by Plato
THE LITERARY WORK
A philosophical dialogue set in the Piraeus, the port of Athens, Greece, c, 411 bce; written in Greek sometime between 388 and 360 bce.
SYNOPSIS
Socrates and the group with which he converses construct a “city in speech” in order to discover the meaning and value of justice.
Events in History at the Time the Dialogue Takes Place
The Dialogue in Focus
Events in History at the Time the Dialogue Was Written
For More Information
Plato was born in Athens c. 429 bce to a wealthy and aristocratic family. Little is Known about his youth. Diogenes Laertius, in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers, reports that at the age of 20, when Plato met Socrates, Plato was an aspiring tragedian. After conversing with Socrates, he burned his tragedies and devoted himself to philosophy. Ten years later, in 399 bce, the philosophical tutelage was cut short when Socrates was tried, convicted, and executed on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. But Socrates’ influence over Plato endured. When he began to write philosophical dialogues, something Socrates never undertook, Plato made his teacher the protagonist of nearly all of them. The Platonic corpus comprises 35 such dialogues and 13 letters. Of the dialogues, 14 are regarded as spurious works, as not really by Plato. Though all the letters are penned as though by Plato, there is no scholarly agreement as to their authorship. In Athens c. 387 bce, Plato founded a philosophical school, the Academy, which stands as the ancient precursor to the modern university. Aspiring young philosophers, including Aristotle, were enrolled at the Academy, which would remain in existence long after Plato’s death in 347. In his lifetime, Plato exhibited a continuing interest in politics; his two longest dialogues, the Republic and the Laws, though quite different in approach, deal with the same fundamental problems of politics. By his own admission, he himself had youthful political ambitions. Plato’s Seventh Letter describes these ambitions as being derailed by two momentous experiences: the cruel and oppressive rule of the oligarchy Known as the Thirty Tyrants, many of whom were his friends and relatives; and the execution of Socrates by the restored democracy (for Plato’s portrayal of this trial, see his Apology, also in Classical Literature and Its Times). Plato’s seventh letter also describes his failed attempt to instruct Dionysius II of Syracuse, the tyrant of Sicily. Contained in Plato’s Republic is a long meditation on the possibility of an ideal city and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to its achievement. One can see in this work a reflection of the failures in government that Plato witnessed in Athens as a youth, as well as his own failed attempt to influence the political situation in Syracuse as a mature adult.
Events in History at the Time the Dialogue Takes Place
The regime of the Four Hundred
Though when the Republic is set cannot be firmly established,most scholars agree that the conversation takes place c. 411 bce (judging by the age of the participants, all of whom were actual historical figures). In that year, circ*mstances were bleak. Financially strapped and militarily weakened, the Athenians made a radical change to their regime. The democratic Assembly voted the democracy out of existence and set in motion a chain of events which led ultimately to the institution of an oligarchic regime, consisting of 400 rulers. In order to understand Athens’s dire military and financial straits in 411, one must step back and reflect upon the emergence of the Athenian Empire and the set of decisions that threatened its existence.
The Persians had twice attempted to invade mainland Greece and both times been defeated by an alliance of Greek city-states. As the greatest military power in Greece at the time, the Spartans led the pan-Hellenic (pan-Greek) coalition. But the Athenians distinguished themselves in battle: first by nearly single-handedly defeating a much larger land army of Persians at Marathon in 490 bce and second by spearheading an incredible Greek naval victory at Salamis ten years later in 480 bce. On the strength of these accomplishments, and dissatisfaction with the Spartan leadership, Athens took the helm of a second alliance of Greek city-states, the Delian League, a naval coalition made up mostly of city-states on the Greek islands and on the coast of Asia Minor. Members assembled for meetings on the island of Delos, which housed the league’s treasury.
The members of the Delian League supplied ships or made a monetary contribution for their joint military expeditions against Persia. The growth of the Delian League into an empire—the Athenian Empire, to be exact—was gradual but, after the Athenians moved the treasury to the acropolis in Athens (about 454 bce) and forced its allies to pay a yearly tribute to Athens, its supremacy was clear.
It was only a matter of time before Athens’s growing sphere of influence would come into conflict with that of Sparta. In The Peloponnesian War, his account of the conflict between Athens and Sparta, the historian Thucydides holds that “the growth of the power of Athens and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta made the war inevitable” (The Peloponnesian War, 1.23; also in Classical Literature and Its Times). The war (431-404 bce) stood at a virtual stalemate until Athens made a strategic blunder by attempting an ambitious expansion of its empire during a temporary truce in 415 bce. Athens decided to send a vast contingent of ships and land forces to gain dominion in Sicily by challenging the domination of Syracuse there. Massive amounts of equipment and provisions were required. But more remarkable than the size of the expedition was how much wealth it required to finance it. When the Athenian forces met with more resistance from the enemy than expected, they dispatched even more money and considerable reinforcements. Despite the magnitude of the Athenian force, the Syracusan military, with Spartan assistance, crushed the invading Athenians both on land and at sea. Athens lost almost all of its entire invading force—in the end, the Sicilian expedition turned out to be a complete disaster for Athens.
