Excerpt from The Banquet: Translated From the Greek of Plato =the Republic, though replete with considerable errors of speculation, is, indeed, the greatest repository of important truths of all the works of Plato. This, perhaps, is because it is the longest. He first, and per aps last, maintained that a state ought to be governed. Not by the wealthiest, or the most ambitious, or the most cunning, but by the wisest; the method of select ing such rulers, and the laws by which such a selection is made, must correspond with and arise out of the moral freedom and refinement of the people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.