Syracuse

Certain · Sicily

Greatest city of the Greek west, destroyer of Athens’ Sicilian expedition, seat of the tyrants Dionysius elder and younger. Plato sailed here three times on the hope that the younger Dionysius might be made a philosopher; the attempt cost him his freedom once and nearly his life, and its wreckage is told in the Seventh Letter — in this library — philosophy’s most personal document on why he ever thought politics could be redeemed.