RECOVERING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Plato’s Reverent City

The Laws and the Politics
of Authority

robe rt a . b a l l i ng a l l
 Recovering Political Philosophy

Series Editors
Timothy W. Burns, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA
Thomas L. Pangle, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Postmodernism’s challenge to the possibility of a rational founda-
tion for and guidance of our political lives has provoked a searching
re-examination of the works of past political philosophers. The re-
examination seeks to recover the ancient or classical grounding for civic
reason and to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of modern philosophic
rationalism. This series responds to this ferment by making available
outstanding new scholarship in the history of political philosophy, schol-
arship that is inspired by the rediscovery of the diverse rhetorical strategies
employed by political philosophers. The series features interpretive studies
attentive to historical context and language, and to the ways in which
censorship and didactic concern impelled prudent thinkers, in widely
diverse cultural conditions, to employ manifold strategies of writing,
strategies that allowed them to aim at different audiences with various
degrees of openness to unconventional thinking. Recovering Political
Philosophy emphasizes the close reading of ancient, medieval, early
modern and late modern works that illuminate the human condition
by attempting to answer its deepest, enduring questions, and that have
(in the modern periods) laid the foundations for contemporary political,
social, and economic life. The editors encourage manuscripts from both
established and emerging scholars who focus on the careful study of texts,
either through analysis of a single work or through thematic study of a
problem or question in a number of works.
 Robert A. Ballingall

Plato’s Reverent City

The Laws and the Politics of Authority
Robert A. Ballingall
Political Science
University of Maine
Orono, ME, USA

ISSN 2524-7166 ISSN 2524-7174 (electronic)

Recovering Political Philosophy
ISBN 978-3-031-31302-8 ISBN 978-3-031-31303-5 (eBook)
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 Of course, the affairs of human beings are not worthy of great
seriousness; yet it is necessary to be serious about them; and that is our
misfortune...by nature god is worthy of complete, blessed seriousness,
but what is human...has been devised as a plaything of god, and this is
really the best thing about it.
Laws 803b–c, trans. Pangle
For August
 Acknowledgments

This book is the second that I have written on Plato’s Laws. The first
was stillborn. It was based on my doctoral dissertation, and I changed
my mind about much of its argument and approach while revising it
for publication. What began as minor edits ballooned into a years-long
effort to rethink what the Laws is doing with the virtue I call “rever-
ence.” In truth, these reflections stretch back to my time in graduate
school at the University of Toronto, during which I embarked on what
proved a disorienting—if ultimately rewarding—journey. I first studied
political philosophy under the guidance of teachers who gently steered
me away from Leo Strauss and the “Straussian” approach to the subject.
I remain deeply grateful to these teachers, particularly Don Carmichael
at the University of Alberta and Lois McNay at Oxford, who were never
dogmatic in their aversion to Strauss and from whom I learned a great
deal about the history of political thought, and what it means to think for
oneself about it. As I worked on the Laws, however, I became convinced
that the most illuminating way of reading Plato owes much to Strauss’s
hermeneutics, or at any rate to the hermeneutics that Strauss rediscov-
ered. Even scholars who malign or ignore Strauss the figure often rely on
the rudiments of his approach—unattributed of course, and usually the
worse for it. For me, this realization was especially poignant, seeing as it
arose not from any pre-existing intellectual commitment but in the face
of a skepticism that I used to train habitually on Straussian readings of
canonical philosophers. It was patiently working through the labyrinth of

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the Laws, rather than falling back on any academic partisanship, that led
me to the ideas I explore in this book.
I doubt my open-mindedness concerning Plato and Strauss would have
been possible were it not for my doctoral advisor, Ryan Balot. As anyone
who knows Ryan will attest, he is quite simply an archetype of academic
rigor and integrity. He personifies what it means to follow the evidence.
He combines an erudition and ingenuity that one seldom finds in the
same person. It was with Ryan that I learned just how many-sided a good
reader needs to be. If we would give due weight in our thinking to the
diverse interpretations that have grown up around most any landmark
text, let alone a Platonic dialogue, then we must wear many hats and see
through many eyes. Ryan is a model of how to do this. And his way of
doing it led him to see the plausibility of “esotericism” in a particularly
compelling light and to share that insight with his students, even or espe-
cially those of us who were trained to be wary of the idea. About the
Laws, a text I first studied with Ryan at Toronto, he and I continue to
disagree on certain points. But it was Ryan’s example and guidance that
allowed me to rethink in some fundamental ways my understanding of
political philosophy and its history.
If my efforts in these regards have been at all successful, that is in
no small part owing to the debt that I incurred to my other teachers
at Toronto. Cliff Orwin in particular helped me hone what interpretive
abilities I have marshaled in the pages to come. If these remain modest,
the fault lies with me; a good teacher can only do so much! Cliff’s semi-
nars at Toronto were unforgettable occasions in which the books we read
seemed to reach across the centuries and demand our whole attention.
The discussions that Cliff inspired were so engaging they would not infre-
quently spill over into extramural conversations that wrapped up only long
after our teacher had packed it in. It was in these seminars that I learned
what it means to read closely and without condescension. With Cliff, we
would pour over every detail of a text, patiently considering how that
one element fits with all the others, sometimes spending hours on a single
line. He taught that it was in this way that we take an author seriously. We
avoid foisting our own notions on a text by first considering that each of
its details serves a purpose of its author. Otherwise, when we encounter
tensions in or are baffled by the work, we end up either reading its author
“charitably” or deciding (prematurely) that he is confused.
I also wish to thank Ed Andrew and Ronnie Beiner, consummate
scholars who served on my doctoral committee and who gave generously
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

of their time and expertise. The earliest incarnations of this book bene-
fited very much from their critical attention and encouragement. They
must be excused if the final form that these ideas have taken is aberrant.
In the event, Ed and Ronnie would be the first to take them seriously,
however much they might find them strange.
I am also grateful to Stephen Salkever, who read the dissertation as the
external appraiser. I have learned much from Stephen’s own work, but his
trenchant if encouraging appraisal proved particularly helpful as I revised
the manuscript and revisited the Laws.
Much the same must be said of the anonymous reviews that Damon
Linker helped arrange as my original editor when the project was with
the University of Pennsylvania Press. Both reviewers shared exception-
ally thoughtful, detailed, and provocative comments that I am glad to
have had the opportunity to consider over the course of several years. To
Damon himself I owe a special thanks for originally taking on the project
and for helping shepherd it, once he left Penn Press, into the capable
hands of Madison Allums and the staff at Palgrave Macmillan. Likewise, I
wish to thank Tim Burns and Tom Pangle who, as editors of the Recov-
ering Political Philosophy Series at Palgrave, saw merit in the book as
well.
I am also pleased to acknowledge my debt to the many friends,
colleagues, and students with whom I have discussed the ideas of this
book and from whom I have had the good fortune to learn, whether in
the political theory program at Toronto, the Program on Constitutional
Government at Harvard, the Political Science Department at the Univer-
sity of Maine, or at sundry conferences and colloquia. I extend my thanks
particularly to Larissa Atkinson, Andreas Avgousti, Kiran Banerjee, Scott
Beauchamp, Catherine Borck, Katie Clark, Scott Dodds, Ivy Flessen, Eli
Friedland, Maya Gordon, Kathryn Grond, Teddy Harrison, Ariel Helfer,
Doug Hutchinson, Seth Jaffe, Hannes Kerber, Kham Kidia, Simon Kow,
Tucker Landy, Mark Lutz, Sophie Marcotte-Chenard, Harvey Mansfield,
Xavier Marquez, Nick Micinsky, Emma Planinc, David Polansky, Laura
Rabinowitz, Richard Ruderman, Shalini Sakunanandan, Dan Schillinger,
Anna Schmidt, Jonas Schwab-Pflug, Igor Shoikedbrod, Rob Sparling,
Devon Stauffer, Ella Street, Mauricio Suchowlansky, Nina Valiquette
Moreau, John Wallach, and Ann Ward. My colleagues in political science
at UMaine have been particularly supportive as I have brought this project
to completion. Mark Brewer, Rob Glover, Amy Fried, Nick Micinsky,
Rich Powell, and Kristin Vekasi—please accept my sincere thanks.
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Parts of this book draw on my own previously published material,

usually in a revised form: “Distant Goals: Second-best Imitation in Plato’s
Laws,” History of Political Thought 37, no. 1 (2016): 1–24; “The Platonic
Rehabilitation of Tragedy” in Classical Rationalism and the Politics of
Europe, ed. Ann Ward (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 75–95;
and “The Rule of Law and the Imitation of God in Plato’s Laws,” Perspec-
tives on Political Science 51, no. 4 (2022): 190–200. I am grateful to the
publishers of these essays for permission to reuse this material freely in
the present volume.
Finally, and above all, I wish to thank my family—my parents, Brent
and Cathy, whose unwavering support all the long years that this book has
gestated has been no small comfort on many an occasion; my brothers,
Alex and Adam, with whom my ideas about all manner of things have
always met with a warm reception and thoughtful criticism; and my son,
August, to whom I proudly dedicate this project.
 Praise for Plato ’s Reverent City

“Plato’s Reverent City is an impressive account of an underappreciated

virtue in an underappreciated book. A subtle and penetrating interpreter
of Plato, Ballingall shows that Plato’s Laws —his longest but not his most
familiar work—has important lessons to teach our irreverent age. This is
a book for serious students of Plato, but also for those concerned about
the drift of our politics away from all things respectful and reverent.”
—Devin Stauffer, Professor and Associate Chair, Department of
Government, University of Texas at Austin

“Taking his bearings above all by the virtue of reverence, a virtue we

are in danger of losing sight of today, Robert A. Ballingall brings an
impressive moral seriousness and keen intelligence to his reading of Plato’s
longest and most political dialogue, the Laws. His analysis will no doubt
be controversial, but so much the better: students of the dialogue will
henceforth have to reckon with his study, and they will be profited by
doing so.”
—Robert C. Bartlett, Behrakis Professor of Hellenic Political Studies,
Boston College

“Reverence is not a feature of the liberalism we live with, but is it not

necessary to authority, including liberal authority? Robert Ballingall’s
astute study of Plato’s Laws addresses the puzzles and covers all the

xiii
xiv PRAISE FOR PLATO’S REVERENT CITY

aspects of reverence while offering a thoughtful tribute to this unlikely

friend of reason.”
—Harvey C. Mansfield, Kenan Professor of Government, Harvard
University

“Robert Ballingall’s The Reverent City is among the best studies of

Plato’s Laws. Written in engaging, clever prose, The Reverent City argues
convincingly that reverence or awe plays a far greater role in classical
political thought than is ordinarily understood. Paying close attention to
both the argument and the drama of the Laws, Ballingall helps readers
discover Plato’s brilliant analysis of this important dimension of political
and spiritual life. ”
—Mark Lutz, Director, Society for Greek Political Thought and Associate
Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

