[Laws by Plato]@TWC D-Link book
Laws

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS
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These Plato proposes to leave to a younger generation of legislators.

The action of courts of law in making law seems to have escaped him, probably because the Athenian law-courts were popular assemblies; and, except in a mythical form, he can hardly be said to have had before his eyes the ideal of a judge.

In reading the Laws of Plato, or any other ancient writing about Laws, we should consider how gradual the process is by which not only a legal system, but the administration of a court of law, becomes perfected.
There are other subjects on which Plato breaks ground, as his manner is, early in the work.

First, he gives a sketch of the subject of laws; they are to comprehend the whole of human life, from infancy to age, and from birth to death, although the proposed plan is far from being regularly executed in the books which follow, partly owing to the necessity of describing the constitution as well as the laws of his new colony.
Secondly, he touches on the power of music, which may exercise so great an influence on the character of men for good or evil; he refers especially to the great offence--which he mentions again, and which he had condemned in the Republic--of varying the modes and rhythms, as well as to that of separating the words from the music.

Thirdly, he reprobates the prevalence of unnatural loves in Sparta and Crete, which he attributes to the practice of syssitia and gymnastic exercises, and considers to be almost inseparable from them.


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