James Romm - Plato and the Tyrant

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: A Book with Legs
Episode: James Romm - Plato and the Tyrant
Date: August 18, 2025
Host: Cole Smead (CEO & Portfolio Manager, Smead Capital Management)
Guest: James Romm (Professor of Classics, Bard College; author, Plato and the Tyrant)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores Plato's philosophy against the tumultuous backdrop of ancient Greek politics, focusing specifically on Plato’s interactions with the rulers of Syracuse—Dionysius the Elder and Younger—and the real-world attempts (and failures) to instantiate the "philosopher-king" ideal described in Plato’s Republic. Author and historian James Romm brings Plato out of the abstract and into the messiness of actual politics, drawing from letters, personal correspondences, and contextual history to illuminate the gap between Platonic ideals and lived reality. The discussion flows through lessons for leadership, virtue, and the perennial conflict between principle and pragmatism—parallels which still resonate in modern business and investing.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Plato’s Relevance and the Genesis of the Book

• [01:55] James Romm notes Plato’s central place in Western thought and cites Bertrand Russell:

  "All subsequent philosophy are footnotes to Plato."

• Despite Plato's foundational influence, the man himself is elusive; he rarely references his own times in the dialogues.
• Romm’s interest was piqued by Plato’s Sicilian misadventures, as recounted in several letters believed to be authentic:

  "That story showed more about Plato than all the dialogues put together."
  —James Romm [02:50]

2. The Philosopher-King and Declining Democracy

• [04:14] Plato, shaped by witnessing the fall and failings of Athenian democracy and the abuses of oligarchic rule (the Thirty Tyrants), posited a new standard: only those trained in philosophy and capable of "absolute justice" should rule.
• Plato’s Academy sought to teach future leaders to apprehend "the forms":

  "After decades, literally decades of that kind of training, a philosopher might be able to perceive what Plato called the forms...those would guide a ruler."
  —James Romm [06:46]

3. Syracuse, Tyranny, and Plato’s Political Odyssey

• [09:30] Dionysius the Elder seized power in Syracuse, founding a dynasty by clever use of mercenary forces and absolute control—a contrast to what Plato sought.
• The ruler drew from models like Gelo and Hieron, earlier autocrats who maintained power with wealth and military might.

4. Criticism and Resistance: Lysias’s Olympic Stand

• [12:30] Lysias, an Athenian with Syracusan roots, denounced Dionysius the Elder at the Olympics, likening him to Persia’s despotic king:

  "He accused the tyrant of Syracuse of becoming a threat to all of Greece..."
  —James Romm [13:06]

• The crowd symbolically destroyed Dionysius’s pavilion—a potent act of political theater [13:54].

5. Tyranny, Wealth, and Mercenaries

• [14:18] Dionysius’s absolute power rested on an unprecedented mercenary force:

  "Perhaps 100,000 men...peoples from Iberia, from North Africa...not Greeks, but could be counted on for loyalty simply because he was paying their salaries."
  —James Romm [14:18]

6. Ortygia: The Island Fortress

• [16:14] The militarized, walled peninsula Ortygia functioned as an unassailable base, foiling siege attempts and tightening the tyrant’s grip.

7. Plato’s First Trip to Syracuse

• [17:34] Plato visits Syracuse at Dion’s invitation, finds himself at odds with Dionysius the Elder (who craves flattery, not challenge), and is ultimately expelled—possibly sold into slavery:

  "Plato was entirely too outspoken for the liking of this tyrant...perhaps the best evidence we have suggests that he was sold into slavery at the behest of the tyrant."
  —James Romm [25:10]

• Plato’s witty repartee with Dionysius:

  "[Dionysius accused Plato of] 'elderizing,'...Plato snapped back...[that Dionysius was] 'tyrantizing.'"
  —James Romm [26:13]

8. Founding the Academy

• [26:45] After his ordeal, with a friend’s financial help, Plato purchases land outside Athens and starts the Academy—the West’s first higher learning institution devoted to philosophy.

9. Virtue, Temperance, and the Platonic Contrast

• [18:37, 19:50, 20:42] The Dionysian (hedonistic) lifestyle of Syracuse stands in contrast to the more austere Doric traditions of Athens and Sparta. Plato viewed these excesses—drunkenness, sexual indulgence—as marks of unfit rulers.

10. Dynastic Schemes & Political Intrigue

• [20:17–23:11] Dionysius’s polygamy, intended to produce more heirs and alliances, also introduced deadly rivalries.
• Attempts to marry across maternal lines to unite the family led to internecine conflict.

11. Philosopher-Kings in Practice: Plato’s Sicilian Fiascos

• [35:20] Despite past humiliations, Plato returns to Syracuse to instruct Dionysius the Younger, who is intellectually curious but poorly suited for philosophical rule. Dion’s (and possibly Plato’s) presence stirs jealousy and political exile.

12. The Reality of Political Power

• [39:17] Plato’s abstract program demanded decades of ascetic philosophical training; even he knew Dionysius the Younger would never become his ideal ruler:

  "A young man of 30 who is already a debauched alcoholic was never going to get there."
  —James Romm [39:17]

13. Syracusan Civil War: Revolution, Betrayal, and the Limits of Idealism

• [46:01–54:13] The struggle for Syracuse becomes a complex web of betrayal, populist insurrection, and shifting alliances. The populace grows suspicious of Dion's real intent (is he liberator or just a new autocrat?), a tension inflamed by misleading letters.

14. Virtue and Friendship: The Damon and Pythias Legend

• [54:56] Romm recounts the legendary loyalty between Damon and Pythias—Pythagorean exemplars who shock Dionysius the Younger with their steadfastness, refusing his offer of friendship:

  "He threw his arms around the two of them, asked to be a third friend and a part of their company, to which they said, no way. You're not one of us."
  —James Romm [56:04]

15. Allegory of the Cave and the Limits of Theory

• [61:04] Dion, educated by Plato, finds himself unable to translate philosophical ideals into practical governance in a fractious, suspicious post-autocracy.
• Cole Smead draws a parallel:

  "In academia, there is no difference between the real world and academia. In the real world, there is."
  —Cole Smead [61:31]

16. Plato's Spin and Legacy

• [62:37] Plato’s Seventh Letter attempts to redeem Dion as a model of noble leadership (but is marked as “spin” by Romm), presenting an idealized version of events to protect Plato’s own reputation.

