or the organization of ideas has no real content; but is only
a type of the method or spirit in which the higher knowledge is to be
pursued by the spectator of all time and all existence. It is in the
fifth, sixth, and seventh books that Plato reaches the "summit of
speculation," and these, although they fail to satisfy the requirements
of a modern thinker, may therefore be regarded as the most important,
as they are also the most original, portions of the work.

It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which has
been raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which the
conversation was held (the year 411 B. C. which is proposed by him will
do as well as any other); for a writer of fiction, and especially a
writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of chronology, only
aims at general probability. Whether all the persons mentioned in the
Republic could ever have met at any one time is not a difficulty which
would have occurred to an Athenian reading the work forty years later,
or to Plato himself at the time of writing (any more than to
Shakespeare respecting one of his own dramas); and need not greatly
trouble us now. Yet this may be a question having no answer "which is
still worth asking," because the investigation shows that we can not
argue historically from the dates in Plato; it would be useless
therefore to waste time in inventing far-fetched reconcilements of them
in order avoid chronological difficulties, such, for example, as the
conjecture of C. F. Hermann, that Glaucon and Adeimantus are not the
brothers but the uncles of Plato, or the fancy of Stallbaum that Plato
intentionally left anachronisms indicating the dates at which some of
his Dialogues were written.

CHARACTERS

The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Polemarchus,
Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Cephalus appears in
the introduction only, Polemarchus drops at the end of the first
argument, and Thrasymachus is reduced to silence at the close of the
first book. The main discussion is carried on by Socrates, Glaucon,
and Adeimantus. Among the company are Lysias (the orator) and
Euthydemus, the sons of Cephalus and brothers of Polemarchus, an
unknown Charmantides--these are mute auditors; also there is
Cleitophon, who once interrupts, where, as in the Dialogue which bears
his name, he appears as the friend and ally of Thrasymachus.

Cephalus, the patriarch of house, has been