Q 01/05

Plato grew up in Athens during which long war?

A) The Persian Wars

B) The Trojan War

C) The Peloponnesian War

D) The Punic Wars

Answer · why

C) The Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC, when Plato was a young man: Sparta, a land power, finally beat seafaring Athens with a fleet paid for by Persia...

Q 02/05

Which philosopher joined Plato's Academy as a teenager and stayed for about twenty years?

A) Xenophon

B) Aristotle

C) Protagoras

D) Democritus

Answer · why

B) Aristotle

Aristotle left Athens around the time Plato died, went on to tutor the young Alexander the Great, and later came back to open his own school, the Lyce...

Q 03/05

By ancient tradition, which plant poison was in the cup Socrates drinks in Plato's account of his execution?

A) Belladonna

B) Wolfsbane

C) Hemlock

D) Oleander

Answer · why

C) Hemlock

Hemlock. In Plato's telling the numbness creeps upward: Socrates walks until his legs grow heavy, lies down, and the attendant presses his foot to che...

Q 04/05

According to Diogenes Laertius, what was Plato's birth name, 'Plato' being a nickname?

A) Aristocles

B) Ariston

C) Aristippus

D) Aristides

Answer · why

A) Aristocles

Modern scholars widely regard the story as false.

Q 05/05

Plato's mother Perictione traced her family to which Athenian lawgiver, one of the Seven Sages of Greece?

A) Pericles

B) Draco

C) Cleisthenes

D) Solon

Answer · why

D) Solon

Solon cancelled the debts that were turning poor Athenians into slaves, a reform remembered as the 'shaking off of burdens'.