3. The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease, clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in the scale of human feelings without impropriety; and such is the divine gift of language possessed by Plato in the “Symposium” and “Phaedrus.” From this there are many fallings-off in the Laws: first, in the structure of the sentences, which are rhythmical and monotonous—the formal and sophistical manner of the age is superseding the natural genius of Plato: secondly, many of them are of enormous length, and the latter end often forgets the beginning of them—they seem never to have received the second thoughts of the author; either the emphasis is wrongly placed, or there is a want of point in a clause; or an absolute case occurs which is not properly separated from the rest of the sentence; or words are aggregated in a manner which fails to show their relation to one another; or the connecting particles are omitted at the beginning of sentences; the uses of the relative and antecedent are more indistinct, the changes of person and number more frequent, examples of pleonasm, tautology, and periphrasis, antitheses of positive and negative, false emphasis, and other affectations, are more numerous than in the other writings of Plato; there is also a more common and sometimes unmeaning use of qualifying formulae, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, κατὰ δύναμιν, and of double expressions, πάντῃ πάντως, οὐδαμῆ οὐδαμῶς, ὅπως καὶ ὅπῃ—these are too numerous to be attributed to errors in the text; again, there is an overcurious adjustment of verb and participle, noun and epithet, and other artificial forms of cadence and expression take the place of natural variety: thirdly, the absence of metaphorical language is remarkable—the style is not devoid of ornament, but the ornament is of a debased rhetorical kind, patched on to instead of growing out of the subject; there is a great command of words, and a laboured use of them; forced attempts at metaphor occur in several passages—e.g. VIII 844 A, παροχετεύειν λόγοις; IX 858 B, τὰ μὲν ὡς τιθέμενα τὰ δ’ ὡς παρατιθέμενα; VI 773 D, οἶνος κολαζόμενος ὑπὸ νήφοντος ἑτέρου θεοῦ; the plays on the word νόμος=νοῦ διανομὴ, IV 714 A, ᾠδὴ ἑτέρα, III 700 B: fourthly, there is a foolish extravagance of language in other passages—“the swinish ignorance of arithmetic,” VII 819 D; “the justice and suitableness of the discourse on laws,” VII 811 C following; overemphasis at IX 861 D; “best of Greeks,” VII 820 B, said of all the Greeks, and the like: fifthly, poor and insipid illustrations are also common, e.g. I 638 C, 639 A, II 644 E: sixthly, we may observe an excessive use of climax and hyperbole, VII 808 A, αἰσχρὸν λέγειν χρὴ πρὸς αὐτοὺς δοῦλόν τε καὶ δούλην καὶ παῖδα καὶ εἴ πως οἷόν τε ὅλην τὴν οἰκίαν: I 636 B, δοκεῖ τοῦτο τὸ ἐπιτήδευμα κατὰ φύσιν τὰς περὶ τὰ ἀφροδίσια ἡδονὰς οὐ μόνον ἀνθρώπων ἀλλὰ καὶ θηρίων διεφθαρκέναι.
4. The peculiarities in the use of words which occur in the Laws have been collected by Zeller (Platonische Studien, p. 85) and Stallbaum (Platonis Leges et Epinomis vol. II p. LVII): first, in the use of nouns, such as ἀλλοδημία, ἀπενιαύτησις, γλυκυθυμία, διαθετήρ, θρασυξενία, κόρος, μεγαλόνοια, παιδουργία: secondly, in the use of adjectives, such as ἀΐστωρ, βιοδότης, ἐχθοδοπός, ἠΐθεος, χρόνιος, and of adverbs, such as ἀνιδιτί, ἀνατεί, νηποινεί: thirdly, in the use of verbs, such as ἀθύρειν, ἀΐσσειν (ἀΐξειεν εἰπεῖν, IV 709 A), εὐθημονεῖσθαι, παραποδίζεσθαι, σέβειν, τημελεῖν, τητᾶν. These words however, as Stallbaum remarks, are formed according to analogy, and nearly all of them have the support of some poetical or other authority.
Zeller and Stallbaum have also collected forms of words in the Laws, differing from the forms of the same words which occur in other places: e.g. βλάβος for βλάβη, ἄβιος for ἀβίωτος, ἀχάριστος for ἄχαρις,
