It is not often that one comes across a book that changes how one sees or understands something in the world. This is especially rare when it comes to a book about an author like Plato, whose writings has generated millennia of commentaries and secondary literature that could fill up a large library. Melissa Lane's Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political represents such a rare achievement. It offers a first-of-its-kind treatment of Plato's discussion of office, a topic which, according to Lane, “must be identified as a textual fact hiding in plain sight” (10). This is a very apt description. Rule and office are indeed “hidden” across Plato's dialogues. But they are not hidden ‘between the lines.’ They appear plainly in the text, clearly visible in the language and concepts that Plato uses. Once this “hidden fact” is revealed, however, it is hard not to see it everywhere.

This, then, is what makes Of Rule and Office such a remarkable scholarly achievement: it changes the way we read and understand Plato's political thought, uncovering a whole new feature of some of the most well-studied texts in the history of Western philosophy. As suggested by its title, it focuses on the nature of political “rule” in Plato's political writing and its connection to