Abstract

The best reviewer of this book would be an old Platonic fox, who in the preparation of his Gorgias—and Phaedrus—seminars would lay the book next to the text and compare the one with the other, passage by passage, retort by retort. For this book is really suitable neither as an introduction nor as a refresher of one’s memory, since its author presupposes—as is after all every interpreter’s right—in each instance that his reader has a detailed command of the texts that only a parallel reading provides. Nevertheless, one gladly reads on, for Benardete, a classical philologian, loves the rash reflection, the paradox, as well as the enthymeme, and writes in a parlando vivace that reminds his listener that he is a reader only when he thankfully finds it possible to comprehend more than one sentence through repeated reading.