Name: Oyebamiji Oluwadarasimi Ifeoluwa

Course Code: ENG 351

Course title: History of Literary Theory
Matric No: RUN/ENG/19/8102
LECTURER-IN-CHARGE: DR. FEMI ADEBAYO.

SYNOPSIS OF PLATO’S ACADEMY

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INTRODUCTION
Plato’s enormous impact on later philosophy, education, and culture can be traced to three
interrelated aspects of his philosophical life: his written philosophical dialogues, the teaching and
writings of his student Aristotle, and the educational organization he began, “the Academy.”
Plato’s Academy took its name from the place where its members congregated, the Akadēmeia,
an area outside of the Athens city walls that originally held a sacred grove and later contained a
religious precinct and a public gymnasium.

The Establishment of the Academy

Plato founded the Academy sometime between 390-380 BCE in Athens. Fundamentally, the
school served as a place where Plato's philosophies would be taught.The Academy was initially
located in an area that was a grove or garden of olive trees that included statues and nearby
buildings. The term academy derives from Academus or Hecademus, a mythical hero the garden
was dedicated to. This term becomes both the term for Plato's school but also our word for
academy and academic.
The Academy's idea was to have an institution where dedicated scholars would meet, discuss,
and lecture about the nature of the universe. Plato believed that knowledge was not attained by
only contemplation but through discussion, teaching, and research.
Plato initially gave many of the lectures and seminars, where he would also field questions from
his select audience of scholars. The subjects focused upon were mathematics, natural science,
astronomy, dialectics, philosophy, and politics. Plato was joined by other well known
philosophers at the academy, including Aristotle before he founded his own Academy after he
had a falling out with Plato's philosophies. While initially the academy functioned as a school
that taught Plato's philosophies about the natural world, this changed by the mid-3rd century
BCE.
DESTRUCTION OF THE ACADEMY
When the First Mithridatic War began in 88 BC, Philo of Larissa left Athens and took refuge in
Rome, where he seems to have remained until his death. In 86 BC, Lucius Cornelius Sulla laid
siege to Athens and conquered the city, causing much destruction. It was during the siege that he
laid waste to the Academy, as Plutarch relates: "He laid hands upon the sacred groves and
ravaged the Academy, which was the most wooded of the city's suburbs, as well as the Lyceum."
The destruction of the Academy seems to have been so severe as to make the reconstruction and
re-opening of the Academy impossible. When Antiochus returned to Athens from Alexandria, c.
84 BC, he resumed his teaching but not in the Academy. Cicero, who studied under him in 79/8
BC, refers to Antiochus teaching in a gymnasium called Ptolemy. Cicero describes a visit to the

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site of the Academy one afternoon, which was "quiet and deserted at that hour of that hour of the
day".

CONCLUSION
While the Academy in Plato’s time was unified around Plato’s personality and a specific
geographical location, it was different from other schools in that Plato encouraged doctrinal
diversity and multiple perspectives within it. A scholarch, or ruler of the school, headed the
Academy for several generations after Plato’s death in 347 B.C.E. and often powerfully
influenced its character and direction. Though the Roman general Sulla’s destruction of the
Academy’s grove and gymnasium in 86 B.C.E. marks the end of the particular institution begun
by Plato, philosophers who identified as Platonists and Academics persisted in Athens until at
least the sixth century C.E. This event also represents a transition point for the Academy from an
educational institution tied to a particular place to an Academic school of thought stretching from
Plato to fifth-century C.E. neo-Platonists.

References
https://www.dailyhistory.org/What_was_Plato
%27s_academy_and_why_did_it_influence_Western_thought . Accessed 15th of November 2021
https://iep.utm.edu/academy/ . Accessed 15th of November 2021
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy . Accessed 15th November 2021

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