day
is more and more severed from the actual. From such ideals as he had
once formed, he turns away to contemplate the decline of the Greek
cities which were far worse now in his old age than they had been in his
youth, and were to become worse and worse in the ages which followed. He
cannot contain his disgust at the contemporary statesmen, sophists who
had turned politicians, in various forms of men and animals, appearing,
some like lions and centaurs, others like satyrs and monkeys. In this
new disguise the Sophists make their last appearance on the scene: in
the Laws Plato appears to have forgotten them, or at any rate makes only
a slight allusion to them in a single passage (Laws).

VI. The Statesman is naturally connected with the Sophist. At first
sight we are surprised to find that the Eleatic Stranger discourses
to us, not only concerning the nature of Being and Not-being, but
concerning the king and statesman. We perceive, however, that there is
no inappropriateness in his maintaining the character of chief speaker,
when we remember the close connexion which is assumed by Plato to exist
between politics and dialectic. In both dialogues the Proteus Sophist
is exhibited, first, in the disguise of an Eristic, secondly, of a false
statesman. There are several lesser features which the two dialogues
have in common. The styles and the situations of the speakers are very
similar; there is the same love of division, and in both of them the
mind of the writer is greatly occupied about method, to which he had
probably intended to return in the projected 'Philosopher.'

The Statesman stands midway between the Republic and the Laws, and is
also related to the Timaeus. The mythical or cosmical element reminds us
of the Timaeus, the ideal of the Republic. A previous chaos in which
the elements as yet were not, is hinted at both in the Timaeus and
Statesman. The same ingenious arts of giving verisimilitude to a fiction
are practised in both dialogues, and in both, as well as in the myth at
the end of the Republic, Plato touches on the subject of necessity and
free-will. The words in which he describes the miseries of states seem
to be an amplification of the 'Cities will never cease from ill' of the
Republic. The point of view in both is the same; and the differences not
really important, e.g. in the myth, or in the account of the different
kinds of states. But the treatment of the subject in the Statesman is
fragmentary, a