In 411 bce, Athens, whose democratic Assembly had chosen to mount such a disastrous expedition, was persuaded to change its constitution. The Athenians considered their situation. Though now at a significant disadvantage, they were determined to continue the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and to maintain their empire in the Aegean Sea. According to Thucydides, the exiled Athenian general Alcibiades, who was a well-Known associate of Socrates and who had defected to the Spartan side during the war, claimed to have a deal in place with the Persian ambassador: in exchange for much-needed financial assistance from the Persians and a military alliance with them, the Athenians would have to recall Alcibiades and change their constitution to an oligarchy. While Aristotle, in his Constitution of Athens (29), and Thucydides, in The Peloponnesian War (8.54), agree that the Athenian Assembly, though at first resistant, was finally persuaded to change the democratic constitution, they differ significantly in their portrayals of this dramatic decision. While Aristotle makes the process seem like a peaceful constitutional convention wherein a series of reforms were proposed and adopted, Thucydides showcases the attempt of the upper classes, those who would most benefit from an oligarchy, to intimidate and in some cases violently suppress any opposition to the change and to ensure that the oligarchy would be as radical as possible. Given this discrepancy, scholars differ on how to reconstruct accurately the chain of events that led to the regime of the Four Hundred. What is certain is that the initial capitulation of the democratic Assembly led to power being vested in a group of 400, thereby instituting an oligarchy in place of the democracy—the regime of the Four Hundred. This body would rule without the approval of the people; the Assembly was never summoned while
THE THIRTY TYRANTS
In 404 bce, Athens finally lost the Peloponnesian War, The Spartan army occupied Athens, tore down its walls and instituted an oligarchic regime composed of thirty Athenian aristocrats, called “The Thirty” its leader was Critias, an uncle of Plato and a one-time follower of Socrates, The regime became Known as the “Thirty Tyrants” because of its cruel, oppressive rule and brutally violent tactics. The Thirty confiscated money and property as they saw fit and exiled or murdered many Athenian citizens, especially, but not exclusively, those who were suspected of being democratic sympathizers, One of their most notorious exploits was the forcible removal and mass execution of close to 300 men of the town of Eleusis so the Thirty would have a base of operations against the growing democratic resistance (Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.4). That resistance, led by Thrasybulus, had its own base in the Piraeus, the chief port of Athens, where the Republic is set. Ultimately the resistance succeeded and, in 403 bce, reinstated the democracy. The restored democracy declared general amnesty for those who supported the Thirty, but not for the Thirty themselves or for those who committed murder on their behalf. Two victims of the tyrants were the brothers Polemarchus and Lysias, in whose house the Republic takes place. Both brothers had their property confiscated and were targeted for further persecution, While Lysias managed to escape, the Thirty took Polemarchus into custody and executed him. In the Republic, Lysias gives a vivid account of Polemarchus’s arrest in a prosecution speech against Eratosthenes, the tyrant who imprisoned his brother.
it was in power. The soldiers in the Athenian fleet, who were patrolling the Aegean at the time and thus could not have attended the Assembly in order to vote against the constitutional change, refused to acknowledge the new government. Persian assistance never came and the oligarchs quickly made themselves unpopular and were deposed. After another set of Assemblies, a new, more inclusive oligarchy, consisting of 5,000 members, was instituted in place of the Four Hundred. Though Thucydides praises this regime as the best he had ever seen in Athens (The Peloponnesian War, 8.97), we know very little about it and it lasted a very short while. The democracy was restored after only a few months. It is just prior to the oligarchic revolution of 411, when democratic Athens is in the midst of a real-life debate about the best form of government, that Plato sets his Republic, a dialogue about the best constitution.
The Dialogue in Focus
Plot summary
In the Republic, Socrates discusses the meaning of justice with a group of men in the Piraeus: Glaucon and Adeimantus, who were Plato’s brothers; Polemarchus and Lysias, two wealthy resident aliens in whose home the dialogue takes place; and the sophist Thrasymachus, who in 411 had published a political pamphlet criticizing the existing democracy. Just as Socrates and Polemarchus are agreeing that justice implies that it is always wrong to harm another, Thrasymachus bursts into the conversation “like a wild beast” (Plato, The Republic, 336b). He introduces his propositions that “justice” is the advantage of the stronger and that injustice is more advantageous than justice. According to this logic, to be just is to follow the laws, which are set down by the powerful ruling class for their own advantage. The laws thus force others to act on behalf of the ruling class. It follows that injustice lies in freedom from the law and the pursuit of one’s own advantage. The un-just man is better off because, shaking off the laws, he pursues his own interests, not those of others, and so is better off than those who follow the rules. Socrates attempts to refute these claims on the grounds that a true ruler will be unselfish and always care for his subjects; he argues that not only is justice itself superior to injustice with respect to virtue and wisdom, justice provides the only path to real happiness. Thrasymachus concedes, though unwillingly,but Socrates himself casts the conclusion into doubt by lamenting the fact that they had failed to define justice adequately.
In book 2, Glaucon and Adeimantus challenge Socrates to come up with better arguments that being just is naturally (regardless of consequences) more advantageous than being unjust. Glaucon sets up two ideals—a thoroughly just man who has the worst reputation for injustice and is despised by all who know him; and a thoroughly corrupt and un-just man who has the greatest reputation for justice and is honored by the city for it. Socrates’ task is to prove that the just man in this case is still better off than the unjust man. In order to accomplish the task, which will take up the rest of the Republic, Socrates proposes an analogy between the just city and the just soul of an individual and suggests that they look for justice in the city, where it will be easier to see, so they may, by analogy, understand it in the individual soul (Republic, 368d).
