ngest and one of the best writings
bearing the name of Plato should be a forgery, even if its genuineness
were unsupported by external testimony, would be a singular phenomenon
in ancient literature; and although the critical worth of the consensus
of late writers is generally not to be compared with the express
testimony of contemporaries, yet a somewhat greater value may be
attributed to their consent in the present instance, because the
admission of the Laws is combined with doubts about the Epinomis,
a spurious writing, which is a kind of epilogue to the larger work
probably of a much later date. This shows that the reception of the Laws
was not altogether undiscriminating.

The suspicion which has attached to the Laws of Plato in the judgment
of some modern writers appears to rest partly (1) on differences in
the style and form of the work, and (2) on differences of thought and
opinion which they observe in them. Their suspicion is increased by the
fact that these differences are accompanied by resemblances as striking
to passages in other Platonic writings. They are sensible of a want
of point in the dialogue and a general inferiority in the ideas,
plan, manners, and style. They miss the poetical flow, the dramatic
verisimilitude, the life and variety of the characters, the dialectic
subtlety, the Attic purity, the luminous order, the exquisite urbanity;
instead of which they find tautology, obscurity, self-sufficiency,
sermonizing, rhetorical declamation, pedantry, egotism, uncouth forms
of sentences, and peculiarities in the use of words and idioms. They are
unable to discover any unity in the patched, irregular structure. The
speculative element both in government and education is superseded by
a narrow economical or religious vein. The grace and cheerfulness of
Athenian life have disappeared; and a spirit of moroseness and religious
intolerance has taken their place. The charm of youth is no longer
there; the mannerism of age makes itself unpleasantly felt. The
connection is often imperfect; and there is a want of arrangement,
exhibited especially in the enumeration of the laws towards the end of
the work. The Laws are full of flaws and repetitions. The Greek is in
places very ungrammatical and intractable. A cynical levity is displayed
in some passages, and a tone of disappointment and lamentation over
human things in others. The critics seem also to observe in them bad
imitations of thoughts which are better