The Republic by Plato
7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked.
(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato’s way of expressing
that he is passing lightly over the subject.
(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he
proceeds with the construction of the State.
(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then again
as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains
the reader’s interest.
(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion of
the poets in Book X.
(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the
valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides, the
manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken up
into the subject, and the argument from the practice of Asclepius,
should not escape notice.