The legendary trial of Plato in 361 B.C. by the citizens of Syracuse, at the behest of Dionysius the Younger, Tyrant of Syracuse, is the setting for a verbal description of the world of Magna Graecia. This lecture given on February 25, 2006 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, to an audience of 750 Humanities West seminar attendees, included an imagined version of Plato’s defense (both of the crimes he is accused of and of his ideas).