The Republic — Plato

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THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO

AN IDEAL COMMONWEALTH

TRANSLATED BY BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A. LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON PROFESSOR OF GREEK LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN ADELPHI COLLEGE, BROOKLYN, N. Y.

REVISED EDITION

THE

Copyright, 1901, Bv THE COLONIAL PRESS.

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

MONG classical authors Plato is second in importance to Homer only, if even to him. To call the founder of the Academy the chief of philosophers ancient or modem is a very inadequate statement, and even, in one important respect, misleading. Though at war with many of the strongest moral tendencies of his race and time, he was none the less himself a Greek, an Athenian, to the core. That is, he was an artist, with eyes opened wide for all beauty in color, form, and motion. The Athenians saw, as perhaps no folk of later days have seen, the glorious charm of the universe, of life, of man. The varied pageant of earthly existence did not pall upon them. Only after a century or two of provincial enslavement is Menander's cry heard: