Plato – The Republic – Easton Press – 1980 100 Greatest Books Ever Written Series Plato (427–347 B.C.) was an Athenian philosopher whose writings stand among the foundations of Western thought. Born into a distinguished Athenian family during the Peloponnesian War, he became in his youth the pupil and friend of Socrates, whose trial and execution in 399 B.C. marked him profoundly and turned him away from the political career his birth might have promised. After years of travel through Egypt, Magna Graecia, and Sicily, he returned to Athens and founded the Academy, the school that would shape philosophical inquiry for centuries and give its name to academic life ever after. Teaching chiefly through conversation, he set out his thought in a series of dialogues in which Socrates almost always appears as the principal speaker, so that the historical teacher and his pupil's own ideas are now inseparably bound together. Among his pupils was Aristotle. He continued to write and teach until his death at eighty, and his influence on philosophy, political theory, and education has been continuous from antiquity to the present day. The Republic is the most celebrated of Plato's dialogues and one of the central works of political philosophy. Cast as a conversation led by Socrates, it begins with the question of what justice is and grows into an inquiry into the nature of the just city and the just soul. In the course of its ten books it ranges across education, the organization of society, the role of the guardians, the place of women, the nature of knowledge and reality, the celebrated allegory of the cave, and the immortality of the soul, closing with a vision of final judgment. Few books have been so continuously read, debated, and contended with, and its questions remain as alive now as when they were first posed. This edition presents the classic English translation by the Victorian scholar Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, together with his introduction, analyses, and summary. Jowett's version was first issued in 1870 and revised in his enlarged third edition of 1892. The text is decorated with medallions cut on wood by the German-American illustrator Fritz Kredel, which together with Jowett's apparatus were first brought together in the edition issued by The George Macy Companies of New York in 1944. The frontispiece portrait of Plato was specially commissioned for this Easton Press edition. Bound in genuine leather in dark brown Spine divided into panels by raised bands, with gilt-stamped anthemion (palmette) designs and the title and author lettered in gilt Front cover framed by an elaborate gilt anthemion border surrounding a blank central panel All page edges gilt Moiré fabric endpapers Satin ribbon page marker Frontispiece portrait of Plato specially commissioned for this edition Woodcut medallions throughout after Fritz Kredel Printed on archival-quality, acid-neutral paper Printed and bound in the United States of America Condition is as new. A handsome, well-kept copy. Ships from Germany. Carefully packed in cardboard book mailer with protective wrapping.