I. THEORY OF ART Book Ten has the appearance of an appendix, written to justify, against anticipated or actual criticism, the attack on poets in Books Two and Three. It has been suggested that it should not be taken too seriously, and should be read as an attack on the extravagant claims made for the poets by Greek opinion, rather than as a serious attempt to state a philosophy of art. It is true that the Greeks treated the works of Homer as their Bible, and also, as we...

Introduction - Plato. Plato (427-347 B.C.) was the greatest of the Greek philosophers, and also one of the greatest Attic prose-writers. He was hugely influenced by the life, teaching, and death of Socrates, who himself wrote nothing. Plato wrote about twenty-four philosophical dialogues, in most of which Socrates is the principal figure. It is a matter of controversy how far Plato portrays the historical Socrates, and how far Socrates is made a mouthpiece for his own views. Central ideas (the importance of philosophical enquiry, the notion that virtue is...