ABSTRACT
There is, as we have noted,1 a marked break between Republic I and Republic II-X, in tone and style. Book I resembles many of the earlier dialogues: there really is some give and take in conversation. Its approach is tentative, its conclusions negative. The other books, however, are much more like the later dialogues, which are dialogues only in name. Instead of being tentative and negative, they are positive and constructive. Plato himself is aware of the change; he is becoming less happy with the dialogue form as a vehicle of his views. Formally speaking the Republic is not dialogue at all: it is a monologue, by Socrates, reporting a discussion he had had the day before. There is a single speaker, Socrates, who starts off Kareftqv x ^ eLi> netpata ‘I went down yesterday to Piraeus’ . Similarly the Phaedo, although technically a conversation between Echecrates and Phaedo is really a report by Phaedo of a previous conversation between Socrates, Simmias and Cebes. In the Parmenides, later than the Republic, the structure is even more cumbersome, and the Theaetetus takes the form of two friends reading another dialogue in a book. Plato is consciously reconsidering his use of dialogue, and feeling some pressure to change to a more monologous form.
