PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Ion.
Socrates: Welcome, Ion. Are you from your native city of Ephesus?
Ion: No, Socrates; but from Epidaurus, where I attended the festival of Asclepius.
Soc.: And do the Epidaurians have contests of rhapsodes at the festival?
Ion: O yes; and of all sorts of musical performers.
Soc.: And were you one of the competitors--and did you succeed?
Ion: I obtained the first prize of all, Socrates.
Soc.: Well done; and I hope that you will do the same for us at the Panathenaea.
Ion: And I will, please heaven.
Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his most-famous student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."