CHRONOLOGY

479 B.C. Retreat of Xerxes' Army. End of Persian War

470 Birth of Socrates

435 Revolution in Corcyra and war with Corinth

432 Beginning of Peloponnesian War

430 Probable date of first performance of Sophocles' Oedipus the King

428 Death of Pericles

Birth of Plato

427 Plague in Athens

423 First performance of Aristophanes' Clouds

422-416 Peace of Nicias, a truce

416-413 Syracusan Expedition

414 First performance of Aristophanes' Birds

404 Athens capitulates to Sparta

403ff. Oligarchic chaos throughout Greece

399 Trial and death of Socrates

398-388 Plato's earlier dialogues

388 Plato visits Syracuse, meets Dion and Dionysius I

387 Academy founded

367 Plato's first attempt to work with Dionysius II in Syracuse

366 Probable date of The Republic

360 Plato's second attempt to work with Dionysius II

360-348 Plato's later dialogues

358 Battle of Chaeronea

348 Death of Plato

THE REPUBLIC

or the Polity

[which in Greek means the constitutional government of a city]


Probably written immediately after Plato's first Syracusan expedition.

The scene is laid in the house of a rich merchant of foreign origin in the Piraeus, the port city of Athens, during the Peace of Nicias, a truce in the Peloponnesian War. The persons present have just been spectators at a celebration of a foreign festival.

There is the atmosphere, though no explicit proposal, of the larger political responsibilities of Athens to the community of which it was a part, a foreshadowing to us with hindsight of the Alexandrian and Roman Empires, to the founding of which The Republic made great contributions. The Platonic Syracusan expeditions give occasion for such guesses.

The plot might be imagined as the withdrawal from the Athenian Assembly, pictured in first book, to the meeting of the philosopher-kings in Nocturnal Council, the city of the birds.

The Persons of the Drama

Cephalus. The name means "head." A retired businessman, head of a business family. A man of experience and sound opinion.

Polemarchus. The name means "war-lord" or "general." Son of Cephalus, pupil of Lysias, the teacher of rhetoric.

Thrasymachus. The name means "rash fighter," a sophist from Thrace.

These three men speaking in character are caricatures of the three classes in the state which is constructed in the fourth book. Their types and others are fully characterized in the eighth book.

Adeimantus. The name means "singer of oracles" or "sooth-singer." An older half-brother of Plato, here a young man. His medium is poetry.

Glaucon. The name means "gleaming eyes" or "owl." He is also a half-brother of Plato, a young man. The suggestion is that he is the owl of Athena the bird that sees in the gathering twilight.

Socrates. "Master of life." In this great comedy Socrates takes all the roles of all the types of comic hero, including that of the playwrite himself.