The Piraeus

Certain · Athens’ harbor town

Themistocles’ fortified harbor, joined to the city by the Long Walls, cosmopolitan and democratic in temper. Plato chose it deliberately: “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday” opens the Republic, a descent (katabasis) the Neoplatonists read symbolically — the philosopher going down into the harbor-town of becoming to found a city in speech. The old commentators noted that the first word of the whole work is I went down.