Although Plato’s, "Republic," is best known for its political philosophy in justice, it covers fundamental principles or virtues that appear in both the structure of society as a whole and in the personality of human beings. It includes a powerful defense of education, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Emile, “To get good idea of public education, read Plato's Republic. It is not a political treatise, as those who merely judge books by their title think, but it is the finest, most beautiful work on education ever written.” The primary focus of this paper in what follows will be on Socrates’ vision of education in the Republic. However, Socrates posited two differing visions of education, of which the earlier is civic education to guardians and the latter is philosophical education to philosopher-kings. This paper is organized into two main sections: the first gives descriptions of the two explicit accounts of education, and the second section figures out both their similarities and differences to unveil the ideals of Socratic education. From book II, after Socrates proves that Cephalus and Polemarchus’ conception of justice and that of Thrasymachus are insufficient, Glaucon and Adeimantus continue the debate with Socrates. They request Socrates to demonstrate that justice is worthy of pursuit in the absence of any external rewards but for its own sake. Since the same letters are easier to see clearly in a bigger place (Republic 368d), Socrates proposes to create a perfectly just city, in which the justice is analogous to that of human beings. Therefore, Socrates begins with detailed analysis of the construction of the just city before applying its results to the justice in personal life. Glaucon denies the first city which only has producers as inhabitants for the reason that people’s desires make such an austere society impossible. Then Socrates transforms the city in to a more luxurious one with potential trouble. Since luxury creates scarcity, land must be taken from others to feed the burgeoning population and wars will follow as the consequence of expansion. Because one person can only do a fine job in one art that suits his nature, the class of guardians should be introduced into the city to perform the art of military. To ensure that these, “philosophic, spirited, swift and strong” (Republic, 376c) guardians are “gentle to their own and cruel to their enemies,” (Republic 375c), Socrates suggests that an education designed to make them like noble dogs is necessary. And education of guardians is the most important aspect of the city, because it is the process to purge the unhealthy, luxurious city and change it into a just city. From this point forward, education becomes one of the central themes of the Republic. Socrates’ First Account of Education Firstly, education in music, including tales and speeches, should begin in guardians’ childhood when they are most plastic. All the tales should be strictly censored, because, “a young thing can’t judge what is hidden sense and what is not; but what he takes into his opinions at that age has a tendency to become hard to eradicate and unchangeable,” (Republic 378d). The content of the tales is meant to shape guardians’ characters so that the gods in the stories must always be depicted as good and as responsible only for what is good in the world, but cannot be said to punish, change shape or lie. The stories about heroes are to make guardians fight against a fear of death, so heroes must never be shown as “accustomed to fearing slavery more than death,” (Republic 367b) and Hades must be praised. Besides, heroes should never be represented as lovers of violent laughter since guardians should be moderate. After addressing the appropriate content of tales, Socrates moves on to discuss the narrative styles and melody of tales according to the criteria of content. All in all, every component of story-telling should include, “good speech, good harmony, good grace, and good rhythm that accompany good disposition,”?Republic 400e). From the descriptions above, it is easy to see that the most important criterion of good tales is fostering courage, moderation and justice. The second part of the guardians’ education is gymnastics. Physical training is the sort in matters of war rather than the sort that trains athletes. Then, Socrates suggests