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The Republic

Plato · Translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1871

Plato

The Republic

Translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1871

What this is

A conversation that starts by asking what justice is, decides the question is easier to see in a city than in a man, and builds the city in order to look at it. The cave, the philosopher-kings and the banishment of the poets are all on the way to an answer about one soul.

How it is set

One leaf per book, with the sections numbered inside it as Long numbers them. A section of Marcus is often three lines, and a page holding three lines is not a page.

What is not here

Notes. These books have the text and nothing else at present — no map, no lives, no commentary. The Gospel of St Luke shows what an annotated book looks like on this shelf, and these will follow it. An empty heading is better than invented filler.

The 10 books

  1. I I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my… 1 sections
  2. II With these words I was thinking that I had made an end of the discussion; but the end, in… 1 sections
  3. III Such then, I said, are our principles of theology—some tales are to be told, and others are not… 1 sections
  4. IV Here Adeimantus interposed a question: How would you answer, Socrates, said he, if a person… 1 sections
  5. V Such is the good and true City or State, and the good and true man is of the same pattern; and… 1 sections
  6. VI And thus, Glaucon, after the argument has gone a weary way, the true and the false philosophers… 1 sections
  7. VII And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or… 1 sections
  8. VIII And so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect State wives and children… 1 sections
  9. IX Last of all comes the tyrannical man; about whom we have once more to ask, how is he formed out… 1 sections
  10. X Of the many excellences which I perceive in the order of our State, there is none which upon… 1 sections
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Text: Plato, The Republic — Benjamin Jowett’s translation, Oxford, 1871, public domain, from Project Gutenberg ebook 1497, set unaltered. Jowett’s long introduction and analysis are his and are not printed here. Set as ten books, which is how it has been divided since antiquity; the Stephanus numbers scholars cite are not in this edition.