Laws

Summary

The Laws is Plato's last and longest dialogue, twelve books of conversation in which three elderly men design the constitution and legal code of a new city. On a midsummer day an unnamed Athenian Stranger walks from Knossos toward the cave and shrine of Zeus with Cleinias, a Cretan, and Megillus, a Spartan. The Athenian opens by asking whether a god or a man is the author of their laws, and the talk becomes an inquiry into what laws are for. The library text is Benjamin Jowett's translation from the third edition of his Dialogues (Oxford, 1892), with his long Introduction and Analysis printed before the dialogue. Books I and II test the Cretan and Spartan codes, which are built for war. The Athenian argues that a lawgiver should aim at the whole of virtue and at peace, that the hardest victory is over oneself, and that well-ruled drinking parties can train citizens to resist pleasure as military drill trains them to resist fear. He pictures each human being as a puppet pulled by cords of pleasure and pain, and urges that we follow the soft golden cord of reason, which in a city is called law. Book III traces political history from a great flood through the early Dorian kingdoms to Persia and Athens, the two mother forms of monarchy and freedom, each ruined by excess. In Book IV Cleinias reveals that Knossos has appointed him to a commission founding a colony, and the remaining books legislate for it. The Stranger compares a good lawgiver to the free physician who persuades his patient instead of simply giving orders, and so attaches a persuasive preamble to each law. The city, later called Magnesia, has 5,040 households on inalienable lots, limits on wealth, thirty-seven guardians of the laws, a council, and a supervisor of education whom Book VI calls the greatest officer of the state. Book VII sets out education in music and gymnastics from infancy, for girls as well as boys. Books VIII to XI regulate festivals, farming, trade, marriage, property, wills and family quarrels; Book IX treats crime and punishment, homicide, and the distinction between voluntary and involuntary wrongs. Book X, the dialogue's theological centre, gives a preamble against three kinds of impiety: denying that the gods exist, that they care for human beings, or that they can be bribed by gifts. Against the first the Athenian argues that soul, the source of all motion, is older than body. Book XII adds auditors of magistrates, rules for travel abroad, burial customs and a Nocturnal Council of senior officials and younger men charged with understanding the purpose of the laws and keeping them sound. The dialogue ends with Cleinias and Megillus resolving to keep the Stranger as a partner in founding the city.

Plot or Argument

• Book I: the walk to the shrine of Zeus, and the aim of legislation

  The Athenian asks whether a god or a man gave the Cretan and Spartan laws. Cleinias explains that Cretan institutions such as common meals and gymnastic training were designed for constant war. The Athenian replies that a good lawgiver legislates for peace and for the whole of virtue, ranking wisdom, temperance, justice and courage in that order. He introduces the image of human beings as puppets of the gods moved by iron cords of passion and the golden cord of reason, and proposes the drinking party as a test of self-mastery.

• Book II: music, choruses and wine

  Education begins with training children's pleasures and pains through song and dance, so that they love what is good before they can give reasons. The Athenian proposes three choruses, of boys, of young men, and of older men devoted to Dionysus. He sets age limits on wine: none before eighteen, moderation until thirty, and after forty wine as the god's gift to soften the hardness of old age.

• Book III: the origin and decline of states

  After a great flood, a few hill shepherds rebuild society from families to clans to cities. The Athenian reviews Troy and the Dorian league of Argos, Messene and Sparta, praising Sparta's mixed constitution. He then names Persia and Athens as the two mother forms of government, monarchy and freedom: Persia fell when its kings lost moderation, and Athens when the people ceased to be the willing servant of the laws.

• Book IV: the new colony, God as measure, and preambles

  Cleinias announces that Knossos has charged him and nine others with founding a colony. The Athenian considers its site and settlers, insists that the state in which law rules over the rulers is the one that prospers, and tells the colonists that God, not man, is the measure of all things. He compares the slave doctor who gives orders like a tyrant with the free doctor who reasons with his patient, and resolves to give each law a persuasive preamble.

• Book V: the general preamble and the 5,040 lots

  A long address to the colonists ranks the honours owed to the gods, the soul, the body, property, parents and friends. The Athenian describes the best city, where friends hold all things in common, and offers this one as a second-best: 5,040 households on lots that may not be sold, a ceiling on wealth of four times the smallest lot, and four property classes.

• Book VI: magistrates and marriage

  Laws are worthless without good officers to keep them. The Athenian provides for thirty-seven guardians of the laws, generals, a council of 360 chosen by a mixed method of election and lot, market and city wardens, and a supervisor of education, the highest office of all. Courts, marriage laws and common meals for men and, he proposes, for women complete the book.