In conceiving the ideal city, Socrates first takes up the education of the guardian, or soldier, class. In order to make guardians harsh to their enemies but gentle to their fellow citizens, Socrates proposes a balanced educational program of music and gymnastics. The gymnastics will train the body, making the guardians tough and hard; they will be impervious to harsh external conditions and to the lure of pleasure. The musical education, which encompasses all of the fine arts (including poetry and its stories), will train the soul, preparing the guardians for rational argument and providing them with models of good moral conduct. In order to prepare the guardians for argument, all art forms will be strictly regulated so that they will only be exposed to art that exhibits, and thus encourages, harmony and order. The stories that are told to the guardians, especially those of Homer, will be strictly censored so that they never listen to any that encourage bad behavior by portraying any unjust actions of gods or heroes, who ought to be moral exemplars. Since a great deal of Greek poetry did in fact contain portrayals of gods and heroes engaging in unjust activities, Socrates’ criteria for acceptable poetry will banish large swaths of the existing canon. The program of censorship amounts to a direct challenge to the independent authority of poets as moral educators. All active poets will be subject to strict government oversight so their poetry serves the goal of properly educating the guardians. Thus educated, the guardians will acquire the ideal mixture of gentleness and harshness for developing harmonious, well-ordered souls.
The finest of the guardians will comprise the ruling class. In order to determine who amongst the guardians is best suited to rule, they will be subjected to a series of tests—those who unwaveringly look to the benefit of the city even in the most adverse conditions will prove themselves worthy of ruling. To ensure the loyalty of the rulers and the citizenry as a whole, Socrates contrives a “noble lie” (Republic, 414c). The citizens will be told that they are all born from the earth, their mother, and so constitute a single family. Three classes of citizens are to be divided according to the metal mixed in their soul: gold for the rulers, silver for the soldiers, and bronze or iron for the farmers and craftsmen. The guardians will live a communal life, eating together in a mess hall “like soldiers in a camp”; they will possess no money, private property, or individual families (Republic, 416e).
In book 4, Socrates, having established the city in speech, investigates it to see where its virtues lie. Its wisdom consists in the knowledge of the rulers; its courage, in the spiritedness of the soldier class; its moderation, in the agreement of the whole city as to who should rule. Its justice resides in each class “doing its own work” or “minding its own business” (Republic, 433a). Drawing an analogy to the soul, the three classes of the city—rulers, soldiers and craftsmen—correspondto the rational, spirited, and desiring parts of the soul (“the spirited part” being the portion reserved for anger, honor, pride, and courage). Four virtues have been linked to the city—wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. These four virtues likewise match up with the virtues of the soul. Like justice in the city, justice in the soul consists in each part of the soul minding its own business. Part of the business of the rational part, since it has knowledge, is to rule and control the spirited and desiring parts.
At the beginning of book 5, when Socrates is about to discuss four deficient types of regime and the souls that correspond to them, Polemarchus and Adeimantus challenge Socrates to defend certain aspects of his ideal city. He must fend off arguments against three radical proposals that are fundamental to his city: (1) that men and women are equal; (2) that the individual family unit be abolished and replaced by an enlarged sense of family including all citizens; (3) that philosophers should rule as kings. Socrates first argues that women and men must be treated as equals. Since they are different only with respect to physical strength and reproduction, women are equally capable of ruling and must be afforded the exact same education as men. Socrates defends the abolition of the family unit by arguing that, when particular familial bonds are eliminated and one cares for every other citizen equally, public and private interests will become identical. Since no one will be able to recognize his or her own child, the scope of paternal and maternal relationships will be expanded to include a whole generation of offspring rather than any individual member of it. Further, all children born in any given generation will consider each other siblings. The rulers, by virtue of their ability to calculate the mysterious “nuptial number,” the mathematical basis of eugenics, or selective breeding for the benefit of the human race, will regulate the sexual relationships between men and women to produce the best children. After they have passed the age of procreation, men and women will be permitted to have sex with whomever they choose, excepting those whom they consider children.
Socrates claims that philosophers must rule the city as kings if this ideal city is ever to be approximated in reality. In order to rule perfectly, the philosopher must undertake the “greatest study” and come to know “the idea of the good,” without which nothing else can be truly useful or beneficial (Republic, 505a). Socrates refuses to say what the idea of the good is, since he does not himself know, but he explains what the good is like using three images: the sun, the divided line, and the allegory of the cave. First, just as the sun is responsible for our vision and the visibility of what is seen, the good is responsible for our knowledge and the intelligibility (or knowability) of what is Known. Second, the divided line provides an account of what exists: Socrates draws a basic division between what is visible and what is intelligible. He then subdivides the visible into physical images and objects; the intelligible, into mathematical objects and forms. The line is ordered hierarchically: forms are most real on the divided line; physical images are least real. In book 7, Socrates’ allegory of the cave illustrates the education necessary for the rulers to achieve knowledge of the idea of the good. Socrates portrays education as a liberation of the soul from slavery to images and as a turning of the soul towards the good. In the allegory, humans sit in the cave, chained to their seats and staring at a screen, onto which images are projected. The projected images are their whole world. When one of the prisoners is released, that person sees that what he or she has been taking for reality is actually only a set of projections made by other people. Having detected the source and nature of the images in the cave, the person is led up a harsh path out of the cave into the light. Once in the real world, the person can perceive the true reality and may after a long time look at the sun (the source of the real beings of the world, the forms and their intelligibility by people). After doing so, the person feels compelled to return to the cave to liberate others. Outside the cave, one is in the intelligible realm, the realm of knowable forms; the sun stands for the idea of the good, which provides both being and intelligibility to the forms. One can come to know the good: “in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of the good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything... it [has] provided truth and intelligence” (Republic, 517b-c).
