: Laws by Plato BCE BCE Jowett Benjamin Translator - Political science Early works to 1800; State The Early works to 1800

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INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The genuineness of the Laws is sufficiently proved by more than twenty citations of them in the writings of Aristotle, who was residing at Athens during the last twenty years of the life of Plato, and who, having left it after his death , returned thither twelve years later ; by the allusion of Isocrates

akuroi tugchanousin ontes tois nomois kai tais politeiais tais upo ton sophiston gegrammenais.) --writing 346 B.C., a year after the death of Plato, and probably not more than three or four years after the composition of the Laws--who speaks of the Laws and Republics written by philosophers ; by the reference of the comic poet Alexis, a younger contemporary of Plato , to the enactment about prices, which occurs in Laws xi., viz that the same goods should not be offered at two prices on the same day

; by the unanimous voice of later antiquity and the absence of any suspicion among ancient writers worth speaking of to the contrary; for it is not said of Philippus of Opus that he composed any part of the Laws, but only that he copied them out of the waxen tablets, and was thought by some to have written the Epinomis That the longest and one of the best writings bearing the name of Plato should be a forgery, even if its genuineness were unsupported by external testimony, would be a singular phenomenon in ancient literature; and although the critical worth of the consensus of late writers is generally not to be compared with the express testimony of contemporaries, yet a somewhat greater value may be attributed to their consent in the present instance, because the admission of the Laws is combined with doubts about the Epinomis, a spurious writing, which is a kind of epilogue to the larger work probably of a much later date. This shows that the reception of the Laws was not altogether undiscriminating.

The suspicion which has attached to the Laws of Plato in the judgment of some modern writers appears to rest partly on differences in the style and form of the work, and on differences of thought and opinion which they observe in them. Their suspicion is increased by the fact that these differences are accompanied by resemblances as striking to passages in other Platonic writings. They are sensible of a want of point in the dialogue and a general inferiority in the ideas, plan, manners, and style. They miss the poetical flow, the dramatic verisimilitude, the life and variety of the characters, the dialectic subtlety, the Attic purity, the luminous order, the exquisite urbanity; instead of which they find tautology, obscurity, self-sufficiency, sermonizing, rhetorical declamation, pedantry, egotism, uncouth forms of sentences, and peculiarities in the use of words and idioms. They are unable to discover any unity in the patched, irregular structure. The speculative element both in government and education is superseded by a narrow economical or religious vein. The grace and cheerfulness of Athenian life have disappeared; and a spirit of moroseness and religious intolerance has taken their place. The charm of youth is no longer there; the mannerism of age makes itself unpleasantly felt. The connection is often imperfect; and there is a want of arrangement, exhibited especially in the enumeration of the laws towards the end of the work. The Laws are full of flaws and repetitions. The Greek is in places very ungrammatical and intractable. A cynical levity is displayed in some passages, and a tone of disappointment and lamentation over human things in others. The critics seem also to observe in them bad imitations of thoughts which are better expressed in Plato's other writings. Lastly, they wonder how the mind which conceived the Republic could have left the Critias, Hermocrates, and Philosophus incomplete or unwritten, and have devoted the last years of life to the Laws.

The Laws are discussed by three representatives of Athens, Crete, and Sparta. The Athenian, as might be expected, is the protagonist or chief speaker, while the second place is assigned to the Cretan, who, as one of the leaders of a new colony, has a special interest in the conversation. At least four-fifths of the answers are put into his mouth. The Spartan is every inch a soldier, a man of few words himself, better at deeds than words. The Athenian talks to the two others, although they are his equals in age, in the style of a master discoursing to his scholars; he frequently praises himself; he entertains a very poor opinion of the understanding of his companions. Certainly the boastfulness and rudeness of the Laws is the reverse of the refined irony and courtesy which characterize the earlier dialogues. We are no longer in such good company as in the Phaedrus and Symposium. Manners are lost sight of in the earnestness of the speakers, and dogmatic assertions take the place of poetical fancies.

The scene is laid in Crete, and the conversation is held in the course of a walk from Cnosus to the cave and temple of Zeus, which takes place on one of the longest and hottest days of the year. The companions start at dawn, and arrive at the point in their conversation which terminates the fourth book, about noon. The God to whose temple they are going is the lawgiver of Crete, and this may be supposed to be the very cave at which he gave his oracles to Minos. But the externals of the scene, which are briefly and inartistically described, soon disappear, and we plunge abruptly into the subject of the dialogue. We are reminded by contrast of the higher art of the Phaedrus, in which the summer's day, and the cool stream, and the chirping of the grasshoppers, and the fragrance of the agnus castus, and the legends of the place are present to the imagination throughout the discourse.

