The school that lasted 900 years

Around 387 BC, after Socrates’ execution and years of travel, Plato began teaching at a grove sacred to the hero Akademos, about a mile outside Athens.

The Academy had no fees in the modern sense and no fixed course. Students studied mathematics, astronomy, politics and philosophy through conversation and debate. A later tradition said a sign over the entrance read: “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.”

Its most famous student was a young man from Stagira named Aristotle, who arrived at seventeen and stayed for twenty years, and then disagreed with much of what Plato taught.

Plato’s school, in one form or another, kept teaching his philosophy until the emperor Justinian closed the pagan schools of Athens in 529 AD, around 900 years after its founding. Every academy today, from art schools to film awards, borrows its name from that grove.