 Has this fact escaped Plato’s notice, alongside other deficiencies of his blue-print of an ideal city? Against all these complaints, justified as they must seem, it should be pointed out that Plato clearly is not concerned with the conditions that would make his city ‘livable’. His aim is rather more limited: He wants to present a model, and to work out its essential features. The same explanation applies to his depiction of the city’s and its citizens’ decay in Books VIII and IX. Contrary to many critics’ assumptions, Plato is not there trying to predict and explain the course of history. Rather, he wants to explain the generation and decay typical of each political system and the psychopathology of its leaders. Plato finds the basis of both in the ‘values’ – be they honor, money, freedom, or lust – that are embedded in he constitutions of the different types of state. It is unlikely that Plato presupposes that there are pure representatives of these types, though some historical states may have come closer to being representatives than others. Given that Plato’s aim is to work out the model of a well-functioning state, he does not and need not concern himself with softening the features of his bare sketch of the decay of the city and of the souls of the citizens due to their inherent tensions. If his decision to concentrate on a model explains certain inhumane features of Plato’s political vision, are there any indications that he was aware of the limitations that he imposed on his ‘political animals’ by confining them to just one function in an efficiently run community? Was Plato aware of the fact that his black-and-white picture of civic life in his model state disregards the claim of individuals to have their own aims and ends, and not to be treated like automata, with no thoughts and wishes of their own? Though the Republic contains some suggestions that would mitigate this bleak picture, for the sake of balancing this picture, it is more fruitful, to look at other works of Plato’s middle period that concentrate on and prioritize the conditions of the individual soul rather than focus on the demands of the community. These works are the Symposium and the Phaedrus. For though each dialogue should be studied as a unity of its own, it is also necessary to treat the individual dialogues as part of a wider picture.