The Age of Alexander and the Life of Dion

"The Age of Alexander" is a collection of some of Plutarch's biographies of famous ancient statesmen. The centrepiece of the book is a biography of Alexander the Great. It also contains the lives of Agesilaus, Pelopidas, Dion, Timoleon, Demosthenes, Phocion, Demetrius and Pyrrhus. In other words, the book is somewhat misnamed, since some of these people lived before the actual age of Alexander.

The most interesting work included in this volume is the Life of Dion, a Syracusan disciple of the philosopher Plato. While Plutarch sympathizes with Dion, it's nevertheless obvious that Dion's regime in Syracuse was oligarchic and anti-democratic. To some extent, it was a military regime based on support from foreign mercenaries. Indeed, Dion even fought a civil war of sorts against the local democrats. Plato's friendship with Dion shows that Plato was no democrat (in case anybody doubted this). That Plato educated Dion and attempted to educate the future tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius the Younger, clearly shows the aristocratic and oligarchic leanings of this most famous of Western philosophers. Plato may have wrestled with real problems in his political dialogues, but he eventually solved them in all the wrong directions! I found it fascinating to read about Dion's exploits, precisely because this man was the only associate of Plato to take political power and hence the closest thing the Platonists ever came to a "philosopher-king" in real life. It's not a very pretty story.

The rest of the book is, of course, equally interesting.