Widely considered the greatest of Plato's works, this famous philosophical treatise of the fourth century B.C. concerns an imaginary ideal state and has served as the prototype for other well-known imaginary commonwealths, including Cicero's De Republica, St. Augustine's City of God, and Thomas More's Utopia Written in the form of dialogues, in which Socrates questions his students, The Republic concerns itself chiefly with the idea of justice, as well as the Platonic theory of ideas, the Platonic theory and criticism of poetry, and Plato's conception of the philosopher's role. A staple of high school and college humanities courses, this immortal work appears here in the excellent translation by the distinguished classicist Benjamin Jowett.