Pol.) and to have forbidden
credit (Stob. Florileg., Gaisford). Some enactments are Plato's own, and
were suggested by his experience of defects in the Athenian and other
Greek states. The Laws also contain many lesser provisions, which are
not found in the ordinary codes of nations, because they cannot be
properly defined, and are therefore better left to custom and common
sense. 'The greater part of the work,' as Aristotle remarks (Pol.), 'is
taken up with laws': yet this is not wholly true, and applies to the
latter rather than to the first half of it. The book rests on an ethical
and religious foundation: the actual laws begin with a hymn of praise
in honour of the soul. And the same lofty aspiration after the good
is perpetually recurring, especially in Books X, XI, XII, and whenever
Plato's mind is filled with his highest themes. In prefixing to most of
his laws a prooemium he has two ends in view, to persuade and also
to threaten. They are to have the sanction of laws and the effect of
sermons. And Plato's 'Book of Laws,' if described in the language of
modern philosophy, may be said to be as much an ethical and educational,
as a political or legal treatise.

But although the Laws partake both of an Athenian and a Spartan
character, the elements which are borrowed from either state are
necessarily very different, because the character and origin of the two
governments themselves differed so widely. Sparta was the more ancient
and primitive: Athens was suited to the wants of a later stage of
society. The relation of the two states to the Laws may be conceived
in this manner:--The foundation and ground-plan of the work are more
Spartan, while the superstructure and details are more Athenian. At
Athens the laws were written down and were voluminous; more than a
thousand fragments of them have been collected by Telfy. Like the Roman
or English law, they contained innumerable particulars. Those of them
which regulated daily life were familiarly known to the Athenians; for
every citizen was his own lawyer, and also a judge, who decided the
rights of his fellow-citizens according to the laws, often after hearing
speeches from the parties interested or from their advocates. It is to
Rome and not to Athens that the invention of law, in the modern sense
of the term, is commonly ascribed. But it must be remembered that long
before the times of the Twelve Tables (B.C. 451), regular courts and
forms of law had existed at Athe