Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher of Classical Athens who is most commonly considered the foundational thinker of the Western philosophical tradition. An innovator of the literary dialogue and dialectic forms, Plato influenced all the major areas of theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the collection of philosophical theories that would later become known as Platonism. May 16, 429 BC – c. 350 BC; died at about 77. Alive at the same time as Sophocles, Hippocrates, Thucydides, Apelles, and Aristotle. Wiki link