The wandering youth and the advice of the missing great ones: on the educational crisis of classical Athens through the dramatic figure of Plato’s Protagoras

Abstract

Plato’s Protagoras displays a conversation on political ἀρετή and its communicability. Putting aside the outcomes of the dialectical contest between Socrates and the sophist, the dramatic figure of the dialogue highlights the presence of a significant number of young political promises, as well as the absence of their parents or tutors, whose excellence in statesmanship and citizenship was well-known. On the basis of their dramatic absence elsewhere in the Corpus Platonicum, this paper comes to consider that according to Plato, the educational crisis that pushed Athens to its collapse, had more to do with the parents withdrawal from their duties concerning the civic and political education of their sons, than had to do with the educational influence of sophistry.

Keywords: Plato, Protagoras, political education, educational crisis, Athens.