• Book VII: education from the cradle

  Infants should be carried and rocked, as nurses and the Corybantic rites calm restlessness by motion. Children are taught dance, wrestling and music; girls receive the same training, including the use of arms. The Athenian prescribes reading, the lyre, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, and says that man is made to be the plaything of God, so that life should be lived in the noblest pastimes of sacrifice, song and dance.

• Books VIII–IX: festivals, economy and criminal law

  Book VIII fixes a festival calendar, military exercises, rules on love between the sexes, agriculture, boundaries, water rights and retail trade. Book IX takes up temple robbery, treason, homicide and wounding. The Athenian argues that no one is unjust willingly, distinguishes injury from injustice, grades homicide by intention and passion, and makes allowance for crimes committed in madness, disease or extreme old age.

• Book X: the preamble against impiety

  The Athenian answers those who think the gods do not exist, those who think they exist but do not care for human affairs, and those who think they can be bought off with sacrifices. He argues that self-moving soul is the first origin of all motion and therefore prior to body, that divine providence attends to the smallest things, and that the gods cannot be corrupted. Impious offenders are sent to a House of Reformation, with death for those who will not reform.

• Books XI–XII: private law, auditors and the Nocturnal Council

  Book XI covers property, sales, trade, wills, orphans, family disputes, poisoning and sorcery, and the duty of relatives to keep the mad at home. Book XII treats embassies, military discipline, the auditors who examine magistrates, journeys abroad to observe other cities, and funerals. Finally the Athenian establishes the Nocturnal Council, which must know the single aim of virtue that runs through all the laws and so preserve them. Cleinias and Megillus agree that the Stranger must help found the city.

Characters

• The Athenian Stranger, chief speaker

  An elderly unnamed Athenian who leads the conversation, criticizes the warlike aims of the Dorian codes and drafts nearly all the legislation.

• Cleinias, Cretan interlocutor

  A citizen of Knossos who reveals in Book IV that he is one of ten commissioners appointed to found a new colony, so that the discussion becomes practical.

• Megillus, Spartan interlocutor

  A Lacedaemonian who speaks less often, defends Spartan institutions and, as a family friend of Athens, warmly receives the Athenian's arguments.

• Zeus, divine lawgiver of Crete

  Cretan tradition credits him, through Minos, with the island's laws; the three men walk toward his cave and shrine.

• Lycurgus, Spartan lawgiver

  Credited with the Spartan constitution, which the Athenian admires for its mixture but faults for training citizens chiefly for war.

• Cyrus and Darius, Persian kings in Book III

  Examples of how monarchy can flourish under a king who grants freedom and decline when princes are raised in luxury.

Lessons

• Laws should aim at the whole of virtue, not victory in war

  The Athenian's first criticism of the Cretan and Spartan codes is that they train citizens for war and courage alone. A lawgiver should aim at peace and at all the virtues together, with wisdom first, because the most important war is the one each person fights within himself.

  • Why does the Athenian rank wisdom first and courage last among the virtues?
  • What does Cleinias mean by the victory over oneself, and how does the Athenian build on it?
  • Can a community be trained for peace in the way Sparta trained for war?

• Persuasion before command

  In Book IV the Athenian compares two doctors: one gives orders without explanation, the other reasons with the patient until he is convinced. Good laws, he concludes, should be prefaced by preambles that teach citizens why the law is just, so that obedience comes from understanding as well as fear of penalty.

  • What does the free doctor do that the slave doctor does not?
  • Why does the Athenian think a law with a preamble is better than a bare command?
  • In Book IX a scornful doctor says the gentle physician is educating the patient instead of curing him. How does the Athenian answer that objection?

• Rulers are servants of the law

  The Athenian calls magistrates ministers or servants of the law and says that a state where law is above the rulers receives every blessing, while one where the law has no authority is on the road to ruin. Book III makes the same point historically about Persia and Athens.

  • Why does the Athenian choose officers by their obedience to the laws rather than by wealth or birth?
  • What happened to Athens, in Book III's account, when the people stopped being the willing servant of the laws?
  • How do the auditors and the Nocturnal Council of Book XII keep the rulers themselves under law?

• Education forms the loves before the reasons

  Books II and VII teach that children must learn to take pleasure in good things and to dislike bad ones through song, dance and play long before they can understand arguments. The supervisor of education is therefore the greatest officer of the state.

  • Why does the Athenian begin education with rocking infants and teaching children to dance?
  • What does he mean by calling man a tame animal who becomes either most divine or most savage?
  • Why does the Athenian insist that girls share the same education as boys?

• Belief about the gods is a matter of public concern

  Book X argues that the soul is older than the body and that the gods exist, care for human beings, and cannot be bribed. The Athenian treats these beliefs as foundations of a lawful city and tries first to persuade those who doubt them.

