I read it in the original Greek at school, and by the time I'd referred to my lexicon enough times to translate it, I wasn't too bothered about what he was actually trying to say.
Impressive, man, impressive. Whatever about Latin (which I studied at school), Greek is a seriously difficult language; and Plato, too is not exactly bed-time reading. Your school sounds as though a rigorous intellectual workout was part of your daily routine.
For my part, I had read Plato at 15, and later, encountered Plato as an undergrad, and years later again, had to teach it to undergrads. The arguments are really a rhetorical device, a means of channeling and focusing the debate; the most interesting thing is his attempts - using rhetoric and a dialectical approach - to address the whys, wherefores and forms of governance. Dylan asks a good question in wondering just who this Utopia caters for? Another good one would be to look at the section "who shall guard the guardians?' which still has - huge - relevance today.
Above all, Plato - and those who followed him - gave us the vocabulary and conceptual frameworks of politics; most of our terms, our concepts (notwithstanding however narrow, or however limited, one feels he is in his scope, or conclusions), our frameworks of reference in the field of politics to this day were coined by the various schools of political philosophy in the Greek city states.
The Romans revered them as impossibly splendid ideals to be achieved, and measured against, (and safely ignored at the same time, as did Renaissance scholars centuries later.) They were seen as a sort of apex of human intellectual achievement, but few were tempted to put these theories into practice (perhaps, Pericles). But they did give us our vocabulary of politics, as well as context, framework and a means of articulating political matters. Despite the manifold contemporary shortcomings of the work, it is still a masterpiece for its era and ours.
Cheers and good luck
