These three books are excellent additions to the ever-evolving body of Plato scholarship. They exhibit a great deal of variety in how they approach the literary, and more broadly aesthetic, aspects of Plato’s philosophical dialogues. All shed light on Plato’s versality as a philosophical writer who draws upon many different cultural phenomena. Put briefly, Liotsakis argues that Plato’s value as a proto-narrative theorist has been consistently overlooked by contemporary narrative theorists. Petraki explores Plato’s pervasive use of sculpture, weaving and other artistic phenomena as metaphors for his philosophical ideas. Schofield’s book is a collection of essays, most previously published, that illustrate the many ways in which Plato uses literary devices to convey philosophical ideas. I will begin with Schofield’s book because of its earlier chronological history (the essays were published between 2003 and 2019) and because some of the essays prefigure more elaborate thematic explorations of Liotsakis and Petraki respectively; then I will address the importance of Liotsakis’s and Petraki’s books for contemporary Plato scholarship. Both volumes are groundbreaking and will shape how scholars deal with the narrative and aesthetic dimensions of Plato’s dialogues for years to come.

Schofield’s How Plato Writes: Perspectives and Problems illustrates the enormous range of a well-respected scholar with a sustained interest in the literary dimensions of Plato’s dialogues. While maintaining a high level of analytical rigour throughout his work, Schofield has been instrumental in establishing the importance of dramatic/literary analysis of Plato over the last few decades, particularly outside the particularities of the Straussian tradition. The introduction outlines the content of each chapter. Schofield divides the essays into four sections: ‘Approaches to the Corpus’, ‘Argument and Dialogue Architecture’, ‘Myth and Allegory in the Republic’ and ‘Projects, Paradoxes, and Literary Registers in the Laws’. He explains, ‘all the essays were prompted by a perception of something problematic, either in a passage within a dialogue itself, or as often in the way scholarship had tackled or failed to tackle a topic’ (p. 1).

Chapter 1 offers a concise account of the social and historical context in which Plato wrote. He addresses Socrates and the fifth-century ‘enlightenment’ and how ‘Plato became a member of Socrates’ intimate circle’ (p. 15). Though Plato was quite young when he met Socrates, Socrates and his method of philosophising remained at the centre of Plato’s thinking through most of his life. Schofield puts the point this way, ‘Nearly the entire output of the most powerful and fertile thinker in the entire tradition of Western Philosophy is conceived as a homage to Socrates and in re-creation of his philosophizing’ (p. 15). Schofield addresses the prevalence of the Sophists and their influence on Athenian education and democratic practices. He also highlights Plato’s awareness of the precarious nature of the Athenian democratic project. In Plato’s dialogues, ‘the fragility of the world of the dialogues and of the political system at Athens that supported it is surely an insistent subtext’ (p. 23). He also addresses Plato’s ‘entanglements with Sicilian court politics’ and his friendship with Dion and Dionysius I (p. 24), his rivalry with Isocrates and their competing schools, the influence that both Parmenides and Heraclitus had on the theory of forms, the Academy and the Laws and other later dialogues.

Chapter 2 addresses the vexed question of the narrated dialogues in Plato’s work. Temporally, Schofield places them squarely within the so-called middle period of Plato’s writing when the character Socrates is ‘made to develop ideas in a more ambitiously Platonic direction’ (p. 43), and he takes the Theaetetus to mark a ‘return to presenting something closer to the aporetic and probably more ‘historical’ Socrates of the earlier scripted dialogues (p. 43). Liotsakis offers a fascinating alternate vision of the importance of narrative elements in the so-called late dialogues.

Chapter 3 examines how the historical Plato was regarded in the Victorian era, primarily by G. Grote and B. Jowett, though Schofield also touches on Paul Shorey’s appreciation for John Stuart Mill’s understanding of the importance of Plato. This chapter offers fascinating insight into an often-overlooked time period of Platonic reception that has a great deal of influence on our contemporary understanding of Plato.

Chapter 4 considers the prominent role that the ‘perennially intriguing figure of Callicles’ plays in the Gorgias (p. 73). Schofield focuses on the passage 509c following, where Callicles decides to return to his previously discarded argument with Socrates. He offers a nuanced reading of the various exchanges between Socrates and Callicles and underscores a certain failure on Socrates’ part because philosophical reasoning cannot overcome Callicles’ love for the demos: ‘Callicles is now absolutely clear that, despite their best efforts, he and Socrates will never find enough agreement on what they value most to make further conversation worthwhile’ (p. 95).