“A brilliant book! Ballingall weaves two questions into a single

persuasive discourse. Beginning with a new interpretive argument that
Plato’s Laws centers on the many-layered and often paradoxical virtue of
reverence, he goes on to present a political philosophical argument that
we moderns need to develop such a conception of reverence of our own,
one that responds to Plato’s Laws by strengthening modern democratic
theory and practice, especially concerning our view of political authority.”
—Stephen G. Salkever, Mary Katherine Woodworth Professor Emeritus in
Political Science Bryn Mawr College
 Contents

1 Reverence and the Politics of Authority 1

A Forgotten Virtue 1
A Buried Problem 7
A Neglected Dialogue 15
Reading the Laws 20
2 Plato’s Laws and the Enigma of Godlikeness 39
Irreverent Beginnings 41
Humbling Kleinias 44
Divine Law According to Reason 47
The Persistence of Tradition 51
Puppets of the Gods; Drinkers at the Banquet 56
The Measure of All Things 60
Our Task 64
3 Classical Utopianism in Plato’s Laws 77
Reason and Law, Monophony and Polyphony 80
The Problem of Property 85
The Game of Lawgiving 91
Utopianism, Not Idealism 99
4 The Athenian’s Rehabilitation of Tragedy 111
Reverence and the Socratic Critique of Tragedy 113
The Human Puppet and Its Tragic Flaw 118
Reverence Recast 127

xv
xvi CONTENTS

Music and the Problem of Authority 132

The Object Lesson of Old Athens 138
5 Reverence and the Ambiguity of Political Virtue 151
The Insufficiency of Gerontocracy 156
Breaking authority’s Spell 160
Drinking Under the Aspect of Eternity 163
Wisdom’s Prosthetic 168
Drinking in the Presence of Impiety 175
Noetic Nomos? 181
6 Epilogue 193
Redeeming an Interpretive Hypothesis 193
Drawing Some Broader Implications 196
After Reverence 201
Authority Under Modern Democracy 205

References 215
Index 229
 About the Author

Robert A. Ballingall is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political

Science at the University of Maine. His research interests lie in classical
political philosophy and its fraught relationship to modern—especially
liberal democratic—political thought. Previously, he was a postdoctoral
fellow in the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard Univer-
sity and Allan Bloom Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow for Research in
Classical Political Thought at the University of Toronto, where he also
took his Ph.D.

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Reverence and the Politics of Authority

A Forgotten Virtue
As a virtue, reverence seems to have disappeared. People who speak
highly of it are suspected of an obtuse fanaticism or of adherence to
some eccentric New Age cult. If reverence lives on in the mainstream
culture, it does so either as a term of abuse or—more typically—through
its antonym, whose merits are loudly broadcast. One hears of a “culture of
irreverence” indispensable to economic enterprise; of a group of veterans
proudly calling themselves “the irreverent warriors”; of the latest critically
acclaimed film, that it is “refreshingly irreverent”; or of the new Broadway
comedy, that it is “profane, hilarious, witty, and totally irreverent.”
Comedy, of course, has always seemed irreverent. What is striking is
the extent to which the comical has proliferated. A fashionable, “ironic”
posture and lazy cynicism now prevails. An almost childlike disrespect
has seized the culture. Where once ridicule of the putatively serious
stood alongside sincere solemnity, there is an unmistakable trend towards
an affected self-deprecation and flippancy, even among public figures
of some eminence. Future prime ministers allow themselves to be seen
in boxing rings or purposefully tumbling down flights of stairs. Pres-
idents and their cabinets invite the ridicule of comedians and perform
self-mocking skits at annual press galas.1 Heads of state announce their
dietary preferences on social media. Leaders of major parties intervene
in frivolous debates agitating obscure corners of the Internet. Even the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
R. A. Ballingall, Plato’s Reverent City, Recovering Political Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31303-5_1
2 R. A. BALLINGALL

exceptions prove the rule: Donald Trump may be incapable of taking

a joke, but his demeanor conveys a buffoonish frankness so bracing it
provokes laughter, in supporters no less than haters.2 Such gestures obvi-
ously strike a chord with democratic publics. Leaders given to playing
the everyman give constituents the impression that they are reflections of
themselves. It is therefore remarkable to see powerful if not distinguished
men and women playing the clown. Is this how ordinary people have
come to see themselves?
What is clear enough is that ordinary people seldom look up to politics
or public affairs as a noble vocation. The well-documented estrangement
from public life in the liberal democracies is associated with contumely
and distrust.3 An attitude of repugnance prevails. Civic leaders of all
stripes are tarred with corruption, incompetence, and worse, sometimes
with good reason, but often not. Large segments of the electorate feel
amply justified in turning their backs on the sordid goings on among the
“politicians” they despise. It is hardly surprising, then, that leaders who
seem to abandon the serious posture of their predecessors should win
a hearing. Self-importance in a leader can be ruinous if taken to imply
insincerity and a tin ear, which it must if constituents cannot recognize
the leader’s calling as a serious pursuit. Performing the comic allows him
to join the voters in their contempt, bridging the gulf that comedy opens
between its audience and the farcical.
If this politics of irreverence once seemed innocuous, recent experi-
ence should have disabused us of that notion. Contempt goes hand in
hand with truculence and even violence.4 The injustice or ineptitude of
statesmen appears more outrageous if affairs of state are perceived with
scorn. If there is nothing lofty about the tasks of politics, then politicians
should be capable of performing their duties as blamelessly as engineers
perform theirs. The politician’s failure to do so thus seems inexcusable
and arouses indignation, however inevitable it may have been. Similarly,
where the public business is thought contemptible, each is more care-
less in the political convictions that he adopts, and less tolerant of those
with whom he disagrees.5 After all, if the problems at hand are trivial,
then they should admit of manifest solutions, namely those that occur to
me. Whoever takes a different view of such trivia must seem unreason-
able, the more so the more forcefully he espouses his “absurd” position.
Contempt inspires arrogance, arrogance disdain. And because the voguish
irony implies this same condescension, it too, in the final analysis, must
be understood as a sort of vanity. Self-deprecation might masquerade as
humility, but it belies conceit.
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 3

To understand why irreverence elicits such divergent attitudes,

however, and to assess fully their political significance, it is necessary to
leave the modern world behind. Only by grasping the nature of reverence
itself, its possibilities and limitations, its origins and ends, we will be in a
position to evaluate its disappearance. In modern English, we retain the
word, but English speakers scarcely know how to use it. “Right now it has
no place in secular discussions of ethics or political theory,” observes Paul
Woodruff. “Even more surprisingly, reverence is missing from modern
discussions of the ancient cultures that prized it.”6 We have become so
blind to the virtue that we fail to notice even where it is most admired. To
recover a sense of what reverence might mean and why it might be impor-
tant, then, we must free ourselves of the blinders that our modern way
of life imposes. We must attend more carefully to a world of strangers,
those to whom reverence held some significance or continues to do so
and avoid projecting our presuppositions into theirs.
This book attempts to do just that by returning to classical antiquity.
The epic and tragic genres of classical literature are in many ways devoted
to extolling reverence. In these works, a recurring motif concerns the
suffering occasioned by its neglect. Lacking an appropriate sense of shame
or betraying an insensitivity to that which ought to inspire awe, figures
like Oedipus, Kreon, Pentheus, and Agamemnon lose sight of the fini-
tude imposed by their humanity and soon trespass on a realm vouchsafed
to the gods. Oedipus misjudges his need of piety, having won through
unaided reason the throne of Thebes; Kreon becomes trapped within a
destructive, uncompromising logic in his refusal to concede the good
sense of others; Pentheus, in his ignorance, dares do battle with a god;
and Agamemnon claims the status due a deity, demanding Achilles’ prize
just as Apollo had demanded his. An especially vivid case is found in the
Persians of Aeschylus, where it is the irreverence of Xerxes—and indeed of
the Persian regime itself—that invites the disastrous defeat at the hands
of the Hellenes. Worshiped as gods, “all-sufficing, infallible, and invin-
cible [pantarkēs akakas amachos ]” (855), the all-too-human shahs are
tempted to a careless arrogance, a symptom of “psychological disease
[nosos phrenōn]” (750–51).
The virtue lacking in these cases is concerned with avoiding an alluring
self-ignorance. It uses a class of emotion rooted in awe and shame (aidōs,
sebas, and aischunē)7 to call one back to the implications of being human,
particularly as human nature both engenders and frustrates longings to
transcend itself. For example, as mortal beings endowed with intellect,
4 R. A. BALLINGALL

we are alive to our ultimate doom yet prone to thinking it wishfully away.
We can imagine life without painful necessities or troubling mysteries
and are liable to forget or minimize them accordingly, as though human
achievements were more accessible and self-sufficient than they truly are.
Failures of reverence are thus associated with a harmful yet appealing
complacency, where the irreverent person condescends a lofty task or
exaggerates his own or another’s capacity for fulfilling it. It is by asso-
ciating such tasks with the divine and by inspiring a fulsome respect for
divine things—things that dwarf the human by definition—that reverence
keeps wishful thinking from going off the rails.8 Where proceeding on
one’s own belongs to god, the pathos of insignificance that reverence
inspires moves us to take counsel and seek assistance. Reverence simi-
larly invites patience and respect for those we might otherwise cynically
disdain; it confronts us with the magnitude of great undertakings that
understandably take time to accomplish or that fail altogether. Rever-
ence thus supplies a reason to show respect even before the respected
person proves himself worthy.9 It redirects respect towards a common
goal whose majesty inspires awe. It is born of acknowledging in another a
shared devotion to majestic things—the truth, for example, or the virtues
themselves.
But if reverence is a virtue, it is also a peculiar one. Most obviously,
the passions by means of which it reminds of human finitude—especially
shame—are linked with vice. These passions are especially complex. Awe
and shame issue from beliefs—often subconscious—about what is truly
awesome, fearful, or shameful and about the identity of those before
whom it is appropriate to feel awestruck or ashamed (Aristotle, Rhetoric
1383b15, 84a20–35).10 Like all evaluative beliefs, these opinions are
disputable (Plato, Crito 44c–d); they can be rationally criticized and
demonstrably harmful, as the example of the chorus in Persians attests.
As courtiers of the god-king, the chorus feels aidōs and sebas (694–99),
but its “awe” does not summon an accurate vision of human weakness.
It is not inspired by that which transcends mankind but by a mortal
man, in whom are placed unreasonable hopes. Tellingly, the courtiers find
they cannot speak to or even look upon the shade of Darius whom they
summon, but not because he is an apparition from the afterlife; it is their
“old fear,” their deos palaion (703, cf. 696) for the memory of the living
despot, that stands guard over their minds (phrenōn anthistatai, 703).11
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 5

