This is John Batchel, speaking with Professor James Rom, his new book, Plato and the Tyrant,

the story of the making of the book Republic on the basis of what Plato learned with three

visits to the most powerful state in the west of the Hellenistic world, Syracuse. This is

4th century BC, ruled by a family of Dionysians, Dionysi, the elder, who becomes the pretender who rises to take control of a very powerful city, Syracuse on the coast of Sicily.

Big fleet, big army, conquering in all directions, including chewing its way up the boot of Italy,

threatening everyone, including Athens, and Carthet.

But Dionysius I succeeded after perhaps drinking himself to death

by his son Dionysius II.

And therein lies the drama that Plato gets involved in.

Right now, James is just speaking to the facts of Syracuse and the power of it, the island.

Off a peninsula that can be walled off from the main city and became the fortress that Dionysius I'm first and then the second held

against all comers.

Here's James Rom, Plato and the Tyrant, the story of the making of the republic, the story

of Plato getting down from his esteemed position in the academy in Athens,

and mixing it up as a reporter might, a long-riding reporter.

And parts of the story of the Syracuse appear in the Republic and in the laws.

And especially in the letters, I learned learned the 13 letters, most of which James

believes are genuine, left behind by Plato. Much more of this in the next month. In June,

I'll put it all together. So the island was the term that the Syracusans used for a peninsula that was originally an island,

but it became attached to the mainland by a causeway.

So it's a protrusion off of mainland Syracuse that forms a kind of a separate zone, easily defended by means of a wall across the isthmus

and supplied with fresh water by means of a natural spring there, which today is still operating,

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