Abstract

R. E. Allen's new book is both a translation and an analysis of the structure of Plato's Parmenides, in which he likens solution of the dialogue to cracking a code. The fact that Parmenides has been read as "everything from a joke to an exercise in the detection of fallacies to a revelation of the Unknown God" is, as Allen recognizes, a rather perverse proof of the dialogue's perennial riddling character.