sexual conduct. Plato’s disdain for men who were ruled by these sentiments – toward any gender – is evident both here and throughout his extensive catalogue of writings.
Rather, Plato seems to argue, a true and proper form of love – one which transcends the venality of human passions – is one which is centered on emotional and intellectual connection while eschewing sexual conquest. His writings in Symposium and Phaedrus hint at this interpersonal ideal: yearning might exist, perhaps even strongly (a telling admission), but partners who resisted these inclinations might achieve a higher state of intimacy and devotion.[17]
Indeed, Plato’s Scala Amoris, or Ladder of Love (as expressed through the character of Diotima in Symposium) takes this idea to a literal and figurative extreme: that a human first drawn to another through erotic interest might eventually “climb the ladder” which enables them to love the other’s soul, then society, and ultimately the adoration of knowledge as the highest notion of Beauty.[18]
Understandably, the Scala Amoris strikes modern readers as borderline ludicrous. It may have even struck Plato’s contemporaries as an oddly impersonal and deterministic vision of love. Perhaps Plato, by then eighty years old, was still trying to convince himself that his own passions might yet be subdued to a holier cause. On the other hand, perhaps he had experienced such an intensive, but not sexual, love – one which he knew by then he would never again repeat.
“Zeal and Attentiveness”
When Plato returned to Sicily in the mid-360s BCE, his friend, colleague and ally Dion was ecstatic. In Dion’s eyes, Plato’s return meant a potential revolution in history was upon them. As he had written to Plato earlier, “all our hopes will be fulfilled of seeing the same persons at once philosophers and rulers of mighty states,” if they succeeded in turning the tide in Syracuse.[19]
Dion apparently believed that, together, he and Plato had everything to play for. Plutarch’s account of these events describes their partnership, begun a generation earlier, as “not of man’s devising, but some heavenly power, as it would seem, laying far in advance of the time a foundation for the liberty of Syracuse, and devising a subversion of tyranny, brought Plato from Italy to Syracuse and made Dion his disciple.”[20]
The attraction, at least intellectual, was mutual: Caroline Araújo writes that Dion was “the most extraordinary young man Plato had ever met,” uniquely inclined toward the sort of growth in virtue which Plato’s writing has immortalized.[21] Plato similarly acknowledged that Dion bore toward him a “zeal and attentiveness I had never encountered in any young man.”[22]
At first, all seemed to proceed according to plan: Dion had convinced the young Dionysius II to invite his philosopher ally back to Syracuse, and the youthful tyrant agreed. Indeed, Dionysius II even sent a large, expensive Greek trireme ship to collect Plato from Athens in high style. He likewise spared no expense on the Athenian’s arrival:
“For a royal chariot, magnificently adorned, awaited [Plato] as he left his trireme, and the tyrant offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the great blessing that had been bestowed upon his government.”[23]
Dion must have been delighted with his friend’s heroic welcome. Almost immediately, the pair set about working together to maximize their influence over the young ruler. Plato leaned heavily on his rhetorical skills, and wider sterling reputation, to introduce a sobering and intellectual influence over the heretofore raucous and debauched Syracuse court life. Academic reasoning and learned discourse soon replaced rowdy banquets, and the tyrant himself showed visible signs of being induced to a more honorable (platonic?) mode of life and governance through his improved behavior.
Green-Eyed Monster
However, as Araújo emphasizes, Dion had made a critical mistake: he overestimated his ability to manipulate events and the tyrant simultaneously.[24] For Dion had rivals aplenty in his home court – notably, the diarist and later Admiral Philistus who had served Dionysius I.[25] Within weeks of his grand arrival, the Philistus faction at court grew anxious about Plato’s influence and how they might intersect with Dion’s ambitions. Plato himself admitted in Letter 7: “I found the court of Dionysius full of intrigues and of attempts to create in the sovereign ill-feeling against Dion. I combated these as far as I could, but with very little success.”[26]
Indeed, Letter 7 implies that the courtiers’ fears surrounding Plato’s influence over Dionysius II were based on more than simple politics. Plato uses this letter, written after the events in question, to address a strange accusation: “a statement had now been circulated contradicting the previous rumors and giving out that Dionysius was becoming extraordinarily attached to Plato.”
