Assuming, therefore, that in λήθη as the counter-essence to ἀλήθεια the primordial opposite to "truth" holds sway, and assuming further that something of the essence of Being shows itself in the essence of this opposition, then the utterance expressing primordially ἀλήθεια's counter-essence, λήθη, and consequently expressing ἀλήθεια's own essence, can only be a word corresponding to the character of this primordial utterance. And that is μῦθος.
In the historical time of the completion of Greek thinking, i.e., in Plato, thoughtful utterance takes the form of "dialogue." It is as if, before the end of Greek thinking, this very thinking, by its own character, once more wanted to speak about itself and attest to the essential rank the word enjoys where man stands in an immediate relation to ἀλήθεια. In Plato's dialogue "Phaedrus," in the discussion of "the beautiful" (the concluding part), we see in addition that Plato recognized very clearly the priority of the immediately spoken word over the merely written one. But where would Plato's "dialogues" be if they never had been written down themselves?
Plato's most expansive "dialogue" in terms of content and range deals with the πόλις. The Romans say res publica, i.e., res populi, i.e., that which concerns the organized and established people, what is most their "business." Ordinarily we call this Platonic dialogue about the πόλις "Plato's Republic." But the difference between the modern republic, the Roman res publica, and the Greek πόλις is as essential as that between the modern essence of truth, the Roman rectitudo, and the Greek ἀλήθεια. Actually this relation already holds on account of the fact that the essence of the Greek πόλις is grounded in the essence of ἀλήθεια. A simple reflection, even if our focus is elsewhere, must still lead us to suspect this connection between ἀλήθεια and πόλις. That is, if ἀλήθεια as unconcealedness determines all beings in their presence {Anwesenheit} (and that means, for the Greeks, precisely in their Being), then certainly the πόλις too, and it above all, has to stand within the domain of this determination by ἀλήθεια, provided the πόλις does indeed name that in which the humanity of the Greeks has the center of its Being.
What is the πόλις? The word itself puts us on the right course, provided we bring to it the all-illuminating Greek experience of the essence of Being and of truth. Πόλις is the πόλος, the pole, the place around which everything appearing to the Greeks as a being turns in a peculiar way. The pole is the place around which all beings turn and precisely in such a way that in the domain of this place beings show their turning and their condition.
The pole, as this place, lets beings appear in their Being and show the totality of their condition. The pole does not produce and does not create beings in their Being, but as pole it is the abode of the unconcealedness