The Academy was the school founded by Plato in Athens in the early 4th century BCE and named for the nearby public gymnasium sacred to the hero Academus. The Academy existed continuously until the 1st century BCE and was finally closed by Emperor Justinian in CE 529. The school has come to represent the entire range of Platonic thought from Plato himself through the Neoplatonists.

Works Consulted: Chernow, Barbara and George A. Vallasi, eds., The Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th ed., New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; Hornblower, Simon and Anthony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.