Awe and shame also admit of multiple “moments.” Shame, for

example, arises not only in the awareness of losing face but in antici-
pation and recollection of that experience.12 One can have a “sense of
shame” without committing shameful deeds or be “shameless” without
doing wrong. It is when a person’s fear of shame preserves him from
deeds he would rightly feel ashamed of doing that his sense of shame
becomes a virtue. But reverence is also shown in responding well to the
feeling of shame when it is rightly experienced—by accepting responsi-
bility for falling short of what virtue requires, rather than hiding from
ethical failure or fleeing the sense of exposure and diminishment that it
accompanies.
As this suggests, reverence is especially curious inasmuch as it is a kind
of palliative or “prosthetic”: it is a virtue only because human nature is
defective. Reverence would be unnecessary in a more perfect species;
with us, it is needed as virtue’s stand-in or “prosthesis” (prosthēkē).13
It is a “virtue of imperfection.”14 A similar observation leads Aristotle
to call reverence (aidōs ) “conditionally virtuous [ex hypotheseōs epieikes ]”
(Nicomachean Ethics 1128b29, trans. Rackham).15 Strictly speaking, he
tells us, the virtues are unconditional (1128b30–31). They are marks
of flawless excellence. That is why reverence is most appropriate in the
young (1128b19–20, cf. 1179b6–11), in ethical learners who have not
yet acquired irreproachable character.16 But reverence is not inappropriate
in the old either (Plato, Laws 729b–c), despite what Aristotle seems to
claim (1128b20–21), at least if we allow that most—even all—adults and
elders are in some ways corrupt. Aristotle himself dwells on the corruption
characteristic of elders in his Rhetoric (1389b–90a). Owing to their long
experience of life’s hardships and injustices, the old tend to be malicious
(kakoētheis ), meanspirited (mikropsuchoi), cowardly (deiloi), and unduly
selfish (philautoi mallon)!17 The point is that noble action in human
beings is fragile; it rarely proceeds from the cardinal virtues themselves.
Human fallibility means that few if any ever master these virtues and that
all start out ignorant of them. Humanity’s ordinary vices are persistent,
perhaps indelibly so. If we are to avoid indulging them, then some device
is needed to compensate for imperfect character, something that moves
us to learn the virtues as best we can and that keeps us from surrendering
to the base desires that stubbornly endure. Though this can’t be moder-
ation itself—the virtue of desiring only that which accords with what is
truly noble—it can be moderation’s stand-in or prosthesis. In the clas-
sical tradition, this is reverence, a virtue duly linked with moderation and
6 R. A. BALLINGALL

self-control.18 By feeling awe for virtue as something transcendent, we

are less prone to lazy self-righteousness. We are less likely to suppose that
knowing and doing what is noble and good is obvious or easy; more likely
to look outside ourselves for direction and guidance.
Similarly, reverent shame helps with performing noble deeds that
would otherwise be impossible. Doing such deeds is the mark of the
virtuous person, yet a person becomes virtuous only by performing them
(Nicomachean Ethics 1105a18–22, b10–12). Reverence helps resolve this
famous paradox. It inclines us to noble actions from a more accessible
motive. The fear of dishonor and pain of shame can overcome the pull of
wayward desires and errant aversions. Moreover, because shame is inex-
tricably social, its salutary form can be externally imposed—whether by
parents, friends, mentors, or lawgivers. As long as the learner inhabits an
ethical community that mobilizes shame at appropriate times, in appro-
priate degrees, and for appropriate failures (a tall order, to be sure), he can
begin to practice noble actions out of the wholesome fear that reverence
summons.19
As a working definition, then, we can speak of reverence as the virtue
of ethical learners: those who lack virtue in the strict sense. Reverence
governs awe and shame so that they inspire in imperfect people a fertile
self-awareness. When felt appropriately, these passions bring home to us
our own imperfection, our need of improvement, and the necessity of
looking beyond ourselves for the leadership and discipline on which our
improvement depends. And this they do when it is moral perfection and
self-sufficiency that we identify with the divine. For awe and shame arise
especially in the presence of that which transcends the human and that
most viscerally calls to mind mortal finitude. To be reverent, then, is to
respect the degree to which one is not a god. It is to know oneself as
needy.
As we proceed, our goal will be to recover a richer theory of this
virtue and its political importance, building on the pioneering work of
Paul Woodruff. More than any modern scholar, it is Woodruff who has
grasped the privileged place of reverence in Greek epic and tragedy, if
not in the aretaic typology of Aristotle.20 Modern scholarship has in this
regard been excessively reliant on the authority of ancient philosophers;
it has permitted justice to eclipse reverence, not only as a fundamental
political virtue of classical literature, but as a virtue altogether. Much as
Aristotle will speak of courage, Aeschylus will speak of aidōs and sebas:
not merely as a passion but as a disposition governing the passions.21 Yet
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 7

seeing as aidōs is not among the virtues to which the philosopher draws
our attention in his Ethics, readers studying classical literature under his
influence have seldom noticed on encountering the term the full range of
what it can convey. We owe a great debt to Woodruff for alerting us to
this mistake.22
Nevertheless, we shall find Woodruff’s complaint at the oblivion of
reverence in classical reception truer than he knows. Woodruff identifies
Aristotle’s great teacher, Plato as a—indeed the—chief antagonist of rever-
ence in its traditional, tragic sense. Plato, he tells us, “rejected the tragic
poets altogether.” He enjoined mankind “to strain beyond human limits”
after “virtues of perfection” such as wisdom and justice.23 I shall argue
that this claim is misleading. The Platonic dialogue most devoted to rever-
ence rehabilitates the tragic sensibility with which that virtue is associated
for the Hellenes and does so in ways that shed special light on its impor-
tance to political life. Plato too turns out to be an author whose interest
in reverence has gone unnoticed,24 even by the scholar to whom its pres-
ence has been most visible. It is true that Plato’s works might seem to
replace reverence for the gods with reverence for virtue and truth. In the
Phaedrus , to take Woodruff’s preferred example, the rational order that
coincides with virtue is poetically represented beyond the heavenly abode
of the gods (247a ff.). According to Woodruff, this subordination of the
gods accounts for a hallmark of Platonic piety. In epic and tragedy, rever-
ence forbids mortals from emulating the divine; in the dialogues, it urges
them to do precisely that (Theaetetus 175e–76c, Laws 716b–d). If the
gods have ceased to be “objects of reverence,” he reasons, then becoming
“godlike” implies no transgression of the boundaries over which rever-
ence presides.25 But as we shall see, Plato is much less prepared to discard
reverence for the gods than Woodruff allows. In the Laws, the exhorta-
tion to emulate the divine exists alongside dire warnings to observe the
fallibility of mortal things. One is enjoined to imitate “the god,” but only
with “due measure” and “moderation” (716d). It is the god who is “the
measure of all things”; human beings must guard against becoming the
measure themselves.26

A Buried Problem
As Woodruff’s example attests, Plato’s interest in reverence is easily
misunderstood. Attending to why this is so will help us see why moder-
nity has turned its back on reverence, and why the virtue has been
8 R. A. BALLINGALL

subsequently neglected, even by specialists of classical political thought.

Unsurprisingly, reverence is most easily recognized where its demands
most cohere with our mores. Modern ethical life leaves little room for
it; we are understandably blind to many of the circumstances in which it
can be expressed. Reverence is relatively visible to us in epic and tragedy,
where it is called for in heroic protagonists. In these cases, the virtue
comes to sight as a curb against tyrannical hubris.

A reverent soul listens to other people even when they are inferior;
that is a large part of remembering that you are human together with
them…Tyrants isolate themselves through a combination of fear and over-
confidence. They do not listen to the common people, not to women,
not to children, and not even to prophets who claim to speak for a god.
Too sure of themselves to take counsel, they set themselves high and fall
hard.27

Thus understood, reverence sits quite easily with the democratic egali-
tarianism of modern society. It seems to reinforce the familiar imperative
to respect or “recognize” other people, regardless of their rank or social
standing. And it reflects the suspicion of political power characteristic of
liberal political thought.
But reverence can be a virtue of ordinary people as well. They too
can forget the implications of their own humanity. In their case, however,
the emotions that reverence inspires must seem much less anodyne. If
reverence makes a leader deserving of respect, it also makes a follower
show that respect more freely. Suitably awestruck at the tasks towards
which he would be led, the reverent acolyte appreciates his inadequacy
for proceeding in them on his own. Doing so would belong to a god,
or at least to a godlike man. He similarly abides in an appropriate sense
of shame. Fearing the censure of those he esteems, or falling short
of the norms that he respects, the follower shrinks from trying to do
himself what rightly belongs to others.28 Reverence is thus coeval with
authority.29 It reveals to the ordinary person the necessity of leadership,
self-discipline, and obedience. These, of course, are suspicious words to
modern liberals. We have difficulty seeing how a trait that elicits respect
for hierarchy and deference to leaders could be a virtue at all. But Plato
at least does conceive of reverence as a virtue belonging to those who are
by nature followers. We must not allow our own abhorrence of authority
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 9

blind us to this fact. To grasp Plato’s reasons for thinking reverence a

virtue, then, it is necessary to consider why Plato deems authority so
important.
Authority in the broadest sense is a form of rule that relies on neither
outright coercion nor rational persuasion. It obtains wherever obedience
is secured with neither threats of violence nor assurance of justification.30
That is not to say that authority is inconsistent with these other forms of
rule. Indeed, they frequently go together. But authority is a revealing
concept insofar as it refers to rule as it emanates from “an accord of
worse and better” about the legitimacy of the better’s rule (Republic
432a,31 cf. Laws 689a–c). Authority thus secures the consent of the
governed, but without any presumptive equality between themselves and
those they obey. Its influence does not wait on appeals to compelling
reasons. Nor does it dissolve when the circumstances in which those
appeals were relevant change. Authority, rather, depends on shared beliefs
about who and what is admirable. It confers legitimacy on stable, hierar-
chical relationships between those thought to embody the admirable traits
and those considered less meritorious in the relevant respects. Authority
thus presupposes something like reverence, a prosthesis for moderation
disposing the ruled to suppress the envy that the more admirable naturally
awaken.32
The consensus and hierarchy that authority entails must seem perni-
cious to liberals committed to pluralism and equality. After all, there are
many admirable traits competing legitimately for recognition. Why should
any one of them be esteemed above the others? Plato, however, was hardly
blind to the diversity of such claims, nor to the strength of their appeals.
In the Laws, his Athenian Stranger identifies seven traits capable of confer-
ring authority, including paternity, noble birth, superior age, despotic
ownership, greater strength, superlative intelligence, and the divine favor
conveyed through chance (690a–c). But whereas the liberal assumes that
it is both possible and desirable to recognize diverse admirable qualities
concurrently, the Athenian takes a very different view. He equates the
celebration of estimable traits with the recognition of authority, calling
them “worthy titles to rule” (690a, 690d). He assumes, in other words,
that the adulation of any one title implies the subordination of the others.
They are “by nature opposed to one another,” he says, and “a source of
civil strife” (690d).
There is an important sense in which the very considerable success
of modern, “open” societies conceals from us the reasonableness of the
10 R. A. BALLINGALL

