An open courtyard or atrium was surrounded on three sides by a single-story, roofed colonnade or peristyle, which may have provided shelter for academicians engaged in reading and copying papyri or perhaps just passing the time. In the middle of the atrium stood a cistern, which supplied water, and farther north are the remains of a pedestal on which stood statues of the nine muses, the protectresses of the arts and letters.

The Academy is literally a museum, a temple or a sacred space, an association that is continued in Aristotle’s Lyceum and on into the most famous library of the ancient world: the Museum of Alexandria (which contained its famous and famously destroyed library), founded by the Ptolemies after 297 B.C.E.



Behind the muses was the main building of the Academy, divided into a number of rooms. We are not exactly sure of their function, but it is highly likely that they were used for teaching and were equipped with boards, writing materials, geometric instruments, globes and celestial spheres. But the center of the Academy was the library, well stocked with texts, stacked papyri, possibly with labels, on which the titles were inscribed. The library was the first of its kind in Athens.

To delve a little deeper, here’s an intriguing question: What was on the shelves of Plato’s library? What had he read and what did he give his students to read? We can only guess, but it’s likely there would have been writings on mathematics, geometry and medicine, volumes by Homer and Hesiod. From the evidence of the Dialogues, it is clear that Plato had read the long-lost works of pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus (“On Nature”) and Anaxagoras (“Nous”), and texts by the Eleatic thinkers like Parmenides. It is also said that Plato made an extremely expensive purchase of three works by Pythagoras. There would also have been works by the Sophists, whom Plato loathed, and possibly the widely read works of the atomists, like Democritus, whom Plato completely ignored, possibly out of envy.

In addition to the bookshelves storing these texts, there was possibly a wooden dais for the readings, lectures and discussions that took place daily. Most intriguing perhaps in the design of the Academy is the House of the Reader, or anagnostes. It is said that a young Aristotle served as Reader or Lector during his 20 years in the Academy. Apparently, he was nicknamed Nous or Mind by Plato, which seems appropriate. It would appear that the agnostic Reader was responsible for reading aloud every treatise submitted for publication in the Academy.

What is striking is the wholly geometric nature of the design of the Academy, which my new friend, Mr. Staikos, thinks was due to the influence of the Pythagorean school that Plato encountered on his trips to Sicily and that had been revived by Archytas of Taras, a friend of Plato’s and some say the model for the philosopher king described in the Republic. Legend has it that the motto of the Academy, written over the entrance, was “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.” For the Academy is not just a building. It is an idea, in accordance with Plato’s theory of the forms, but also the Pythagorean view that ultimate reality is expressed by number.

But the Academy was also a privately funded research and teaching facility, situated outside the city. Most of us have a rather whimsical idea of philosophy as a bunch of men in togas having a chat in the agora. And we think of Socrates as a gadfly, philosophizing in the street and somehow speaking truth to power. It’s an attractive idea. But this is the literary conceit of philosophy — one that is still in circulation today. It is the fiction that Plato wants his readers to believe.