 Archytas was most famous in antiquity and is most famous in the modern world for having sent a ship to rescue Plato from the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius II, in 361. In both the surviving ancient lives of Archytas (by Diogenes Laertius, VIII 79–83, and in the Suda) the first thing mentioned about him, after the name of his city-state and his father, is his rescue of Plato (A1 and A2). This story is told in greatest detail in the Seventh Letter ascribed to Plato. It has accordingly been typical to identify Archytas as “the friend of Plato” (Mathieu 1987). Archytas first met Plato over twenty years earlier, when Plato visited southern Italy and Sicily for the first time in 388/7, during his travels after the death of Socrates (Pl. [?], Ep. VII 324a, 326b-d; Cicero, Rep. I 10. 16; Philodemus, Acad. Ind. X 5–11; cf. D.L. III 6). Some scholars have seen Archytas as the dominant figure in the relationship (Zhmud 2006, 93) and even as the “new model philosopher for Plato” (Vlastos 1991, 129) and the archetype of Plato’s philosopher-king (Guthrie 1962, 333). The actual situation appears to be considerably more complicated. The ancient evidence, apart from the Seventh Letter, presents the relationship between Archytas and Plato in diametrically opposed ways. One tradition does present Archytas as the Pythagorean master at whose feet Plato sat, after Socrates had died (e.g., Cicero, Rep. I 10.16), but another tradition makes Archytas the student of Plato, to whom he owed his fame and success in Tarentum (Demosthenes [?], Erotic Oration 44).