Athenian’s view in this regard.33 The liberal democracies in which we

live appear stable and legitimate—and their citizens decent and just—
precisely because of the personal freedoms that these societies safeguard.
We look disparagingly on traditional, “closed” societies that are xeno-
phobic, culturally homogenous, and ideologically self-policing and dismiss
as foolish their intense fear of diversity and difference. But this conde-
scension obscures the profound novelty of modern societies, which were
founded on the paradoxical proposition that uncertainty and disagree-
ment might be sources of cooperation and obedience. This idea has
proved so successful that it has obscured the deeper dimensions of
the fundamental political problem of who should rule and by what
right. Following thinkers such as Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and
Montesquieu, our societies resolve this problem by focusing on the
common interest that citizens have in goods of the body such as secu-
rity, health, and prosperity and by permitting a casual skepticism about
ideals in whose name people passionately disagree and are willing to forgo
bodily goods or even die. We enjoy stability without conformity, but
only because modern civilization buries the divisive longings that attend
contests for honor and religious or moralistic devotion.34
To traditional societies such as the poleis of ancient Greece, such
a strategy would have seemed both impossible and contemptible.
Surrounded by potential adversaries against whom only a small number
of citizen-soldiers might be deployed, the ancient cities were very much
dependent on the public spiritedness of their members. Any factionalism
or reluctance to hazard one’s life could pose an existential threat.35 Even
if these societies could have achieved security without arousing passionate
devotion, doing so would have seemed exceedingly strange. It makes
intuitive sense that the association demanding our ultimate and highest
loyalties should be dedicated to our ultimate and highest ends (Aris-
totle, Politics 1252a4–8, 1253a19), the things that each of us takes most
seriously and for whose sake he is most willing to make sacrifices. Accord-
ingly, classical political thought takes for granted the polity’s dedication to
a shared way of life impinging on the deepest concerns of its members.36
It assumes that the vitality of the city depends on consensus about the
most comprehensive human concerns. These are ethical questions of the
highest order. They ask after humanity’s rightful place within the cosmos
and seek to identify the most beautiful and best way of life (Laws 817b).37
Unfortunately, it is the nature of such questions to inspire violent
disagreement. The beliefs that answer them bestow considerable respect
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 11

on particular habits and attitudes, on specific ways of life. Great respect

implies authority or a title to rule, so it is by nature coveted by ambi-
tious men. Logically, there are two ways to win this prize. Those desirous
of rule might convince their comrades that they are the ones preemi-
nent in the esteemed ethos. But they might equally persuade their peers
that the most estimable life is the one in which they already excel, or the
one to which they are otherwise most passionately attached. This latter
possibility supplies the ambitious and moralistic with an appealing incen-
tive to dispute and disrupt the prevailing ethical order. It exists as an
enduring challenge to the consensus on which traditional society is based.
And it is one of many reasons why societies committed to consensus
on the largest religious and ethical questions are obliged to settle such
questions as far as possible and protect the shared beliefs that answer
them.38 A myriad of social pressures is needed to preserve the integrity of
such beliefs and ensure that passionate devotion is directed towards—and
ambitious honor-seeking channeled through—them exclusively. Inasmuch
as the approbation of certain traits implies praise for particular ways of life,
the need of ethical consensus is inconsistent with simultaneously honoring
diverse traits. The many estimable qualities competing for admiration
must be subordinated within a hierarchy of esteem.
In the Laws, Plato develops a deeper account of this problem, one
that we can begin to grasp by reflecting on the dialogue’s Greek title,
Nomoi. Although nomos includes much of what we mean by “law,” it
refers more generally to the mores or customs of traditional society that
encapsulate shared beliefs about comprehensive concerns.39 Plato’s near
contemporary Demosthenes says “nothing novel or extravagant or pecu-
liar, but only what you [the Athenian jurymen] all know to be true as
well as I” when he sets down the following claim:

…the laws wish [hoi nomoi…boulontai] for the just, the noble, and the
beneficial; they seek for it, and when they find it, they set it forth as a
general commandment, equal and identical for all. The law is that which
all men ought to obey for many reasons, but above all because every law
is an invention and gift of the gods, a tenet of wise men, a corrective of
errors voluntary and involuntary, and a general covenant of the whole city,
in accordance with which all men in that city ought to regulate their lives.
(Against Aristogeiton, 16–17)40
12 R. A. BALLINGALL

Such examples attest to the close relationship in the ancient city of ethical
and customary authority. More precisely, they suggest that nomos is what
makes ethical authority possible. Traditional society faces the massive task
of settling questions that not only awaken the strongest passions, but that
presuppose a succession of further problems. The primary political ques-
tion of who is to rule implies a basic ethical question of how a human
life is to be most nobly lived. Nomos tries to answer these questions, but
with such authority as to put the questions themselves to rest, indeed to
obscure the very degree to which they are questions at all. This makes
sense when one considers how the basic ethical question implies in its
own right a host of further quandaries about the larger whole in which
human life proceeds.41 Is this whole directed by capricious, unpredictable
forces? the benevolent hand of a philanthropic demiurge? the impersonal
laws of a cold, indifferent nature? Can it be reduced to material substance,
or does the whole admit non-material beings as well? If it does, do the
latter include human souls that can survive the death of the body and
deities that might direct the soul’s journey after death? Do we therefore
rightly fear our postmortem fate, or can we go to the afterlife filled with
hope, so long as we scrupulously do right by gods and men? If this hope
is reasonable, should we pursue it by orienting ourselves according to the
lawful, as the city insists and as Demosthenes counsels? Or should we be
troubled by how the lawful varies among the cities and how the cities
themselves are ruled by self-interested factions? Policing the expression of
ideas or embellishing the shared beliefs of the community goes only so
far towards settling such issues. What is needed is a means of obscuring
the uncertainty that naturally attaches to them, arresting successions of
doubts and worries; something capable of concealing the parochialism of
customary beliefs and endowing them with the appearance of the natural
and the inevitable. In the ancient city, it is nomos that accomplishes this
task.42
Even so, the complacency that nomos cultivates is useful to the city
only if the beliefs that it strengthens do justice to the deepest human
concerns while at the same time favoring cooperative behavior. Consensus
based on the pleasures of the body, the accumulation of wealth, or even
the attainment of honor leaves too many of the fundamental questions
unanswered. Customs dedicated to these ways of life are more likely to be
challenged and liable to discourage the noble deeds on which the ancient
city relies. Unfortunately, these are also the ethical beliefs towards which
human beings are naturally drawn, or so argues the Athenian Stranger of
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 13

the Laws. In a series of evocative images, he stresses the great extent to

which human nature is mortal or even bestial in its attachment to somatic
pain and pleasure. “For human beings,” he observes, “everything depends
on a threefold need or desire” (782d). Like “every animal,” we have a
“natural erotic longing” for food, drink, and sex that is “full of frenzy, and
refuses to listen if someone says it ought to do anything except satisfy the
pleasures and desires connected with all these things, and always avoid for
itself all the pain connected with them” (782e–83a, cf. 644c–45c, 732e–
33a). Even the longing for honor and the noble—to which he otherwise
confers a certain seriousness—is situated within this framework. Concern
for reputation is introduced as a species of fear, namely of disrepute and
shame (646e–47a). Because the Athenian defines fear as an expectation
of pain (644c–d), he implicitly includes the desire for honor and nobility
within the ambit of the “human” things (cf. 733a, 862d with Aristotle,
Politics 1271a17–18). He will speak of the virtues as “divine goods” and
the soul as belonging to the gods; but he will also identify the noble
things with the correct responsiveness to bodily desire (cf. 636d–e with
782d).43
This ambiguity reflects a problem for any custom or law that would
ennoble citizens, exhorting them to practice the virtues for their own
sake: the noble things do not obviously confer pleasure or release from
pain (661d–62a, cf. Apology 31d–32a). The preoccupation with the
body’s needs militates against hazarding one’s life or abstaining from
avarice. Even those who so love the noble that they would forgo bodily
pleasure in its name rely for motivation on a tenuous link between
honor and virtue. Not infrequently do gallant deeds go uncelebrated,
not least because of the envy they stir up. The sheer beauty of noble
deeds is similarly fragile; the sacrifice they appear to entail often seems
vain and foolish (cf. Republic 358b ff.). Above all, praise for nobility can
be wrongly conferred, and often is. For all these reasons, customs that
do not gratify bodily desire or suitably confer an anticipated respect are
seldom obeyed, let alone championed. If the duties they ordain do not
accord with powerful desires or prejudices, or otherwise seem strange and
burdensome, then the citizen can hardly be expected to regard the laws as
“his own” and rouse his “spirit,” his thumos, in their defense. Customary
authority is thus confronted with a dilemma that cannot be dissolved by
the appeal to honor or the love of one’s own. The nomoi that the citizen
can readily accept and internalize cannot establish the kind of consensus
14 R. A. BALLINGALL

that the city needs; yet the consensus that is needed must be based on
beliefs that appear painful and difficult to hold dear.44
The Laws, I argue, sees in reverence a solution to this dilemma because
reverence uses the “mortal nature” of human beings against itself.45 The
passions that reverence enlists are kinds of fear (646e–47a, cf. Euthy-
phro 12b) and so can be understood as expectations of pain (644d),
as we have noted. The Athenian tells us that the fear that is shame
(aischunē) shrinks from being “considered evil if we say or do something
that is not noble” (646e–47a). Similarly, the fear that is awe inspires a
frightening sense of self-diminishment. Beholding something in whose
presence our own concerns and capacities seem trivial, we feel disarmingly
small.46 Because awesome things can be personified and cast judgment
without being manifestly present,47 awe can cohere with shame; we can
feel ashamed before the ancestors or even the gods themselves. Accord-
ingly, a lawgiver, or “indeed anyone worth much of anything…reveres
[sebei] with the greatest honors this sort of fear, calling it ‘reverence’
[aidōs ]” (647a6–8) and “the divine fear [hon…theion phobon]” (671d4).
Reverence is exceedingly useful to the political art because it diminishes
self-righteousness. The passions that it inspires can thus destabilize the
painful appearance that mortal nature otherwise imparts to virtue. They
can provoke a wholesome self-doubt that obstructs the identification of
the good with the seemingly pleasant. They can thereby lay the founda-
tion for customs that are genuinely useful to the city, those that demand
cooperative behavior that often seems painful.48 Furthermore, because
shame and awe are of a piece with “mortal nature,” their mobilization
does not depend on unrealistic reforms to the citizen’s character. They
are anticipations of pleasure and pain in their own right. They are also
inextricably social, called forth by an awareness of ourselves as objects of
others’ evaluations. The reverent passions can thus overcome the paradox
of ethical learning. The virtues are learned by practicing the very actions
that they are needed for performing, or performing precisely. But approx-
imations of these actions can be accomplished from less exalted motives.
We can practice them out of fear before we learn to do them out of skill.49
Those we respect can impose on us feelings of awe and threats of shame
that move us to do what we would otherwise be hard-pressed to under-
take. We can thus internalize salutary habits from without that cannot
originate from within.
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 15

A Neglected Dialogue
Until quite recently, modern readers have treated Plato’s Laws with
contempt, particularly as it deals with reverence and authority. Consider
R. G. Bury’s complaint that the work seems less the product of a first-rate
genius than a testament to senile decline:

