The old men are afraid of the ridicule which “will fall on their heads more than enough” (VI 781 C; VII 790 A, 800 B; X 885 C), and they do not often indulge in a joke. In one of the few which occur, the book of the Laws, if left incomplete, is compared to a monster wandering about without a head (VI 752 A). But we no longer breathe the atmosphere of humour which pervades the “Symposium” and the “Euthydemus,” in which we pass within a few sentences from the broadest Aristophanic joke to the subtlest refinement of wit and fancy; instead of this, in the Laws an impression of baldness and feebleness is often left upon our minds. Some of the most amusing descriptions, as, for example, of children roaring for the first three years of life (VII 792 A); or of the Athenians walking into the country with fighting-cocks under their arms (VII 789 B, C); or of the slave doctor who knocks about his patients finely (IV 720 C); and the gentleman doctor who courteously persuades them; or of the way of keeping order in the theatre, “by a hint from a stick” (III 700 C), are narrated with a commonplace gravity; but where we find this sort of dry humour we shall not be far wrong in thinking that the writer intended to make us laugh. The seriousness of age takes the place of the jollity of youth. Life should have holidays and festivals; yet we rebuke ourselves when we laugh, and take our pleasures sadly. The irony of the earlier dialogues, of which some traces occur in the tenth book, is replaced by a severity which hardly condescends to regard human things. “Let us say, if you please, that man is of some account, but I was speaking of him in comparison with God” (VII 804 B).
The imagery and illustrations are poor in themselves, and are not assisted by the surrounding phraseology. We have seen how in the Republic, and in the earlier dialogues, figures of speech such as “the wave,” “the drone,” “the chase,” “the bride,” appear and reappear at intervals. Notes are struck which are repeated from time to time, as in a strain of music. There is none of this subtle art in the Laws. The illustrations, such as the two kinds of doctors (IV 720 C), “the three kinds of funerals” (IV 719 D), the fear potion (I 647 E), the puppet (I 644 D), the painter leaving a successor to restore his picture (VI 769), the “person stopping to consider where three ways meet” (VII 799 C), the “old laws about water of which he will not divert the course” (VIII 844 A), can hardly be said to do much credit to Plato’s invention. The citations from the poets have lost that fanciful character which gave them their charm in the earlier dialogues. We are tired of images taken from the arts of navigation, or archery, or weaving, or painting, or medicine, or music. Yet the comparisons of life to a tragedy (VII 817), or of the working of mind to the revolution of the self-moved (X 897), or of the aged parent to the image of a God dwelling in the house (XI 931), or the reflection that “man is made to be the plaything of God, and that this rightly considered is the best of him” (VII 803 C), have great beauty.
2. The clumsiness of the style is exhibited in frequent mannerisms and repetitions. The perfection of the Platonic dialogue consists in the accuracy with which the question and answer are fitted into one another, and the regularity with which the steps of the argument succeed one another. This finish of style is no longer discernible in the Laws. There is a want of variety in the answers; nothing can be drawn out of the respondents but “Yes” or “No,” “True,” “To be sure,” etc.; the insipid forms, “What do you mean?” “To what are you referring?” are constantly returning. Again and again the speaker is charged, or charges himself, with obscurity; and he repeats again and again that he will explain his views more clearly. The process of thought which should be latent in the mind of the writer appears on the surface (IV 719 A, 713 B). In several passages the Athenian praises himself in the most unblushing manner, very unlike the irony of the earlier dialogues, as when he declares that “the laws are a divine work given by some inspiration of the Gods,” and that “youth should commit them to memory instead of the compositions of the poets” (VII 811). The prosopopoeia which is adopted by Plato in the “Protagoras” and other dialogues is repeated until we grow weary of it. The legislator is always addressing the speakers or the youth of the state, and the speakers are constantly making addresses to the legislator. A tendency to a paradoxical manner of statement is also observable. “We must have
