The Republic of Plato, like the Athens of Pericles, has an artistic as well as a political side.
There is hardly any mention in Plato of the creative arts; only in two or three passages does he even allude to them (Rep.; Soph.).

He is not lost in rapture at the great works of Phidias, the Parthenon, the Propylea, the statues of Zeus or Athene.

He would probably have regarded any abstract truth of number or figure as higher than the greatest of them.

Yet it is hard to suppose that some influence, such as he hopes to inspire in youth, did not pass into his own mind from the works of art which he saw around him.

We are living upon the fragments of them, and find in a few broken stones the standard of truth and beauty.