Chapter 5 turns to the Parmenides. Though he clearly has utmost respect for G. Vlastos’s groundbreaking work on the Third Man Argument, Schofield understands the Parmenides as a ‘Platonic dialogue’. By this he means, ‘A Platonic dialogue is a text, often steeped in intertextual resonances, particularly echoes or pre-echoes of other Platonic dialogues on which it may be commenting retrospectively or prospectively’ (p. 97). Schofield succeeds admirably in this task.

Chapter 6 exemplifies Schofield’s keen analytical ability and literary erudition as he takes on ‘The Elusiveness of Cratylus in the Cratylus’. He draws extensively on Aristotle’s account of the influence that Cratylus and his Heracliteanism had on Plato (pp. 123–6).

Chapter 7 addresses the presentation of the Noble Lie in the Republic. Schofield perceptively remarks that ‘Plato is in fact nowhere more our contemporary than in making similar preoccupations – knowledge, virtue, truth, deception – central to his own vision of what matters in politics’ (p. 140). In the last section, ‘Believing the Lie’, Schofield raises the vexed question of whether the rulers need to believe the lie or not. He concludes that ‘the noble lie is very far from being simply a brazen piece of propaganda designed primarily to control the mass of the pollution of the ideal city … It is aimed at the rulers in the first instance (3.414d), and its main purpose is to get them to be public-spirited’ (p. 159).

Chapter 8 turns to Plato’s Cave. Schofield argues that a single unified interpretation of this iconic image is difficult, if not impossible. He presents ‘an exercise in what might be called metaspeleology: a diagnosis of the crux of the difficulty that generates interpretive impasse, and an associated remedy for the interpretive angst’ (p. 163). He places the cave well within its trajectory of the plot of the Republic. He sees the cave as a ‘democratic city’ (p. 169) with its own internal narrative dynamics. His observation about the aporia the released prisoner feels is particularly fascinating and helps link the cave to so many other dialogues where the interlocutors experience aporia in the face of the rough steep upward way of Socratic questioning.

Chapter 9 is the first of five chapters dealing with the Laws. Schofield addresses ‘Religion and Philosophy in the Laws’ and does an excellent job of laying out the dramatic context of the complicated dialogue. I found his observation about Plato’s intended readership compelling. The Laws is ‘for practiced Platonic readers: not exclusively so, but most importantly for them’. He continues, ‘I suspect that by the time he composed the dialogue Plato had long been incapable of not writing with that practiced reader chiefly in mind’ (p. 185).

Chapter 10 addresses Aristotle’s puzzlement about the Laws; though he seems to dislike the dialogue, he also employs much of its philosophical content, ‘albeit mostly unacknowledged’ (p. 204). Chapter 11 broadens the scope of consideration to Xenophon and the Laws of Lycurgus as a means of identifying various modes of law making. Chapter 12 brings the long-standing doctrine of Socratic Intellectualism into conversation with a new view of human psychology that he sees in the Laws. Chapter 13 focuses on the marionette imagery in the Laws as a means of unfolding the pleasure and pain dynamic that runs throughout the treatment of the citizens of Magnesia. This chapter sets a nice stage for Petraki’s more detailed exploration of the imagery in the Laws.

Schofield ends this fine collection by examining the paradoxes of childhood and play in both Heraclitus and Plato. Schofield’s long-standing interest in Presocratic philosophy is on display here. Overall, these essays form a coherent whole, and it is very helpful simply to have them all in one place. Sometimes, references to very recent scholarship are lacking, but given that the essays were previously published, some as long as 20 years ago, that is understandable. Liotsakis and Petraki are two scholars whose work dates to a time after that documented in Schofield’s volume.

