Laws is Plato's last and longest dialogue. It is generally agreed that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older man, having failed in his effort in Syracuse on the island of Sicily to guide a tyrant's rule, instead having been thrown in prison.
By : Plato (Πλάτων) (c. 428 BCE - c. 347 BCE),Translated by Benjamin Jowett (1817 - 1893)
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Unlike most of Plato's dialogues, Socrates does not appear in the Laws: the dialogue takes place on the island of Crete, and Socrates appears outside of Athens in Plato's writings only twice, in the Phaedrus, where he is just outside the city's walls, and in the Republic, where he goes down to the seaport Piraeus five miles outside of Athens. The conversation is instead led by an Athenian Stranger (Greek: ξένος, romanized: xenos) and two other old men, the ordinary Spartan citizen Megillos and the Cretan politician and lawgiver Clinias from Knossos.
The Athenian Stranger, who resembles Socrates but whose name is never mentioned, joins the other two on their religious pilgrimage from Knossos to the cave of Zeus. The entire dialogue takes place during this journey, which mimics the action of Minos: said by the Cretans to have made their ancient laws, Minos walked this path every nine years in order to receive instruction from Zeus on lawgiving. It is also said to be the longest day of the year, allowing for the densely packed twelve chapters.
By the end of the third book Clinias announces that he has in fact been given the responsibility of creating the laws for a new Cretan colony, and that he would like the Stranger's assistance. The rest of the dialogue proceeds with the three old men, walking towards the cave and making laws for this new city which is called the city of the Magnetes (or Magnesia).
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The question asked at the beginning is not "What is law?" as one would expect. That is the question of the apocryphal Platonic dialogue Minos. The dialogue rather proceeds from the question, "who it is that receives credit for creating laws."
The questions of the Laws are quite numerous, including:
Divine revelation, divine law and law-giving
The role of intelligence in law-giving
The relations of philosophy, religion, and politics
The role of music, exercise and dance in education
Natural law and natural right
The dialogue uses primarily the Athenian and Spartan (Lacedaemonian) law systems as background for pinpointing a choice of laws, which the speakers imagine as a more or less coherent set for the new city they are talking about.
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