Great Dialogues of Plato

Rating:
Summary: Ick
Review: Beautiful translation, the timeless texts of Plato -
but delivered in tiny print without many notes. Great texts, lousy edition.

Rating:
Summary: A terrific translation
Review: I'm new to Plato. That should be said first. With that said, these are the things I have read: The Republic, Meno, Crito, Euthyphros, Symposium, Phaedo, Phaedrus and The Apology. With THAT said, you can appreciate, maybe, what I wanted to say about this book:

Not all of those translations were in this book. Phaedrus was one good example of what was missing, and when I read that, I had read it in another book that I own, with the translator being Benjamin Jowett. I also read Jowetts translation of the Republic. After reading that translation, I came to this book, translated by Rouse.

Hands down, Rouse takes the cake. I immediately noticed a difference in how easily the material is understood. Within the first ten pages of a reread of The Republic (and Symoposium and Apology), I could understand what was being presented far better than I could in the other translation. I had thought before that the material was difficult to understand, and in books like Phaedrus, it can seem so. What I discovered though, is that the material is only as difficult as the translators skill, or lack thereof, makes it. I know that some people have complained about how the material is 'anglicized' for the public, but I would think that this would be a good thing. Plato is from a different time and place than the mass of people living today (with only an elite few really having the full scope to understand everything needed to slog through Jowetts translation- I wasn't really one of them) and should be changed slightly to help accomodate those with the desire to understand him and the contributions he made.

This book does that wonderfully. The annotations do a wonderful job of helping to explain what might seem vague. The quotation marks help to place dialogue in the (english) readers mind. The arrangement of the books is done in an order that makes sense, allowing a person to logically progress through the series of Platos' thought process. The material itself is something that every human being with a desire to learn should experience, and Rouse did a wonderful job of exacerbating that to the public at large.

Bottom line: if you want to read Plato and don't have the time to earn a degree in ancient Hellenistic culture first, then pick up this translation. Also ignore the detractors that might think this way of seeing the ancient Greek as too 'tainted', they're just jealous because Plato is now accessible to everyone in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Compact, Portable Platonic Dialogues
Review: This is a very good book to take with you on trips. It's compact in it's size, but includes many of Plato's works compiled into a single volume.