Even more curiously, Plato goes on to write:
“What were the facts about this attachment? I must tell the truth. As time went on, and as intercourse made him acquainted with my disposition and character, he did become more and more attached to me, and wished me to praise him more than I praised Dion, and to look upon him as more specially my friend than Dion, and he was extraordinarily eager about this sort of thing. But when confronted with the one way in which this might have been done, if it was to be done at all, he shrank from coming into close and intimate relations with me as a pupil and listener to my discourses on philosophy, fearing the danger suggested by mischief-makers, that he might be ensnared, and so Dion would prove to have accomplished all his object. I endured all this patiently, retaining the purpose with which I had come and the hope that he might come to desire the philosophic life. But his resistance prevailed against me.”
Plato seems to suggest that the young monarch, Dionysius II, became especially devoted to the point of violent jealousy of the philosopher’s (pre-existing) relationship with Dion. Plato attempted to redirect this affection, clarifying to the tyrant that what he desired was the young monarch’s adoration not of himself, but rather of the moral compass which Plato’s rhetorical work pointed him toward. But Dionysius II does not take kindly to this admonition. In his mind, aligning himself with the model of the “philosopher-king” provokes the very suspicions which the Philistus faction had warned the tyrant of: that Plato might subdue or otherwise disempower him, rendering his monarchy impotent and unworthy of his father’s legacy.
Whether or not this jealousy was purely “platonic” (pardoning the now inevitable pun) or pointed toward another facet (perceived or tacitly acknowledged) of Dion and Plato’s partnership is probably unknowable. Either way, Dr. Graham suggests that Plato was fast wearying of the mercurial young ruler when his central motivation for gracing his court at all – Dion – was on the way out.
The Philistus faction soon had the perfect weapon to turn against Dion written by his own hand: a letter from Dion to the Carthaginian king which appeared to show the former interfering in affairs of state – affairs which should have been the exclusive domain of Dionysius II. The tyrant, already evidently jealous of Dion’s proximity to Plato and wary of both their intentions, promptly shipped his relative off to the Italian mainland in honorable exile.[27] Plutarch’s record of the events suggests this was the point when Dionysius II ramped up his fawning over the philosopher:
“As for Plato, Dionysius at once removed him to the acropolis…But after time and intercourse had accustomed Dionysius to tolerate his society and discourse, just as a wild beast learns to have dealings with men, he conceived a passion for him that was worthy of a tyrant, demanding that he alone should have his love returned by Plato and be admired beyond all others, and he was ready to entrust Plato with the administration of the tyranny if only he would not set his friendship for Dion above that which he had for him. Now, this passion of his was a calamity for Plato, for the tyrant was mad with jealousy, as desperate lovers are, and in a short space of time would often be angry with him and as often beg to be reconciled; for he was extravagantly eager to hear his doctrines and share in his philosophical pursuits.”[28]
If Plutarch’s account is accurate, then it suggests that the tyrant was dangerously obsessed with Plato, and by extension dangerously envious of Dion. In that context, the political plot surrounding the letter was pushing on an open door of bitter jealousy in Dionysius’ mind.
None of this was welcome to the increasingly forlorn philosopher: not only was he already himself dedicated to Dion, but he had no interest in the tempestuous, perhaps lovestruck pleading of his supposed mentee. Just a few months after he had arrived, Plato ignominiously departed Syracuse and returned to his Athenian homeland.
As fate would have it, someone else would soon return to him.
The Academy
Shaking the dust of Syracuse off his sandals, Plato (hardly a man given to self-pity) must have carefully considered his next steps. They led him, invariably, back to the fount of his lifelong devotion: the Athenian Academy.
Unlike the volatile Syracuse, the Academy was Plato’s domain, office and personal homestead: Plato owned his own property adjacent to its main campus where he regularly hosted friends, students and important guests. The Academy itself was a sprawling oasis for the intellectuals of his era, complete with gymnasiums, gardens and walking paths, lecture halls and what might today be considered classrooms for study and discourse amongst the gathered Greek elites.
