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In this paper I address the relationship between Aristophanes' Ecclesiasuzae and books 2-4 (and the first parts of Book V) of Plato's Republic. To address this issue, I examine passages of the two works deemed similar by James Adam and others in the light of Holger Thessleff's work on Platonic chronology with assistance from Debra Nails. I dispute Ussher's conviction that the confluent ideas are a result of the intellectual atmosphere in Athens during the beginning of the 4th Century B.C.E., as well as the notion that the production of Ecclesiasuzae preceded the dissemination of any parts of the Republic. My conclusion is that an unfinished "Proto-Republic" was circulated in Athens prior to 392 (the most commonly accepted date for the production of Ecclesiasuzae) and that it was this work which Aristophanes parodying through the reforms of Praxagora. While the conclusion I reach is similar to that of Thesleff, I do not rely on (nor indeed, necessarily agree with) several of his specific arguments in order to arrive at a pre-Ecclesiasuzae date for the "Proto-Republic." Instead, I draw upon the compositional practices of ancient authors, the preeminence of the Republic in Plato's corpus, the inadequacy of previous arguments attempting to describe the two works' similarity, and the texts themselves to reach my conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with Plato's use of poikilos and cognates to describe democracy. It does not argue that Plato's Republic contains empirical analyses of some contemporary event, but supposes that an historical reading of the book is possible and legitimate. Post Peloponnesian War Athenian society experienced profound socio-economic changes. Echoing the aristocratic élite's circumspect anxiety when faced with the nouveaux riches, Plato clearly regards obsessive greediness as one of the root causes of the corruption of any political system. Referring to democracy, the philosopher invents the himation poikilon or ‘embroidered coat of many colours' metaphor. By materializing the multifaceted concept of poikilia, this metaphor gives a single and palpable form to the principal topoi of anti-democratic rhetoric: the himation poikilon evokes the motley constitution of the Athenian regime, the tyrant's ostentatious opulence, aped by the demos turannos, the inconstancy of the demos, the deceitful character of democracy and, last but not least, its penchant for spectacles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper intends to settle a relationship of reciprocal elucidation between two surprising platonic utterances. The first one, in Republic (428 E), is "a city established on principles of nature" (kata physin oikistheisa polis); the second one, in the Statesman (308 D), speaks about a "the true natural art of statecraft" (kata physin alethos ousa politike). The comprehension of the two platonic formulas, in their contexts, allows to verify the coherence of the political thought of Plato in his late works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop certain of tyranny in Plato's Republic, Book IX. It takes into account not only the pleasures as principle of the dissolution of "logismos" but also the platonic intention of structuring the man's negative paradigm, its thinking, its affections, its actions -the tyrant-, as the opposite of the philosophical soul in its "celestial paradigm" or the man's paradigm, who uses "logismos", who has autarky and who knows what one's care is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]