Not only does it lack the charm and vigour of the earlier dialogues,
but it is marked also by much uncouthness of style and a tendency to
pedantry, tautology and discursive garrulity which seems to point to the
failing powers of the author. Moreover, the author himself indicates his
own advanced age by the artistic device of representing three interlocutors
in the dialogue as old men, and by the stress he repeatedly lays upon the
fact of their age, as well as upon the reverence due from the young to the
old.50

Unfortunately, Bury’s sentiment persists among many of Plato’s other-

wise serious students.51 The tendency to dismiss the Laws ’ “arid” style,
disparagements of individuality, and frequent contradictions as so many
proofs of its author’s senescence has discouraged readers from carefully
examining the dialogue as a rewarding work in its own right. Indeed,
it is amazing the frequency with which one meets with scholars who will
concede to having never read the Laws at all, in some cases despite having
labored over Plato’s other works for many years.
Even those who do read the Laws with care seldom take up its
central theme in earnest. The intense preoccupation with augmenting
customary and ancestral authority is usually maligned unsympathetically,
or marginalized optimistically, the better to privilege concerns that are
more recognizably defensible. For some time, the first approach prevailed.
Its exponents, beginning at least with George Grote, maintained that the
Laws accentuates the most chilling tendencies of the Republic, envisaging
a sweeping program of religious indoctrination and political repression
that stands as a betrayal of the Socratic ethos and anticipates the Spanish
Inquisition or even twentieth-century totalitarianism.52 More recently,
this reading has been displaced by scholars who emphasize the work’s
praise of law, a mixed regime, and the voluntary consent of the governed.
Some of these readers, like the followers of Grote, argue that the Laws
evinces a transformation in Plato’s political philosophy.53 But whereas
the first group had characterized that transformation as a decline from
youthful “Sokratist” to tired “Dogmatist,” the second sees a process of
16 R. A. BALLINGALL

“development,” one that culminates in a republican theory less pessimistic

about non-philosophers and therefore less preoccupied with how they
might be therapeutically coerced and indoctrinated. Others deny the need
to adduce any such development to explain the Laws ’ republicanism.
These readers suggest that the Athenian makes good the Eleatic’s argu-
ment in the Statesman: where the rule of a genuine political expert
proves impracticable, a second-best expedient or “imitation” is to be
found in redirecting authority away from rulers and towards more-or-
less immutable rules.54 To be sure, these approaches have their strengths,
and I have certainly learned from them a great deal myself. But generally,
they do suffer from a certain deficiency. However far scholars might go
in reading the Laws sympathetically, few do so with the dialogue’s vital
theme, with the question of customary or ethical authority that stands
at its heart. Its “almost Burkean reverence for tradition and established
custom”55 is usually disparaged or obscured. The interest in concealing
the parochial, clumsy, and coercive character of nomos either derided or
ignored. Modern readers, in short, have not sufficiently set aside their
liberal scruples when attempting to unriddle the Laws.56 This has been
particularly detrimental to its modern reception. As I have suggested, the
central problem of the work is rather invisible to modern readers. Our
complacency about political stability makes us contemptuous of efforts to
settle the largest human questions. But if we are unable to sympathize
with this facet of the pre-modern situation, then we shall miss what is
really at stake in Plato’s longest dialogue.
The problem is not merely that we risk misunderstanding the Laws ’
central themes, as grave as that would be. Readers who ignore the frailty
of ethical authority and on whom the dangers of its dissolution are lost
will also tend to neglect the way in which Plato asks to be read. That’s
because Plato’s very conception of writing hangs on the problem of such
authority and on its ambiguous relationship to philosophy. Consider that
Plato’s chief purpose in writing is to advertise the philosophic way of life
and to foster philosophic reflection in his readers.57 Few fail to notice that
this is the ambition at least of the so-called Socratic works, and that these
dialogues accomplish their goal precisely because of their “aporetic” char-
acter. They challenge readers to think for themselves by showing them the
hitherto hidden implausibility of conventional opinion. Whether opinion
takes the form of written law or unwritten convention, formal rules or
implicit norms, Socrates persistently exposes its contradictory character.
Opinion can be plausibly true in some circumstances, but not in all the
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 17

cases to which it might be applied.58 Though this process of exposure

tends to be bewildering, it also potentially liberates the reader of opinion’s
power. It can compel her to think for herself about the matters on which
opinion pronounces, leaving her fruitful questions on which to chew and
engrossing riddles through which to work. The aporetic dialogues thus
attest to the philosophic life as an emancipation from the authority of
customary opinion, of nomos. They promote this emancipation not only
by marshaling litanies of reductios, but especially by giving flesh and
blood to the perspectives from which opinions arise. They memorably
personify conventional beliefs and the possible reactions to their disso-
lution, inviting readers to experience imaginatively that dissolution for
themselves.
Keeping these points in mind when we turn to dialogues such as the
Republic and Laws is instructive. For if these works are also devoted
to fostering philosophical understanding, then they too must aspire
to liberate their readers. Unlike the aporetic dialogues, however, the
action of these longer works dramatizes more than the embarrassment
of conventional opinion. It also enacts the authorization of new opin-
ions, new customs with which the old are replaced.59 The Republic and
Laws envision the founding of cities “in speech,” not least the founding
of beliefs that would enjoy customary authority within them. But if
these beliefs, however renovated, remain “customary,” and Plato gives
us every indication that they do, then the philosophical purpose of the
dialogues that create them must be at cross purposes with the authority
with which these works would endow them.60 Socrates might argue that
the Kallipolis is a paradigm of justice, but insofar as it remains a city,
it is defined—as all cities are—by the shadow figures of opinion from
which the philosopher tries to free his mind (compare 377 ff. and 414–
16 with 459c and 514a ff.). The city of the Laws is similarly founded
on shadows (663c).61 Despite the Athenian’s efforts to attach “preludes”
to its laws (718b–23e), its rulers remain its “slaves” (715d, 762e). The
preludes might aspire to “teach” those subject to law, to persuade them
to obey law voluntarily, but the city ruled by law is not ruled by a supple
intelligence that sees to all things (875a, 875d), at least not directly. It is
ruled, rather, by authoritative dogmas. And dogmas are blind and inflex-
ible. They are crude generalizations, unable to discern the good they wish
to discover in the myriad circumstances in which they are applied.
18 R. A. BALLINGALL

Law could never, by having comprehended precisely what is most excel-

lent and most just for all at the same time, command what is best. For
the dissimilarities of both human beings and actions, and the never being
at rest, so to speak, of any single thing among human things—these do
not allow any art whatsoever to proclaim anything simply in any area
concerning all things for all time. (Statesman 294a–b)62

The Athenian quietly echoes this subversive thought in the Laws. Whereas
the poet can at least “make two speeches about one subject,” he says,
the lawgiver must “always exhibit one speech about one subject,” even
if that speech cannot accommodate the manifold conditions to which it
must refer (719c–d, cf. Phaedrus 277b–e). No matter how penetrating
his insight, his wisdom cannot be crystallized in the laws that he would
proclaim. As Procrustes maimed his guests, law mutilates reality.63 It must
warp multifarious particulars to fall within rigid, inequitable rules. It must
equally suppress the appearance of that violent operation, relying as it does
on exaggerated claims to justice and wisdom (Statesman 299c). For these
reasons, the philosopher who would reach for truth must extricate himself
from law’s authority. His liberation must run against the grain even of the
customs that he himself might devise.
Because the Laws presents itself as preoccupied with expounding
dogma, its emancipatory potential is easily overlooked. Indeed, the
dialogue is famous for submerging philosophy, a word that appears in its
pages only twice, even then only in its cognates. But given Plato’s interest
in cultivating a love of wisdom in his readers, we should be careful about
assuming that his purpose in the Laws is simply to persuade us of the
goodness of its city or of the veracity of its customs. Rather, we should
be on the lookout for indications of a more comprehensive standpoint
from which this city might be appraised, one that allows us to learn about
human affairs, and politics in particular, without losing sight of their
shortcomings.64 My suggestion is that Plato furnishes us with precisely
these indications in the many tensions and contradictions with which his
Athenian riddles his speech.65 The Athenian, I submit, plays both poet
and lawgiver, despite the contrast that he seems to draw between them.
He uses his “preludes” not merely to make the laws he recommends more
appealing. He also uses them to speak past the ordinary citizens to whom
they are ostensibly addressed. He presents his more careful listeners with
problems to untangle and encourages them, along with other citizens, to
study his preludes carefully if they find these problems vexing. In fact,
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 19

the Athenian urges his addressees to become readers of the Laws itself;
he advises his companions in the dialogue to record and make available
the whole of their conversation, to be studied by citizens of the city they
would found (811c–12a, 822e–23a, 957d). This, I think, is the beginning
of a more compelling account of the Laws ’ many paradoxes than is any
appeal to Plato’s declining powers. Approaching the work by focusing on,
rather than disparaging or ignoring, the problems and contradictions that
it throws up turns out to make much more sense of the text. Supposing
Plato intends us to see and think through these problems, we can take a
critical eye to his political rhetoric without repudiating his philosophical
guidance, without failing to ascend to the broader perspective through
which he would have us look upon it.66
This does not mean that Plato intends the city of the Laws to be a self-
destructive parody. Indeed, I shall argue that it is to be taken quite literally
as the practically best—if tragicomically improbable—regime. But Plato
assigns it this status, I will suggest, only because it refuses to emancipate
its citizens from the authority of nomos . Like Athens, it might provide a
place for philosophy, as I argue it does in Chapters 4 and 5. But unlike
Athens, it conceals the dissolution of customary authority that philos-
ophy tends to engender. “The city of the Magnesians”67 might benefit
indirectly from the inquiries of the philosopher, but it does not bring
such inquiries into the light of day. It depends on the authority of its
conventions and so, like all ancient cities, tries to protect them from skep-
ticism and disagreement. But whereas other cities do so lacking a clear
understanding of why such protection is needful and how it is best accom-
plished, Magnesia proceeds with a more penetrating political theory, one
the Athenian furnishes for the benefit of future philosophers, and Plato
his future readers. The Athenian grasps why it is that cities must sustain
the authority of “simple” beliefs that are too Procrustean to do justice to
reality. But he also sees that such beliefs are susceptible of improvement
and can even accommodate the quest that would liberate a few gifted
souls of their power. Customary opinions are necessary, he will suggest,
because the mortal nature of the majority leads them to live like “fatted
cattle” when free to pursue the way of life that they spontaneously find
congenial.68 As harsh as that may sound, it will emerge as the pivotal
reason for the augmentation of authority countenanced in the dialogue.
Without reverence and the humility that it occasions, the virtues on which
the city depends for security and human life for its depth and meaning will
20 R. A. BALLINGALL

appear to most people as painful and burdensome and to be avoided wher-

ever possible. To escape these evils, citizens must recognize the fallibility
of their own judgment, must disavow their own perception of the pleasant
and painful, and affirm instead the opinion that the most pleasant life is
in fact the ethically richer and socially cooperative life of “justice,” the life
enjoined on them by suitably renovated customs (664b–c, 733d–34e).
That Magnesia would achieve this limited but worthy goal is, I submit,
one reason it is to be taken seriously as a decent regime. The other is
that it would foster philosophic inquiry while largely separating it from
public life, thus keeping it from eroding conventional opinion. I argue
that it is because Magnesia has an eye to both goals, to both political
and philosophic virtues, that the Athenian weaves into his speeches the
many paradoxes and problems that so vex interpreters. In so doing, he
intimates that however decent the city might become, it and the rest of
human affairs are not really the most serious things. Political life in the
ancient city depends on the tyranny of opinion, on the unfortunate—
indeed tragic—necessity of having to treat nomos as though it really was
the wisdom it pretends to be. But this façade of seriousness does not have
to squelch the quest for a wisdom that is real. As I go on to argue, rever-
ence allows nomos to seem imperfect without destroying its own authority.
Awestruck by the immensity of the goal after which it strives, the practi-
cally best regime can openly call itself second to the best. Inspired with an
appropriate humility, its way of life can frankly acknowledge that it merely
emulates the divine and merely imitates the life that really is most beautiful
and best. The Laws never implies that such self-recognition could expose
completely to the city the degree to which it exaggerates its own serious-
ness. But the dialogue does suggest that reverence affords a degree of such
exposure, sufficient to spur those who remain dissatisfied with the second-
best to look beyond the “mortal” customs the city sanctifies.69 Reverence
permits the city to point beyond itself without destroying itself. It allows
the Athenian to augment customary authority even as he undercut the
customs he sets down.

