Reading Plato where it happened

Tweets from @houshuang, in date order · links and handles removed, nothing else changed

6 July 2025

Classical concerts in Athens hit differently!

12 July 2025

Weird to watch ancient Greek tragedy performed in Athens, and think about the fact that these were basically not performed for almost 1500 years. Seems so simple - no special effects needed, such powerful dialogues...

22 July 2025

You know your Ancient Greek text book is going hard when you read Plato dialogues in the original during breaks, to relax :)

25 July 2025

Epidaurus Ancient theatre sits 10,000. Any large venue that regularly hosts theatre performances? Oedipus tonight. Sold out of course. Watched Elektra here some weeks ago. Amazing.

30 July 2025

I have just spent 30 days in Athens, learning so much, and experiencing lot's of culture and history. But the last thing I did was a really amazing milestone and conclusion, that brought together a number of threads.

A while back @AntigoneJournal shared an auction of classics from a deceased classics scholar in England. I was able to buy a complete works of Plato in ancient Greek from 1872 for a very reasonable price. When it arrived, I saw that both covers were detached, and worn, but otherwise the book was in great shape, even with some neat notes.

I've been self-studying ancient Greek for a few years, but was in no way ready to read Plato. But I knew that "one day".

In Athens, I spent a few weeks in the reading rooms of the Nordic Library working through the second Athenaze book that has been sitting around for ever.

In addition, I did a really fun book restoration workshop at Thaleia's Bookbindery (highly recommended!) where we reattached the bindings of the Plato book.

Then I spent two long days in the library reading Euthyphor and Apologia with dictionaries etc...

Finally, I spent two days going around Athens and reading Plato dialogues in appropriate sites... I read all of Euthyphro right next to the King's Stoa where it "happened". I read Ion right next to the Dionysian theatre in Acropolis. I read the opening of Politeia in Pireaus...

And I ended, a few hours before catching my flight, with reading the analogy of the cave in the park where Plato's academy was. This was such an amazing and rewarding experience, bringing together this old book with such a lovely history, the experience of restoring it, the actual ability to read these texts, and the physical locations. I'm now back in Norway, and I will keep working on the other texts and diving deeper into their meaning and how they have been interpreted throughout time!

23 August 2025 · reply

This was my first Plato dialogue, I worked on it in Athens and then finally read the whole thing in ancient Greek in front of the remnants of the King's Stoa. That was pretty magical.