  • What are the three forms of impiety the Athenian names?
  • How does the argument about motion lead to the conclusion that soul is prior to body?
  • Why does the Athenian think the belief that the gods can be bribed is worse than the belief that they do not exist?

Context

Plato wrote the Laws in old age, after his unsuccessful attempts to guide the rulers of Syracuse and during decades in which Greek cities still founded colonies and appointed lawgivers to draft their codes. The dialogue draws on the traditions of Crete and Sparta, admired in Athens for their order and discipline, on Athenian experience of democracy, and on the long Greek debate about whether law is a matter of nature or of convention. Unlike the Republic, which describes a city ruled by philosopher-kings, the Laws designs a city ruled by written law administered by elected officials.

Composition

Ancient tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, holds that Plato left the Laws on wax tablets at his death and that his pupil Philip of Opus transcribed it, and some scholars think the Epinomis, a short sequel, is also Philip's work. Jowett's introduction gives Aristotle's citations of the Laws as evidence of its genuineness. The library text is Jowett's translation from the third edition of The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford, 1892), with his Introduction and Analysis.

Reception

Aristotle discusses the Laws critically in Politics Book II, faulting its large population and land. Cicero wrote his own De Legibus as a Roman answer to it. The dialogue was read less than the Republic for many centuries, but it has drawn renewed study in modern times; scholars disagree over whether it revises the Republic's ideals or applies them to a city of ordinary citizens, and over how its penal and religious laws should be read. Interest in its preambles has also grown among legal theorists.

Comparisons

• the-republic

  The Republic imagines a city ruled by philosopher-kings with goods held in common among the guardians; Book V of the Laws calls such a city the best and offers Magnesia, with private lots and rule by written law, as a second-best.

• plato-statesman

  The Statesman argues that a wise ruler would be better than any law but that, lacking one, written laws are a necessary second course; the Laws builds a whole city on that second course.

• politics

  Aristotle's Politics Book II examines the Laws by name, objecting to its 5,040 households and its property arrangements, while sharing its interest in mixed constitutions and education.

• cicero-republic-and-laws

  Cicero's On the Laws imitates Plato's setting of a conversation on a long walk and, like the Athenian, prefaces law with an account of divine reason and natural justice.

• hippocratic-writings

  The Hippocratic treatises show the Greek medicine behind Plato's comparison of the free doctor who inquires into the whole nature of a disease with the assistant who prescribes by rote.

• the-spirit-of-the-laws

  Montesquieu, like the Athenian Stranger, asks how laws should suit a people's character and situation, and both treat education as the foundation of each form of government.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening question about whether a god or a man gave the laws, and how Book X returns to the gods at the end of the argument.
• The image of the puppet and its golden cord of reason in Book I, and how the Athenian connects it with the law of the city.
• The two doctors of Book IV and the preambles that follow from the comparison.
• Book III's story of Persia and Athens as two mother forms of government, each ruined by going to an extreme.
• The Nocturnal Council of Book XII and why the Athenian thinks laws need guardians who understand their purpose.

Key terms and names

Preamble (prooimion)

The persuasive introduction the Athenian attaches to a law, explaining its reasons so that citizens obey willingly rather than only for fear of punishment.

Athenian Stranger

The unnamed old Athenian who leads the dialogue; Socrates does not appear in the Laws.

Magnesia

The name given in later books to the colony being founded; it is to have 5,040 households.

Guardians of the laws

Thirty-seven elected magistrates who watch over the observance of the laws and the registers of property.

Nocturnal Council

The body of senior magistrates and selected younger men who meet before dawn to study the purpose of the laws and preserve them.

Second-best city

Book V's description of Magnesia, which keeps private property and rule by written law because the best city of common ownership is beyond ordinary human beings.

Impiety

In Book X, holding that the gods do not exist, that they do not care for human beings, or that they can be bribed with offerings.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Who are the three speakers, where are they walking, and what does Cleinias reveal in Book IV that changes the purpose of the conversation?
2. Comprehension What is the difference between the slave doctor and the free doctor in Book IV, and what does the Athenian decide to do with his laws as a result?
3. Comprehension What three beliefs about the gods does Book X treat as impiety?
4. Interpretation In the puppet image, why is the golden cord soft and the others hard? What does this suggest about how reason governs us?
5. Interpretation Why does the Athenian think law should rule over the rulers, and how do his institutions try to accomplish that?
6. Interpretation Book V calls Magnesia a second-best city. What does the Athenian give up from the best city, and why?
7. Big Question Should laws try to persuade citizens, or is it enough that they command and punish?
8. Big Question Can a city make its citizens good, or can it only restrain them from doing harm?

Faith Connections

• Deuteronomy 4:6-8 (Scripture)

  Moses asks what great nation has statutes and judgments so righteous as the law God has given Israel. The Laws opens by asking whether a god or a man authored the Cretan and Spartan codes, and readers can compare the Greek search for divine law with the giving of the law at Sinai.