The extensive study that will accomplish this turning of the soul to knowledge of the good, Socrates claims, will consist of the following disciplines: philosophical arithmetic, plane geometry, solid geometry, astronomy, harmonics, and finally dialectic (the search by study and argumentation for the most real beings, the forms). The students who have made it this far—they are by now about 50 years old—will look to the good itself and employ it in order to rule the city justly.
In books 8 and 9, Socrates resumes the discussion of deficient regimes and souls. He takes them
THE MYTH OF ER
In the myth of Er. Socrates recounts the tale of a man named Er, who died in battle and 12 days later came back to life. Having observed what happens to souls in the afterlife, he recounts the story. After death, souls come to a demonic place with four holes, two in the earth and two in the heavens. A judge passes judgment on the soul, sending the un-just down under the earth to suffer tenfold for the suffering they caused while alive and sending the just up into heaven to enjoy tenfold rewards for good deeds done in life. After a thousand years of reward or punishment, all souls return to the demonic place to choose their next life (except for the worst tyrants and criminals who suffer eternally in the underworld). Each soul receives a numbered lot and, in order of the drawing, chooses its next life from among the lives available. The souls coming from heaven, forgetting what got them into heaven, tend to choose the life of a tyrant or other powerful sort, ensuring that next time they die, they will be sent down under the earth. Conversely, the souls coming up from under the earth, mindful of the mistakes of the earlier life, tend to choose more carefully and wind up with more just lives so that after death they will find themselves in the heavenly place. Thus, most souls are caught in an endless reincarnation cycle of virtuous and vicious lives. The myth emphasizes the importence of the ability to distinguish between the good life and the bad so that one will be able to recognize and choose a just life both while alive and later in the demonic place. Only philosophical inquiry, with its sustained reflection on the good life, will provide the human soul with the intellectual resources to make the right decision consistently and thus escape the cycle of virtue and vice that un philosophical souls must endure, Included in Plato’s myth are figures from the epics of Homer. Odysseus, stripped of his concern for honor, is Plato’s hero: “By chance Odysseus’ soul had drawn the last lot of all and went to choose; from memory of its former labors it had recovered from love of honor; it went around for a long time looking for the life of a private man who minds his own business; and with effort it found one lying somewhere neglected by the others” (Republic, 620c). Odysseus rejects the ethos of honor and fame characteristic of Homer’s world and chooses instead a private life of quiet reflection, nurturing through philosophy his soul and thus minding his most important business.
up in the order of degeneration from the best regime. The timocratic state—governed on principles of honor and military glory—will love victory most of all, and the timocratic man will be dominated by the spirited part of his soul. The oligarchic regime will be ruled by the rich, and the oligarchic man will be ruled by the desiring part of his soul, though, being stingy, he will only seek to satisfy his necessary desires. The democratic regime is the most diverse and superficially attractive; a democracy makes everyone equal by granting freedom to all. In truth, the democratic man is also ruled by his desires. But he treats all desires, both necessary and unnecessary, as equally important; he looks, says the dialogue, to satisfy whichever one happens to strike him. A tyranny is ruled by the desires of one autocratic man; it is warlike and oppressive, violent both to its neighbors and its own citizens. The tyrannical man is ruled by the sad*stic, lustful, and unlawful desires that most people encounter only in dreams. Just as the tyrannical regime enslaves and dishonors its best citizens—the philosophers who insist on thinking for themselves—so too the tyrannical man enslaves and dishonors the best part of his soul—his reason. The tyrant, the most unjust man, has the most disharmonious soul possible and is the most unhappy. At this point, Glaucon and Adeimantus are satisfied that Socrates has answered the objections they raised at the start of book 2. Glaucon observes atthe end of book 9 that in order to become and remain harmonious in soul, the just man will not be politically engaged:
“[The just man] won’t be willing to mind the political things.”
“Yes, by the dog,” [Socrates] said, “he will in his own city, very much so. However, perhaps he won’t in his fatherland unless some divine chance coincidentally comes to pass.”
“I understand,” [Glaucon] said. “You mean he will in the city whose foundation we have now gone through, the one that has its place in speeches, since I don’t suppose it exists anywhere on earth.”
“But in heaven,” [Socrates] said, “perhaps, a pattern is laid up for the man who wants to see and found a city within himself on the basis of what he sees. It doesn’t make any difference whether it is or will be somewhere. For he would mind the things of this city alone, and of no other”
(Republic, 592a-b)
Thus, the just man, instead of being a politically active citizen in his actual city, will fix his gaze on the ideal city in order to found a just regime in his soul.