Reading the Laws

As anyone familiar with the writings of Leo Strauss and his followers will
appreciate, the interpretive framework that I am proposing owes much to
their pioneering work. Like these readers, I have found that the dialogues
speak more intelligibly when read as invitations to think, not only about
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 21

the possibilities of political life, but also about its limitations; that Plato
seeks to free the reader of her attachment to political life as much as he
proposes to teach her about political things; and that central to Plato’s
view of these things is the problem of authority and the consequent need
to put some distance between philosophy and politics if they are both
to thrive. In subsequent chapters, I hope to show that this framework
is especially helpful for approaching the Laws, for it prompts us to look
for how that dialogue, despite its superficial dogmatism, asks to be read
against the grain. As I have suggested, reading the work in this way allows
us to make sense of it without having—desperately—to impute to Plato
any grim decline into senility or profound philosophical transformation.
Rather than being obliged to bracket the interest in authority and obedi-
ence as an embarrassment and betrayal, or simply a theme to be ignored,
we are freed to consider how augmenting authority might be harmo-
nized with philosophical inquiry and why Plato suggests that neither goal
should be abandoned altogether. This alternative sees in the work’s many
tensions and problems invitations to assemble a broader perspective from
which its city in speech might be evaluated, and not simply testaments
to its unfinished character or to Plato’s advancing age. Above all, it is
an approach that is vindicated by the account of political life set down
in the Laws itself. The dialogue stresses the importance to political life
of authoritative beliefs vulnerable to skepticism and dialectical examina-
tion. Because it dramatizes the founding of a city in light of this concern,
it understandably suppresses or conceals the skepticism that it quietly
cultivates in its philosophical readers.
As helpful as Strauss’s hermeneutics will prove to be, I will argue that
their potential has yet to be fully realized when it comes to understanding
Plato’s Laws. According to the interpretations developed by some of
Strauss’s distinguished followers, the Laws attests to the pre-eminence of
courage as the political virtue par excellence.70 On their view, reverent
awe and shame would be replaced in Magnesia by a certain spirited-
ness, by the “inward” deployment of thumos, the love of one’s own, and
the desire for honor, against the citizen’s own mortal nature. Whereas
reverence is a virtue of the Dorian cities, they contend, the virtue of
Magnesians consists chiefly in a competitive ambition to conquer them-
selves, the better to obey the challenging demands of law.71 But as these
scholars would be the first to acknowledge, thumotic manliness threatens
customary authority as much as it augments it, a point made by the
Athenian himself, as we shall see. The love of one’s own and the desire
22 R. A. BALLINGALL

for honor risk arousing a dangerous audacity and boldness. Because the
citizen is inexorably “bound” to desiring pleasure and fleeing pain, it is
essential that his perception of the pleasant and painful corresponds as
much as possible to the demands of civic duty. But since his perception of
these things naturally suffers distortions in whose shadows the just things
seem painful (661d–63c, 734d), he must be inspired to doubt his own
perception of the just and unjust things. If the citizen is to champion
his civic duties, then he must renounce his misleading judgment. Political
courage must be built on top of ethical humility.72
Since the Laws is one of the most important sources for the interpretive
approach that Strauss develops, the stakes in this matter are quite high.
Consider the ambitious exposition of that approach and its theoretical
and textual foundations accomplished recently by Arthur Melzer. Melzer
contends that the authority on which traditional society relies is upheld
precisely by “complacency,” by more-or-less blind self-confidence in the
veracity and nobility of the beliefs on which political virtue depends.73
According to the Athenian in the Laws, however, unreflective adher-
ence to customary beliefs is only beneficial if those beliefs resist rather
than reinforcing the basic “mortal” impulse of man. Complacency must
be preceded by repudiation of that impulse, he maintains, instilled from
childhood and constantly reinforced thereafter by way of habits, myths,
and the judicious use of fear. If this is right, and political virtue sits
upon a substrate of self-doubt, then the good citizen will share with the
good man—with the philosopher in fact—the very trait that Melzer insists
he lacks, and must lack. In reverence, the political and the philosophic
acquire a surprising resemblance; their fundamental antagonism is less
stark than Melzer claims. To be sure, whatever acknowledgment of his
own ignorance the citizen might achieve would sit beneath and prepare
him for his passionate devotion to opinion. The Athenian does not enter-
tain the prospect of a city that comes to philosophize (cf. Republic 494a
with Statesman 292e, 300e). He does see that opinion is susceptible
of improvement. Some beliefs will better sustain the vitality of the city
and the nobility of the citizen. If these beliefs are to be championed, he
argues, then the virtue devoted to them consists in a double movement:
first away from, and then back towards, complacency and confidence.
Since the first of these movements is an experience of self-deficiency, the
Athenian points to a possible kinship between politics and philosophy,
one that as far as I am aware has yet to be fully appreciated.
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 23

Still, that this aspect of political virtue has been neglected hardly means
we should reject the interpretive framework developed by Strauss and
his students. In fact, recognizing authority’s need of reverence and the
textual basis for this claim in the Laws helps to flesh out that framework
yet further. It adds a touch more nuance to an already fruitful approach.
The importance of reverence does not efface the tension between the
political and the philosophic, nor the consequent need to put some
distance between the one and the other. Nor should we be surprised if
Plato’s response to this tension as a writer—his tendency to write “eso-
terically”—should inspire disagreement, even (or especially) among those
who read him in this way. Plato famously anticipates that his works will
provoke disagreement and misunderstanding in the Phaedrus. He may
write dialogically and to that extent perhaps overcome Socrates’ critique
of writing. But the dialogue form and its contradictory speeches do
not fully escape the pernicious resemblance to painting, whose offspring
“stand there as if they are alive” yet remain “solemnly silent” if anyone
asks them anything (275d).74 A dialogue too “roams about everywhere,
reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those
who have no business with it.” It might compel its readers to piece
together its illocutionary acts for themselves, hopefully keeping at least
some of them from the impression “that they have come to know much
while for the most part they…know nothing” (275b). But even “at their
very best,” Socrates maintains, written words “can only serve as reminders
to those who already know” (278a). Among those of us who do not, they
must necessarily remind of different things. They must predictably inspire
disagreement.75
This is not to say that the dialogues provide zetetic readers no grounds
at all on which to settle interpretive disputes. Strauss’s own approach
to reading them “dramatically” is frequently and unfairly maligned for
making precisely that mistake, for leaving readers little means of falsi-
fying his interpretive claims. He and his followers, the objection goes,
simply read into the dialogues whatever it is that they want to find,
claiming as “those who already know” to possess insight into Plato’s
hidden wisdom.76 But Strauss appeals to a control on wild specula-
tion that does not depend on this presumption. He suggests that the
dialogues are composed in accordance with Socrates’ criterion for correct
discourse (Phaedrus 264a–c), written with such virtuosity that no part
of them, no particular argument or image, no single line or turn of
phrase, is superfluous to their intended meaning.77 The “logographic
24 R. A. BALLINGALL

necessity [anangkēn logographikēn]” (264b7) of such compositions means

the interpreter cannot claim to understand any one of them fully until he
has found a compelling explanation for each of its innumerable parts.
He cannot “mine” a dialogue for argumentative structures and claim, on
the basis of these passages alone, to grasp Plato’s view. That the work is
framed by a certain drama; that it treats of a particular topic, in a partic-
ular place, among particular characters; that certain forms of speech are
used with some characters and not with others; that some and not all of its
arguments seem dubious, or to contradict the images ostensibly meant to
illuminate them; all such details have some bearing, according to Strauss,
on how the “arguments” themselves are intended to be understood.
While sympathetic to this way of reading Plato, I have no illusions that
I have lived up to this standard in my own study of the Laws or of any
other of Plato’s works. Nor am I surprised that few have, nor that those
who are quite advanced continue, nevertheless, to disagree among them-
selves. If Strauss is right to think the criterion for interpreting a dialogue
is that one grasp how each and every one of its parts contributes to the
whole, then that is an exceedingly high demand for an author to make of
his readers, a demand that will understandably inspire divergent accounts
of how these diverse parts fit together. That does not mean that readers
should refrain from venturing interpretive hypotheses, nor that these must
remain wholly speculative until one has arrived at a comprehensive under-
standing. Rather, it suggests that these hypotheses can be falsified if they
fail to account for the textual phenomena better than plausible alterna-
tives. If, for example, the text yields problems or contradictions that can
be explained either by appealing to desperate expedients like the presence
of multiple, independent purposes,78 or, on the other hand, by finding
in the text itself an account of why such tensions are necessary, given the
dramatic context of the conversation in which they arise, then the latter
should clearly be preferred.
In what follows, I take my bearings by one of the most glaring of these
problems. As we have seen, the Athenian enjoins the Magnesians whom
he imagines himself addressing to become like god as far as possible. He
claims that they must do so by practicing moderation, which he seems to
associate with political obedience and deference to law. But in the very
same passage, the god about whom he speaks is said to be “the measure of
all things” while the moderate man is said to refuse becoming the measure
himself. The citizen, it would seem, becomes like god by becoming unlike
god. This paradox is reflected in the way the Athenian speaks of the
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 25

regime that he persuades his companions to found. The best regime and
“most beautiful and best way of life,” he says, belong to the gods or to
the children of gods; the second-best regime—that which can belong to
men—is their nearest imitation. But the best regime is under the despotic
rule of a better and more divine species; the second-best is governed
by human beings who cannot be entrusted with despotism. Similarly,
whereas the best regime abolishes the family and private property, the
second-best permits exclusivity, privacy, and material inequality.
My hypothesis is that this puzzling aspect of the text is deliberately
provocative. It invites the reader to ask at least three questions whose
examination will prove fruitful: how can the city be an imitation without
approximating the signal attributes of its model? Why invite the emula-
tion of that which must ultimately be avoided? And in what sense can
the merely “moderate” soul resemble the divine, the soul with “every
virtue” (899b, 900d–e)? By looking for how the text resolves these ques-
tions that it provokes, we shall find that the Laws furnishes a perspective
from which to appraise the city that it founds in speech. The text does
not answer these questions explicitly and decisively, but it does supply
the resources needed to answer them for ourselves. When we do, we
discover an account of political life that justifies Plato’s roundabout way
of proceeding, one that stresses the importance of authority to ethical
learning, and of reverence to making such authority possible, but that
at the same time accommodates the conflicting needs of philosophic
liberation. On my reading, then, Plato grounds authority in the unique
moral psychology that reverence makes available, which is paradoxically
supportive of efforts to transcend authority itself. In this way, we can
make sense, not only of the enigma of godlikeness, but also of the larger
quandary of why the Laws is so preoccupied with ethical and customary
authority if, like other dialogues, it ultimately aspires to liberate certain
readers from such authority to better think for themselves. Like a well-
written speech, I suggest, reverence can at once intensify and dissolve the
moral conviction on which healthy politics depends but that stands in the
way of the philosophic life. Before we can assemble this account, however,
we do need to satisfy ourselves that the imitation of god really puts to us
certain provocative questions. This shall be our task in Chapter 2.
26 R. A. BALLINGALL

