Of
Imitation
Theory of Imitation
Background
Plato was born in 427 BC—3 years after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war. At the time ancient Greek was divided into several city states, and each state has its own government. At that time there were two city states which were powerful and strong enough to influence the governing system of whole Greek. The states were “Athens” and “Sparta”. Both the states were at war, when Plato was born , due to the conflict of choice of democracy rule or military rule.
Plato was born in a society suffering with political unrest, dissolution, decline and because of war there was plague and scenes of chaos and destruction. He was born in a very educated and politically influential and strong family. Plato was utterly depressed because of the situation prevailing in society. He was a blind follower of Socrates who favoured democracy—so did Plato. Plato was also in favour of Athenians but the same were against Socrates because they blame him for spoiling the ideas of young generation. His philosophical ideas were felt strongly dangerous by the political administrators so they poisoned him in 399 BC to death. They poisoned him and resultantly Plato gave his favour to Athens and belief in democracy.
He went to Egypt and got philosophical education. He came back Athens and opened ‘Academy’ with the purpose to produce good men, good cities and good rulers. He took responsibility to reorganize the human life when socio political circumstances of Greece were not satisfactory.
At the time Greek society was divided into 3 classes of people. First were Citizens—who were born in Greece and all rights; voting, education, owing land and property were limited to them only. Second were Resident aliens—who came from other countries to work or for business. They have no rights of voting, being political representatives, buying property. Third were the slaves—who were treated even worse than the animals. Women have no