"Who shall guard the guardians ?" (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?), writes Juvenal in his Satires (6.347-348). Melissa Lane identifies here what she calls the "Juvenal conundrum", a formulation to which Plato not only comes explicitly close in the Laws (12.945b5-c2), but which, she argues, lies at the center of his political thought in the Republic and consistently carries through his later works. The author brings out the coherence of Plato's response and argues that Plato can thus serve as a contemporary resource, placing him in dialogue with "modern political theorizing" (4). Lane finds in Plato an inherently evaluative conception of rule: ruling must take place in the interest of those who are ruled - its "telos". Plato, she argues, was constantly aware of the risk that this purpose might become corrupted, so that ruling would serve the interests of those who rule. He therefore developed "a schema of rule": "The underlying challenge is not only to define the telos properly but also to deploy a taxis capable of maintaining the proper orientation of rulers (who may, specifically, be officeholders) toward it" (52). The book shows how Plato consistently conceived rule specifically as office - an accountable charge controlled by limitations and guarantees, notably institutional ones.

The importance of Lane's book for Platonic studies, and its resonance for political and legal philosophy more broadly, is reflected in the Journal of the History of Philosophy's 2024 Book Prize. The book draws on many of her earlier articles, which are referenced and sometimes explicitly revised in the notes. More broadly, the book shows that Plato's political philosophy relies centrally on what had long remained in plain sight yet largely unnoticed: the dual meaning of the Greek term arkhē, which can denote rule in a general sense, but also office when referring to the controlled exercise of rule (especially in the plural: 10; see also 216, 270). In doing so, Lane challenges a dominant assumption in Platonic scholarship - that the Republic shows little interest in law and office, and that this concern appears only in the Laws. The author adopts a "complementarist position" (30), beyond both unitarianism and developmentalism. She identifies in Plato a conception of office "as a kind of rule distinguished by its limited and accountable parameters and associated thereby with willing obedience" (11).

The book is structured in four parts of unequal length, followed by a Glossary of Selected Greek Terms, a Bibliography, and an Index of names.

Part I ("Introduction") sets out the book's general argument in a problem-oriented way, already in dialogue with both ancient and modern references. Lane situates Plato's originality within his historical and cultural context - for instance "the Homeric trope of the king as shepherd" or the Athenian Areopagus - while contrasting it with Popper's misreading (27), Weberian descriptive approaches to rule, Marxism (19), and democratically inspired critiques such as those of Arendt and Rancière (11). Focusing on Plato's consistent concern with a taxis - a constitutional and legal order that, through the limitation and accountability of rule, secures its telos, "the good of those ruled" - Lane shows how Plato reworks Greek institutional practices and political vocabularies, and ultimately raises the question of whether this Platonic "reconfiguration" amounts to a genuine "break" (188).

Part II develops this "reconfiguration" through the analysis of Plato's three political dialogues. Lane emphasizes the role of in-kind wages to rulers, together with their legally enforced deprivation of all private property, which create a "complex geometry of objective dependence" within the city (175), alongside a "service conception of rule." In the Republic, two levels of guardians ensure the selection, supervision, and control of junior rulers by senior ones. This structure is discussed in relation to the Athenian Areopagus, and contrasted with institutions contemporary to Plato, such as dokimasia (a scrutiny process for screening rulers) and euthunai (end-of-term audits), where accountability primarily operates from below (the ruled) rather than from above, as in Plato. Crucially, already in the Republic, neither nature nor education, nor the ruler's knowledge or virtue, are sufficient to secure the telos of rule (186, 212). They must be complemented by a taxis "involving powers [...] as inherently limited," including "performance audits," limited specified powers, restrictions on eligibility, and "other potential mechanisms of monitoring and sanctioning" (55, 217). By addressing long-standing and difficult questions in the corpus, this section shows how Plato profoundly rethought the function of the ruler - and was conscious of doing so (173, 245-6).

Part III turns to the "degenerations of rule and offices" in Books 8 and 9 of the Republic. Lane argues that Plato constructs "a detailed, and relativistic, political science of Greek institutions" (288). She highlights the interdependence between individual psychology and the structure of the city (256, engaging notably with Ferrari and Williams). The analysis reveals how "institutional breakdown" occurs, which in turn underscores the co-constitution of telos and taxis in Plato's political thought (350). Lane also stresses the epitactic nature of rule, as issuing orders, and the importance of willing obedience, compatible with the Platonic conception of freedom (305) - different from the standard modern concept (377). Against this background, anarchy and tyranny appear as "two extremes," which reveal the schema in negative form: anarchy underscores the importance of taxis, tyranny the importance of telos. "If the telos of a taxis is negated and inverted, that taxis loses its value [...]. Absolute power without any limits inevitably turns to its opposite: no power at all" (317).

Part IV ("Thematizations of rule and office") extends this dual contrast between tyranny and anarchy. Against tyranny, Lane highlights the "compossibility" of rule with civic friendship and civic freedom, fostered by office and law. Against anarchy, she explains why Platonic rule and office cannot accommodate the "rule over none" (Kolodny), since they are fundamentally epitactic and therefore hierarchical. Political hierarchy is practically inevitable, but it can be made ethically valuable (404) and would ultimately become unnecessary if each individual were capable of psychic self-rule. Lane shows how taxis can be hollowed out from its telos: in doing so, she not only constructs a meticulously referenced and philologically informed reading of a constitutionalist Plato, but also demonstrates how Plato can serve as a critique of proceduralism.

One may regret the absence of an index locorum (only an index of names is provided), which is available only online. This is particularly surprising given that the book seems to aim to function as a working tool: Lane explicitly invites readers to draw selectively from it (35). The book's numerous repetitions serve clarity and reflect the author's scrupulous attention to references - for example, note 29 (184) corresponds to note 53 (161) and is further developed on pp. 189-90 - allowing readers consulting isolated sections to remain fully informed. Yet these repetitions sometimes give the impression that the argument might have been condensed without losing its rigor, perhaps even allowing the originality of the thesis to emerge more sharply.

Such condensation might also have allowed further development of the relation between Platonic constitutionalism and the definition of the Good, a central problem of Platonic philosophy. Lane explicitly sets this aside as "beyond the scope" of the book (20), suggesting instead that the "operationalization of the Good as 'the good of the ruled'" allows one to dispense with a "full account of the content of the Good," by providing a "helpful test" distinguishing "the good of the ruled" from their "exploitation." This idea has been linked, not only by readers but by Lane herself in her "Response to comments" at two 2023 meetings (collected by J. Dunn, History of European Ideas 50:6), to the late Sarah Broadie's recent Plato's Sun-Like Good (2021) (1118-9). This important implication could have been explored further - especially since it receives only brief attention in the discussion of Vermeule's common good constitutionalism (28-9) and when Lane reflects on knowledge of the Good and the role of the discursive "logic of reason-giving and account rendering" (220-2).

Nevertheless, the book stands as a landmark contribution to Platonic scholarship.

Marion Pollaert