My dissertation argues that Plato’s concept of _epistēmē_ is closer to our modern concept of understanding than it is to our concept of knowledge: for Plato, the person who has _epistēmē_ of some domain (e.g. geometry) has a synoptic grasp of its axiomatic structure and grasps the content of its axioms and theorems. On this picture, Plato denies that there is understanding of perceptible objects (because, according to him, facts about them do not exhibit any axiomatic structure) but he does allow that they can be grasped in a privileged way, which he is willing to call _“gnōsis”_ (which philosophically and etymologically is closer to our notion of knowledge). Thus, I argue that Plato can deny that there is understanding of the perceptible world yet still maintain that philosophers are best suited to rule, as he does in _Republic_.