The typical Athenian apologizes for the tendency of his countrymen 'to spin a long discussion out of slender materials,' and in a similar spirit the Lacedaemonian Megillus apologizes for the Spartan brevity , acknowledging at the same time that there may be occasions when long discourses are necessary. The family of Megillus is the proxenus of Athens at Sparta; and he pays a beautiful compliment to the Athenian, significant of the character of the work, which, though borrowing many elements from Sparta, is also pervaded by an Athenian spirit. A good Athenian, he says, is more than ordinarily good, because he is inspired by nature and not manufactured by law. The love of listening which is attributed to the Timocrat in the Republic is also exhibited in him. The Athenian on his side has a pleasure in speaking to the Lacedaemonian of the struggle in which their ancestors were jointly engaged against the Persians. A connexion with Athens is likewise intimated by the Cretan Cleinias. He is the relative of Epimenides, whom, by an anachronism of a century,--perhaps arising as Zeller suggests out of a confusion of the visit of Epimenides and Diotima ,--he describes as coming to Athens, not after the attempt of Cylon, but ten years before the Persian war. The Cretan and Lacedaemonian hardly contribute at all to the argument of which the Athenian is the expounder; they only supply information when asked about the institutions of their respective countries. A kind of simplicity or stupidity is ascribed to them. At first, they are dissatisfied with the free criticisms which the Athenian passes upon the laws of Minos and Lycurgus, but they acquiesce in his greater experience and knowledge of the world. They admit that there can be no objection to the enquiry; for in the spirit of the legislator himself, they are discussing his laws when there are no young men present to listen. They are unwilling to allow that the Spartan and Cretan lawgivers can have been mistaken in honouring courage as the first part of virtue, and are puzzled at hearing for the first time that 'Goods are only evil to the evil.' Several times they are on the point of quarrelling, and by an effort learn to restrain their natural feeling . In Book vii., the Lacedaemonian expresses a momentary irritation at the accusation which the Athenian brings against the Spartan institutions, of encouraging licentiousness in their women, but he is reminded by the Cretan that the permission to criticize them freely has been given, and cannot be retracted. His only criterion of truth is the authority of the Spartan lawgiver; he is 'interested,' in the novel speculations of the Athenian, but inclines to prefer the ordinances of Lycurgus.

The three interlocutors all of them speak in the character of old men, which forms a pleasant bond of union between them. They have the feelings of old age about youth, about the state, about human things in general. Nothing in life seems to be of much importance to them; they are spectators rather than actors, and men in general appear to the Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the Gods and of circumstances. Still they have a fatherly care of the young, and are deeply impressed by sentiments of religion. They would give confidence to the aged by an increasing use of wine, which, as they get older, is to unloose their tongues and make them sing. The prospect of the existence of the soul after death is constantly present to them; though they can hardly be said to have the cheerful hope and resignation which animates Socrates in the Phaedo or Cephalus in the Republic. Plato appears to be expressing his own feelings in remarks of this sort. For at the time of writing the first book of the Laws he was at least seventy-four years of age, if we suppose him to allude to the victory of the Syracusans under Dionysius the Younger over the Locrians, which occurred in the year 356. Such a sadness was the natural effect of declining years and failing powers, which make men ask, 'After all, what profit is there in life?' They feel that their work is beginning to be over, and are ready to say, 'All the world is a stage;' or, in the actual words of Plato, 'Let us play as good plays as we can,' though 'we must be sometimes serious, which is not agreeable, but necessary.' These are feelings which have crossed the minds of reflective persons in all ages, and there is no reason to connect the Laws any more than other parts of Plato's writings with the very uncertain narrative of his life, or to imagine that this melancholy tone is attributable to disappointment at having failed to convert a Sicilian tyrant into a philosopher.

We must endeavour to find a thread of order which will carry us through this comparative disorder. The first four books are described by Plato himself as the preface or preamble. Having arrived at the conclusion that each law should have a preamble, the lucky thought occurs to him at the end of the fourth book that the preceding discourse is the preamble of the whole. This preamble or introduction may be abridged as follows:--

The institutions of Sparta and Crete are admitted by the Lacedaemonian and Cretan to have one aim only: they were intended by the legislator to inspire courage in war. To this the Athenian objects that the true lawgiver should frame his laws with a view to all the virtues and not to one only. Better is he who has temperance as well as courage, than he who has courage only; better is he who is faithful in civil broils, than he who is a good soldier only. Better, too, is peace than war; the reconciliation than the defeat of an enemy. And he who would attain all virtue should be trained amid pleasures as well as pains. Hence there should be convivial intercourse among the citizens, and a man's temperance should be tested in his cups, as we test his courage amid dangers. He should have a fear of the right sort, as well as a courage of the right sort.

At the beginning of the second book the subject of pleasure leads to education, which in the early years of life is wholly a discipline imparted by the means of pleasure and pain. The discipline of pleasure is implanted chiefly by the practice of the song and the dance. Of these the forms should be fixed, and not allowed to depend on the fickle breath of the multitude. There will be choruses of boys, girls, and grown-up persons, and all will be heard repeating the same strain, that 'virtue is happiness.' One of them will give the law to the rest; this will be the chorus of aged minstrels, who will sing the most beautiful and the most useful of songs. They will require a little wine, to mellow the austerity of age, and make them amenable to the laws.

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