The Statesman (or Politicus) is central to any serious concern with Plato's political thought. It clarifies and modifies Plato's earlier positions, especially in the Republic, and illuminates the principles of his political thinking even while these are in the process of changing.

Plato (429–347 bc) is known and discussed widely as a political thinker, but usually on the basis of his best-known work, the Republic, and this is in many ways a pity. The Republic is a work in which political theory is mixed together with ethical theory and metaphysics, and the political strand (which is not a very large one) is hard to disentangle and open to many different kinds of interpretation. Further, the political ideas, though expressed with vigour, are very sketchy, and their relation to contemporary political reality is remote. Plato's later works, Statesman and Laws, are more properly seen as works of political theory than is the Republic, and studying them can both help us to understand the Republic better, and also put it into perspective, as being only part of a long development in Plato's thinking.

In the Statesman, for example, Plato defends the ideal of the ruler as possessor of a particular kind of expertise, namely expertise in the ‘political skill (or art)’ (politikē technē). This idea dominates the political aspect of the Republic: political problems are to be solved by imposing an ideal ruler, and the only interesting question is what the nature of that rule is to be.

In preparing this translation, the Oxford Classical Text (E.A. Duke, W.F. Hicken, W.S.M. Nicoll, D.B. Duke and J.C.G. Strachan, eds., Platonis Opera, vol. I, Oxford University Press, 1994) has been followed, except in the few places indicated in the notes. We are extremely grateful to David Robinson for letting us see a copy of the text of Statesman in advance of publication.

The canonical essay on Plato's style of writing in his later dialogues remains the General Introduction by Lewis Campbell to his 1867 edition of Sophist and Statesman combined (see the bibliography on pp. xxviii–xxix). Here I need only point out to the reader that the Greek of Statesman is occasionally difficult and dense, and that it rarely rises to the conversational fluency and brilliance of Plato's early and middle-period dialogues. At the same time, he sometimes experiments – for no very good reason that I can see – with artificial alliteration, word order and rhythm. It is in the nature of translating from one language to another that these rhetorical devices are likely to be lost: they certainly have been in the following translation. Otherwise, my intention has been to keep as close to the Greek as a reasonable degree of fluency allows, without losing the occasionally dry and laborious tone of the original. Apart from this tone, however, there is little in the way the dialogue has been written to deter a potential reader, and (as always in Plato) enough thought-provoking material to make a reading worthwhile.

socrates: I'm really very grateful to you, Theodorus, for introducing me to Theaetetus. And thanks for the introduction to our visitor as well.

theodorus: You'll probably be three times as grateful, though, Socrates, when they've completed their portraits of the statesman and the philosopher as well.

socrates: All right – if this is what you want us to report as the view of our foremost arithmetician and geometer, Theodorus.

theodorus: What, Socrates?

socrates: That he counted each of the men as equivalent, when their relative values progress by leaps that are too great for you mathematicians with your ratios.

theodorus: That's a good point, Socrates. I call on Ammon, the god of my race, to witness that I admit it. You're quite right to tell me off for my mathematical mistake. Thanks for the reminder. I'll get my own back on you another time, but for now I'd like to ask our visitor to continue his kindness and next to pick either the statesman or the philosopher, whichever he likes, and give us an account of him.

visitor: Yes, I'd better, Theodorus. I mean, once we've undertaken a project, we oughtn't to give up until we've reached the end. But what should I do about Theaetetus here?

theodorus: What do you mean?

visitor: Shall we give him a break and instead get Socrates here to join us in our exertions? What do you suggest?