ATHENIAN: Is it a god, my friends, who in your view should take the credit for your legal arrangements? Or some human?

CLEINIAS: A god, my friend. Rightfully speaking, it has to be a god. With us it's Zeus. In Sparta, where our companion here is from, I believe they say it's Apollo, don't they?

Megillus: Yes.

ATHENIAN: Ah, you agree with Homer, then, that Minos used to go and stay with his father every eight years, and that Zeus's utterances were the basis for the laws he gave your cities?

CLEINIAS: Yes, that's how the story goes in our country. And his brother, too, was justice incarnate, Rhadamanthys – a name which I am sure is familiar to you. His claim to fame, or so we Cretans at any rate would say, derived from his impeccable dispensation of justice in those days.

ATHENIAN: He certainly has a fine reputation – a credit to his father Zeus. And since you were brought up, you and our companion, in that kind of moral framework, I imagine we can pass our time pleasantly enough today in an exchange of views on political arrangements and laws along the way. It's a fair step from Cnossos to the cave and shrine of Zeus, by all accounts. There are wayside resting-places, no doubt, in this heat, with the tall trees giving plenty of shade. There can be no objection, at our age, to our making frequent stops at them, using conversation as a means of raising one another's spirits, and in this way completing the whole journey in comfort.

CLEINIAS: Yes, my friend, and after a bit, in the groves, there are wonderfully tall and beautiful cypresses, and meadows for us to stop and spend some time in.

ATHENIAN: That sounds a good idea.

CLEINIAS: It certainly does – all the more so when we see them. Shall we go, then? Here's to a safe journey.

ATHENIAN: Amen to that. Now, tell me, why does your law require those meals together, and the physical training, and the bearing of arms?

CLEINIAS: I don't think that is very hard for anyone to understand – at any rate where Crete is concerned. You can see what the landscape is like, all over Crete.

Variations from the Greek text of the Budé edition

There are two standard editions of the Greek text of the Laws: Burnet's in the Oxford Classical Text series (1907), and the Budé of des Places (Books 1–6, 1951) and Diès (Books 7–12, 1956). Burnet's text is conservative. With Greek that not infrequently seems strained or worse in diction or syntax, he evidently took the view that this was how Plato had come to write in his old age, not usually something due to misunderstanding of the original or error of transcription imported by a scribe. He adopts into the text comparatively few conjectural attempts to improve on what the manuscripts offer as Plato's words, unlike Bury's Loeb edition of 1926, which was much influenced particularly by England's often revisionary textual and linguistic commentary of 1921. The Budé editors offer a Greek text very similar to Burnet's, with des Places in particular following Burnet closely. However, their edition in its apparatus criticus to the text conveys a much fuller account of variant manuscript readings and also of those offered by the indirect tradition – quotations of passages made by later Greek authors such as Eusebius or Stobaeus. It also reports more scholarly conjectures, including some made subsequent to the publication of the OCT. For these reasons the Budé edition is now generally taken as the basic resource for scholarly study of the dialogue. Subsequent to the Budé, Saunders’ Notes on the Laws of Plato (Institute of Classical Studies, London, 1972) and Schöpsdau's commentary in the Mainz Academy Plato series (1994–2011) both contain valuable discussion of the text of individual passages.

In the list below, the references to manuscript readings relate to one or both of the two most authoritative witnesses to the hypothetical archetype: Codex Parisinus gr.1807 (A in the Budé apparatus criticus), from the ninth century AD, and Codex Vaticanus gr.1 (O in the apparatus criticus) from the ninth to the tenth centuries, which from 5.746b8 on is not independent of the Parisinus. Some independent value also attaches to some of the corrections made (probably on the basis of an earlier manuscript now lost) to the text reproduced in the fourteenth-century Codex Marcianus Venetus 1022 (formerly gr.188; Kc in the apparatus). Conjectural readings or excisions are indicated by the names of their authors.

ATHENIAN: Well, that's enough of that. Now, the origin of a social and political system – what are we to say about that? Might I suggest a vantage-point from which to get the easiest and best view?

CLEINIAS: What vantage-point is that?

ATHENIAN: The best one from which to watch development in cities as they change for better or worse, in any particular case.

CLEINIAS: What vantage-point are you talking about?

ATHENIAN: That of a long or infinite period of time, I would say – together with the changes occurring in it.

CLEINIAS: Explain.

ATHENIAN: Well, take cities and people living under some kind of political system. How long has that been going on for? Is that something you could ever form any conception of, do you reckon?