17. The Myth of Er and the Question of Death

• [64:36] In the closing of the Republic, Plato turns to the myth of Er, imagining the afterlife as a moment of choice between philosophical virtue and tyrannical power:

  "The task of the philosopher is to recover the visions that he has had before birth of this astral realm..."
  —James Romm [64:49]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Plato’s practical engagement with politics:

  "He gives us very little access to his Persona, his inner life. Yet we do have a set of letters that seem to be by him and I argue are by him that show us the inner person and especially his misdoings or his grave mistakes on the island of Sicily..."
  —James Romm [01:55]

• On the gap between philosophy and reality:

  "A young man of 30 who is already a debauched alcoholic was never going to get there."
  —James Romm [39:17]

• On academia vs. real world:

  "In academia, there is no difference between the real world and academia. In the real world, there is."
  —Cole Smead [61:31]

  • Repeated for emphasis, capturing the chasm between philosophical theory and political practice.

• On Damon and Pythias:

  "He threw his arms around the two of them, asked to be a third friend and a part of their company, to which they said, no way. You're not one of us. And that was the end of that."
  —James Romm [56:04]

• On Plato’s self-interest as philosopher-king, via Karl Popper:

  "When he talks about a philosopher king and someone trained in the kind of rigorous mathematical, abstract thinking that Plato's academy specialized in, he can only be talking about himself or at least his own class, the students of the academy."
  —James Romm [47:31]

• On Plato’s writing as an invitation:

  "My book tries to give a basic introduction to the Republic along with this narrative...I hope it leads people to want to pick up the Republic and read the original text."
  —James Romm [67:20]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------| | 01:55 | Why Romm wrote about Plato and the Tyrant | | 04:14 | Plato’s idea of the philosopher king | | 07:48 | The Thirty Tyrants and the fall of Athens | | 09:30 | Dionysius the Elder in Syracuse | | 12:30 | Lysias’s critique at the Olympics | | 14:18 | Mercenaries and autocracy in Syracuse | | 16:14 | The fortification of Ortygia | | 17:34 | Plato’s first visit, Dion’s invitation | | 25:10 | Plato and Dionysius’s confrontation | | 26:45 | Plato’s return to Athens and founding Academy | | 35:20 | Plato’s return to Syracuse under Dionysius Jr.| | 39:17 | The limits of education on tyrannical rulers | | 54:56 | Damon and Pythias, the ideal of virtue | | 61:04 | Dion as failed “philosopher king” | | 62:37 | Plato’s “spin” via the Seventh Letter | | 64:36 | The myth of Er and philosophical legacy | | 67:20 | Final thoughts: the enduring value of The Republic |

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Takeaways For Investors and Thinkers

• The search for wise, just leadership is ancient—and perpetually fraught with compromise.
• Ideals are vital, but their implementation demands practical wisdom and an honest assessment of context and human nature.
• Leadership (in business or politics) faces eternal temptations: tyranny, self-dealing, flattery, and short-term pragmatism.
• Engaging with the classics, especially The Republic, remains crucial for understanding both personal and institutional ethics.

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Further Reading & Resources

• James Romm Website: jamesrom.com
• Upcoming Book: Biography of Demosthenes (October release)
• Book Discussed: Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece

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This episode serves as an insightful portal into the messy intersection of ideals and realpolitik, offering lessons as relevant to the boardroom as to the ancient agora.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

You're listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management. At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who play the long game. You can learn [e-mail] or by calling your financial advisor.

[Cole Smead]

Welcome to A Book with Legs podcast. I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management. At our firm, we are readers and we believe in the power of books to help shape informed investors. In this podcast, we speak to great authors about their writings the late, great Charlie Munger prescribed using multiple mental models and analysis. We analyze their work through the lens of business markets and people. In this episode, we are going to the Classics and really ancient Greece. We will add to our knowledge of Plato as we welcome James Romm to discuss his recently published book, Plato and the Tyrant, the Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a philosophic masterpiece. Mr. Rahm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and editor of the Ancient Lives Biography series from Yale University Press. He has published a voluminous number of books on Greek and Roman history and has written essays that are regular in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Review of Books. He has held the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Berkeley Fellowship, and the Biography Fellowship at the Leon Levy Science center of the City at University of New York. I might add, he has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and a B.A. from Yale University. Thank you for joining me today.

[James Romm]

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

[Cole Smead]

This will be a lot of fun. So, you know, as I just mentioned just a second ago, you've written a lot of books about Greek and Roman history. What caused you to want to write about this particular history? I think, you know, I assume from your writing, you know, you thought about this a long time of really kind of being a centerpiece for talking about Plato.

[James Romm]

Yes. Well, Plato, of course, is one of the headline names from Greek antiquity. He's often thought to be the founder of Western philosophy. It was said by Bertrand Russell that all subsequent philosophy are footnotes to Plato. Yet we know very little about him from his dialogues. He almost never makes any reference to his own times and never represents himself. So he gives us very little access to his Persona, his inner life. Yet we do have a set of letters that seem to be by him and I argue are by him that show us the inner person and especially his misdoings or his grave mistakes on the island of Sicily, where he went three times during the course of his life. And I thought that story showed more about Plato than all the dialogues put together. And I thought it was a story that really had to be told.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And both, like you're pointing out, there's these 13 letters that you discuss and reference a lot. And then the other obviously his major work that you reference a lot is the Republic, which obviously he's most well noted for. And effectively, if I was going to explain to our audience, you use the inner interaction between those, those 13 letters and the Republic to explain a lot of this story, correct?

[James Romm]

That's right. I only use five of the 13 letters. There are some in that batch that are certainly not genuine and others that are hard to say whether they're genuine because they're so short. But the five that I use are very long and to my mind they are unmistakably Plato's own writings.

[Cole Smead]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And it's those that tell most of the story in my book.

[Cole Smead]

Okay, so let's start out with one of Plato's big ideas. And this is a theme throughout the book because this is kind of the lens that all should be judging in politics and ultimately leadership is his idea of a philosopher king. So can you, you know, using the republic, can you explain this idea of the philosopher king that Plato comes back to time and time again? And we'll discuss throughout our discussion today.

[James Romm]

So first it's important to recognize something about Plato's times. We think of Athenian democracy as a flourishing institution. We talk about the golden age of Pericles and so on. That was all in the past. By the time Plato came of age, the democracy of Athens has lost its war against Sparta, had executed Socrates, had made what Plato considered terrible mistakes and shown itself to be not only in decline, but non viable as an institution. Also other states, Sparta had shown that their governments were not working out well. He was looking for a new model of governance to save Greece from decline. And so he looked to philosophy, his own field, and posited the idea that a good ruler, a good executive, would have to be educated in philosophy. He would have to be looking to concepts like justice, not earthly justice, not court cases and precedents, but absolute justice, the essence of that concept, in order to rule in a just manner. And so the only good ruler would have to be educated as a philosopher.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

Now, when you talk about philosophy, I'm going to ask you a question because I think a lot of philosophy as a framework. Right. In other words, to your point, Plato had a framework of thinking about the world that was very unique. And obviously he's become very popular since then. Is that how you think about it as well. His framework was just more unique than how others were looking at the world. But at the same time, a lot of this came out of, you know, as you discuss in your book the Socratic Method, he was asking the why and how.