It must have been a soothing return to peace and familiar settings, ideally suited for the proverbial big man on campus. But something – or someone – must have been missing for Plato since he quickly invited an old friend to join him: Dion of Syracuse.
Dion, still exiled and wandering about the Mediterranean, arrived in Athens expeditiously (bringing with him, Plutarch notes, his considerable existing influence in the Greek world and vast stores of personal wealth). Plato personally hosted Dion in his elegant home near the campus, and “kept Dion with him in the Academy, where he turned his attention to philosophy.” A charming episode from this period involves Dion’s support for a new youth chorus at the Academy: unable to fund the chorus on his own, Plato was aided by Dion’s financial largesse – in turn winning the approval of the Athenian people who valued Dion’s magnanimity and appreciation of culture.[29]
Despite their close personal ties, Plato pushed Dion to make friends and build alliances in Athens. There may have been an ulterior motive to bolstering Dion’s Athenian connections: convincing him to adopt a quieter, more intellectual bent rather than meddle further in Syracuse politics. Plato himself had, by this point, long despaired of effecting meaningful change in Dionysius II or anyone else on that disappointing island. Dion, however, was “motivated like never before to bring responsible government to Syracuse.”[30] This left Plato in an increasingly uncomfortable, and soon untenable, position as Dion worked tirelessly to chart his way back to the city of his birth.
Plato might have even wondered if, apart from the madness in Sicily, he and Dion might have been the perfect duo to lead the Academy toward its most prolific and influential decades. If they were indeed “more than friends,” Plato’s vision would have suited the Academy’s later history: Louis Crompton writes that from 339 to 240 BCE, the Academy’s leadership would progress amongst a series of male lovers, one after the other, guiding the institution.[31]
It was not to be.
Invasion Force
Plato and Dion spent six idyllic years with the latter often sojourning in Athens amid his other travels; Plato might have later considered these his halcyon days alongside the man he cared about more than any other living person. But the Sicilian pigeons would soon return to roost.
As much as Dion had not given up on the notion of liberating Syracuse, neither had Dionysius II given up on the prospect of retaining Plato’s presence at his royal court. So the tyrant, now in his late 30s, sent word to Athens with an offer: if Plato would return once more to Syracuse, Dionysius would relent his anger toward Dion and reinstate him to his privileged role among the Syracuse royal family.[32]
It is a powerful mark of Plato’s devotion to Dion that he would take up so great a risk and venture to Syracuse on his behalf. In 360 BCE, Plato once again boarded a trireme for one more chance to change Syracuse’s – and Dion’s – destiny. Plato once again despaired of the eventual outcome (he was by then an elderly man, by the standards of the age) but once again hoped against fate that he might yet secure the hoped-for outcome.
Predictably, the trip was nearly disastrous for Plato: once the Athenian was safely ashore, Dionysius II almost immediately broke his promises to Dion and placed Plato effectively under house arrest. With the tyrant’s suspicions of Plato worsening by the day amid a simmering rebellion in his mercenary army, Plato sensed the need to get out of Sicily as fast as possible. A mutual friend of his and Dion’s, Archytas, had been kept abreast of the situation and managed to get another trireme to Syracuse. This vessel rescued the beleaguered Plato, who then reunited with Dion at the Olympic Games.[33]
Dion, understandably, was outraged by how both he and Plato had been treated. By this point, he was well-advanced on the road to mounting an invasion of his homeland. Plato outright refused to countenance this possibility: he saw both Dion and Dionysius as culpable in the messy, unfortunate situation, and was repulsed at the thought of bloodshed as any sort of pathway to just rulership.[34] Plato would later suggest that, in succumbing to such impulses, Dion had given in to a base and craven nature beneath his dignity and wisdom. It was perhaps the first major rupture between the two men; it would also be the last.
With Plato’s refusal to support his invasion force, Dion took matters into his own hands. Initially, Dion launched a successful invasion of Syracuse in 357 BCE; in a matter of days, a relatively small army of a few thousand captured the capital city, but his obvious rival Dionysius and ally Philistus positioned themselves south of the city. Once Philistus was brutally killed in action, and Dionysius convinced that the cause was lost, the tyrant fled for Italy.[35]
For a moment, at least, Dion’s determination had been vindicated: he had captured the city, protected his allies, and now stood atop a better regime surely destined to write a new chapter of Syracuse’s history. But rare indeed is the armed invasion which leads to a gentle, predictable transition of power; certainly, Plato himself must have realized, Syracuse was hardly the venue to feature such a historical anomaly.
