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 Politics II 6, § 8 following).
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 (III 683 C). The companions start at dawn, and arrive at the point in their conversation which terminates the fourth book, about noon (IV 722 C). 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” (I 642 A), and in a similar spirit the Lacedaemonian Megillus apologizes for the Spartan brevity (compare Thucydid. IV 17), acknowledging at the same time that there may be occasions when long discourses are necessary (IV 721 E). The family of Megillus is the proxenus of Athens at Sparta (I 642 B); 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 (642 C). The love of listening which is attributed to the Timocrat in the Republic (VIII 548 E) is also exhibited in him (III 683 B, C). 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 (III 699 D). A connection with Athens is likewise intimated by the Cretan Cleinias. He is the relative of Epimenides (I 642 D), whom, by an anachronism of a century—perhaps arising as Zeller suggests (Platonische Studien p. 111) out of a confusion of the visit of Epimenides and Diotima (“Symposium” 201 D)—he describes as coming to Athens, not after the attempt of Cylon (596 BC), 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 (I 625 A; IV 712 C). A kind of simplicity or stupidity is ascribed to them (X 885 and following, 888 E). 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