[James Romm]

Yes, but he goes way beyond Socrates, who developed this question and answer method that we call the Socratic Method. He advocates a system of education and he practiced it at his academy, his, the institution he founded of training the mind to think only in abstract terms, using geometry, mathematics, physics, fields of knowledge that don't involve concrete things or visibles, but are only mental constructs.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

After decades, literally decades of that kind of training, a philosopher might be able to perceive what Plato called the forms, that is these absolute essences, eternals, justice, courage, beauty, wisdom, moral qualities in their abstract form, in their essence. And those would guide a ruler, a governor in making decisions.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And a lot of these have been really what shaped western education. Just as an example, James, my kids go to a classical school and all those virtues you mentioned are staring them on the wall in their class all the time. Because to your point, they're coming straight from Plato in terms of the basis of western thought. To your point about his footnotes, let's talk about the 30 in Athens, because to your point, he's creating these ideas really out of what is a bad political system at Athens. Can you talk about the mob that was in effect running Athens at the time?

[James Romm]

So it wasn't quite at the time, but it was in Plato's youth, when he was about 20 years old, a junta, a board of 30 right wing authoritarians seized control after the defeat of Athens by Sparta. They were put in place basically as Spartan puppets. And because they were backed by Spartan power, they were able to do whatever they pleased. And they ran roughshod over the city, eliminating democratic opponents, stealing the estates of wealthy citizens, committing horrible abuses. And Plato witnessed all this from a very close range because the leader of this gang of 30 was a blood relative of his, a man named Critias, who conceivably could have tried to draft Plato into the junta.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And Plato saw these abuses side by side with the abuses committed by the democracy and decided that neither the extreme right nor the extreme left, if you will, in modern terms, were viable forms of governance.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

So while this is going on, you know, from a Plato discussion, can you introduce our audience to Dionysius and also kind of, you know, what was he watching as this younger, I'll call it aspiring ruler or leader with really, I think you talk A lot about the history of Syracuse and Gelon and Hieron and what he tried to mimic and copy from their leadership.

[James Romm]

Yes. So right about the same time that the 30 were in control of Athens and were quickly overthrown by the resurgent democracy, ruler came to power in Syracuse, which had also been a democracy, but suddenly reverted or flipped around 404 BC and put a charismatic demagogue into sole power, a man named Dionysius. He was only about in his early 20s at the time, a total newcomer to the political scene, but he swiftly took control of and created a autocratic machine that he intended would govern Syracuse forever for generations. He handed power on to his son about 40 years later, who was also named Dionysius. So we have to talk about the elder and the younger. Dionysius and Plato established relations with both these men, visited both of them in Syracuse over the course of about 30 years in an effort to try to guide their regimes onto a philosophic path.

[Cole Smead]

And can you also explain what Dionysius tried to use from the prior leadership I mentioned, who kind of the heritage of leadership had been in Syracuse prior, But he was a fairly practical, pragmatic person. He wasn't coming from nobility, he wasn't coming from leadership. He was just watching everything that he saw, anything from in politics out to what had worked in Syracuse prior. Is that a. Is that a fair assumption?

[James Romm]

That's right, yes. About a century before his time, Syracuse had undergone an earlier autocratic regime. Gilon and Heron, two brothers, one the elder and then the younger in turn, who had demonstrated some of the ways in which an autocracy could control the city by means of wealth, primarily, and the hiring of mercenaries, of foreign fighters that would be loyal only to the ruler and disarming the rest of the population so that the ruler would be protected by an invincible military force.

[Cole Smead]

So as he's coming to power, you know, I think it was Lysias was the vocal critic of him in front of the politics of the time. Everyone has their critic. And this is a pretty common storytelling that throughout, whether we're talking about Plutarch or anyone writing on these various subjects, that there is this vocal critic that has to be met at the time. How did he meet Lysias as his critic?

[James Romm]

So Lysias was an Athenian, but he came from a family that had been kicked out of Syracuse. He was an expat, if you like, or his father at least, was an expat.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

He'd grown up in Athens in the liberal democracy of that time and came to fear and despise this new tyranny in Syracuse, that of Dionysius the Elder. He spoke out very stridently at the Olympics of 388. And that's the scene with which I opened my book.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

He accused the tyrant of Syracuse of becoming a threat to all of Greece, of behaving like the ruler of Persia on the other side of the Aegean, a man who represented a grave threat to Greek freedom, and urged those who were listening to him there at Olympics, at the Olympic Festival, to rise up right then and there, tear down the pavilion tents that the Syracusans had erected, and trample the beautiful cloth and the gold furnishings underfoot to show their disdain for this tyrannical regime. And they did exactly that. They demonstrated against Dionysius by tearing apart these tents.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

Now, he's kind of striking at a moment where tensions are high, though. I think that's the other thing I took away from any of these leadership changes or the situations at the time. A lot of it had to do with what was the political pressure and typically what was the military pressure. So, what with Lysias being so critical, what allowed him to really become the autocrat, as they refer to him?

[James Romm]

Well, as I say, he hired a crew of mercenaries, perhaps 100,000 men. So understand that this is a number, a fantastically high number for the Greek city states of the day, using the wealth which he had built from the wealthy citizens of Syracuse and extorted and used all kinds of financial manipulations to hire, not Greeks, but peoples of southern Italy, Gauls, for instance, peoples from Iberia, from Spain, what is now Spain and Portugal, and from North Africa, peoples that were noted for their savagery in war and who could be counted on for loyalty to the ruler simply because he was paying their salaries.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And that was another theme that I think came up is if a. If a tyrant's a tyrant, it's partly because they're paying mercenaries. Wasn't that a common theme across the tyrants that you write about?

[James Romm]

That's correct. But Dionysius the Elder took this to unprecedented extremes. Because he had more wealth than anyone had controlled in the past, he was able to hire a larger force and pay them better.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

The other thing that it seemed from your writing that he was very astute to do was on the subject of adamantine bonds, or tygia, if I'm pronouncing that right, was the island that he effectively causes to be his fortress. He builds, you argue, a very defendable wall there on the island. And that causes him to have effectively, like an island fortress, if I understood your writing correctly.

