Laws may be said to have more the nature of a sermon,
the Republic of a poem; the one is more religious, the other more
intellectual.

(5) Many theories of Plato, such as the doctrine of ideas, the
government of the world by philosophers, are not found in the Laws;
the immortality of the soul is first mentioned in xii; the person of
Socrates has altogether disappeared. The community of women and children
is renounced; the institution of common or public meals for women (Laws)
is for the first time introduced (Ar. Pol.).

(6) There remains in the Laws the old enmity to the poets, who are
ironically saluted in high-flown terms, and, at the same time, are
peremptorily ordered out of the city, if they are not willing to submit
their poems to the censorship of the magistrates (Rep.).

(7) Though the work is in most respects inferior, there are a few
passages in the Laws, such as the honour due to the soul, the evils
of licentious or unnatural love, the whole of Book x. (religion), the
dishonesty of retail trade, and bequests, which come more home to us,
and contain more of what may be termed the modern element in Plato than
almost anything in the Republic.

The relation of the two works to one another is very well given:

(1) by Aristotle in the Politics from the side of the Laws:--

'The same, or nearly the same, objections apply to Plato's later work,
the Laws, and therefore we had better examine briefly the constitution
which is therein described. In the Republic, Socrates has definitely
settled in all a few questions only; such as the community of women and
children, the community of property, and the constitution of the state.
The population is divided into two classes--one of husbandmen, and
the other of warriors; from this latter is taken a third class of
counsellors and rulers of the state. But Socrates has not determined
whether the husbandmen and artists are to have a share in the
government, and whether they too are to carry arms and share in military
service or not. He certainly thinks that the women ought to share in the
education of the guardians, and to fight by their side. The remainder of
the work is filled up with digressions foreign to the main subject, and
with discussions about the education of the guardians. In the Laws there
is hardly anything but laws; not much is said about the constitution.
This, which he had intended to make more of the ordinary type, he
gradually brings round to the other o