The philosopher Plato was born to an aristocratic Athenian family. His father Ariston was said to be descended from the legendary King Codrus; the family of his mother Perictione was prominent in more historical times. Dropides, an ancestor of Perictione, was a relative and friend of Solon (as Plato himself reports in the Timaeus, 20e). After Plato's father's death, Perictione was remarried to Pyrilampes, a political associate of Pericles and Athenian ambassador to the Persian king. Perictione's brother Charmides and her cousin Critias had a more sinister career, as members (and in Critias's case, ringleader) of the Thirty Tyrants who ruled Athens in a bloody junta, after the defeat by Sparta in 404 BCE.

Plato's family is well represented in the dialogues, perhaps to compensate for his own absence. In the Charmides, situated thirty years before the rule of the Thirty, Plato introduces...