[James Romm]

That's right. So if you look at a map of Syracuse, either the ancient city or modern Syracuse, there's a X crescence. There's. There's a peninsula that sticks out into the sea, which is connected by only a very narrow isthmus. And that peninsula is called Ortigia, or the island. It was originally an island, and the Syracusans connected it with a causeway. This was a perfect place to establish a military base. It could be walled off by fortifying the isthmus. It had ports for ships and it had a natural spring. The Fonte Aretuza, still a tourist attraction today, gush of fresh water that could supply the needs of its inhabitants with fresh. Fresh drinking water. So it couldn't be starved out in a siege, couldn't be attacked. It was the perfect power base for an autocrat like Dionysius.

[Cole Smead]

So Plato, I think, originally visits Syracuse as a Younger Man In 388 or 387, if I remember correctly from my notes. What brought him to Syracuse the first time.

[James Romm]

He had already been traveling in southern Italy, and this, as far as we know, was his first trip away from Athens, or at least first trip of any magnitude. He had first visited a city called Tarentum in southern Italy, which was famous for a population of Pythagorean thinkers, another philosophic school that Plato was very interested in. While he was there, he received an invitation from a man named Dion, who is a principal character in my story, who was the brother in law of the ruler of Dionysius the Elder, and had developed a deep interest in Plato's ideas and wanted to bring him to court.

[Cole Smead]

So a little more background on Syracuse. We talked a little bit about the geography, but I think the other thing, obviously, you know, the names obviously sound a lot like Dionysus, which is the God of wine. What does that kind of teach us about the people of Syracuse when it came to maybe the parties they threw?

[James Romm]

Yes. Well, Dionysius is derived from Dionysus. There's just an additional I that makes it an adjective of Dionysus. Dionysian. And the family, the ruling family, was famously alcoholic, and. And the wines of Sicily were plentiful and famous, and the whole population seems to have enjoyed them very fully.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And at a couple of crucial points in my story, the action turns on the fact that a lot of people were drunk.

[Cole Smead]

And this would be very different from, say, I think the term you used was the Doric Greeks, which would be kind of the traditional Peloponnese of Athens and Sparta. They. They viewed to be that that was not a good thing in their minds.

[James Romm]

That's right. The Syracusans were Dorian in stock, meaning that they came from the subset of the Greek peoples that had largely settled the Peloponnese and especially Sparta and the Dorians in mainland Greece, the Spartans were famous for their abstemiousness, their temperate lifestyles.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And their resistance to pleasures like food, drink, and sex. So the Syracusans, having transplanted themselves from mainland Greece to Sicily, which is abundant in food, wine, and the sexual activity that usually goes with those things in the Greek world, they just went whole hog in that direction.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

On the sexual activity. The other thing that I'll say Dionysius attempted, you know, he obviously he practiced polygamy. So he had two wives. Can you kind of teach us the reason why, from a dynasty perspective he did that? And kind of how he tried to use that to his advantage? Unsuccessfully, I might add, in many respects. But also, you know, why would a guy like him be so interested in having multiple wives regardless?

[James Romm]

Great question. So polygamy was not native to the Greek world. It was not practiced by Greeks. It was associated with the Persian empire in Asia, that dynasty that the emperors of Persia were famously polygamous. And the advantage of polygamy for a ruler is you have more children to use as well. You use the sons as potential heirs and also high officers in your military. You use the women as marital pawns to establish bonds of alliance with other rulers. So you have more staff, if you like to choose from.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

Of course, there are huge downsides to this system as well, because you create rivalries within the household between the two branches. In the case of Syracuse, two branches. Because Dionysius married two wives.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

One was a native Syracusan, though that gave him a legitimacy or power base among the noble families of Syracuse. The other was from Locri on the southern Italian. On the toe of Italy, the southern part of Italy. And that was important because Syracuse was extending its power, its empire, to that part of the world.

[Cole Smead]

Hi, I'm Cole Smead, CEO and portfolio manager here at Smead Capital Management and host of this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd like to invite you to check out smeecap.com at our firm. We are stock market investors. We advise investors who play the long game with a discipline that has proven success over long periods of time. Learn more about our [e-mail] past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks and including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead Funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors llc. Not affiliated. There was a lot of half brothers were pretty common in Persia. You put in your writing, which caused its own problem because half brothers tended to like killing other half brothers, I think, as you said. But he tried to fix this by effectively inbreeding the two lines.

[James Romm]

That's right. To unite the family, prevent rivalry between these two maternal lines. Dionysius arranged marriages across the divide. So half siblings from one wife would marry half siblings from the other wife. A legitimate kind of marriage in the Greek world. As long as the common parent is the father, not the mother, this is not regarded as incest.

[Cole Smead]

So he has a son that's his namesake and you know, on this kind of, I'll call it, lineal track that he's on, you know, how does passing the baton really work with his son?

[James Romm]

So his firstborn son came from the wife from Locri, not the native born Syracusan. And he named this son Dionysius, giving it his own name, meaning that this was clearly the heir apparent to the throne.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

Later he also had sons with the other wife, creating potential rivalry. And the man I mentioned before, Dion, the fan of Plato, who invited Plato in, was the brother in law of the Syracusan wife. And that created huge rivalries because Dion, it turns out, was the most capable member of the royal house, the one who would be best able to rule. Yet he was not in the bloodline, not in the line of succession.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

So Plato comes to Syracuse on this trip, to your point, he runs into Dionysius. And Dionysius is used to, I think you call it in your book. There's a Greek term for it. But the Dionysius flatterers is what he becomes accustomed to. That's not what he interacts with Plato. His interaction with Plato, that didn't fit, I guess, the standard at the time.

[James Romm]

That's right. Plato was entirely too outspoken for the liking of this tyrant. And he got kicked out summarily, ignobly. And perhaps the best evidence we have suggests that he was sold into slavery at the behest of the tyrant. The ship that was conveying him back to Athens put in at the port of Aegina, a city that was at war with Athens. And Plato was immediately taken into slavery and then ransomed once his friends realized what had happened.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And I think the term that they used in their interaction was you referred to, I think Dionysius said that Plato was elderizing, kind of, I'll put it another term, kind of pulling an old man on him. And I think Plato snapped back that he was, you know, something along lines of, if this is a verb, tyrannizing. Is that correct?

[James Romm]

That's right. One of the stories we have from this meeting of sage and ruler is exactly as you say, that they both coined these words to insult the other. And Plato's word was tyrantize.

[Cole Smead]

So, so Plato then goes back to Athens and starts, you know, what we know as the Academy. How does he get out of slavery? How does he start the academy? Because it seems like, you know, there needs to be some help from friends and influence from others.

[James Romm]

Yes. So the reports we have, and again, these can't be confirmed because they come from much later than Plato's time. Plato himself never refers to this episode in his letters, but we have legends that he was sold into slavery, ransomed by a friend for some of money, and when his kinsmen and friends tried to compensate this man, giving him back that same sum of money, he said, no, it's fine, let Plato have it and let him buy a piece of property to use for an educational institution. So this is all right. After his departure from Syracuse, he receives money from a wealthy patron and uses it to buy property outside of Athens. And that became the foundation of the academy. It was in a grove of a God by the name of Academe. And so it took on the name of that God.

