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Apollo
Philosophy
While the dramatists were cutting their thespian cloth, late-5th- and early-4th-century-
BC philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates were introducing new trains of thought
rooted not in the mysticism of the myths, but rather in rationality, as the new Greek mind
focused on logic and reason. Athens' greatest, most noble citizen, Socrates (469-399
BC), was forced to drink hemlock for his disbelief in the old gods, but before he died he
left behind a school of hypothetical reductionism that is still used today.
Plato (427-347 BC), his star student, was responsible for documenting his teacher's
thoughts, and without his work in books such as the Symposium , they would have been
lost to us. Considered an idealist, Plato wrote The Republic as a warning to the city-state
of Athens that unless its people respected law, leadership and educated its youth suffi-
ciently, it would be doomed.
Plato's student Aristotle (384-322 BC), at the end of the Golden Age, focused his gifts
on astronomy, physics, zoology, ethics and politics. Aristotle was also the personal physi-
cian to Philip II, King of Macedon, and the tutor of Alexander the Great. The greatest
gift of the Athenian philosophers to modern-day thought is their spirit of rational inquiry.
 
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