Unsurprisingly, some of Dion’s former allies (even those who had helped him to win the day) began to conspire against him. Some sensed the tantalizing opportunity of a power vacuum; others doubted Dion’s integrity and wondered if he might instead become the new boss of Syracuse who closely resembled the old one. Plutarch writes:
“Now, there was a certain comrade of Dion’s named Callippus, an Athenian, who, as Plato says, had become intimately acquainted with him, not as a fellow pupil in philosophy, but in consequence of initiation into the mysteries and the recurrent comradeship which this brought. He took part in Dion’s expedition and was held in honour by him…But now that the chief and noblest friends of Dion had been consumed away by the war…he saw that the people of Syracuse were without a leader, and that he himself was very much in favour with Dion’s soldiers.”[36]
Any student of ancient history can predict what happened next: Callippus masterminded a conspiracy to assassinate Dion. He succeeded, murdering Dion in 354 BCE just a few short years after his triumphant return home. Dr. Webster writes, “to Plato’s chagrin, a colleague from the Academy played Judas in the hour of Dion’s triumph.”[37]
“Madden my soul…”
A more bitter blow to Plato, then in his early 70s, can hardly be conceived: that his devoted friend, his ally through so many troubles and pleasures, was sentenced to an early death by a man they both knew and trusted.
Of the various epigrams attributed to Plato, his dedication to Dion stands out as highly credible in its authorship by scholars.[38] Within this discussion, its contents are noteworthy:
“The Fates decreed tears for Hekuba and the Trojan women even at the hour of their birth; and after thou, Dion, hadst triumphed in the accomplishment of noble deeds, the gods spilt all thy far-reaching hopes. But thou liest in thy spacious city, honoured by thy countrymen, Dion, who didst madden my soul with love.”
C.M. Bowra writes that these stirring verses highlight both Plato’s immense grief and sense of personal loss, as well as the intensity of the devotion shared between the two men.[39] Per the latter, the phrase “madden my soul with love” is especially intriguing. As noted, Plato viewed romantic and sexual love as a sort of dehumanizing madness. But he also asserted the nobility of love for another’s soul and the purity of true Beauty – the essence of platonic love and, it might be argued, its modern variant “queerplatonic.”
The latter term, though a recent invention, offers us a useful lens through which Plato and Dion’s tragic story might be interpreted. Today, queerplatonic relationships refer to platonic partnerships – which their participants see as neither sexual nor romantic – but which carry the depth of feeling, connection and dedication which heteronormative culture typically ascribes to traditional romance.
It is unclear, and unprovable, if Plato and Dion were ever sexually involved with each other at any point during their multi-decade relationship. But the historical record which survives to us strongly implies that theirs was an uncommonly close partnership – not simply a meeting of political ways and means a la “Game of Thrones”. Such alliances were plentiful in the tumultuous world of classical Greece, adopted and disposed of by their participants as easily as they were taken up.
But convenience, or quirk of fate, seems insufficient to describe Dion and Plato. Indeed, in referencing his own soul in the famous epigram, Plato intimates that he and Dion had achieved a particular level of the Scala Amoris: that their souls loved one another. Or, as we might say in modern parlance: soulmates. Plato might have valued that bond so profoundly that the thought – by either of them – of tarnishing it with sexual release might have been unthinkable even if homoerotic attraction lingered between them.
Some observers might struggle to interpret such a relationship as “queer”. Nevertheless, such an intensive bond between two men was, then as now, starkly defiant of the norms of classical Greece. It continues to befuddle and frustrate the norms of the modern era, where identities (especially those along the asexual and aromantic spectrums) continue to be devalued and the validity of “queerplatonic” as a relationship descriptor remains subject to debate. Perhaps Plato, writing over 2300 years ago, was further ahead of his time than he even realized.
