Plato: The Statesman (Revised)

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher born in the 5th century BC. Being greatly inspired by Socrates, Plato extensively meditated on existential and political issues. Justice is a particularly important component of Plato's explorations and it is at the heart of his best-known work The Republic. The philosopher is also renowned for establishing the Academy in c. 387 where one of the main subjects was unsurprisingly the study of justice. In fact, one of his brightest students, Aristotles became a canonical thinker himself. Subsequently, Platonism turned out to be the foundation of a whole school of thought within the canon of Western Philosophy. In fact, all the eminent philosophers of the past millenium - such as Machiavelli, Kant and Nietzsche - reflected on the works of Plato or used them to postulate their own dialectic ideas.

Robin Waterfield is an independent scholar and translator living in southern Greece. Among his numerous translations of Greek works are Plato's Symposium, Gorgias, and Republic, all published in the Oxford World's Classics series. His other works of history include Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece and Taken at the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece.