system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is Plato's Republic a Serious Political Proposal?

I was recently listening to the Partially Examined Life's episode on Plato's Republic and later on in the episode one of the hosts had mentioned that in academia, some treat Plato's Republic as a straightforward political proposal while others treat as a metaphor for the soul and other abstract answers. 

What is the general consensus regarding what Plato meant?
gpt
In *A History of Western Philosophy*, Bertrand Russell says the following which if accurate gives some credence to the idea that it could have been a serious model:

> Plato's Republic, unlike modern Utopias, was perhaps intended to be actually founded. This was not so fantastic or impossible as it might naturally seem to us. Many of its provisions, including some that we should have thought quite impracticable, were actually realized at Sparta. The rule of philosophers had been attempted by Pythagoras, and in Plato's time Archytas the Pythagorean was politically influential in Taras (the modern Taranto) when Plato visited Sicily and southern
Italy. It was a common practice for cities to employ a sage to draw up their laws; Solon had done this for Athens, and Protagoras for Thurii. Colonies, in those days, were completely free from control by their parent cities, and it would have been quite feasible for a band of Platonists to establish the Republic on the shores of Spain or Gaul.
Unfortunately chance led Plato to Syracuse, a great commercial city engaged in desperate wars with Carthage; in such an atmosphere, no philosopher could have achieved much. In the next generation, the rise of Macedonia had made all small States antiquated, and had brought about the futility of all political experiments in miniature.