 Athens was a city of numerous festivals, competitions, and celebrations, including the Panathenaea that attracted visitors to the city from throughout the Mediterranean. Like the Olympics, the Panathenaea was celebrated with special splendor at four-year intervals. [450 Parmenides] Plato depicts the nineteen-year-old Socrates in conversation with the great visiting philosophers from Elea, Parmenides and Zeno, at one of the Greater Panathenaea festivals, in late July or early August of 450.