In book 10, Socrates revises his earlier account of poetry in the ideal city. Poetry as a whole is banished on the grounds that it is mimetic, or imitative. Imitation, Socrates argues, contains no knowledge since it creates superficial images of a more complex preexisting reality. Imitation also harms the soul by gratifying, and thus fortifying, the part that desires. To finish off the argument, Socrates turns to the consequences of justice and argues that justice will not go unnoticed by one’s fellow citizens nor unrewarded by the gods in this life. He then recounts the “Myth of Er” to show that justice is also advantageous in the afterlife because, in death, we are called to account for our actions in life.
The trial of Socrates
In 399 bce, at the age of 70, Socrates stood trial for impiety and corrupting the youth. Plato dramatized this event in an earlier dialogue—the Apology (also in Classical Literature and Its Times). The work is called an apology because apologia, in Greek, refers to a legal defense speech; Socrates certainly does not apologize for anything. We have no way of knowing how accurately Plato was in his rendition of Socrates’ speech, an important consideration to keep in mind, especially since another major writer, Xenophon, provides a markedly different account of the trial.
In Plato’s version, Socrates mounts an elaborate defense not just of himself but of his philosophical mission in life. Socrates relays how a friend consulted the oracle at Delphi to find out if there was anyone wiser than Socrates. When the oracle replied that no one was wiser, Socrates, realizing he himself was not wise, set out to discover the hidden meaning of the oracle’s words. He went around interrogating those who claimed to be wise, only to discover that many of them did not possess wisdom after all. Socrates reasoned that the oracle must mean that “human wisdom is worth little or nothing” but that his Socratic wisdom, the knowledge that he was ignorant, was superior to misguidedly believing oneself to be wise. Socrates argues that by disabusing the Athenians of their pretensions to wisdom, he was performing an immensely valuable service. He was alerting them to the fact that they were fundamentally ignorant about the most important thing—what kind of life they should lead. Because they all falsely believed that they already knew the answer, they neither investigated nor paid attention to the matter. They neglected the attempt to educate themselves through philosophical inquiry. This neglect, Socrates argues, amounts to a failure to take care of their most important possession, their souls; it ignores a crucial implication of Socratic wisdom, that the “unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato, Apology, 38a). The jury did not agree. By a vote of 280 to 220, they convicted Socrates and, after he antagonized them by proposing free state-sponsored meals for himself as his “punishment,” they sentenced him to death by an even wider margin. It was a misled jury, say some scholars, who condemned Socrates because of his relationships with two unsavory Athenians of the day: a traitor to the city (Alcibiades) and the leader of the Thirty Tyrants (Critias). In any case, in the Republic, Socrates offers a second, more elaborate defense of philosophy and the role of the philosopher in the city. Every political community shuns the philosopher as either useless or vicious. They are “useless”—not part of the horde clamoring for political power, philosophers are left unused by the establishment. There is no dearth of examples of Athens’s enmity towards philosophers: Anaxagoras was exiled on charges of impiety; Socrates was executed; and Aristotle fled Athens a year before his death to escape being prosecuted for impiety. Socrates also argues that those who have great natures suited to philosophical inquiry become vicious when they abandon their philosophical training too soon and attempt to achieve political power. This explanation exonerates Socrates for thecrimes of his one-time associates Alcibiades and Critias and accounts for why they became such notorious figures despite being the philosophical companions of Socrates. Philosophy and politics will be at odds, The Republic implies, until the “divine chance coincidentally comes to pass” and they converge in the ideal city (Republic, 592a).
Women and the education of youth in Athens.
In the Republic Socrates proposes that women and men are intellectual equals and that, because of this, they should be treated as equals with respect to ruling the city. To understand how radical and shocking this proposal was, one must know the legal and social status of women in fifth-century Athens.
At no time in her life did an Athenian woman fail to have a protective male guardian, or kyrios. Her father played this role until she was married, at which point her husband assumed responsibility for her. If her husband chose to divorce her or if he died, her guardianship reverted back to her father and, if possible, a new husband was found. There were complex rules governing who was to become her guardian in case her father was dead but, in general, her closest living male relative, including her son if she had one, would take over her protection.
Athenian women did not possess functional citizenship rights: they could not attend or vote in the Assembly, or ekklēsia; they could not hold any political office or administrative position in government. Women were also not permitted to serve on juries. Not surprisingly, women possessed a diminished legal status as well. They could not prosecute cases on their own behalf, nor could they mount their own defense when prosecuted. Except in rare cases, women did not testify in court. Their names were not even mentioned; they were rather identified by their relationship to the legally relevant males—wife of, sister of, or daughter of. A woman’s testimony, if it was required, could be delivered by her guardian on her behalf; oaths sworn by women at holy shrines were also admissible as evidence. In sum, male guardians stood up for women when it came to political or legal matters in ancient Athens.
Athenian women did play a crucial role in the transaction of wealth in the city, but they had little or no control over this role. In marrying off his daughter, an Athenian citizen was expected to send with her person a considerable dowry. This dowry would become the property of her husband and guardian although the woman retained a claim to it in case he divorced her, at which point, it would revert back to her father. In cases where a father left no direct male descendants, his daughter inherited the estate but her control over it was nominal. A woman who thus became an heiress could be claimed in marriage by her father’s closest male relative even if both of them were already married. Any property, including inherited property, associated with an Athenian woman would become the property of her guardian, which at least partly explains why the transfer of guardianship was so strictly regulated. After Pericles passed a law restricting citizenship to those with Athenian heritage on both their mother and father’s side (451 bce), having an Athenian wife became necessary for the bearing of legitimate heirs.
