Platonic Drama and its Ancient Reception

Reconstructing the way Plato presented himself to his original audience as the creator of an alternative drama Nikos Charalabopoulos explains the paradox'' of the dialogue form as an appropriation of the discourse of theatre the dominant public mode of communication of the time. Reviewing artefacts ranging from a statue of Sokrates in the Academy from the fourth century BC to a mosaic of Sokrates in Mytilene from the fourth century AD Charalabopoulos discusses a range of evidence pointing to a centuries-old tradition of treatment of the dialogues as performance literature and reveals the significance of Plato the prose dramatist'' for his original and subsequent audiences.