[Cole Smead]

Okay, and you comment on how this was a different educational institution, if you will, than say what Socrates had, because Socrates was always enlightening the unenlightened versus this was people that were already educated continuing to want to learn. Is that a fair assessment?

[James Romm]

That's right. This was a case of higher education of young men from all across the Greek world who had read something of Plato's work or knew something about him and were coming there to study with him and advance their own knowledge.

[Cole Smead]

And even though I think in Socrates case you said that he always was just lecturing, kind of, I think of almost like a university style lecturing. It wasn't written down. Even though Plato was written down, he still lectured in this format.

[James Romm]

Yes, much of the work of the academy was non verb, was non written. It was oral conversations which Plato calls dialectic, in which two philosophers, two trained minds, would go back and forth with each other in a kind of give and take system. But we also have these dialogues that Plato wrote for a different audience, not the people of the academy, but the public generally.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

You made a comment in the book that I mentioned to you before, but you commented that Plato obviously was quickly adopted or quickly connected with early Christians. Can you explain, you know, why Plato was so interesting to these early Christians or what their connection was?

[James Romm]

So I talked about the forms, these essences that Plato thinks of as the source of true knowledge, the only thing that the mind can really use to learn or to, to gain insight. You can't gain insight from the world around you. You have to look to an astral world, an other world, a world in the sky essentially, to perceive these forms. And the master form, the one that gives life or gives quality to all the others, he calls the form of the good. And he compares it to the sun in that it gives off light that illuminates everything.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

The Republic has a transcendent passage describing what it's like to behold the form of a good. It brings sublime joy. So it's an easy step from that concept to the Christian idea of heaven and a supreme deity who inhabits this heavenly realm and radiates light and is a source of sublime joy.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

Also, you know, he had a disdain. Plato had a disdain for the visual versus the virtuous is how I think about it. He's spending a lot of the Republic writing, in effect, about Dionysius, according to what you say. And wouldn't that also separate him from Greek culture? I mean, here's Dionysius getting drunk, pretty much an alcoholic, having sex constantly. And that is about as far away from what Plato is teaching his students to be thinking about.

[James Romm]

Exactly. So Plato had to distinguish in the Republic between the king, a philosopher, a trained mind, a temperate lifestyle, and a tyrant who is the prisoner of his appetites, who is run by his nightmarish desires. And a lot of books, 8 and 9, the political books, if you like, of the Republic, are concerned about making this distinction that there are good autocrats trained in philosophy and there are bad autocrats who are all about desire and appetite.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And that tyrant figure is very much modeled on Dionysius the Elder.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And it kind of plays at, you know, there's been this idea of like a noble king in a way. And that comes off as a very Plato esque idea. Can you just comment from the original sources how we know the difference in the writing between Dionysius the older versus Dionysius the younger? You kind of talk about the different attributes that are ascribed to each of them.

[James Romm]

So the ancient world didn't have Roman numerals for sequential rulers. They didn't have Dionysius 1, Dionysius 2. They sometimes use the older, the elder and the younger as a way to distinguish these father and son. In fact, sometimes we only have Dionysius and we don't know who is being referred to or we have to guess.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And the way in which we can guess, in my view, is the quality of the stories that are being told. The stories about the elder focus on his role as the supreme leader, his paranoia, his efforts to protect himself from assassination, his fears about losing his. His rule. The episodes of the younger, the. The son who seems to have been much more dissolute than his father, more addicted to drink and a greater sexual libertine. And the stories about him focus on those themes, his pursuit of pleasure.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

There's a story in your book where they're appealing to the Spartans who were mercenaries fighting for or I guess, aligned with Dionysius. And they appeal to them because the Spartans were thought to be this guardian class, virtuous people, and really more chastened, I would argue, than the Syracusans. And yet, despite the fact that Sparta is against tyrants, they don't stand down from serving a tyrant. I mean, this just seems like the most odd, you know, the odd situation from a philosophical perspective.

[James Romm]

The Spartans had given up a lot of their high ideals by the 4th century. By the time of Plato, they were doing dirty deals, for instance, with the Persians on the other side of the Aegean and trading away Greek freedom for the sake of advantage. The foreign policy had become much more of a pragmatic, much less ideological than it was in the previous century. And so the Spartans were perfectly happy to work hand in hand with the tyrant Dionysius if it benefited them, if it helped them boost their position in mainland Greece.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

So obviously Dion becomes a big, you know, he is very different than Dionysius the Younger. He's a big fan of Plato. They bond a lot. And you talk about their relationship. You know, why did Plato come back after having such a brusque experience and really, you know, bizarre experience in the first case.

[James Romm]

So Plato's departure, and presumably his. His enslavement came in 387, 20 years later. Plato's now in his 60s or approaching 60.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

Dionysius the elder dies and passes the baton to his son, who is then 30. So the younger was a curious fellow. He, yes, he was a libertine, but he also had an Interest in philosophy. He had grown up without an education, without much learning, and felt that he really lacked that and wanted to improve himself. And Dion, who is on the scene now as the senior advisor to the throne, tells him, I've got the perfect tutor for you. If you bring Plato here, you can get instruction from him and he will make you revered as not just a powerful ruler, but an enlightened one.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And Dionysius went for that, for that offer.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

But then, you know, not long after, Dion is shipped off. And so Plato's in this weird tension. What was the dichotomy for Plato after Dion is shipped off?

[James Romm]

Yes. So the circumstances of Dion's banishment have much to do with Plato's arrival. Plato came back to Syracuse, rebonded with Dion, who was his biggest fan in Syracuse, probably also his lover, but we can get into that if you want to. And this made the ruler terrifically jealous. He was insecure. He was just on the throne. He was much younger than Dion. And here was Dion, hand in glove with the man who he wanted to get instruction from, who he thought of as his ally. That jealousy caused him to boot his uncle out, his father's brother in law, and banish him from Sicily altogether. That left Plato high and dry. He'd come there at Dion's behest. Now Dian was gone. Plato was in a very uncomfortable position, essentially under house arrest because the ruler refused to let him leave, even though he wanted to, until a war broke out that sort of forced his hand and allowed Plato to return to Athens.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And the other thing I didn't mention earlier, but I just want to mention, if you could comment on the Republic, because the Republic was not written all at once. This was, I think you referred to as a composite. So really, Plato's taking all of his experiences and building the Republic with this.