An Athenian woman’s domain of authority and influence was the household, or oikos, the fundamental social unit of the city. Women were expected to manage the household slaves and to care for the children. Women also played key roles in events associated with family. At funerals, for example, women were the primary care-takers of the corpse.
Part of caring for the children was making sure they were properly educated. Customarily elementary instruction of boys was conducted in private tuition-based schools; girls for the most part were educated at home. The cost of education was fairly inexpensive, so a rudimentary level of schooling was widespread; however, since schooling was not mandatory, basic education was limited to those who were willing to educate their children and could afford to do so.
Primary school consisted of three programs of study: letters, music, and physical education. These were taught concurrently beginning sometime between the ages of five and seven. Physical education included both fitness training and coaching in the techniques of the various sports (in javelin throwing, discus throwing, wrestling, etc.). In their music instruction, students learned to play the lyre and sing the poetry of renowned lyric poets. The study of letters encompassed instruction in reading and arithmetic, with a concentration on the reading and memorization of poetry, especially that of Homer. In fifth-century Athens, poetic education was intended “as the basis of moral training, as providing examples of noble conduct to be emulated” (Beck, p. 117). The poets themselves were considered educators: in the Republic, Socrates claims that many people praise Homer as the poet who “educated Greece” (Republic, 606e).
Higher education was available in professional disciplines (like medicine), in purely intellectual pursuits (philosophy, mathematics, and science), and in rhetoric, which provided training for speaking persuasively in the law-courts and in the Assembly. The sophists were a group of traveling educators who charged high fees for courses in rhetoric and public speaking—they tended to train students intent on achieving political influence. In democratic Athens, the sophists had many clients since the ability to persuade your fellow citizens in public policy was tantamount to achieving political power. Plato’s portrayal of the sophists in several of his dialogues, including his depiction of Thrasymachus in the Republic, is an attempt to refute the self-serving ethics they promoted through their style of teaching rhetoric. In his view, their teachings promoted ethical relativism, the idea that there is no right or wrong except by convention or agreement. What’s good or right in a given culture or time period, according to this view, is so only because that is what the culture considers good or right. There is no such thing as independent moral truth, only moral conventions. For Plato, ethical relativism allows a man to act as he pleases in an amoral world, a world without any true right or wrong.
Sources and literary context
After Socrates was executed in 399 bce, several of his followers began writing literature commemorating Socrates’ life. This phenomenon was widespread enough for Aristotle, in the Poetics, to treat Socratic literature, Sokratikoi logoi, as an established literary genre. But only the Socratic literature of Plato and Xenophon still exists. The genre itself occupied a space between history and fiction, a precursor, one might argue, to contemporary historical fiction. It featured characters who were based on real historical figures, but the conversations they had were fictional. Casting Socrates in the role of the hero, the conversations typically portrayed him and a few companions discussing matters of ethical and philosophical import. How close they are to what Socrates really believed remains a matter of vigorous debate. The members of the Socratic circle were not the first to dramatize the figure of Socrates; the comic dramatist Aristophanes satirized Socrates by portraying him as a charlatan and the consummate sophist in his Clouds (also in Classical Literature and Its Times).
Scholars have for a long time noticed that the revolutionary social proposals of Plato’s Republic bear remarkable similarities to those found in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen. In that comedy, the Athenian women, disguised as men, enter the Assembly and vote to hand over all political power exclusively to the women. Praxagora, the leader of this group, institutes a monumental (and fanciful) governmental change: private property is to be held in common, all will eat their meals together, and the family unit will be abolished. As in the Republic, the parent-child relationship will be expanded to encompass whole generations, and all will live as if in “a single household” (Aristophanes, Assemblywomen in Comoediae, line 674; trans. F. Trivigno). The similarities are too extraordinary to assign to chance though scholars have not come to an agreement about the relationship between the two texts. Most agree that Plato’s Republic probably did not predate Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen and so rule out the possibility that Aristophanes is parodying Plato. Scholars, perhaps uncomfortable with the idea that something so serious and philosophically interesting could have had its origin in comedy, have been likewise reluctant to accept that Plato took up these proposals from Aristophanes. However, since in book 2 of his Politics (also in Classical Literature and Its Times), Aristotle asserts that Plato was the first to take
THE DIALOGUE FORM
Plato, unlike most other philosophers, dramatized his philosophical vision rather than divulging it in a treatise. Plato’s own absence from the dialogues presents the reader with a set of interpretive problems unparalleled in the discourse of other philosophers. Why did Plato write dialogues? How does one discover the philosophical meaning of a dialogue? And even if the meaning can be discovered, how does one relate the dialogues to each other? The easiest solution would be to equate the views expressed by Socrates with the philosophical thought of Plato, but this solution poses several problems. It renders the dramatic context empty and meaningless, which suggests that Plato wasted his dramatic gifts gussying up the dialogues with dramatic details when he could have just as easily written a straightforward treatise. This solution also fails to address the fact that across several dialogues, Socrates makes incompatible, even contradictory, claims. Would Plato himself hold such contradictory attitudes? Another approach is to hold that the dramatic context and the views of characters in a dialogue comprise a meaningful whole. The dramatic presentation discourages passive reliance on authority for received wisdom and encourages an active intellectual role for readers, who are prompted to engage in their own philosophical pursuit. Scholars who favor this position, however, disagree over what the philosophical meaning of a dialogue is and even whether any philosophical content is intended at all Others say that Plato held a unified view throughout his career and that the different dialogues represent different teaching strategies for advancing the same philosophical content. Still others argue that Plato’s views changed over time, as shown by the various positions endorsed by different dialogues. Lastly, some interpreters argue that Plato has no systematic philosophy at all and that the dialogue form shows that he just wanted to provoke his readers into asking philosophical questions. In the Republic, he would be provoking them into focusing on such major philosophical issues as the nature of justice, the structure of the soul (or mind), the conditions for the possibility of knowledge, and the role of art in society.
