Aristocle, known as Plato (large shoulders), was born in Athens. Plato was one of the most important thinkers and writers in the history of Western culture, not just of the golden age of Greece. The most famous student of Socrates, Plato in 387 B.C. founded his own school, The Academy, an interdisciplinary school for research where he taught philosophy and mathematics. It became the first "university" in Europe, and provided a basis for Plato's vast influence through the ages.

As a youth, Plato was actively homosexual and had a number of male lovers. c.393-387 B.C. Plato writes the Symposium, Phaedrus, and other works celebrating homosexual love. In the Symposium, to illustrate the highest kind of love, Plato drew his examples solely from homosexual love - it exemplifies the highest and purest form of love: love for love alone rather than for financial or procreative purposes.

Interestingly, and with an irony that the philosopher might have appreciated, the term "platonic love" is used today to mean a kind of sexless friendship (usually between members of the opposite sex!). Plato described Socrates' trial and death in Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.

Plato's epigrams on Aster and Agathon are well known. The three first epigrams express Plato's mourning and love for his recently deceased young friend. They were translated by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but the first epigram was left out of the standard collection of his works, while the second was included but with the boy's name feminized to "Stella" by the editors. Both play on the the boy's name, Aster, which in Greek means "star".

To Aster I:

"Sweet Child, thou star of love and beauty bright,
Alone thou lookest on the midnight skies;
Oh! That my spirit were yon Heaven of light
To gaze upon thee with a thousand eyes."

(translation by Shelley)

To Aster II:

"Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled;
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead."

(translation by Shelley)

To Aster III:

"Thou at the stars dost gaze, who art my star
- O would that I were
Heaven, to gaze on thee,
ever with thousands of eyes."

To Agathon:

"Thee as I kist, behold !
on my lips my own soul was trembling;
For, bold one, she had come,
meaning to find her way through."