Plato. - 1987;2005;

EARLY SOCRATIC DIALOGUES

PLATO (c. 427347 BC) stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West. He came from a family that had long played a prominent part in Athenian politics, and it would have been natural for him to follow the same course. He declined to do so, however, disgusted by the violence and corruption of Athenian political life, and sickened especially by the execution in 399 of his friend and teacher, Socrates. Inspired by Socrates inquiries into the nature of ethical standards, Plato sought a cure for the ills of society not in politics but in philosophy, and arrived at his fundamental and lasting conviction that those ills would never cease until philosophers became rulers or rulers philosophers. At an uncertain date in the early fourth century BC he founded in Athens the Academy, the first permanent institution devoted to philosophical research and teaching, and the prototype of all Western universities. He travelled extensively, notably to Sicily as political adviser to Dionysius II, ruler of Syracuse.

Plato wrote over twenty philosophical dialogues, and there are also extant under his name thirteen letters, whose genuineness is keenly disputed. His literary activity extended over perhaps half a century: few other writers have exploited so effectively the grace and precision, the flexibility and power, of Greek prose.

TREVOR SAUNDERS was born in Wiltshire in 1934, and was educated at Chippenham Grammar School, University College London and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He taught at the universities of London and Hull, and at the time of his death in 1999 was Professor of Greek at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he had taught since 1965. He was also a Visiting Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Visiting Fellow of the Humanities Research Centre, Canberra. His main interest was in Greek philosophy, especially political, social and legal theory, on which he published numerous works, including two Penguin Classics: a translation of Platos Laws and a revision and re-representation of T.A. Sinclairs translation of Aristotles Politics. In 1991 he published Platos Penal Code, a study of the penology of the Laws in its historical context, and in 1995 he published a translation of Politics: Books I and II for Clarendon Press. His recreations included railway history and the cinema.

ROBIN WATERFIELD was born in 1952. He graduated from Manchester University in 1974 and went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at Kings College, Cambridge. He has been a university lecturer, and both copy editor and commissioning editor for Penguin. He is now a self-employed writer with publications ranging from academic articles to childrens fiction. He has translated various Greek philosophical texts, including several for Penguin Classics: Xenophons Conversations of Socrates and Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises, Plutarchs Essays, Platos Philebus and Theaetetus and (in Platos Early Socratic Dialogues) Hippias Major, Hippias Minor and Euthydemus. His biography of Kahlil Gibran, Prophet: The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran, is published by Penguin. He has also edited The Voice of Kahlil Gibran for Penguin Arkana.

DONALD WATT was born in Argyll in 1955, and was educated at Oban High School, the University of Edinburgh and Balliol College, Oxford. His main academic interests are Greek drama and philosophy. He now lives in London, where he works in publishing.

IAIN LANE was born in Essex in 1961, but has spent most of his life in Yorkshire. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His main academic interest is moral philosophy, especially the ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle. He is married, and serves in the Anglican Priesthood.

PLATO
Early Socratic Dialogues

Edited with a General Introduction by TREVOR J. SAUNDERS

ION
Translated and introduced by TREVOR J. SAUNDERS

LACHES
Translated and introduced by IAIN LANE

LYSIS, CHARMIDES
Translated and introduced by DONALD WATT

HIPPIAS MAJOR, HIPPIAS MINOR,
EUTHYDEMUS
Translated and introduced by ROBIN WATERFIELD

With some fragments of Aeschines of Sphettus,
translated and introduced by TREVOR J. SAUNDERS

PENGUIN BOOKS

TO THE MEMORY OF
BETTY RADICE

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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These translations first published 1987
Reprinted with a new Preface and revised Bibliography 2005
4

General introduction copyright Trevor J. Saunders, 1987
ION: introduction, translation, commentary and notes copyright Trevor J. Saunders, 1987
LACHES: introduction, translation, commentary and notes copyright Iain Lane, 1987
LYSIS, CHARMIDES: introduction, translation, commentary and notes copyright Donald Watt, 1987
HIPPIAS MAJOR, HIPPIAS MINOR, EUTHYDEMUS: introduction, translation,
commentary and notes copyright Robin Waterfield, 1987
FRAGMENTS OF AESCHINES OF SPHETTUS: translation and commentary
copyright Trevor J. Saunders, 1987
Preface copyright Chris Emlyn-Jones, 2005
All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
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CONTENTS

Translation with running comment

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Translation with running comment

The publication in 1987 of an edition of these seven short dialogues of Plato was hailed by reviewers as a landmark in the history of Penguin Classics. The team of editors, under the distinguished leadership of the late Professor Trevor Saunders, produced translations and commentaries that were clear, informative and, at the same time, scholarly. At the time their work was state of the art and in most respects it remains so; this volume, not least Saunders own contribution to it, is one of the most stimulating and reliable guides for anyone studying these dialogues in translation.

For this reason revision of the original text is unnecessary. In the intervening period, however, scholarship on Plato has moved on, and it is appropriate that early twenty-first-century readers should have the opportunity of a bibliographical update. Since the late 1980s the general emphasis of Socratic/Platonic scholarship has changed in some respects: for example, the existence and nature of a clearly defined socratic period in the history of Platos