[James Romm]

That's right, that's right. As far as we know, the Republic was written over the course of Plato's whole adult life, a period of perhaps 30 or 40 years. It was the only dialogue that he spent so much time on because he really wanted it to be his masterwork. And so he was working on it and revising it during the times when he was also visiting Syracuse.

[Cole Smead]

Yeah, in discussion, you know, Plato's there, he's providing advice, and, you know, he's trying to teach the younger at the time, but then obviously he's got his own courtesans and court that's there, you know, with him as tyrant. And you talk about this idea of worldly wisdom and it's funny cause I open the podcast with the idea of worldly wisdom, but it's a little bit different in what you're talking about in terms of worldly wisdom. Plato is trying to talk about the eternal or the timeless, if you will. And that's not exactly the worldly wisdom that his court was speaking of. To Dionysius the Younger. What kind of worldly wisdom were they using?

[James Romm]

So Plato's philosophy is designed for people who have committed their lives to study, have committed to a program of education that literally takes 40 years to achieve the full status of a wise man. A young man of 30 who is already a debauched alcoholic was never going to get there.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure, sure.

[James Romm]

So Plato must have come to Syracuse knowing his potential was limited as a teacher. At best, he could make Dionysius the Younger a more controlled and more revered ruler by getting him off the wine, getting him to follow a more temperate lifestyle and to develop alliances with reliable people, not with the drinking buddies that were his traditional allies.

[Cole Smead]

We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management. At smead, we believe in disciplined investing, which is why the SMEAD funds have a proven track record of long term outperformance. If you're an investor who plays the long game and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit smeadcap. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. SMEAD funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors llc. Not affiliated. Plato discusses what is referred to as the guard class, or he calls it the silver class. And this is kind of getting back to what we talked a little bit about with Sparta. What did he believe their role ultimately was and how did that compare to the. I think he calls it the gold class, which would be, you know, I think what he referred to as the wealthy. He had this idea of how this would improve the entire state.

[James Romm]

Yes. So you're speaking of the ideal state that's constructed in the Republic. Perfectly just city, state. So the question of the republic, for those that haven't yet encountered it, it's by far Plato's most ambitious and also most compelling dialogue. And the question is, what is justice? Would it make us happy if we had a ring that would make us invisible? Why would we do just things rather than unjust things?

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

That's the challenge that Socrates has posed. And in order to meet the challenge, he builds an imaginary city that would represent perfect justice in a society. And that city, as you say, has a silver race or silver class of guardians trained in philosophy, but also as military men. So it's a soldierly class, but also a philosophic class. Those two things combined, and they would have the absolute control over military and. And political matters. Most of the population would not be permitted to enter that class. They would be the producers, the consumers, the economic base of the society. And then at the top, you have the gold element, which is the ruler, the philosopher king, who has taken from the silver class the best of the best and empowered with absolute power.

[Cole Smead]

Okay, so then Plato, he ends up back in Syracuse a third time. He, after the second time, I think he goes back, if I remember correctly from my notes, and he kind of plays merchant buyer for Dionysius the Younger. He gets him his wine. He kind of helps do some things for his household at times, and kind of plays what I'll consider friendly and helpful, but very skeptical. He ends up in Syracuse, you know, again the third time later. By this time, he just considers this all kind of a waste of time. And I think the other thing you touch on at that moment is you kind of hark back to his childhood in Athens. I mean, people like Plato were taught songs to mock the tyrant at that time.

[James Romm]

That's right. There was a dread of tyrants in Athens in Plato's day, and citizens had to swear an oath that they would assassinate anyone who attempted a tyranny and that anyone who killed the tyrant would be forgiven, would not be considered a criminal. So for him to go a third time, as you say, back to Syracuse after having had interactions with Dionysius that clearly showed the tyrannical side of the regime, he went back a third time. And that really is explained by his relationship with Dion. Dion had been kicked out, had been stripped of his estate and his family. And. But Plato had tried to assure that the tyrant would recall him and restore him to favor. And so by going to Syracuse, Plato thought he could bring that about. He could get Dion restored.

[Cole Smead]

So then while Dion's away, he is kind of, I'll call it, you know, you know, removed. But there's still tumult going on locally. So I think, and I'll probably butcher the name here, but Heraclids is. He's pushed off. He has to flee. He has some, you know, relatives who try to go to the Younger to seek out you know, effectively, Grace is this. It's kind of odd because in this. In this, you know, the whole discussion and every time, you know, you're storytelling through what's going on in Plato's writing and the other histories that have come out of this is it. I was kind of thinking of, like, the old rule, you know, keep your friends close and your enemies even closer, to put it in Godfather parlance. And Dionysius the Younger is very much putting his enemies as far away that they can, in some ways, plot, you know, without, you know, him having any knowledge of what they're up to.

[James Romm]

Yes, that's a very apt quote from the Godfather, because when Dionysius sent Dion out of Sicily and he went back to mainland Greece, it was assumed that he would try to foment some kind of overthrow of the Syracusan regime. Dionysius made it promise not to do that and still had control. Excuse me. Still had control over half his estate.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

As a way to ensure compliance, but nevertheless, Dayon used what wealth he still had to hire mercenaries and to organize an invasion of Sicily as a way to overthrow the regime.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And. And. And Dionysius the Younger obviously continue to make it as frustrating for Dion as possible. I think he took his wife from your writing and, you know, remarried her off as though he had, you know, was gone, took half of his net worth and continued to move the estate around in the way that was most advantageous for him. The other thing that you wrote about that I found just terribly interesting is that ultimately, when Plato thought of this idea of the philosopher king or that gold class that we were just talking about, that he was never really thinking about anyone other than himself. Is that a fair assessment?

[James Romm]

Well, that's an idea that I present.

[Cole Smead]

Okay.

[James Romm]

Through the writings of a man named Karl Popper, who is a philosopher of the mid 20th century, who wrote a whole book called the Spell of Plato, about how misguided we are when we revere Plato and we refuse to see his own autocratic ambitions. That when he talks about a philosopher king and someone trained in the kind of rigorous mathematical, abstract thinking that Plato's academy specialized in, he can only be talking about himself or at least his own class, the students of the academy. Now, I don't support that, but I think it's at least a possibility, and it's one that we really have to wrestle with when we read the Republic.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

When I also think of other, you know, things from antiquity. So, for example, like. To your point, I think of, like, the. The Hebrew People saying to God, we want a king. They get. They get ultimately a king, and then they're really unhappy with their king. Right. In other words, the idea being that there is an ideal situation, it just is never seen. And that would kind of play at the idea that, like, if Plato could be king, you might get the ideal. But obviously that's never going to come to pass because there's just a lot of humanly practical things that have to go along with that, and that's never going to happen. So to your point, you know, the form is always present, and yet in humanity, it's never actually recognized. To your point?

[James Romm]

Yes.

[Cole Smead]

On that same thread, Atlantis was this kind of same idea of, you know, what I'll call purity in society. Can you explain, you know, the story of Atlantis and why that played at this idea of kind of Plato's view of class?

[James Romm]

Sure. So Atlantis is a myth invented by Plato. Many people don't realize that. We think of it as a Greek myth that goes way back, but in fact, Plato is the only source we have for it. He spells it out in his dialogue Critias. Atlantis was a race that. The Atlanteans were a semi divine race, and their kings were fathered by the God Poseidon. And they built an empire, a naval empire, fantastically wealthy and successful. And the kings were able to rule well because they weren't seduced by wealth, they weren't consumed by greed, but their children were not fathered by a God. So they only had one quarter divine blood, and their children only had one eighth divine blood. So over the generations, the divine element got adulterated and humanity predominated. And that's when their greed got the better of them, such that the gods finally got sick of them and destroyed the island with an earthquake and flood and sank it to the bottom of the sea.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

So there was nothing ideal about it. In the end, Dayan builds an army to your point earlier, through mercenaries. He's also communicating with other people that can help him to come back to Syracuse, doesn't it? You know, in your writing, it seems like it's pretty long odds for him to take back Syracuse. And yet he finds an opening and kind of takes advantage of Dionysius the Younger not being available and present at the moment.

[James Romm]

Yes. He had the good fortune to land on Sicily at a time when Dionysius was off the scene supervising his Italian holdings. His. His southern Italian holdings. And the population was very much on the side of this revolution. So as Dayon got closer to the walls of Syracuse, his Army grew from volunteers and militiamen, and he was able to take control, while the tyrant was away, of all the mainland parts of the city, but not the island of Ortygia. And of course, once Dionysius got back to Ortygia, this impregnable base that he had built, he dug himself in and the civil war commenced.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

Diane's in control of the city. And to your point, Dionysius the Younger, you know, he controls the island. And he says, hey, you know, he's gonna leave. He's gonna abdicate, and calls him into a truce. What happens with that supposed truce?

[James Romm]

Well, it was a fake offer, of course. He wasn't. No way was he about to give up the ghost. Right. Right off the bat. As soon as he was presented with this challenge. And he took prisoner, made prisoners of the emissaries that came to arrange the terms. And while the population drank and celebrated. I mentioned before that the turning points that hinge on drunkenness. He sent his troops across the isthmus wall and attacked the city and showed he was not going anywhere. He was ready to kill in order to stay in power.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

And they're sending letters back and forth, and it almost seems like these are very pithy letters, where they're pretty much using the letters to mock each other back and forth.

[James Romm]

Well, the letter that we have or that we know of is from Dionysius to Dion at a time when this civil war had. Had already broken out. And Dion believed that the letter was from his son who was being held hostage on the island. So he had it read aloud in the assembly in. In the popular assembly consisting of the citizens of Syracuse. That was a big mistake. The letter was not from his son. It was faked to look like it was from his son, but in fact was from Dionysius, the tyrant on the island, saying, essentially, you and me were part of the same family. And don't let. Don't let the rule get away from us. Don't let the tyranny get away from us. We need to keep control here. And treated him like a. A member of a. Of an inner circle.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And that alerted the rest of the population, who are already suspicious of him because of his connections to the royal family, that perhaps he was just looking to take power himself and become a new tyrant.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

Before this happens, you told an interesting story about two gentlemen that Dionysius the Younger had interacted with, which was Phintius and Damon. And this really fits into Plato's view of the ideal. Can you explain the story of these Two gentlemen. And what happens and why this is just so, you know, shocking to the court. And also Dionysius.

[James Romm]

So we know them better as Damon and Pythias. The real name is Phintheus, but it's become corrupted and it now is generally known as Pythias.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Okay.

[James Romm]

And it's a very widely known story of two friends, both of them members of the Pythagorean school. I mentioned earlier. This was a southern Italian school that focused on the simplicity of lifestyle and moral virtue. And Dionysius had a bet with some of the members of his court that the serenity practiced by these Pythagoreans was all a sham, and if they were presented with real hardship, they would fall apart just like anybody else.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

So they picked someone at random. Pythias. I'm sorry, Damon. And had him arrested and accused of plotting against the throne and sentenced to death. Totally falsified charges.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And instead of collapsing and, you know, weeping and asking for mercy, the man simply said, that's fine, but I need to make some arrangements for after my death. I'll have my friend come here and stand hostage for me while I go do what I need to do. Everyone laughed. No friend is going to do that and subject themselves to possible execution. But in fact, the friend did show up. And then at the end of the day, Damon came back and resumed his place as the guy on death row. No one could believe this. And Dionysius was overcome with longing, seeing how real friends treated one another. He didn't have friends like that. And he threw his arms around the two of them, asked to be a third friend and a part of their company, to which they said, no way. You're not one of us. And that was the end of that.

[Cole Smead]

Yeah. As soon as they saw virtue, they knew that was something to be in awe of, but yet at the same time, they had trouble practicing it on their own. So Dayan comes back to power in Syracuse, but he's not the only potential power. He is considered the autocrat, but there's obviously a naval power there, too. Can you explain how he's coming to power and he's trying to shape the politics, and I think he attempts to be the philosopher king, if you will, trying to allow the polis to have certain ability to speak into the situation, but it's just not that clean.

[James Romm]

So you have to imagine the. And we've seen this in our own times, a society that has been under the thumb of an autocrat and is suddenly liberated.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

But the Liberator in this case was a member of the tyrant's household. So deeply suspect.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

And also politically conservative and did not want to grant the people their old democracy back. He wanted a more conservative constitution.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

Something that would have checks and balances so the democracy would not run wild. The people were mistrustful of that too. So along comes a more populist leader man named Heraclides, who is in charge of the Navy. And the Navy is typically in in all Greek cities made up of the poorer classes. And as the commander in chief of the Navy, and also as a fiery orator, Heraclides raised up, instigated a kind of left wing democratic second revolution.

[Cole Smead]

Working class too, I think you mentioned. I'm sorry, working class too. He kind of represented more of the.

[James Romm]

Working class, more of the common people who felt that Dayon was not much better than the previous, than Dionysius. Sure, there was a joke going around at the time, you know, why would we swap out a drunken tyrant for a sober one? They're two of the same stripe. But Heraclides was truly a man of the people and also a fiery orator. And he managed to get faction opposed to Dion to exert considerable pressure on the new regime.

