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In the mid-fourth century BCE, the Greek philosopher Plato authored a work that has, centuries later, continued to shape political and philosophical thought across the Western world - the "Republic."
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The "Republic" is the longest and best known of Plato’s dialogues: over the course of ten books, Socrates constructs his ideal city-state, and in the process expounds upon the concepts of justice, education, the role of poets in society, and the fate of soul. Containing some of Plato’s most famous discourses, including the Allegory of the Cave, the Myth of Er, and a prolonged discussion of Theory of Forms, the "Republic" is also one of his most influential works in the spheres of intellectual and political history. It remains a standard on freshman reading lists at American universities and a perennial recommendation of booksellers when election season rolls around. This presentation will orient listeners in the intellectual, political, and cultural conditions under which Plato wrote the "Republic" and provide an introduction to the both the broad premise and the most famous episodes of the work, as well as its place in Plato’s literary corpus.
Presenter: Gabrielle Roehr is a doctoral candidate in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) with high honors in Classics and a minor in Art History from New York University in May of 2020. Her senior thesis, titled “The Archaic Present: Nostalgia and Ideology in the Age of Augustus,” examined the intersection of art and politics and the creation and maintenance of ideology in Augustan Rome, with special attention paid to Vergil’s Aeneid, Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, the Forum Augustum, and the Monumentum Ancyranum. She began the PhD program in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in September of the same year. Her research interests include narrative and
storytelling in Greek and Latin poetry, the relationship between weaving and poetry, and contemporary reception of ancient myth. Her in-progress dissertation (working title: “A Thousand Stories: Helen and Narrative Tension and Instability”) examines Helen of Troy as narrator and object of narrative in Homer, Attic tragedy, and Latin poetry as well as in twentieth and twenty-first century anglophone adaptations of the Helen myth.
At the conclusion of the program please feel free to take a brief online survey here: https://www.projectoutcome.org/responses/78961
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