Notes
1. Comedians themselves have begun finding political success. Volodymyr
Zelensky is an especially visible case, having been elected President of
Ukraine by a wide margin in the spring of 2019 despite the protracted
military emergency and his total lack of previous political or policy expe-
rience. On the rise of the political salience of comedy, see Nicholas
Holm, Humor as Politics: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary Comedy
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Julie Webber, Mehnaaz Momen,
Jessyka Finley, et al., “The Political Force of the Comedic,” Contemporary
Political Theory 20, no. 2 (2021): 419–46.
2. The Trumpian buffoon, of course, has become a prototypical figure.
Demagogues like Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, and Boris Johnson
all put on similar performances. The type is perhaps best illustrated by
the mayoralty of Rob Ford, elected chief executive of the City of Toronto
in 2010. Ford’s tenure was marked by shocking disregard for the dignity
of his office and by breathless media coverage of his obscene behavior,
none of which did much to hinder his popularity. While mayor, Ford
appeared in cell-phone videos smoking crack cocaine and uttering obscen-
ities about future prime minister, Justin Trudeau. On another occasion, he
was recorded drunkenly slurring Jamaican patois while ordering take-out
at a Caribbean restaurant. He responded on live television to allega-
tions that he had made lewd comments about oral sex to a female aide
by saying: “I’ve never said that in my life to her, I would never do
that. I’m happily married, I’ve got more than enough to eat at home.”
Despite or because of such antics, Ford’s support remained remarkably
solid throughout his mayoralty. He may well have won a second term had
he not withdrawn his candidacy during the 2014 election due to health
complications related to his substance abuse. For a chronicle of Ford’s wild
career, see Robyn Doolittle, Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (Toronto:
Penguin, 2014).
3. David C. King, “Fall from Grace: The Public’s Loss of Faith in Govern-
ment,” in Why People Don’t Trust Government, eds. Joseph S. Nye Jr.,
Philip D. Zelikow, and David C. King (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1997), 155–78; Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox, Running
from Office: Why Young Americans are Turned Off to Politics (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015).
4. Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris, At War with Government: How
Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2021); David Matsumoto, Hyisung C.
Hwang, and Mark G. Frank, “Emotional Language and Political Aggres-
sion,” Journal of Language & Social Psychology 32, no. 4 (2013): 452–68;
Barak Orbach, “On Hubris, Civility, and Incivility,” Arizona Law Review
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 27

54, no. 3 (2012): 443–56; Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Cultural
Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism (Oxford University
Press, 2019).
5. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A.
Pocock (Hackett, 1987), 30–31, 33, 67–68. For more contemporary
discussions, see Diana C. Mutz, In-Your-Face-Politics: The Consequences
of Uncivil Media (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Susan J.
Tolchin, The Angry American: How Voter Rage Is Changing the Nation
(Boulder: Westview, 1998).
6. Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 1.
7. Awe and shame are “emotions of self-assessment.” They are experienced
as changes in the view that we take of ourselves, whether because we
are confronted with something in whose presence we feel small and less
significant than before, as in the case of awe, or because we have deviated
from some norm and so altered our standing in the world, as in the
case of shame. See Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of
Self-Assessment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
8. Woodruff (Reverence, 113–30) argues that reverence need not presuppose
theism; “objects of reverence” such as death, the beautiful, or the final
explanation of the universe can also relevantly remind of human weakness.
See also Reverence, 113n6.
9. Reverence thus resolves what Woodruff calls “the paradox of respect,” the
puzzle that good leaders respect their subordinates, and good teachers
their students, even as they legitimately regard themselves as superior.
Reverence similarly resolves the paradox as it obtains for the subordi-
nates and students themselves, who are not yet in a position to evaluate
competently the qualifications of those they would follow or from whom
they would learn. Without reverence, they too have little reason to show
genuine respect (Reverence, 222–28).
10. For an account of these emotions that emphasizes their cognitive content
and association with vice, see Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought:
The Intelligence of the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
11. The ambivalence of aidōs is reflected in the adage spoken by Apollo in
Iliad 24.45 and echoed verbatim in Hesiod’s Works and Days (318):
“aidōs, which does men great harm and great good” (trans. M. L. West).
12. For a study of shame that helpfully distinguishes shame’s “moment
of recognition” from its “moment of reaction,” see Christina H.
Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics
of Shame (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
13. That reverence is a prosthesis for genuine or complete virtue is, as we shall
see, a key theme of Plato’s Laws. See also Leo Strauss, The Argument and
28 R. A. BALLINGALL

the Action of Plato’s Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975),

19, as well as Sara Brill, Plato on the Limits of Human Life (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2013), which discusses in a somewhat different
vein a “logic of prosthesis” in the Laws and other dialogues.
14. Paul Woodruff, “Virtues of Imperfection,” Value Inquiry 49 (2015): 597–
604.
15. Translations of the Ethics are adapted from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,
trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2011).
16. Hence Burnyeat’s formulation: “shame is the semi-virtue of the learner.”
Myles F. Burnyeat, “Aristotle on Learning to Be Good,” in Essays on
Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. A. O. Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980), 78.
17. Aristotle even blames the old for being “excessively shameless [anais-
chuntoi mallon]” (Rhetoric 1390a2). It is therefore puzzling that in the
Ethics we read of reverent shame being inappropriate in the elderly, the
reason being that it is appropriate to expect from them irreproachable
propriety.
18. That reverence can be conceived in this way is well attested, not only in
Plato’s Laws, as we shall see, but in tragedy too. See, e.g., the scout’s
eulogy of Amphiaraus in Seven Against Thebes. Amphiaraus is called “a
man of the highest moderation [sōphronestaton]” (568), because he is one
“who reveres the gods [hos theous sebei]” (596) and “desires not merely
to appear virtuous [dokein aristos ], but to be virtuous” (592), implying
an appropriate sense of shame in addition to his reverent awe. Amphiaraus
does not disdain honor (589); he desires it only if well deserved.
19. For the argument that Aristotle conceives of aidōs in this way, see Howard
J. Curzer, “Aristotle’s Painful Path to Virtue,” Journal of the History
of Philosophy 40, no. 2 (2002): 141–62 and Nicholas Higgins, “Shame
on You: The Virtuous Use of Shame in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,”
Expositions 9, no. 2 (2015): 1–15.
20. Woodruff reconstructs a psychological account of reverence based on Aris-
totelian virtue ethics, but as sources for that account, he looks to the poets
and historians rather than to authors of a more avowedly philosophic bent.
21. Besides the passages cited above, see, e.g., Agamemnon, 914–57; Seven
Against Thebes, 397–411; Eumenides, 690–704.
22. Credit is also due in this vein to Douglas Cairns, Aidōs: The Psychology
and Ethics of Honor and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993). Cairns’ study helpfully collects important extant
passages articulating the psychology of reverence and persuasively argues
that an adequate understanding of aidōs and its cognates troubles the
distinction of A. W. H. Adkins and E. R. Dodds between “shame cultures”
and “guilt cultures.” It is thus an illuminating companion to Bernard
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 29

Williams, Shame and Necessity, Sather Classical Lectures vol. 57 (Berkeley

and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). Cairns interprets
aidōs as a concept that combines shame and respect and that therefore has
a positive connotation. He shows, across an impressive range of original
source material, how aidōs isn’t merely an emotion or affect but a valued
disposition towards various emotions. In my view, however, Cairns does
not go far enough in this direction. He does not sufficiently attend to
how aidōs can be a virtue.
23. Woodruff, “Virtues of Imperfection,” 598. According to Woodruff, rever-
ence is extolled above all in tragic poetry. He argues that “irreverence,
manifest in acts of hubris, is the principal tragic vice; it is decried by
choruses and illustrated in many tragic plots, though not always explicitly”
(“Virtues of Imperfection,” 600).
24. Or nearly unnoticed: see Shalini Sakunanandan, “Drawing Rein: Shame
and Reverence in Plato’s Law-Bound Polity and Ours,” Political Theory
46 (2018): 331–56. Sakunanandan is the only other scholar of whom I
am aware to have placed reverence at the center of an interpretation of
Plato’s Laws. The posthumously published transcripts from his seminar on
the Laws suggest that Strauss too privileged reverence in his interpretation
of the dialogue. See Leo Strauss, Plato’s Laws: A Course Offered in the
Autumn Quarter of 1959, University of Chicago, ed. Lorraine Pangle (Leo
Strauss Center, University of Chicago, 2016), 77–87. Reverence receives
some attention in Strauss’s other works on Plato as well. See, e.g., “Plato,”
in History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 80, 87; The City and Man
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 20; Argument and Action,
19–21, 51–53; and On Tyranny, eds. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S.
Roth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 205–206. See also
the illuminating Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Free Speech and Democracy in
Ancient Athens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), which
discusses democratic citizenship and Socratic philosophy alike as premised
on a liberation from reverence but (with one brief exception, 62) without
treating of the Laws. Nina Valiquette Moreau, “Civic Piety: Plato and
Reverence for the Rule of Law,” History of Political Thought 38 (2017):
384–408 likewise examines reverence in the Apology, Euthyphro, and Crito
but not in the Laws.
25. Woodruff, Reverence, 143–44.
26. Translations of the Laws are adapted from The Laws of Plato, trans.
Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). For the
Greek, I have relied on Platonis Opera, vol. 5, ed. John Burnet (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1909).
27. Woodruff, Reverence, 84, 91.
30 R. A. BALLINGALL

