The Republic
Plato, c. 375 BCE
Held by Standard Ebooks, PG 1497read here
Read it here about 87 h of reading
Add to a shelf
A Socratic dialogue in ten books on what justice is and whether the just person is happier than the unjust one. Socrates answers by building a city in speech: a state with guardians and rulers chosen and educated for the job, ending in rule by philosopher-kings. He then matches the city's parts to the parts of the soul, ranks five kinds of regime from best to worst, and closes with the myth of Er and the fate of souls after death. Along the way come the ring of Gyges, the noble lie and the allegory of the cave.
Where it happens
- Piraeus Athens' port, where Socrates and Glaucon are stopped by Polemarchus and taken to dinner and a festival.1
- Athens The dialogue's world: Socrates talks with Athenians and foreigners during the Peloponnesian War.1
- Oxyrhynchus Papyrus fragments of the Republic found here date to about 200 to 300 CE.1
- Nag Hammadi Fragments of a different version of the Republic turned up in the library found here in 1945.1
- Balliol College, Oxford Jowett's college for the rest of his life, where his Plato translation was made.2
Through time
- 375 BCPlato writes the Republic around this date, in the middle period of his dialogues.1
- 250Papyrus copies of parts of the Republic are written at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, around 200 to 300 CE.1
- 1855Jowett becomes Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, the post from which his Plato translation grew.2
- 1893Jowett dies, having spent his last years on a commentary on the Republic.2
- 1945Fragments of a different version of the Republic are found in the Nag Hammadi library.1
- 2001A survey of over 1,000 academics and students names the Republic the greatest philosophical text.1
Who is in it, and behind it
Benjamin Jowett translator
Oxford classicist and Balliol College figure whose complete Plato translation grew from his Greek professorship.23
Socrates character
Narrator and main speaker, who asks what justice is and builds the ideal city to find out.1
Glaucon character
Socrates' companion, who tells the story of Gyges and calls the first simple city a city of pigs.1
Adeimantus character
Glaucon's partner in pressing Socrates to defend justice for its own sake.1
Thrasymachus character
Argues that justice is whatever benefits the stronger and that injustice pays better.1
Cephalus character
Aged host who defines justice as honesty and paying debts.1
Polemarchus character
Cephalus' son, who holds that justice means helping friends and harming enemies.1
Gyges subject
Shepherd in Glaucon's tale who gains power from a ring of invisibility.1
Er subject
Soldier who dies, comes back after twelve days and reports on the afterlife in Book X.1
What it is about
Justice in city and soul
Socrates compares the parts of the city to the parts of the soul and calls justice a balance between them.1
The ring of Gyges
Glaucon asks whether anyone would stay just if they could do wrong unseen, and Socrates must show justice is good in itself.1
The noble lie
The rulers spread a myth of gold, silver and bronze people so that citizens accept their roles.1
Philosopher-kings
Socrates argues that rulers must be lovers of wisdom who understand the Forms, since they are least open to corruption.1
Allegory of the cave
A parable of prisoners who mistake shadows for reality illustrates the gap between appearance and the Forms.1
Decline of regimes
Socrates ranks aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny, each growing out of the failure of the last.1
In its own words
I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess;
if you were providing for a city of pigs, how else would you feed the beasts?
Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock.
just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside,
Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den;
Let a man do what is just, whether he have the ring of Gyges or not, and even if in addition to the ring of Gyges he put on the helmet of Hades.
The shape of the book
73 chapters, 1,196,583 words. Point at a bar.
How it came to be here
Plato wrote the Republic around 375 BC, in the middle period of his dialogues, and Book I may have begun as a separate piece. The dialogue is set in the time of the Peloponnesian War. Papyrus fragments from Oxyrhynchus show it was read in Egypt in the 200s and 300s CE, and Cicero's later De re publica gave the work its English name. The version on this site is Benjamin Jowett's English translation, from Project Gutenberg, printed with his introductions inside a larger Dialogues volume.
Free to read elsewhere
- Standard Ebooks this edition
- Open Library search editions you can borrow or read
- HathiTrust search full-view scans
- Project Gutenberg search
Sources
Text: SE 'Dialogues' (1,202,725 words), Benjamin Jowett translation; Republic from PG 1497. CC0 (Standard Ebooks).