Abstract

This paper is a close reading of the first book of the "republic". Plato prepares the reader for what is to come in the work by hinting at the elaboration of justice in its human, political and cosmic aspects. The paper attends to the argumentative, mythic and rhetorical strategies that plato employs to open the discussion and to develop it. In this way the paper is an aid to a competent, and by no means uncritical, reading of the "republic"