[1] University of British Columbia, “Plato,” accessed November 9, 2025, https://phas.ubc.ca/~stamp/TEACHING/PHYS340/NOTES/FILES/Plato.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjekf_59OWQAxVfEFkFHTjxDFUQFnoECCcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2acUgXZSbLBVoWHEyTyyEd
[2] Louis Crompton, “Plato’s Symposium” in Homosexuality and Civilization (Harvard University Press, 2003), pg. 55.
[3] University of British Columbia, ibid.
[4] Nick Romeo and Ian Tewksbury, “Plato in Sicily,” Aeon, December 21, 2020, https://aeon.co/essays/when-philosopher-met-king-on-platos-italian-voyages.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 17.6. Philosopher Kings,” The First Philosophers, January 8, 2025, https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-17-6-philosopher-kings-0833e5813f81.
[7] Crompton, pg. 60.
[8] Carolina Araújo, “What Was Plato up to in Syracuse?” In Plato at Syracuse: Essays on Plato in Western Greece with a New Translation of the Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding, ed. by Heather L. Reid and Mark Ralkowski, pg. 77, Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvcmxptk.8.
[9] Brittanica Editors, “Dionysius I,” accessed November 22, 2025, Encyclopedia Brittanica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dionysius-I.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 19.1. The Golden Opportunity,” The First Philosophers, February 28, 2025, https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-19-1-the-golden-opportunity-947eabb78efd.
[12] As Dr. Graham helpfully explains, Dion was both the brother of one of Dionysius I’s wives, and also married to one of the late tyrant’s daughters. Thus Dion was both uncle and brother to the new ruler.
[13] Plutarch, “Life of Dion,” Parallel Lives, Vol. VI (Loeb Classical Library edition, 1918), https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Dion*.html.
[14] Nick Romeo and Ian Tewksbury, ibid.
[15] Plato, Letter 7, Livius.org, updated June 8, 2019, https://www.livius.org/sources/content/plato/letter-7/plato-on-sicily/.
[16] Crompton, pg. 61.
[17] Crompton, pg. 60 – 61.
[18] Kristian Urstad, “Loving Socrates: The Individual and the Ladder of Love in Plato’s Symposium,” Res Cogitans, 2010, https://www.sdu.dk/en/Om_SDU/Institutter_centre/Ikv/Videnskabelige+tidsskrifter/rescogitans/Issues/~/media/60490E04DC5748DA93349E0B40C03C8D.pdf.
[19] Nick Romeo and Ian Tewksbury, ibid.
[20] Plutarch, ibid.
[21] Araújo, pg. 83.
[22] Nick Romeo and Ian Tewksbury, ibid.
[23] Plutarch, ibid.
[24] Araújo, pg. 85.
[25] Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 19.2. Man of the House,” The First Philosophers, March 3, 2025, https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-19-2-man-of-the-hour-b271742b9839.
[26] Plato, ibid.
[27] Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 19.3. Palace Intrigues,” The First Philosophers, March 6, 2025, https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-19-3-palace-intrigues-5562412a3711
[28] Plutarch, ibid.
[29] Plutarch, ibid.
[30] Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 19.4. Dion and Plato,” The First Philosophers, March 10, 2025, https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-19-4-dion-and-plato-db7909f67aaa.
[31] Crompton, pg. 59.
[32] Plutarch, ibid.
[33]Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 23.3. Recessional,” The First Philosophers, July 10, 2025 https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-23-3-recessional-59ca3e915c42.
[34] Araújo, pg. 88.
[35] Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 27.2. The Battle for Syracuse,” The First Philosophers, November 7, 2025, https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-27-2-the-battle-for-syracuse-6b70011b2647.
[36] Plutarch, ibid.
[37] Daniel W. Graham, PhD, “Plato 27.5. Aftermath,” The First Philosophers, November 18, 2025, https://medium.com/the-first-philosophers/plato-27-5-aftermath-04a486e15474.
[38] C. M. Bowra, “Plato’s Epigram on Dion’s Death,” The American Journal of Philology 59, no. 4 (1938): 394–404, https://doi.org/10.2307/291178.
[39] Ibid, pgs. 401 – 404.