these radical proposals seriously, probably Plato made serious what Aristophanes conceived as hilariously funny.
Events in History at the Time the Dialogue Was Written
The Athenian democracy
As noted, an oligarchy ruled Athens the year that the Republic takes place. The oligarchy interrupted several decades of rule by democracy, which was the system in effect when Plato wrote his Republic. The English word, democracy, comes from the Greek, dēmokratia, which literally means the rule (kratos) of the people (dēmos). Like modern democracy, the Athenian democracy valued liberty, equality, freedom of speech, and citizen participation. Pericles, in describing the Athenian character, observed, “We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business at all” (Pericles in Thucydides, 2.40). Apart from these similarities, however, Athenian democracy differs in several fundamental ways from the modern version. While the latter depends on the election of representatives who, for a term of office, represent the political interests of their constituency, in Athens, any citizen over 20 could speak and vote in the Assembly (ekklēsia), the deliberative body that made nearly all of the important political decisions. The number of times the Assembly met increased gradually from 10 days a year in the early fifth century to 40 days a year in the fourth century. Any one of the 30,000-60,000 Athenian citizens could enter the Assembly on any day it met.
The daily administration of government affairs required about 1,200 magistrates, or public officials. A few positions were elected by the Assembly from the pool of citizens who possessed the relevant expertise (e.g., army generals). “The vast majority of Athenian magistrates were selected by lot; and, since almost all of them held offices that only lasted a year and could not be held by the same person again, the people had to choose 1100 persons in that manner every year” (Hansen, p. 230). Only those citizens over 30 who presented themselves for allotment were eligible, but the expectation was that every male citizen of Athens can and ought to engage in the affairs of the state.
The agenda of the Assembly was set by a committee of magistrates Known as the Council of Five Hundred (Boulē). Any citizen, however, could offer an amendment or modification to a proposal. Debate in the Assembly entailed any number of participants making speeches for or against the proposal, some prepared, some extemporaneous. Though everyone had the right to speak, a small group of professionally trained orators generally dominated the discussion and greatly influenced decisions. In the fifth century, since the responsibilities of the Assembly were so wide-ranging, a citizen trained in persuasive argument could exert considerable influence over the Assembly. In the fourth century, after the fall of the Thirty, the restored democracy curtailed the Assembly’s ability to pass laws though it retained full authority in foreign policy to pass decrees, elect generals, or declare war.
The Athenian jury system selected 6,000 jurors yearly from citizens who applied for service and were older than 30. The number of jurors at a trial was variable, but could amount to as many as 501 or more. In the fourth century, jurors might be selected to serve as legislators as well. To enact a new law, the Assembly would call for a board of 1,000 legislators, who were chosen by lot from the 6,000 jurors, to decide if the proposed amendment should become law.
There was no district attorney to represent the interests of the state and no defense lawyer to represent an individual’s rights; in both civil and criminal proceedings, individual citizens served as prosecutors, and defendants had to defend themselves. In the courts, as in the Assembly, rhetorical virtuosity was highly prized. Any citizen could hire a speechwriter (Lysias, for example) to prepare an eloquent and persuasive speech, but the litigant had to deliver it himself. According to standard procedure, the prosecution and then the defense presented their evidence, interviewed their witnesses, and made their case. The jury voted without any deliberation, which, given the size of the juries, would have been next to impossible. No standard appeal process existed except in the rarest of cases. If a defendant was found guilty and no penalty was prescribed, both parties proposed a penalty, defended it, and then waited for the jurors to vote on the penalty.
The tyranny in Syracuse
It is unclear when Plato composed the Republic. The range of conjectures falls between the dates of Plato’s first and last visits to Syracuse (388 bce and 360 bce). The relationship between the writing and these visits is no mere coincidence: scholars have long tried to firmly establish a relationship between the ideal city articulated in the Republic and the account Plato gives of his trips to Syracuse in his letters. Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch provide independent confirmation that Plato made three visits to Syracuse and that, in each case, his at-tempts to influence the Syracusan tyrant were spectacular public failures.
