How did the rule of the Thirty Tyrants influence Plato’s views of government?

Following the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, the democratic government was abolished and replaced by the Thirty Tyrants, an oligarchy led by Critias, who was a relative of Plato.12

Initially, Plato held high hopes for this new regime. However, he soon discovered that the reality of the oligarchy was far more oppressive than the democracy it replaced, describing the new terror as far worse than the system he had previously despised.12

This experience significantly influenced his political philosophy. Witnessing the failures of both the Athenian democracy and the subsequent tyrannical oligarchy led Plato to conclude that existing political systems were fundamentally flawed. He eventually determined that political conditions would not improve until either philosophers became rulers or rulers became philosophers. This conviction became a cornerstone of his work, the Republic, where he argued for a state governed by an elite class of philosopher-rulers who govern exclusively by reason, rather than by the passions and desires that drive ordinary political life.12