Allen's extensive analytical introductions to each of these dialogues are excellent. The translations are clear and fairly easy to follow. A great introduction to what Socrates was trying to accomplish.

Translations are extremely readable (This is especially important if you teach it; I teach the Euthyphro and Polus section of the Gorgias). The commentary is useful, but definitely not as inspiring as any excellent commentary *on Plato* should be.

I should add that the Gorgias is on a very short list of books that have substantially changed my life for the better.

The dialogues are great and R.E. Allen's commentaries are very helpful, but this is taxing, so I can hardly say I've "gotten" this book without closer rereading, which I'll do, someday.

To be read again, again, again, and ...again

I didn't actually read this book; it's my proxy for the various dialogues I've read. I prefer the early ones (Meno and Apologia are my faves) and stopped reading about 2/3 of the way through when they get too heavy for me. If I ever decide it's a good idea to read the Laws, just do me a favor and put me out of my misery.

Who was Socrates? He died in 399 BC and according to Plato and Xenophon there was a trial at which he was condemned to death. But there are no writings of Socrates for he never wrote down anything. The result is we must rely on the picture of Socrates drawn by Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon. In the Clouds Aristophanes portrayed Socrates as a teacher who charged fees for instruction, taught a variety of subjects including rhetoric, and disbelieved in the traditional gods. All of this is denied in the description of Socrates in Plato and that of by Xenophon. Aristophanes comic portrait, which was the only one produced contemporaneously with Socrates own life, is one that seems slanted to meet the satirical comic ends of the playwright. In spite of this, if we believe Plato's description of the relationship of Aristophanes and Socrates in his Symposium they appeared to be friends. While some claim that Aristophanes' portrait of Socrates was based on hostility I would side with those (scholars like G. Murray) who suggest it was based on pure comedy. The play as a whole still retains comic elements that twenty-first century readers can and do enjoy.
More interesting in my recent reading is the portrait of Socrates that one may glean from the dialogues of Plato. The familiar saying of Socrates is that he only knows that he does not know anything. And he spends his time refuting his dialectical partners who claim to know something. This usually leads to the result that they admit they do not know what they claimed to, but also usually leaves the reader in the dark as the dialogue ends without any resolution or answer to the questions posed by Socrates. This occurs repeatedly with unsuccessful attempts to define temperance (Charmides), courage (Laches), or friendship (Lysis). It is surprising when, in a reading of the Gorgias, the reader finds a different Socrates who does claim to know several things. It is here, in the Gorgias, that we see Plato's own dramatic art at work, molding a new and improved Socrates to perform in a way that will display, perhaps, the views of Plato himself.
Plato's dramatic art is not unlike that of a playwright and several dialogues, including the Gorgias, have a dramatic progression and contain crises as plays do. The Gorgias as a whole can be seen as a fine example of Plato's art in the form of a dramatic progression. There are three perfectly connected episodes: Socrates' three conversations with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. Gorgias, the famous sophist, seeing only the technical side of the orators' training, is incapable of giving his art any moral purpose. Polus will not use rhetoric for an evil end but only because he is timid and respects prejudices. But let a violent person like Callicles come along: he will find in the school of Gorgias not a restraint, but an instrument for the expression of his violence. In this fashion all consequences of the intellectual attitude of Gorgias are developed in a living and dramatic manner. Interestingly, Plato ends the Gorgias with one of the famous myths that appear and reappear throughout the dialogues (Symposium, Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Republic to name a few). They do not always appear in the mouth of Socrates, but at the end of the Gorgias it is Socrates himself who says to Callicles:
"Give an ear then, as they say, to a right fine story, which you will regard as a fable, I fancy, but I as an actual account; for what I am about to tell you I mean to offer as the truth." (523a)
Socrates goes on to present a treatise of a sort that comments on the destiny of the soul, giving the dialogue a foundation that in retrospect it seemed to be aiming at the whole time.

Working my way through Plato. R.E. Allen's translation and commentary are immense.

Most of this work is concerned with the trial and death of Socrates. Socrates was absolutely brilliant. The logic he employs should be envied by all thinkers. A brilliant mind.

I am reading ancient philosophy to my youngest son, and while I managed to dodge reading any of it in my previous 50+ years, I am actually enjoying it, in a kind of weird way. Although it is pretty clear to me that I do not understand at least half of it.

This is a dialogue between Euthyphro and Socrates that takes place outside the court house in Athens. Socrates has been accused of impiety, and as we all know, that did not go well for him. So the account that Plato wrote about this event has some irony running through it. Euthyphro is accusing his father of murder. When Socrates asks him why he would betray his own father when he is not compelled to do so, he puts forth that he is doing the pious thing. Socrates asks him to explain to him what piety is, and poor Euthyphro falls neatly and completely into Socrates logical trap and there is no escaping for him. Euthyphro is arrogant but Socrates takes him apart piece by piece until there is nothing left for Euthyphro to essentially say that he knows a pious act when he sees it. Which is about how well things go for Socrates.

Gorgias: R.E. Allen's translation was the clearest and ALSO the most accurate of three that I compared while studying Ancient Greek (the others being Donald J. Zeyl's for Hackett, and Lamb's in the Loeb Classical Library). It'd be very hard to top.

Meno: Excellent translation, so easy to read.

His introductions to these texts are very helpful in providing both section-by-section summary and analysis, as well as an overarching interpretation of how the texts might be viewed as a whole, leading to conclusions that the dialogues are speaking to something higher than the sum of their parts.

Every once in awhile I get a bug up my butt and want to learn more about philosophy. In the end I think it's a subject that I'm not really going to get without help. This was well written with very good explanations and readable translations.