CLEINIAS: Well, it certainly wouldn't be easy, that's for sure.

ATHENIAN: But you do know it would be an inconceivably vast expanse of time.

CLEINIAS: Yes, I certainly do know that.

ATHENIAN: During that time, don't we find, thousands upon thousands of cities have existed, and by the same reckoning, as many have been destroyed. And as for each one's social and political arrangements at various times, haven't they been of every possible kind, as cities have at one time grown larger, at another smaller, at one time worse, and at another better?

CLEINIAS: Unquestionably.

ATHENIAN: Let's see if we can find the reason for this kind of change. It may perhaps act as a pointer to the first origin, and later development, of social and political systems.

CLEINIAS: Good idea. But it calls for a certain amount of concentration, on both sides. For you, to make your ideas on the subject clear, and for us, to follow what you are saying.

ATHENIAN: Very well, then. Do you think the old stories still have any truth in them?

CLEINIAS: Which stories?

ATHENIAN: That there have been many destructions of the human race – by flood, or plague, or any number of other happenings in which only a very small part of mankind survived.

CLEINIAS: Yes, that kind of story is entirely plausible. No one would deny that.

ATHENIAN: Well, let's think about just one out of all those destructions – the one caused by the great flood.

CLEINIAS: Think about it? What kind of thoughts?

ATHENIAN: If anyone passes himself off as an ambassador or herald from the city, on an unauthorised mission to another city; or, when he is sent as an ambassador, fails to convey the actual message with which he was sent – or equally, if it becomes clear on his return as ambassador or herald, whether from enemies or indeed friends, that he is not reporting what they said correctly – then there shall be prosecutions for these offences, for illegally failing to respect the messages and ordinances of Hermes and Zeus, with an assessment, for anyone found guilty, of what is to happen to them or what they should pay.

Theft of property is demeaning – and outright robbery a disgrace. None of the sons of Zeus has ever delighted in deception or violence, nor engaged in either of these activities. Therefore let nobody, striking the wrong note in this connection, be deceived by poets or mischief-making storytellers, or misled into thinking that if he steals or uses violence he is not doing anything to be ashamed of, but only what gods themselves do. That is neither true nor plausible, and anyone who acts illegally in this kind of way is not for one moment either a god or the child of gods. This is something a lawgiver is far more likely to know about than all the poets put together. Anyone who listens to what we say is fortunate, and may he continue fortunate for all time; he who does not listen, let him, as a next step, find himself up against the law, something like this: Any theft of public property, be it substantial or indeed trivial, calls for the same penalty, because the person who steals something small has the same desire to steal – merely less power; and the one who makes off with something larger, not having deposited it there in the first place, is a wrong-doer through and through. Therefore if the law decides on a lesser punishment for either of them, it is not on account of the scale of the theft, but rather because one offender might perhaps be curable, whereas another is incurable.

ATHENIAN: Once the children have been born – male and female – the next topic for discussion, presumably, if we go about things in the right way, will be upbringing and education. To say nothing about these is totally out of the question, but if we do talk about them, then it would clearly be appropriate to employ a degree of instruction and admonition, in preference to legislation. In people's private and domestic lives a great many things are done – trivial things, hidden from public view – which are prompted by the pains and pleasures and desires of particular individuals, and which can easily run counter to the intentions of the lawgiver, resulting in all kinds of variety and inconsistency in the characters of the citizens. This, for cities, is a bad thing. The triviality and frequency of this behaviour makes it inappropriate and unbecoming for the person making laws to make them punishable offences, and in any case it undermines the written laws if people get into the habit of breaking the law through repeated petty infringements. So it is a pretty hopeless task trying to make laws in this area, and yet out of the question to say nothing about it. But I think I had better try and clarify what I mean – maybe an example or two would shed a little light on things, as it were, since so far we are pretty much in the dark.

CLEINIAS: That's certainly true.

ATHENIAN: Very well. Now, it is an absolute requirement of correct upbringing that it should be clearly capable of producing the finest and best possible bodies and souls. We were correct in saying that, I take it.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And the finest bodies, I imagine – to start with the simplest case – need to grow as straight as possible, right from early childhood.

CLEINIAS: They certainly do.

ATHENIAN: How about this, then? We notice, don't we, that it is the first spurt of growth, in any living organism, which is naturally and easily the greatest and most abundant – in fact, many people would strongly argue that, after the age of 5, human height does not get to double itself in the next twenty years.

ATHENIAN: Well, then, everyone please listen – anyone who was listening to what we have been saying about the gods and the ancestors we love, since of all the things he possesses, that which is closest to the gods, that which is most his own, is his soul.

