Editing Plato (section)

====Foundation of the Academy====
[[File:MANNapoli_124545_plato's_academy_mosaic.jpg|thumb|[[Plato's Academy mosaic]] in the villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in [[Pompeii]], around 100 BC to 100 CE]]
{{main|Platonic Academy}}
After his return from Syracuse, Plato founded his philosophical school, the Academy, near the sacred olive grove of [[Hecademus]], in roughly 383 BC.{{sfn|Nails|2002|p=248}} At first, the property consisted of only a house with a garden, and during his lifetime, the work of the Academy itself likely took part an open area for study of philosophy and mathematics.{{sfn|Nails|2002|p=248}} From 383 BC until about 366 BC, Plato primarily spent his time at the Academy, writing the majority of the dialogues during this time.{{sfn|Nails|2002|p=7}} Much like Socrates and his students had been parodied in [[Aristophanes]]' plays [[The Clouds]] and [[The Birds (play)|The Birds]], the students at the Academy seem to have been the target of their contemporaries in [[Middle Comedy]].{{sfn|Nails|2002|p=248}} A fragment from a lost play of [[Epicrates of Ambracia|Epicrates]] depicts two students of the Academy engaged in a fierce debate over the [[genus]] of a [[pumpkin]], in a parody of the Platonic conception of [[diairesis]].{{sfn|Nails|2002|p=248}} [[Aristotle of Stagira]], who would go on to become a philosopher as famous as Plato in his own right,{{sfn|Dillon|2003|pp=1–3}} arrived in 367 BC, shortly before Plato departed again for Syracuse.{{sfn|Nails|2006|p=7}}