TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY FRANCIS MACDONALD CORNFORD LITT.D., F.B.A. Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Publication Information : Book Title : The Republic of Plato. Contributors : Francis MacDonald Cornford – transltr, Plato – author. Publisher : Oxford University Press. Place of Publication : London. Publication Year : 1945.
PREFACE
This version aims at conveying to the English reader as much as possible of the thought of the Republic in the most convenient and least misleading form. I have, accordingly, taken certain liberties, which it is reasonable to suppose that Plato would have sanctioned in an edition prepared for the modern press. The traditional division into ten ‘ books,’ i.e. papyrus rolls, has been discarded, as an accidental expedient of ancient book-production, having little more to do with the structure of the argument than the division of every Victorian novel into three volumes had to do with the structure of the stories. The dialogue falls naturally into six main parts, and these I have subdivided, where minor breaks occur, into forty chapters. The notes prefixed to the chapters are designed to hold the thread of the argument and to explain matters which Plato could take for granted as within the common knowledge of his readers. The sole purpose is to bring out what Plato meant, not to attack or defend his opinions. These are better left to the judgement of the reader. For sympathetic and more detailed interpretation, the best guide known to me is R. L. Nettleship’s Lectures on the Republic of Plato. Professor Ernest Barker’s Greek Political Theory ( 1918) reviews all Plato’s works and the speculations of his predecessors in this field. In Plato To-day Mr. R. H. S. Crossman has made a lively and provocative experiment in confronting Plato with the political problems of the present day.