The Republic is written in the form of dialogues, and presents the imagined character of Socrates as the authorial voice who is in conversation with several interlocutors. It is the first knowledge-text in the Western tradition to speak about topics as diverse as political theory and philosophy, art and aesthetics, ontology (the object of knowledge) and epistemology (the method of knowledge), reality and representation, the soul and the body, the individual and society, education and political leadership. A necessary prelude to any Platonic dialogue is to precisely define the topic of discourse—for instance, justice—before the interlocutors can proceed with enumerating and debating the various instances and effects of it. In fact,