Plato's Animals

<p><i>Plato's Animals </i>examines the crucial role played by animal images metaphors allusions and analogies in Plato's Dialogues. These fourteen lively essays demonstrate that the gadflies snakes stingrays swans dogs horses and other animals that populate Plato's work are not just rhetorical embellishments. Animals are central to Plato's understanding of the hierarchy between animals humans and gods and are crucial to his ideas about education sexuality politics aesthetics the afterlife the nature of the soul and philosophy itself. The volume includes a comprehensive annotated index to Plato's bestiary in both Greek and English.</p>