• Romans 2:14-15 (Scripture)

  Paul speaks of Gentiles who do by nature what the law requires, showing its work written on their hearts. The Athenian's golden cord of reason, which the city calls law, is a pagan attempt to describe such an inward law.

• Augustine, City of God VIII (Church Fathers)

  Augustine judged the Platonists nearest among the philosophers to Christian teaching about God as the cause of being and the light of reason. Book X's argument that soul is prior to body and that the gods care for small things as well as great is one of the passages that made this judgment possible.

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 95 (Great Conversation)

  Aquinas teaches that human law derives from natural law and should lead citizens toward virtue by habituation and discipline, a view close to the Athenian's claim that law should aim at the whole of virtue.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The aim of law is the whole of virtue and the happiness of the citizens, not victory in war. Human beings are pulled by passions but can follow reason, which in a city takes the form of law. Citizens follow law most fully when they understand and love it. Therefore a good lawgiver persuades before he commands, educates citizens from infancy, places law above the rulers, and grounds the whole code in true beliefs about the gods.

Rhetorical device: analogy. In Book IV the Athenian compares legislation to medicine: the slave doctor issues orders like a tyrant, while the free doctor explains the illness and persuades the patient before prescribing. From this comparison he draws the plan of adding a persuasive preamble to each law.

Debate: Resolved: That laws should explain their reasons to those who must obey them.

Memory Work

Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man

the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats--which each man gains or sustains at the hands, not of another, but of himself

Writing Prompts

Essay: The Athenian says the supervisor of education is the greatest office of the state. Using Books II, VI and VII, explain why education matters so much to his city and what kind of person it is meant to form.

Comparison with The Republic: Compare the city of the Republic with Magnesia in the Laws. What does each assume about human nature, and why does the Laws call its own city second-best?

Medical Lens

The Laws is one of the richest ancient sources on the doctor-patient relationship. In Book IV the Athenian contrasts the slave doctor, an assistant trained by rote who issues orders and hurries on, with the free physician who inquires into the whole nature of the disease, talks with the patient and his friends, and does not prescribe until he has convinced him; Book IX returns to the image with a scoffing practitioner who says the gentle doctor is educating the patient instead of curing him. Historians of medical ethics often cite these passages as an early picture of informed persuasion, and the analogy shapes Plato's idea of legislation as therapy for the soul. Book VII describes nurses rocking restless infants to sleep and compares this with the Corybantic rites that calmed frenzy by music and dance, an early account of motion and rhythm as treatment for agitation. Book II's age rules for wine treat it as a remedy for the hardness of old age. Book IX makes allowance for crimes done in madness or disease; Book XI requires relatives to keep the mad at home under penalty, distinguishes madness from disease and madness from bad temper and education, provides for the sale of a slave with epilepsy, and separates poisoning by drugs from harm attempted by sorcery, with a penalty for physicians who poison. These are fourth-century Greek ideas; any modern clinical reading is interpretive.

• Book IV

  The slave doctor and the free doctor compared, introducing the persuasive preambles to the laws.

  Physicians Doctors Medical Ethics
• Book VII

  Infants rocked to sleep and the Corybantic cure of frenzy by music and dance, explained as outer motion calming inner agitation.

  Sleep Insomnia Madness Psychosis Philosophy AS Therapy
• Book II

  Age limits on wine, and wine as Dionysus' gift for softening the sourness of old age.

  Alcohol
• Book IX

  Offences committed in madness, disease or extreme old age, and the mocking doctor who says the gentle physician only educates his patient.

  Madness Psychosis Physicians Doctors
• Book XI

  The law that the mad must be kept at home by their relatives, the kinds of madness, the sale of a slave with epilepsy, and the law on poisoning and sorcery.

  Madness Psychosis Epilepsy Seizures Pharmacology Poisons

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Choose one school rule and write two versions: a bare command with a penalty, and the same rule with a short preamble that persuades. Discuss which version students would be more likely to keep and why.

• Dialogue

  Write a scene in which Socrates, from the Republic, meets the Athenian Stranger and asks why he has settled for a second-best city.

• Essay

  Book VII says man is made to be the plaything of God and should spend life in the noblest pastimes. Explain what the Athenian means and whether it makes life less serious or more.

Further Reading

• The Laws of Plato (trans. Thomas L. Pangle), Plato

  A literal modern translation with an interpretive essay.

• Plato's Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws, Glenn R. Morrow

  Compares the institutions of the Laws with actual Greek law and practice.

• Plato's Laws: A Critical Guide, Christopher Bobonich (ed.)

• The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws, Leo Strauss

• Politics, Aristotle

  Book II contains Aristotle's critique of the Laws.