From Plato’s generation onwards it became the practice among leading philosophers to set up a school within one’s own lifetime, and upon one’s own death either to bequeath its headship to one’s own chosen successor, or to entrust to the school’s members the task of electing the next head. It was only with that succession, when the school’s intellectual legacy needed to be defined and secured, that the founder’s authoritative status was likely to come to the fore. The process is nowhere better illustrated than in the Early Academy.