The Athenian declares that he will not merely promulgate peremptory laws, but will recommend them to the citizens by prologues or hortatory discourses.
The colonists being supposed to be assembled in their new domicile and ready for settlement, Plato, or his Athenian spokesman, addresses to them a solemn exhortation, inculcating piety towards the Gods, celestial and subterranean, as well as to the Dæmons and Heroes — and also reverence to parents.[140] He then intimates that, though he does not intend to consult the settlers on the acceptance or rejection of laws, but assumes to himself the power of prescribing such laws as he thinks best for them — he nevertheless will not content himself with promulgating his mandates in a naked and peremptory way. He will preface each law with a proëm or prologue (i.e. a string of preliminary recommendations): in order to predispose their minds favourably, and to obtain from them a willing obedience.[141] He will employ not command only, but persuasion along with or antecedent to command: as the physician treats his patients when they are freemen, not as he sends his slaves to treat slave-patients, with a simple compulsory order.[142] To begin with an introductory proëm or prelude, prior to the announcement of the positive law, is (he says) the natural course of proceeding. It is essential to all artistic vocal performances: it is carefully studied and practised both by the rhetor and the musician.[143] Yet in spite of this analogy, no lawgiver has ever yet been found to prefix proëms to his laws: every one has contented himself with issuing peremptory commands.[144] Here then Plato undertakes to set the example of prefixing such prefatory introductions. The nature of the case would prescribe that every law, every speech, every song, should have its suitable proëm: but such prolixity would be impolitic. A discretion must be entrusted to the lawgiver, as it is to the orator and the musician. Proëms or prologues must be confined to the great and important laws.[145]
[140] Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 716-718.
[141] Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 718-719-723.
[142] Plato, Legg. iv. p. 720. This is a curious indication respecting the medical profession and practice at Athens.
[143] Plato, Legg. iv. pp. 722 D-723 D. τῷ τε ῥήτορι καὶ τῷ μελῳδῷ καὶ τῷ νομοθέτῃ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἑκάστοτε ἐπιτρεπτέον.
[144] Plato, Legg. iv. p. 722 B-E.
The προοίμια δημηγορικά of Demosthenes are well known.
[145] Plato, Legg. iv. p. 723 C-D. About τὰ τῶν νόμων προοίμια, compare what Plato says about his communications with the younger Dionysius, shortly after his (Plato’s) second arrival at Syracuse, Plato, Epistol. iii. p. 316 A.
General character of these prologues — didactic or rhetorical homilies.