In order to do justice therefore to the design of the work, it is
necessary to examine how far it rests on an historical foundation and
coincides with the actual laws of Sparta and Athens. The consideration
of the historical aspect of the Laws has been reserved for this place.
In working out the comparison the writer has been greatly assisted
by the excellent essays of C.F. Hermann ('De vestigiis institutorum
veterum, imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis de Legibus libros indagandis,'
and 'Juris domestici et familiaris apud Platonem in Legibus cum veteris
Graeciae inque primis Athenarum institutis comparatio': Marburg, 1836),
and by J.B. Telfy's 'Corpus Juris Attici' (Leipzig, 1868).
EXCURSUS ON THE RELATION OF THE LAWS OF PLATO TO THE INSTITUTIONS OF
CRETE AND LACEDAEMON AND TO THE LAWS AND CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS.
The Laws of Plato are essentially Greek: unlike Xenophon's Cyropaedia,
they contain nothing foreign or oriental. Their aim is to reconstruct
the work of the great lawgivers of Hellas in a literary form. They
partake both of an Athenian and a Spartan character. Some of them too
are derived from Crete, and are appropriately transferred to a Cretan
colony. But of Crete so little is known to us, that although, as
Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois) remarks, 'the Laws of Crete are the
original of those of Sparta and the Laws of Plato the correction of
these latter,' there is only one point, viz. the common meals, in which
they can be compared. Most of Plato's provisions resemble the laws and
customs which prevailed in these three states (especially in the two
former), and which the personifying instinct of the Greeks attributed
to Minos, Lycurgus, and Solon. A very few particulars may have been
borrowed from Zaleucus (Cic. de Legibus), and Charondas, who is said to
have first made laws against perjury (Arist. Pol.) and to have forbidden
credit (Stob. Florileg., Gaisford). Some enactments are Plato's own, and
were suggested by his experience of defects in the Athenian and other
Greek states. The Laws also contain many lesser provisions, which are
not found in the ordinary codes of nations, because they cannot be
properly defined, and are therefore better left to custom and common
sense. 'The greater part of the work,' as Aristotle remarks (Pol.), 'is
taken up with laws': yet this is not wholly true, and applies to the
latter rather than to the first half of it. The book rests on an ethical
and religious foundation: the actual laws begin with a hymn of praise
in honour of the soul. And the same lofty aspiration after the good
is perpetually recurring, especially in Books X, XI, XII, and whenever
Plato's mind is filled with his highest themes. In prefixing to most of
his laws a prooemium he has two ends in view, to persuade and also
to threaten. They are to have the sanction of laws and the effect of
sermons. And Plato's 'Book of Laws,' if described in the language of
modern philosophy, may be said to be as much an ethical and educational,