INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
EXCURSUS ON THE RELATION OF THE LAWS OF PLATO TO THE INSTITUTIONS OF CRETE AND LACEDAEMON AND TO THE LAWS AND CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS.
BOOK I.
BOOK II.
BOOK III.
BOOK IV.
BOOK V.
BOOK VI.
BOOK VII.
BOOK VIII.
BOOK IX.
BOOK X.
BOOK XI.
BOOK XII.
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The
genuineness of the Laws is sufficiently proved (1) 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 (B.C. 347), returned thither
twelve years later (B.C. 335); (2) by the allusion of Isocrates(Oratio
ad Philippum missa, p.84: To men tais paneguresin enochlein kai pros
apantas legein tous sunprechontas en autais pros oudena legein estin,
all omoios oi toioutoi ton logon (sc. speeches in the assembly)
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 (upo ton sophiston); (3) by the reference
(Athen.) of the comic poet Alexis, a younger contemporary of Plato
(fl. B.C 356-306), 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(Ou
gegone kreitton nomothetes tou plousiou
Aristonikou tithesi gar nuni nomon,
ton ichthuopolon ostis an polon tini
ichthun upotimesas apodot elattonos
es eipe times, eis to desmoterion
euthus apagesthai touton, ina dedoikotes
tes axias agaposin, e tes esperas
saprous apantas apopherosin oikade.Meineke,
Frag. Com. Graec.); (4) 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 (Diog. Laert.) 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 (1) on differences in the
style and form of the work, and (2) 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
questions which have been thus indirectly suggested may be considered
by us under five or six heads: I, the characters; II, the plan; III,
the style; IV, the imitations of other writings of Plato; V; the more
general relation of the Laws to the Republic and the other dialogues;
and VI, to the existing Athenian and Spartan states.I.
Already in the Philebus the distinctive character of Socrates has
disappeared; and in the Timaeus, Sophist, and Statesman his function
of chief speaker is handed over to the Pythagorean philosopher
Timaeus, and to the Eleatic Stranger, at whose feet he sits, and is
silent. More and more Plato seems to have felt in his later writings
that the character and method of Socrates were no longer suited to be
the vehicle of his own philosophy. He is no longer interrogative but
dogmatic; not 'a hesitating enquirer,' but one who speaks with the
authority of a legislator. Even in the Republic we have seen that the
argument which is carried on by Socrates in the old style with
Thrasymachus in the first book, soon passes into the form of
exposition. In the Laws he is nowhere mentioned. Yet so completely in
the tradition of antiquity is Socrates identified with Plato, that in
the criticism of the Laws which we find in the so-called Politics of
Aristotle he is supposed by the writer still to be playing his part
of the chief speaker (compare Pol.).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.
