We are steadily building a database of Poets for you to listen to and would be interested to hear from you if you have suggestions for others we might include in the site. You can let us know by visiting our Contact Us page. All of the poems on this website have been narrated by Gerald Cox, you can find out more about Gerald on the About Us page.

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Beauty

This is a piece by Plato from the Symposium, circa 370 B.C. translated by Robert Bridges. Plato talks about ‘absolute beauty’. You can listen to it below.

Plato 348 - 423 B.C.

Was an Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought, and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

He is widely considered the pivotal figure in the history of Ancient Greek and Western philosophy, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle. Plato has also often been cited as one of the founders of Western religion and spirituality. The so-called Neoplatonism of philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry influenced Saint Augustine and thus Christianity. 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.”

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