Just started reading the republic. Any works or characters I

>>9873022
>is it even important to understand the text?
what

>>9873022
Checked. At the very least, read about Socrates trial before you begin.
>Recommended: 5 dialogues, Hackett edition

>>9873022
>Should I know who Thrasymachus and Lysias are

Not really. Who they are is not important. What matters is their argument.

>>9873071
Following up on this, for The Republic -- You should use the Allan Bloom edition

>>9873022
>Should I know who Thrasymachus and Lysias are

Not really. It doesn't matter who they are. What matters is their argument.

>>9873098
>>9873132

Thrasymachus and Lysias BTFO

>>9873098
>>9873132
Baneposting on /lit/

>>9873022
You can understand their point of view from the dialogue, really theyre there to maneuver the story where plato wants it to go.

>>9873022
>Any works or characters I should be familiar with?
I mean, one could lazily say "read all the Greeks before this" but that's unrealistic and distracting. With all of the poetry quotations throughout, my suggesting would be to look up those passages (when feasible) in their original contexts to discover how Plato uses them. Pretty often he'll have a character quote a line of poetry in defense of a position, and looking up the original context reveals weird interplays between the quoted passage and the dialogue.

There are three works I can think of, however, that you should read: The Ring of Gyges story in Herodotus's Histories (it's very short), and two Aristophanes plays that the Republic is responding to (in part): The Assembly of Women, and The Birds.

>Should I know who Thrasymachus and Lysias are
Sure; maybe look up Debra Nails's The People of Plato on b-ok.org or something, which has biographies and accounts of all the people that appear in Plato's writings. Totally invaluable.

For Thrasymachus and Lysias specifically, it's important to compare how they're treated in the dialogue Phaedrus. Thrasymachus's key trait there is described as being able to stir up the city's emotions (look carefully as the Thrasymachus debate, his indignation is more feigned than real, and confer Socrates's later claim about being friends with Thrasymachus). It might be important to note that besides being a sophist by trade, Thrasymachus acted as an ambassador to Athens for his home country at a point when Chalcedon was in iffy standing with Athens. Lysias is the talented brother of Polemarchus, who escaped the slaughter of the Thirty Tyrants that Polemarchus suffered.