CHAPTER XXXIX.
LEGES AND EPINOMIS.
Leges, the longest of Plato’s works — Persons of the dialogue.
The Dialogue, entitled Leges — De Legibus — The Laws — distributed into twelve books, besides its Appendix the Epinomis, and longer than any other of the Platonic compositions — is presented to us as held in Krete during a walk from the town of Knossus to the temple of Zeus under Mount Ida — between three elderly persons: Megillus, a Spartan — Kleinias, a Kretan of Knossus — and an Athenian who bears no name, but serves as the principal expositor and conductor. That this dialogue was composed by Plato after the Republic, we know from the express deposition of Aristotle: that it was the work of Plato’s old age — probably the last which he ever composed, and perhaps not completely finished at his death — is what we learn from the scanty amount of external evidence accessible to us. The internal evidence, as far as it goes, tends to bear out the same conclusion, and to show that it was written during the last seven years of his life, when he was more than seventy years of age.[1]
[1] The allusions of Aristotle to Plato as the author of the Laws, after the Republic, occur in Politica, ii. b. 1264, b. 26, 1267, b. 5, 1271, b. 1, 1274, b. 9. According to Diogenes Laertius (v. 22) Aristotle had composed separate works Τὰ ἐκ Νόμων Πλάτωνος γ — Τὰ ἐκ τῆς Πολιτείας β.
Plutarch (De Isid. et Osir. p. 370 E) ascribes the composition of the Laws to Plato’s old age. In the Προλεγόμενα εἰς τὴν Πλάτωνος φιλοσοφίαν, it is said that the treatise was left unfinished at his death, and completed afterwards by his disciple the Opuntian Philippus (Hermann’s Edition of Plato’s Works, vol. vi. p. 218). — Diog. Laert. iii. 37.
See the learned Prolegomena of Stallbaum, who collects all the information on this subject, and who gives his own judgment (p. lxxxi.) respecting the tone of senility pervading the Leges, in terms which deserve the more attention as coming from so unqualified an admirer of Plato: “Totum Legum opus nescio quid senile refert, ut profecto etiam hanc ob caussam a sene scriptum esse longé verisimillimum videatur.” The allusion in the Laws (i. p. 638 B) to the conquest of the Epizephyrian Lokrians by the Syracusans, which occurred in 356 B.C., is pointed out by Boeckh as showing that the composition was posterior to that date (Boeckh, ad Platon. Minoem, pp. 72-73).
It is remarkable that Aristotle, in canvassing the opinions delivered by the Ἀθηναῖος ξένος in the Laws, cites them as the opinions of Sokrates (Politic. ii. 1265, b. 11), who, however, does not appear at all in the dialogue. Either this is a lapse of memory on the part of Aristotle; or else (which I think very possible) the Laws were originally composed with Sokrates as the expositor introduced, the change of name being subsequently made from a feeling of impropriety in transporting Sokrates to Krete, and from the dogmatising anti-dialectic tone which pervades the lectures ascribed to him. Some Platonic expositors regarded the Athenian Stranger in Leges as Plato himself (Diog. Laert. iii. 52; Schol. ad Legg. 1). Diogenes himself calls him a πλάσμα ἀνώνυμον.