Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 4

The right of Translation is reserved.


The Republic is the longest of all the Platonic dialogues, except the dialogue De Legibus. It consists of ten books, each of them as long as any one of the dialogues which we have passed in review. Partly from its length — partly from its lofty pretensions as the great constructive work of Plato — I shall give little more than an abstract of it in the present chapter, and shall reserve remark and comment for the succeeding.
Declared theme of the Republic — Expansion and multiplication of the topics connected with it.
Personages of the dialogue.
The dramatic introduction of the dialogue (which is described as held during the summer, immediately after the festival of the Bendideia in Peiræus), with the picture of the aged Kephalus and his views upon old age, is among the richest and most spirited in the Platonic works: but the discussion does not properly begin until Kephalus retires, leaving it to be carried on by Sokrates with Polemarchus, Glaukon, Adeimantus, and Thrasymachus.
Views of Kephalus about old age.
Compare the language of Cato, more rhetorical and exaggerated than that of Kephalus, in Cic. De Senect. c. 13-14.
Definition of Justice by Simonides — It consists in rendering to every man what is owing to him.
“Is that your explanation of justice (asks Sokrates): that it consists in telling truth, and rendering to every one what you have had from him?” The old man Kephalus here withdraws; Polemarchus and the others prosecute the discussion. “The poet Simonides (says Polemarchus) gives an explanation like to that which you have stated — when he affirms, That just dealing consists in rendering to every man what is owing to him.”
Objections to it by Sokrates — There are cases in which it is not right to restore what is owing, or to tell the truth.