The Opening Scene

The first scene of Plato's Republic foreshadows the political questions that the remainder of the dialogue addresses in enormous detail. Socrates has the opening line (which he delivers to an unnamed character): “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon.” The Piraeus was the seaport of Athens, a few miles southwest and lower in elevation than the city proper. Most important, it was the setting of the resistance movement that fought against the Tyranny of the Thirty, the brutal group of Spartan sympathizers who in 404 B.C.E., at the end of the Peloponnesian War, had overthrown the Athenian democracy, which had been proudly in place for a century. The democracy was soon restored (in 403), but the trauma suffered by the Athenians was profound. Plato was twenty-five years old at the time, and at least two of his close relatives (Charmides and Critias) were among the Thirty and their henchmen. (The dialogue, which was probably written around 380, is set in approximately 410.)