A review by binstonbirchill
The Republic by Plato
5.0
First of all, that was intense, not in a mortal combat sort of way but in a oh-my-god I gotta concentrate because one thing rolls into the next and there is literally no breaks the entire way through. It's a 310 page back and forth (mostly forth) discussion that results in the setting up of a Utopian city. Now like all Utopias, it could also be considered someone else's Dystopia but we'll leave that alone in this review. The introduction states that The Republic was the book that took civilization from the world of Homer to the world we live in today, the evidence supporting that statement becomes clearer and clearer as the argument builds the city to it's eventual conclusion. The last seven pages are like a smack in the face, quite easily the best ending to any book I've ever read.
A few interesting tidbits:
The Ring of Gyges: Lord of the Rings fans will see similarities.
Platonic love: the idea is directly from a passage in this book.
Plato is, at times, absolutely hilarious. His use of "Apparently. Probably. It looks like it." are majestic.
While there were one or two passages that I found incomprehensible (surely a deficiency in the reader) on the whole this book is very approachable, but you do have to keep your attention on the book otherwise you'll lose the thread or web or whatever. I would suggest reading the Iliad before reading this as there are quite a few references to Homer.
Other good primers, in no particular order, would be:
Aeschylus: (oft referenced Tragedian, The Oresteia is spectacular)
The Odyssey: (but of lesser direct relation to The Republic than The Iliad)
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (for an understanding of Greek geography and brilliant speeches)
Herodotus: The Histories (An introduction to the whole of the ancient world of the Greeks)
Hesiod: I've not read his surviving works yet but he's referenced a lot in The Republic.
A few interesting tidbits:
The Ring of Gyges: Lord of the Rings fans will see similarities.
Platonic love: the idea is directly from a passage in this book.
Plato is, at times, absolutely hilarious. His use of "Apparently. Probably. It looks like it." are majestic.
While there were one or two passages that I found incomprehensible (surely a deficiency in the reader) on the whole this book is very approachable, but you do have to keep your attention on the book otherwise you'll lose the thread or web or whatever. I would suggest reading the Iliad before reading this as there are quite a few references to Homer.
Other good primers, in no particular order, would be:
Aeschylus: (oft referenced Tragedian, The Oresteia is spectacular)
The Odyssey: (but of lesser direct relation to The Republic than The Iliad)
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (for an understanding of Greek geography and brilliant speeches)
Herodotus: The Histories (An introduction to the whole of the ancient world of the Greeks)
Hesiod: I've not read his surviving works yet but he's referenced a lot in The Republic.