This page is part of the "tools" section of a site, Plato and his dialogues, dedicated to developing a new interpretation of Plato's dialogues. The "tools" section provides historical and geographical context (chronology, maps, entries on characters and locations) for Socrates, Plato and their time.

This page provides an index to the entries on persons (*) and locations of interest in the study of the historical context of Socrates and Plato that are available on other pages of this site (names in italic are names for wich there is no specific entry, but which are delt with through another entry).

By clicking on a name in the index, you can go to individual entries on famous Greek leaders, writers, thinkers of the Vth and IVth centuries B. C., and also on characters staged in Plato's dialogues, or on the main cities and locations of Ancient Greece that are of interest in the study of Plato's dialogues, either as the location of noteworthy historical events of that time, or as the birthplace of famous writers or philosopher, or as locations mentioned in one or another dialogue. By clicking on the minimap below a city's name, you can go to a full size map for a better viewing of the city's location. You may also click on the area number at the beginning of the text to go to a director map that will show you where the specific portion of the full size map shown in the minimap is located in the larger map (this option is not available for locations in Attica, the relationship between the minimap and the full size map being obvious in that case).

From both types of entries, links are provided to the chronology page of this site and to the dialogues when appropriate. Links are also provides to the entry for the person or location's name in various tools at Perseus when they exist : the general lookup (indication of all the domains of Perseus where the name appears), the entry in the Encyclopedia, the English Index of mentions in ancient authors (a list of all the sections of ancient texts available at Perseus (in English translation) in which the name occurs), and, for locations, the atlas (multicolored relief map of the area surrounding the location) and the index of site pictures in the site catalog.

With regard to geographic entries, it should be noted that where we think in terms of names designating Greek cities and regions, that is, specific sets of buildings and areas of land, the Greeks of that time were thinking in terms of people and would use names designating the inhabitants or citizens of a given city or area, not the land itself, which was named after its inhabitants, not the other way around (see Thucydides, I, 3, 2). Thus, an Athenian of Plato's time would not talk, for instance, of Athens, using as we do such an abstract word to designate a well defined tract of Greek land and the buildings on it, but of the Athenians, that is, the citizens who were collectively making up the "city" (in the Greek sense) named after them, no matter where they lived, within the walls of Athens, in the countryside of Attica, or anywhere else in Greece at large, temporarily or permanantly, thus excluding resident aliens (metics) and slaves who were nonetheless living within what we think of as the city (in the modern sense). Similarly, Doris was not so much a geographic area as it was a gathering of cities (in the Greek sense, that is, of their citizens) founded by Dorians. The case of Doris is especially illuminating because, as is explained in the corresponding entry, this name was given to two different regions, one in Asia Minor and one in mainland Greece, where Dorians had settled at one time or another, but neither in the area of Greece where, in historical times, Dorians were the majority, that is, Peloponnese, as if to show that these "peripheral" settlements of the Dorians in "foreign" lands were in greater need of a reminder of their origin. In the same way, the name Ionia was given, not to Attica where Ionians had their roots and were still then making up the bulk of the population, but to their settlements in Asia Minor, spreading over several provinces there, mainly Caria (the "country" of the Carians) and Lydia (the "country" of the Lydians).

Many stories belonging to Greek "mythology" have been developed in the entry for the city where they take place. These stories and the characters that take part in them were the common "historical" background of most Greek of classical times and provided the subject matter of children tales, poetry and drama from Homer and Hesiod down to the Tragics and later. Besides, in many cases, the name of the city or people was explained as deriving from the name of a hero (called the eponym) presented as the ancestor of the people (such as Ion for the Ionians) or the founder, or refounder, of the "city" (such as Calydon for the city by that name). Even in the dialogues, either when quoting poets or when looking for examples, Plato draws on these stories, or should we say, has one or another of the characters of a dialogue draw on them. Besides, a lot of them record, in one form or another, traces of "historical" events, peoples' migrations, power struggles between families and cities, etc., though it is hard to interpret them in this respect and to sort out "history" and "myth". What's more, there usually exist several variants of the same story, genealogies vary from one author to another, and it is not easy to make sense of all that when bringing together all the available material and trying to provide a "linear" presentation of it. And this is not surprizing if we think of these stories (some of them at least) as attempting to explain foundation or refoundation "myths" of provinces and cities, relations between these cities and between their leading families, the origin of temples and monuments that belonged at various times to different cities, etc. We may now understand why the story might have evolded as the context in which it was told evolved and alliances switched. Indeed, we can see how, in classical times, the great tragic poets, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, adapted the same story to make a point based on the historical situation at the time they were writing their plays. Though I sometimes mention the existence of several traditions for the same story, there are other places where I don't though there may exist variants as well. But the purpose here is not to be exhaustive, but to center on the best known of these stories, and to give a feel for the kind of stuff a Socrates or a Plato could hear from childhood on. In order to do this, I have drawn heavily on the "Dictionnaire de la Mythologie Grecque et Romaine", by Pierre Grimal, PUF, Paris, 1951.

WARNING : this tool is still in the making. Provisions have been made in the index for entries that are not filled in yet. Please be patient. Entries will be added as they are ready.

For faster access to a specific section of the index, click on a letter below :