Two of the ten excerpts included in this volume are new translations, while the other eight are taken from the following editions of Plato’s dialogues:
1. The Origin of Virtue (Protagoras 320c–323a). From Protagoras, translated with an Introduction and Notes by C. C. W. Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
2. The Judgement of Souls (Gorgias 523a–527a). From Gorgias, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
3. The Androgyne (Symposium 189c–193e); and 4. The Birth of Love (Symposium 201d–212c). From Symposium, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
5. The Other World (Phaedo 107c–115a). From Phaedo, translated with an Introduction and Notes by David Gallop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
6. The Cave (Republic 514a–517a); and 7. Er’s Journey into the Other World (Republic 614b–621d). From Republic, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
8. The Winged Soul (Phaedrus 246a–257a). From Phaedrus, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
9. The Two Cosmic Eras (Statesman 268d–274e); and 10. Atlantis and the Ancient City of Athens (Timaeus 20d–25d; Critias 108e–121c). New translations by Robin Waterfield.
With one exception, all translators have translated the Greek text of John Burnet’s Oxford Classical Text, Platonis Opera (5 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900-7). The exception is Gorgias, whose translator has translated the Greek text of E. R. Dodds’s Plato: Gorgias (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).
The numbers and letters which appear in the margins of the excerpts are the standard means of reference to passages in Plato’s works. They refer to the pages, and their sections, of the edition by Henri Estienne (in Latin, Stephanus) of the Greek text of Plato (published in Geneva in 1578).