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7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked.

(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato's way of

expressing that he is passing lightly over the subject.

(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he

proceeds with the construction of the State.

(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then

again as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which

he sustains the reader's interest.

(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion

of the poets in Book X.

(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the

valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides,

the manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is

taken up into the subject, and the argument from the practice of

Asclepius, should not escape notice.