I went down to the Piraeus

Let's now peek into the book itself. Just peek. We won't go too far. Let's start with the first line. Who remembers what the first line is? Oh, come on. You should know this. You're looking at the book. You're cheating. "I went down to the Piraeus." I went down to the Piraeus. Why does Plato begin with this line? There's a story that I heard. I'm not sure if it's altogether true, but it's a good story, at least, about the famous German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who said that on his first teaching of the Republic, he went through the whole book, taught the whole book in one seminar, one semester. The last time he taught it, the final time he taught it, he never got beyond the first sentence, "I went down to the Piraeus." What does it mean? Why does he begin with this? "I went down," a going down. The Greek word for this is catabasis. "I had made a descent." - Steven B. Smith Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science