Everything that belongs to a person, and this is true for everybody, falls into two classes: things which are stronger and better – masters, in fact – and things which are weaker and worse – their slaves. Among things that belong to him, he must honour the master elements at all times above the slave elements. So when I say, as I just did, that second only to the gods our masters and those who keep them company, a person needs to value his own soul, that is correct advice. And yet virtually none of us values it in the correct way – though we think we do. Value, I take it, is something which comes from the gods, and is good; nothing that is evil can be of value, and anyone who thinks he is going to develop his soul by words or gifts, or by indulging it, without in some way making it a better soul than it was before, may think he values it, but in fact does nothing of the kind.

From earliest childhood every human being immediately regards himself as capable of learning everything. He thinks that in order to value his soul, all he has to do is praise it, after which he actively encourages it to do whatever takes its fancy. But if he acts in this way – this is what we are saying now – then he is damaging his soul, not valuing it. What he needs to be doing, as we have said, is valuing it second only to the gods. The same goes for a person who on any particular occasion regards others, rather than himself, as responsible for his faults – however great or numerous they may be – and exempts himself, in every instance, from blame. He may think he values his soul, but he could not be more wrong; in reality he is damaging it.

ATHENIAN: Very well, then. Now, what is this city going to be? We need a clear idea about that. I don't mean, what is its name now, or what will it be called in the future. I dare say that will resolve itself when the city is founded – or else some place, or the name of a river or spring, or one of the local gods, might confer their own repute on our city after it has come into being. No, the thing I want to know, when I ask the question, is this – will it be a city by the sea, or will it be inland?

CLEINIAS: It's about ten miles from the sea, my friend, the city in question.

ATHENIAN: What about harbours? Does it have any on that side? Or is it entirely harbourless?

CLEINIAS: It has good harbours on that side, my friend. None better.

ATHENIAN: Ouch, that's bad news. And how about the land round it? Is it self-sufficient? Or are there some things it is lacking in?

CLEINIAS: No, there's practically nothing it is lacking in.

ATHENIAN: And the nearest neighbouring city? Will that be close by?

CLEINIAS: No, not at all. That's why the colony is being founded. It's a place which was left deserted in the past by emigration from the region – heaven knows how long ago.

ATHENIAN: And flat ground, mountains, woodland? How about them? What proportion of each are we going to find the place blessed with?

CLEINIAS: It resembles the rest of Crete as a whole in its character.

ATHENIAN: Steep and hilly, rather than flat, in other words.

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: In which case, acquiring goodness would not be an impossible dream. If it was going to be on the sea, with good harbours, and not self-sufficient, but lacking in all sorts of things, then to stop these characteristics resulting in bad habits of any and every kind, the city would stand in need of some great saviour, and inspired lawgivers. As it is, those ten miles are a bit of a blessing, though it certainly does lie closer to the sea than is ideal, given that you describe it as having good harbours.

ATHENIAN: Our business dealings with one another would come next; they call for regulation, as appropriate. A simple principle, I imagine, might be something like this: nobody, as far as possible, is to lay a finger on my possessions, or move them an inch, without getting my agreement in some shape or form; and I will observe the same rule, if I have any sense, in regard to the property of others.

In this context, let's begin with treasure: suppose someone, not one of my ancestors, has hidden it away for himself and his family; may I never pray to the gods to let me find it; or if I do find it, may I not make off with it, nor for that matter share the information with the so-called seers, who, one way or another, as I see it, are always going to advise people to help themselves to what has been put there in the ground. The financial benefit to me from helping myself could not possibly be as great as the solid gain, in terms of excellence of soul and justice, which I should derive from not helping myself; weighing possession against possession, I would be better off, and in a better part of myself, putting justice in my soul rather than money in the bank. It is a good saying, in many situations – ‘If it's not for moving, don't move it’ – and we can regard this as one of those situations. We should listen, too, to the popular stories – how this kind of thing is bad for fertility.

But if someone is not concerned about children, and has no time for the person who laid down this law; if he helps himself to a hoard which neither he himself nor any of his father's fathers put there, without the consent of the person who did put it there, undoing that finest and simplest of laws, the rule laid down by that man – noble through and through – who said ‘If you didn't put it there, don't pick it up’; if he shows contempt for these two lawgivers, and helps himself to some substantial sum which he didn't put there himself, and which may on occasion be a huge quantity of treasure: what ought to happen to him?

The goal of legislation and a political system (Books 1–3)