"Plato and the Tyrant" review

Beware of toxic relationships

Excerpt: "Syracuse sank further into lethal civil strife. Plato tried to disclaim responsibility, writing open letters that played down his role in an “effort at spin control.”

All this is only a sketch of the finely sifted story Mr. Romm tells in “Plato and the Tyrant.” He includes abundant historical and social context. He collates different versions of important events carefully and is frank about the limits of his evidence. Not a Plato specialist himself, he generously cites the literature, tracking shifts in opinion about the “Republic” and its author.

Sometimes, however, his narrative bogs down in the shuttling among Sicily, Athens and the text of the “Republic,” only to be prodded along with portentous phrases such as “but soon, a new crisis made him a hero again” and “but fate had a strange resolution in store for him yet.”

Still, Mr. Romm’s portrait of Plato as a scheming, often bumbling political player will be intriguingly new to most readers.

It is fascinating to imagine that the revered sage “had made moral compromises, committed errors of judgment, and gotten into jams he nearly couldn’t get out of.” Lie down with tyrants, get up with regrets.