On Plato’s first trip to Sicily, he made the acquaintance of Dion, the brother-in-law of the Syracusan tyrant, Dionysius I. Dion found in Plato an inspirational teacher of philosophy and Plato found in him a dedicated and gifted pupil. The Seventh Letter claims that Plato had come to Syracuse convinced that the problem of political justice could only be solved by the convergence of philosophy and power. In his Life of Dion, Plutarch reports that Dion, having been convinced by Plato of the desirability of having a philosopher-king, arranged for Plato to meet Dionysius I, hoping to ignite the spark of philosophy in the ruler of Syracuse. Dionysius I was a military strongman who had established his monarchy violently, made several attempts to subdue all of Sicily, and remained at war for most of his career. When the two met, Plato apparently offended him by arguing that tyrants, least of all, possess true courage. Insulted, Dionysius I arranged to have Plato, while on his journey back home, sold into slavery. Plato’s friends ransomed him soon after.
Plato made a second trip to Syracuse on the invitation of Dionysius II, the son of the by-then-dead Dionysius I. The younger Dionysius, encouraged by Plato’s former pupil Dion, was eager for philosophical training. For Plato, the attraction was the opportunity to put his political principles into practice. Upon arriving, he found the court “full of faction and malicious reports to the tyrant about Dion” (Republic,1.329b). Soon after, Dionysius II exiled Dion for allegedly having plotted against the tyranny; he was accused of using philosophy to subdue and control the tyrant. Although the philosophical relationship never got very far, they parted on more or less friendly terms.
Though the court harbored considerable hostility towards Plato, Dionysius II persuaded him to return to Syracuse several years later. Plato was offered the opportunity to effect a reconciliation between the exiled Dion and Dionysius II and to instruct the latter philosophically. Despite Plato’s efforts, Dionysius II steadfastly refused to attempt any reconciliation with Dion. Plato found that the king had been dabbling in philosophy, his head “full of half-understood doctrines” and was quite unwilling to endure the long, rigorous education required for the study of philosophy (Plato, The Seventh Letter, 340b). Plato fell out of favor with Dionysius II and lived as a virtual prisoner in Syracuse until some friends pleaded successfully that he be permitted to leave. Thus, the attempt to turn a real-life king into a philosopher-king, never got very far.
After Plato’s failure, Dion deposed Dionysius II by seizing Syracuse when the former was away on a military campaign. As ruler, Dion tried to implement a Platonic system of government but lacked the support and resources to achieve it. His rule, beset with turmoil and infighting, lasted only briefly before he was assassinated. Plato’s Seventh Letter is addressed to Dion’s friends and associates, encouraging them to follow in his footsteps by trying, in a nonviolent way, to create “the best and most just constitution and system of laws” (Republic, 1.351c). Syracuse, plagued by social and political unrest, would not recover any semblance of stability for the next 20 years.
Reception and impact
The first major review of Plato’s work was done by his student, Aristotle, in his Metaphysics and Politics. In the Politics, Aristotle argues that the regime of the Republic is excessively unified, harmonized to an unattainable and undesirable degree. Aristotle takes issue especially with the abolition of the family unit and private property. He argues that once family relations are extended to the whole community, rather than having the desired effect of making everyone love each as his own, no one will love anyone as his own. As Aristotle sees it, the citizen’s individual interests in his family and his property are good for the city as a whole because the state is naturally composed of a diversity of elements whose competing interests help the community thrive. But, of course, Aristotle’s rebuke of Plato depends on his interpretation of Plato’s ideas, and many scholars have found this interpretation to be lacking.
It would be difficult to overstate the impact of the Republic or of Plato more generally on the history of Western philosophy. Plato set the stage for the discipline by asking and offering the first attempts to answer nearly all of its central questions (What exists? How is knowledge possible? Where do moral obligations come from?). These questions would become the foundational ones for the different branches of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy and aesthetics). Modern interpretations have varied significantly on the meaning of the Republic. Some argue that the city that Plato envisions is a Utopia and provides justification for a totalitarian government; both the Nazis and the Soviets found a justification for their regimes in Plato. On the other hand, many have seen in the Republic an indirect argument for democracy, since it is the most tolerant and congenial to philosophy. Still others have interpreted the Republic as encouraging indifference to politics. According to this interpretation, Plato shows us that political justice is impossible. Socrates makes the conditions for the perfectly just city unattainable by demanding that its rulers acquire a totally comprehensive wisdom in order to rule justly. Thus read, the Republic becomes an anti-political document, encouraging us to refrain from engaging in the politics of our city and to concentrate exclusively on the politics in our soul.
—Franco Trivigno
For More Information
Aristophanes. Comoediae. Ed. F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Beck, Frederick A. G. Greek Education: 450-350 B.C. London: Methuen, 1964.
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. 2 Vols. Trans. R. D. Hicks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925.
Edelstein, Ludwig. Plato’s Seventh Letter. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1966.
Hansen, M. H. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Trans. J. A. Crook. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Just, Roger. Women in Athenian Law and Life. London: Routledge, 1989.
Krenz, Peter. The Thirty at Athens. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Meiggs, Russell. The Athenian Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Plato. Apology. In Four Texts on Socrates. Trans. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.
_____ The Republic. Trans. A. Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968.
Plutarch. Lives. 11 Vols. Trans. B. Perrin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1918.
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Trans. R. Crawley. Rev. T. E. Wick. New York: Modern Library, 1982.
Xenophon. Hellenica, Books 1-4. Trans. Carleton L. Brownson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1918.
World Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historic Events That Influenced Them
