Plato’s Republic is typically thought to recommend a form of government that, from our current perspective, seems perniciously totalitarian. In Athens Victorious Gregory Recco demonstrates that Plato intended quite the opposite: to demonstrate the superiority of a democratic constitution. In Plato’s reenactment, Athens wins. Recco argues that the values identified in Book Eight as distinctively democratic were the very ones that served as the unannounced touchstones of moral and political judgment throughout the dialogue.