[Cole Smead]

Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on this show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 in investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by Smead Capital Management. Smead Capital Management understands how frustrating and illustrated logical the stock market can be. If you're searching for funds with a proven track record, give the SMEAD funds a look. Or better yet, reach [e-mail] and don't forget to mention you're a fan of the podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before for investing SMEAD funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors llc. Not affiliated. And this kind of creates, you know, what I'll call Dion's, you know, moment in the cave, if that's how I can put it. You know Plato, you know Plato, using the allegory of the cave. You know, you're enlightened, but you still have to go back to the cave and explain it to others. Do you think that's a fair assessment of the position that Diane was in at that moment and had to deal with the awkwardness, that situation.

[James Romm]

That's a, that's a good way to put it, that he had been trained at the academy. He learned from Plato, thought of himself as a philosopher. And here he was meeting very practical real world problems of placating a democratic insurgency. And he did a very poor job of it and alienated some of his supporters.

[Cole Smead]

Yeah, because I always think of, there's, there's an old saying that it says, you know, in academia there is no difference between the real world and academia. In the real world there is. And I think of that a lot. As you know, you know, to your point, Dion is educated. He's obviously been taught by Plato and it's great to know all that. But then you still have to pragmatically and practically deal with that in the real world. And you know, you quickly find out that that's just not so easy all the way out to. As you write about, you know, obviously he ends up murdering Heraclides, which wasn't his original intention. In some ways they were helpful to each other. But when you get into this political class warfare and you need to get rid of your problems, that was the most practical way of doing it. This doesn't obviously stop it for, you know, stop what Syracuse is, you know, power structure is. Dion is eventually murdered as well. But in Plato's view, Dion dies this incredibly honorable death in Plato's mind.

[James Romm]

The account that we have of this phase of the story, the Syracuse and civil War, comes to us largely from Plato's seventh letter, a very long document, even longer than some of the dialogues written in the first person and describing all the events on syracuse going back 30 years. And as you say, it tries to extol Dion as a model leader. By that time he was dead. And to insist that he had only the most noble and high minded goals for the government of Syracuse. I read that as Plato's attempt at spin.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

Because Dion was his protege. He had set some of these events in motion by his relationship with Dion. And he didn't want the Greek world to blame him for what was happening in Syracuse. He wanted to exonerate himself and also uphold Dion as a kind of beacon for those who would follow, for those who are still trying at that time to reform the government of Syracuse, to put a decent regime in place.

[Cole Smead]

The other question I have, and this happens, you talk about this late in your book, but Plato talks about his death in the Republic. I find this so interesting because most people I meet, I consider It a very tough thing for them to talk about their own death and what they think will or will not come. I don't think people tend to want to look stupid or sound stupid or even talk about their own demise. Is that how you look at Plato? In other words, he was virtuous to the point that he had no problem talking about this and trying to write about it, you know, in the Republic, or do you have a different view of that?

[James Romm]

So you're referring to the final stretch of the Republic, which is called the myth of er. And it's not Plato's own afterlife specifically, it's just the afterlife generally.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

It's narrated by a character named er. Er, who had died and been brought back to life by the gods, who essentially told him to be a messenger to humanity as to what to expect after death. And it's kind of a purifying 1000 year journey through the stars and planets in the outer reaches of the universe and then reincarnation into a new life. Plato believed in reincarnation and that the task of the philosopher is to recover the visions that he has had before birth of this astral realm, the realm of the forms, essentially the purity of the world beyond our own.

[Cole Smead]

And the other thing I think we can draw from, to your point, the story of Ur, which is in many respects I was referring to him kind of talking about his own self, is that he has this big eternal view. In other words, to your point, even though he came back a thousand years later, it's still an eternal story. He's living in this dialogue on ur. Is that fair?

[James Romm]

The point of the dialogue is to convince us that we will all face this choice at the end of the journey, when we're about to be reincarnated. We will have the chance to choose what kind of life to inhabit in our next existence. And we'll either choose. Well, meaning we'll choose something akin to philosophy.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[James Romm]

Or if we haven't learned much, we'll choose the life of a tyrant. Because the uneducated, the unenlightened person thinks of that. Holding absolute power, gathering wealth, pursuing pleasure, thinks of those things as the best kind of life.

[Interviewer/Host Assistant]

Sure.

[Cole Smead]

I know there's a lot we didn't talk about and I just, I was kind of mentally racking through my notes. But what else, you know, what would it be on your research into this discussion or the, you know, the works themselves, do you think should also be mentioned to our audience that we haven't discussed?

[James Romm]

You know, the. The Republic is something everyone should be at least familiar with, because it's one of the cornerstones of Western thought. It's a magnificent work, but it's, it's not easy. It's composed of. Of different parts and sometimes we can't even really tell how much of it is serious or how much of it is a kind of carnival like thought experiment, turning the world upside down to see what it looks like. So my book tries to give a basic introduction to the Republic along with this narrative that we've been, we've been sketching. And I hope it leads people to want to pick up the Republic and read the original text.

[Cole Smead]

I agree. I think your book is an excellent gateway drug to get people down the rabbit hole of asking, you know, what was the importance of Plato? Why is he, you know, really the bedrock of Western thought? And why do certain aspects of what he said ring true today in the ideas of virtue, which even though I would say there are some virtues that aren't considered as civically important, I think a lot of people would regard as important, much like Plato did. Where else, James, can people follow you going forward? Are you big on social media? Where are you typically writing outside your books today?

[James Romm]

I'm not big on social media. I do have a website, jamesrom.com and I write reviews for the Wall Street Journal. You can google my name on the Wall Street Journal website and see books that I've reviewed over the last few years. My next book coming out in October, it's a much shorter book than Plato and the Tyrant. It's about half the length. It's a biography of Demosthenes, a figure from 4th century Athens, a contemporary of Plato who tried to rescue Athens at a time when it was under great threat from Alexander the Great. And how that all played out.

[Cole Smead]

Yeah, because you mentioned in the very parting chapter, you mentioned Philip of Macedon at the very end of this book. And I was already ready to go down the whole rabbit trail. Like I mentioned before of my, you know, one of my classes I took in college of Alexander the Great and the Hellenist of Kingdoms. And so you referencing that makes me want to go in whole hog over more of this. So I appreciate your time, James. Your book reminds me of an old saying that I believe Plato would agree with as he thinks about the philosopher in the cave. And I touched on this earlier, but I just want to say it again. In academia, there's no difference between academia and the real world. In the real world, there is. And Plato not only espoused ideals and forms, as he would say, but he also had to rectify that in the real world. Go out and buy a copy of Plato and the Tyrant where you buy your books. If you enjoy this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to A Book With Legs, give us a review. Tell others about the great authors like James Romm that we get the opportunity to study the world with and through for our tribe. If you have a great book that you'd like to recommend, email podcastmeetcap.com that's podcastmeecap.com you can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is eedcap. Thank you for joining us for A Book with Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode.

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