I use the following translations: Lysis, trans. Stanley Lombardo, in Plato:
Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 687– 707;
Charmides, ed. Rosamond Kent Sprague, in Plato: Complete Works, 639– 63; The
Republic of Plato, 2nd ed., trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991);
Protagoras, trans. Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell, in Plato: Complete Works,
746 – 90; Euthydemus, trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, in Plato: Complete Works,
708– 45. I leave out a consideration of the Menexenus and the Rival Lovers due to
space considerations and to the contested authenticity of these dialogues.
Anne-Marie Frosolono makes a similar distinction with respect to Au-
gustine’s dual role in the Confessions, “Thus Spoke Au gustine: An Analysis of
the Relationship Between Language and Spirituality in the Confessions,” Con-
temporary Philosophy 15, no. 1 (1993): 4– 7. My sense of “Socrates the character”
includes the various Socratic characters, the elenctic Socrates and the construc-
tive Socrates, that Ruby Blondell (2002) masterfully analyzes. In the narrated
dialogues, each of these Socratic characters is fi ltered through the lens of
“Socrates the narrator.”
On Plato’s Lysis, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Logos and Ergon in Pla-
to’s Lysis,” in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans.
P. Christopher Smith (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980),
1– 20; James Haden, “Friendship in Plato’s Lysis,” Review of Metaphysics 37 (1983):
327– 56; Aristide Tessitore, “Plato’s Lysis: A n I nt roduct ion to Ph i lo soph ic Fr iend -
ship,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 28 (1990): 115 – 32; Francisco Gonzalez, “Pla-
to’s Lysis: An Enactment of Philosophical Kinship,” Ancient Philosophy 15 (1995):
69– 90; G. Scott, Plato’s Socrates as Educator (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2000); Geier, Plato’s Erotic Thought.
Ronna Burger writes: “There can be in principle, it seems, no such
thing as a reliable narrator: a reliable narrator, like a perfect image, would
become so superfl uous that his narrative report would be indistinguishable
from the original event and therefore no reconstruction at all” (Ronna Burger,
“Plato’s Non-Socratic Narrations of Socratic Conversation,” in Hart and Tejera,
eds., Plato’s Dialogues: The Dialogical Approach, 127). See also Wayne Booth, The
Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
See, in contrast, Apollodorus’ characterization of Aristodemus’ narra-
tive ability (Symposium 173b and 223d).
Kenneth Moors, “The Argument Against a Dramatic Date for Plato’s
Republic,” Polis 7 (1987): 6– 31.
2 1. On Plato’s Republic, see Ruby Blondell, “Letting Plato Speak for Him-
self,” in Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity, ed. Gerald Press (Lan-
ham: Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2000); Allan Bloom, “Interpretive Essay,” in The
Republic of Plato, 2nd ed., trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991);
Leon Craig, The War Lover (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); How-
land, The Republic; and Claudia Baracchi, Of Myth and Life and War in Plato’s
Republic (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002).
See Dorrit Cohn, “The Poetics of Plato’s Republic: A Modern Perspective,”
Philosophy and Literature 24 (2000): 34– 48; and David Roochnik, Beautiful City:
The Dialectical Character of Plato’s Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