Liotsakis’s fascinating work, Plato’s Proto-Narratology: Metanarrative Reflections and Narrative Paradigms, not only delves deeply into Plato’s use of narrative, but also develops his nascent theory of narrative that extends far beyond the narrative typologies presented in the Republic. The introduction outlines the scope and motivation for the work. He writes to address the ‘absence of a study on Plato’s “theory of narrative”’ (p. xii). The three dialogic foci of his analysis are Statesman, Timaeus-Critias and Laws. He addresses several interpretative quandaries that his study navigates; ‘although the narrative techniques traceable in the Platonic works are innumerable and relatively distinct, we have to be careful in determining what is to be taken as “theory”’ (p. xvi). To navigate these interpretative difficulties, he has ‘chosen to explore passages in which I believe that theory and practice of narrative are deliberately placed together in an orchestrated coexistence, which is elaborated by Plato himself in order to draw our attention to narrative phenomena’ (p. xviii). He explains what he means by ‘proto-narratology’ and why he has chosen the dialogues that he addresses: ‘if narratology is marked by its effort to provide a solid system of conceptualisation and description of narrative phenomena, then, I believe, one of the first such endeavours in the history of western civilization is evident in what Plato does in the Statesman, Timaeus/Critias and the Laws’ (p. xix).

Liotsakis begins with the Statesman. He offers an overview of the dramatic setting and philosophical content of the dialogue, turns to ‘the narrative arrangement of the myth’ (p. 3) and the ‘Visitor’s speculations on turning raw material into a coherent narrative whole’ (p. 12). He admirably illustrates how ‘the Statesman is indeed a special case within the Platonic corpus because it reveals how Plato regards narrative composition as a creative procedure in a formalist fashion which heralds the ground-breaking narratological distinction between the so-called fabula and the sujet’ (p. 12). Liotsakis underscores a process of narrative selection that the Stranger employs: ‘Besides the information about where the myth came from as a whole, its individual details and episodes are also introduced as the result of selection. The Visitor allows Young Socrates to enter his compositional laboratory’ (p. 16). In doing so, ‘the Visitor helps Young Socrates to abandon his materialistic approach that associates kingship with the golden lamp and take up the more general issue of what statesmanship or kingship is’ (p. 19). In the subsequent sections dealing with causality and temporality, Liotsakis makes many insightful observations. For example, ‘the Visitor claims that the three stories about the Pelopidae, the Age of Cronus and the earth-born men, as well as countless others, have either been lost or survived in a disconnected and fragmentary fashion’ (p. 24). He summarises his overall argument, ‘the way in which the myth unfolds in its first half and the discussion between narrator and receiver offer strong evidence in support of the view that Plato invites us to read the cosmological myth as the result of the narrator’s deliberate effort to restore, apart from causal linkages, the temporal connections between the elements of the material he draws for his account’ (p. 30). He turns to the conception of narrating/listening time, which ‘has traditionally been neglected both by narratologists and classicists’ in their treatment of Plato’s dialogues (p. 37). He addresses the Visitor’s philosophical use of digressions and observes that ‘the trilogy Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman, apart from its many other common features, is also marked by a series of digressions relating to the questions of method’ (p. 39). He asks, ‘exactly what is this feeling of anticipation which some people, according to Plato might experience due to the retarding function of the extensive narrating/listening time?’ (p. 47). He employs research in cognitive science to address this important question. In conclusion Liotsakis emphasises ‘the value of leisure time in philosophical inquiry’ (p. 53).

In Chapter 2, ‘Timaeus and Critias: Plato’s “Proto-Theory” of Fictional Worlds’, Liotsakis reflects on the introductions of the Timaeus and Critias. He considers if Plato had an understanding of fictional worlds, since both dialogues ostensibly link back to at least parts of the conversation that Socrates had with his interlocutors in the Republic. While assuming these dialogues are inexorably linked has some interpretative difficulties, Liotsakis describes this point as ‘immaterial’ (p. 99). Nonetheless, I have no difficulty believing that Plato had a strong conception of possible worlds. Indeed, I would say that every single dialogue is based on this insight, at least to some degree. Liotsakis asserts that ‘the Atlantis account is not an exotic narrative of elements altogether foreign to the audience of Plato’s age. On the contrary, it includes an abundance of events and situations that resemble the most celebrated moments of Greek history, … the story leads its receivers to the conclusion that all that Critias describes, even if they did not really happen, could at least have taken place’ (p. 65). Liotsakis directly engages with important contemporary works of narratology in the next section on the incomplete and indeterminate constructs of fictional worlds. He argues that the ‘present analysis may add to modern scholarship … particularly Pavel’s view that the deliberate informational density of an account occasionally reflects its author’s concern about … incompleteness’ (p. 79). Section 2.4 helpfully addresses Plato’s awareness of the sociocultural aspects of fictional worlds. He argues that the opening of the Timaeus illustrates how ‘Plato foregrounds this issue’ (p. 89), but in this section and the one following Liotsakis returns to the Republic to explore the intertextuality of fictional worlds. Liotsakis concludes that ‘Plato pays less attention to the truthfulness of narrative representations of reality and transfers his focal point of interest towards what is taken by narrators and audiences as likely … he touches upon issues that constitute the cornerstones of modern theory of fictional worlds’ (p. 107).

In the last long chapter, ‘The Laws: Formalism and Reception Theory Intermingled’, Liotsakis draws together the various strands of narratology explored in the two previous chapters and applies them to the Laws. He argues that ‘Plato not only underscores the choices that composers of stories make in the process of shaping them; he also intends to share with us his view that these compositional choices serve the way in which the composers want their stories to influence the audience’s intellect and emotions’ (pp. 110–11). The first section explores narration as a means of persuasion. He writes, ‘the main weapon of the legislator and one of Plato’s most striking novelties in the Laws are the so-called preludes, through which the lawgiver is invited to convince the citizens to follow his order’ (p. 112). He summarises the intricacies of the text to set the stage for ‘the manipulative role of the preludes’ (p. 118) and the role that narrative more broadly plays in ‘the legislator’s weaponry of persuasion’ (p. 119). He explores the important role that dance and music play as modes of persuasion in Magnesia; but narratives offer an even more powerful means of persuasion on the citizens’ psychology. Liotsakis draws out numerous thematic connections between Books 1, 2 and 3 by looking at presentations of the mythic past and then considers the preludes in the remaining books of the Laws as a practice aimed to ‘soothe men’s souls with persuasion and consolation’ (p. 144). Another observation rich with contemporary relevance concerns ‘the passages in which Clinias and Megillus display their ethnic identity within their discourse with the Athenian’ (p. 167). I found the extended comparison with the Homeric treatment of the Cyclopes and the Athenian’s account of shepherds particularly fascinating along with links back to Plato’s Cave. The two concluding sections address the social and political aspects of narration and ‘narrative realities’ (p. 205). He persuasively ends by asserting that ‘Plato’s place on the archaeological map of narratology should be incised afresh’ (p. 210).

The book has a thorough bibliography dealing with both Platonic and narratological sources and much-appreciated indexes. Throughout, Liotsakis’s reading of some of Plato’s most complicated dialogues is highly detailed with careful attention to the Greek. Often, these ‘late’ dialogues are thought to be less dramatically nuanced than dialogues of the so-called early and middle period. Liotsakis brings them to life philosophically and dramatically through his engagement with Plato’s ‘proto-narratology’.

Finally, there is Petraki’s persuasive, highly detailed, well-argued Sculpture, Weaving, and the Body in Plato. Petraki takes the artistic innovations of fifth-century Greece, primarily sculpture and weaving, as the starting point for the analysis. Most fascinating is her argument that artistic innovations such as the lost wax technique are metaphors for how Plato’s theory of forms functions as a metaphysical pattern and replica. Petraki gives her analysis a political tone from the beginning of the book by starting with Pausanias’ reference to ‘the legendary story of Aristogeiton and Harmodius’ love and friendship’ (p. 1). She explains that ‘eros and friendship inspired the two men to resist despotic power and facilitate the construction of a new political order’ (p. 1). She articulates her aim: ‘To map out the network of sculptural image-making in certain dialogues in order to argue the thesis that Greek sculpture, revolutionised by the advent of the lost-wax technique for the production of bronze statues and large statue groups, lies at the heart of Plato’s conception of the philosophical relationship of “participation”’ (p. 2). Broader awareness of Plato’s use of aesthetic imagery helps ‘articulate the complex relation of the tangible and visible to the immaterial and invisible … [and] Plato’s attempt to bridge ethics, politics, and metaphysics’ (p. 20). Petraki explores a wide range of dialogues in passing such as Phaedrus, Alcibiades I and Theaetetus, though Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Politicus and Laws each receive a chapter-long treatment dealing with their use of aesthetic metaphors. Her assessment of the Republic dovetails nicely with Schofield’s discussions of the Noble Lie and the Cave. When we take the imagery beyond the Cave Wall into the Laws, the Cave becomes all the richer.

