 To the literal-minded the very phrase “Plato’s aesthetics” refers to an anachronism, given that this area of philosophy only came to be identified in the last few centuries. But even those who take aesthetics more broadly and permit the term find something exploratory in Plato’s treatments of art and beauty. He might be best described as seeking to discover the vocabulary and issues of aesthetics. For this reason Plato’s readers will not come upon a single aesthetic theory in the dialogues. For the same reason they are uniquely situated to watch core concepts of aesthetics being defined: beauty, imitation, inspiration.