Five-minute digest
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.
Top 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Verified Quotes
“Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the author of your laws?”
“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”
“this is the sacred and golden cord of reason, called by us the common law of the State”
“Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man”
“For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation”
“he will not prescribe for him until he has first convinced him”
“Man, as we say, is a tame or civilized animal; nevertheless, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature”
“the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has become, or will be”
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.
- Book VII
Infants rocked to sleep and the Corybantic cure of frenzy by music and dance, explained as outer motion calming inner agitation.
- Book II
Age limits on wine, and wine as Dionysus' gift for softening the sourness of old age.
- Book IX
Offences committed in madness, disease or extreme old age, and the mocking doctor who says the gentle physician only educates his patient.
- 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.