Petraki starts with the Phaedo because of its ‘picture of the soul and the Forms as being immaterial, invisible, and eternal. It also contains most of the fundamental features of Plato’s so-called middle-period metaphysics’ (p. 27). The chapter has two parts. In the first she analyses the main passages that provide a standard view of participation: Phaedo 65c–e, 72e–77c,102a–107b. She focuses on the ‘moulding’ language and argues that this dialogue ‘prepares the ground for an idea that will be developed in the Republic where Socrates is compared to a sculptor who “moulds” the souls of the guardians and the philosopher-rulers of the Kallipolis so that they instantiate certain positive ethical properties in accordance with the Forms’ (p. 43). Next, Petraki addresses the relationship between the soul and the body, particularly the binding imagery and imprisonment to ground her argument for the importance of the lost wax sculptural technique and craft more broadly. She ‘maintain[s] that Plato formulates the image of the body from prison vocabulary and imagery from the field of craft (83d1–e7)’ (p. 49). She writes, ‘the soul stands for the core of wax-covered clay, which is encased in an exterior plaster mould in the bronze casting technique. The “nails,” which in the Platonic image (84d4–5) are metaphors for bodily pleasures, in the sculptural techniques are used to fix all the components together, fixing the external plaster mould to the internal wax model, to the clay core and to its internal armature-skeleton’ (p. 50). She also has an excellent reading of the eschatological myth at the end of the dialogue. Her attention to the Greek here and throughout is excellent and solidifies her case for the imagery Plato employs.

Chapter 3 analyses the Symposium. Though Petraki recognises important similarities of the depiction of the body here and in the Phaedo, she states that ‘the Symposium’s perspective on corporeality is far more versatile and has more diverse representatives’ (p. 57). Aristophanes’ speech sets the stage for Diotima’s and Alcibiades’ speeches. Petraki uncovers how ‘Plato draws terminology and imagery from the art of sculpture’ to convey philosophical insight in the forms (p. 58). Aristophanes’ ‘metaphors for human flesh may be divided into two broad groups: those derived from everyday objects and crafts, and those derived from plastic arts’ (p. 62). In section 3 she offers a detailed description of the lost-wax technique and then turns to Diotima on the human body. In the Alcibiades section she calls to mind that Alcibiades refers to Socrates as a sculpture with images of the divine inside and that Alcibiades is focused on Socrates’ body (p. 57). She finally asks the central question, ‘Might Plato be engaging in a philosophically creative dialogue with the visual and representational art of his time?’ (p. 85).

Chapter 4 assesses how ‘Plato’s subjection of the art of sculpture to philosophy is developed further in the Republic’ (p. 106) and ‘rests on a positive model of mimesis’ (p. 107). Her treatment ranges over Glaucon’s use of sculpture images in the Gyges story and the presentation of perfectly just and unjust men with reputations for the opposite. She addresses how the philosopher-kings imitate the forms. She even finds art imagery in the city and soul analogy. Socrates uses the imagery to describe the ethical formation of the guardian class. Particularly given the ostensibly harsh treatment of the poetic artist, it is refreshing to read her galvanisation of the positive import of the arts throughout the Republic. Her treatment of sculptural imagery in Book 9 is particularly insightful: it ‘give[s] flesh to the qualities of ugliness, strife, heterogeneity, and multiplicity’ (p. 176).

Petraki could have easily stopped her compelling analysis here, but she also considers the Politicus and the Laws in Chapters 5 and 6. She turns to Plato’s use of the weaving metaphor ‘as a method of articulating how humans may be combined to create a unified and harmonious societal whole’ (p. 176). She draws out how much the art of weaving depends on mathematics (pp. 217–22). This reading of Politicus nicely complements Liotsakis’s. I benefited greatly from reading them in concert with each other. Together they demonstrate how skilfully Plato employs aesthetics in the service of philosophy.

The final chapter on the Laws is excellent. Petraki’s treatment of puppeteering and its role in Greek culture, particularly in religious contexts as sites of wonder, is outstanding. Like the weaving metaphor in Politicus, she links the puppet to mathematical study. She also analyses the role of dance as civic and moral foundations. Again, reading this chapter alongside both Schofield and Liotsakis provides great insight into this last, often opaque, unfinished dialogue of Plato’s final years. The epilogue considers the idea of sculptural resemblance and visual resemblance more broadly. Petraki considers examples from Charmides, Phaedrus, Alcibiades I, Theaetetus and the Demiurgic activity in Timaeus.

In sum, I highly recommend all three books to scholars in ancient philosophy and Classics.