28. See, e.g., Laws 700e–701b, 732a–b. We will have occasion to examine
these and similar passages with care in later chapters.
29. Saxonhouse, Free Speech and Democracy, 62–63.
30. Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the
Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome, trans. Arnaldo
Momigliano and S. C. Humphreys (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1980), part 3, ch. 11; Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future
(New York: Penguin, 2006), 92–93. I accept Arendt’s view that authority
is a useful concept only if distinguished from both coercion and persua-
sion, but I do not accept her claim that authority is therefore distinct from
“power.” Nor can I agree with her assertion that authority did not exist
for the Hellenes, apart from in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. The
word’s etymology may not be Greek, but it is difficult to imagine political
life without authority, even if the phenomenon lacks a name. Tocqueville’s
view seems the more reasonable: however much a society may suppose that
it achieves consensus and obedience on the basis of rational persuasion or
autonomous reasoning, it is always necessary that we encounter authority
within it. See Democracy in America II 1.2.
31. Translations of the Republic are adapted from The Republic of Plato, trans.
Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968). For the Greek, I have relied
on Platonis Opera, vol. 4, ed. John Burnet (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1902).
32. Compare J. S. Mill, “The Spirit of the Age IV,” in The Collected Works
of John Stuart Mill, vol. 22, eds. Ann Robson and John M. Robson
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 289–95; On Liberty and
Other Essays, ed. John Gray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
73–74, 378–79 and Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil §263; Human, All
Too Human, §96. Strange as it may seem, Mill and Nietzsche share the
distinction of being among the few modern thinkers to take reverence
seriously as a bulwark of authority, or of what Nietzsche calls “an instinct
for rank.” Nietzsche even praises reverence for upholding “adherence to
traditional custom” and follows the ancients in regarding custom as an
essential means to “the all important end of maintaining and sustaining
the community.” This distinctive aspect of Nietzsche’s thought is rightly
pointed out by Woodruff (Reverence, 3). Even so, in keeping with his view
that only the Greek poets and historians appreciated the importance of the
virtue, and in conformity with the domesticated reception of Mill’s polit-
ical thought, Woodruff exaggerates the extent to which Nietzsche’s praise
of reverence is unique among the “great Western philosopher[s].” For an
interpretation of Mill that emphasizes his own, decidedly illiberal concern
with authority and interest in Plato’s investigations of this question, see
Robert Devigne, Reforming Liberalism: J. S. Mill’s Use of Ancient, Reli-
gious, Liberal, and Romantic Moralities (New Haven: Yale University
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 31

Press, 2006). See also Alan Ryan, “Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty:

Some Unanswered Questions in Mill’s Politics,” in The Making of Modern
Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 364–80.
33. In the following two paragraphs, I am drawing heavily on Arthur
M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric
Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 169–73. See also
Edward Shils, “Tradition and the Rationalization of Society,” in Tradition
(Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981), 287–310.
34. Early liberal theorists such as John Locke assumed—with Plato in fact—
that most people do not have to be persuaded to prefer a life of material
comfort to rigorous exertion and self-denial. It is a preference to which
they revert in the absence of social pressure and persuasive argument. For
a critical treatment of this assumption in liberal thought, see Stephen G.
Salkever, “Lopp’d and Bound: How Liberal Theory Obscures the Goods
of Liberal Practices,” in Liberalism and the Good, eds. R. Bruce Douglass,
Gerald M. Mara, and Henry S. Richardson (New York: Routledge, 1990),
167–202.
35. Mogens Herman Hansen, Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek
City-State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 125–26.
36. John Patrick Coby, “Aristotle’s Three Cities and the Problem of Faction,”
The Journal of Politics 50, no. 4 (1988): 896–919.
37. The main elements of even a polytheistic piety such as that of the Hellenes
seem to have enjoyed a remarkable degree of consensus in the ancient
cities, including at Athens, notwithstanding the emergence of sophistic
and philosophic dissenters in the fifth century. See, e.g., Jon D. Mikalson,
Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1987), 106–109. Moreover, as the extant tragedies attest (e.g.,
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 401–402, 701–705), infringements of customary
norms could be interpreted as violations of this consensus and as dishon-
oring the gods who preside over it. While it is true that Hellenic piety did
not expound an elaborate set of divinely revealed moral laws, the Greek
poleis, including democratic Athens, did uphold hegemonic, if contested,
ethical “ideologies” that praised particular ways of life as most noble. For
discussion of the Athenian ideology of courage, e.g., see Ryan K. Balot,
Courage in the Democratic Polis: Ideology and Critique in Classical Athens
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
38. That is not to say that traditional societies ever succeeded in achieving
complete consensus of course. But it is noteworthy that even for demo-
cratic Athens, arguably the most committed of such societies to freedom
of speech and equality among citizens, consensus or “same-mindedness”
(homonoia) stood as a principal object of political aspiration. See, e.g.,
Demosthenes, 25.89. Lysias 2.17, and Isocrates 18.44 with Josiah Ober,
32 R. A. BALLINGALL

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology and the Power of
the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 295–99.
39. Hence the definition of nomos to which Socrates’ “comrade” (fellow Athe-
nian?) assents in Plato’s Minos : “the official opinion of the city [to dogma
poleōs ]” (314c2) that “wishes to be the discovery of what is [bouletai
tou ontos einai exeuresis ]” (315a3). Translations of the Minos are adapted
from The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues,
ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 53–66. It
is telling that Plato has the comrade restate the definition by dropping
Socrates’ “wishes [bouletai]” qualification, apparently without noticing
that he has done so. For the possible significance of this detail, see Mark
J. Lutz, “The Minos and the Socratic Examination of Law,” American
Journal of Political Science 54, no. 4 (2010): 988–1000, as well as my
discussion below. For a philological study of the broad meanings attaching
to nomos, along with the more archaic thesmos, see Martin Ostwald, Nomos
and the Beginnings of Athenian Democracy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1969).
40. Adapted from “Against Aristogeiton 1,” trans. J. H. Vince, in Demos-
thenes: Orations, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1935).
Some scholars have disputed the authenticity of this speech, e.g., Marcello
Gigante, Nomos Basileus (Naples: Edizioni Glaux, 1956), 269. For a
strong rejoinder, see W. K. C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol.
3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 75–79.
41. Compare Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3, 4–5.
42. Compare Herodotus 3.38, Thucydides 1.20, and Plato, Laws 634d–e,
858e–59b with Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (University of
Chicago Press, 1965), 91; Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3,
131–34; and Melzer, Between the Lines, 174–77. We will examine the ways
in which nomos conceals the uncertainty attaching to customary beliefs in
later chapters.
43. This picture accords with the image of the human puppet furnished in
the Laws to clarify the meaning of self-control (644b–45c). Considering
“each of us living beings” as a plaything of the gods, the Athenian likens
mortal or human virtue to the movements of a puppet who follows the
pull of a “golden cord”—laws taken over from one of the gods or from
some private “knower.” To follow this golden cord, however, the human
puppet is in need of “helpers” to overcome the pull of other, “iron” cords
associated with passions such as fear and boldness. As I argue in Chapter 4,
the helpers of which the Athenian speaks must refer to reverent awe and
shame, iron cords in their own right capable of assisting the gentle pull of
law. Self-control or political moderation is thus associated in the dialogue
with the very passions that moderation is needed to overcome.
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 33

44. See also David Cohen, Law, Violence, and Community in Classical Athens
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 44.
45. See also Nicomachean Ethics 1128b15, where Aristotle observes that aidōs
is rooted in the body.
46. Although the Athenian seems to define aidōs in terms of aischunē at 646e–
47a (reverent awe in terms of fear of disrepute), I agree with Mark Lutz
that the invocation of aidōs is meant to imply the fear of the gods that
the Athenian has frequent occasion to extol. See Mark J. Lutz, Divine
Law and Political Philosophy in Plato’s Laws (DeKalb: Northern Illinois
University Press, 2015), 64.
47. Williams, Shame and Necessity, 82 and Saxonhouse, Free Speech and
Democracy, 67.
48. Compare Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §260: “The profound rever-
ence for age and tradition—all law rests on this double reverence…”.
49. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, Q. 95, art. 1.
50. R. G. Bury, “Introduction,” in Plato X: Laws, Books 1–6 (Cambridge:
Loeb Classical Library, 1926), vii. See also Ernest Barker, Greek Polit-
ical Theory: Plato and His Predecessors (London: Methuem, 1918), 205;
George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (New York: Holt, Rine-
hart and Winston, 1957), 67; David Grene, Greek Political Theory: The
Image of Man in Thucydides and Plato (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965), 200–204. To many scholars, Bury’s calumny finds confir-
mation in the testimony of Diogenes Laertius, who records an anecdote
attesting to the Laws having been left “upon waxen tables” at the time of
Plato’s death, suggesting that it was written in Plato’s very last years. See
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. Robert D. Hicks (Cambridge: Loeb
Classical Library, 1960), 311.
51. See, e.g., George Klosko, The Development of Plato’s Political Theory (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 217 and David Roochnik, “The
‘Serious Play’ of Book 7 of Plato’s Laws,” in Plato’s Laws: Force and Truth
in Politics, eds. Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2013), 144.
52. George Grote, Plato and Other Companions of Sokrates, vol. 3 (London:
John Murray, 1865), 409–12; J. S. Mill, “Grote’s Plato,” in The Collected
Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 11, ed. John. M. Robson (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1978), 414–15; Francis M. Cornford, “Pla-
to’s Commonwealth,” in The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 46–67; Karl R. Popper,
The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1971), 195; Richard F. Stalley, An Introduction to Plato’s Laws
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 41; Klosko, Development, 161–69, 241–46.
53. Sabine, History of Political Theory, 67–87; Gregory Vlastos, “Socratic
Knowledge and Platonic ‘Pessimism’,” in Platonic Studies (Princeton:
34 R. A. BALLINGALL

Princeton University Press, 1981), 204–17; Julia Annas and Robin Water-
field, “Introduction,” in Plato: Statesman, eds. Annas and Waterfield
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ix–xxiv; David Cohen,
“Law, Autonomy, and Political Community in Plato’s Laws,” Classical
Philology 88, no. 4 (1993): 301–17; Cohen, Law, Violence, and Commu-
nity; Christopher Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and
Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Thanassis Samaras, Plato
on Democracy (New York: Peter Lang, 2002).
54. Glenn R. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of
the Laws (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 9–13; Alfred
E. Taylor, The Laws of Plato (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1966), xiii; W. K.
C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1978), 335; André Laks, “Legislation and Demiurgy:
On the Relationship Between the Plato’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Laws’,” Classical
Antiquity 9, no. 2 (1990): 209–29; Trevor J. Saunders, “Introduction,”
in Plato’s Laws (New York: Penguin, 2004), xxxii; Trevor J. Saunders,
“Plato’s Later Political Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato,
ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 465;
Kenneth Royce Moore, Sex and the Second-best City: Sex and Society in the
Plato’s Laws (New York: Routledge, 2005), 3; Malcolm Schofield, Plato:
Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 10; Kenneth
Royce Moore, Plato, Politics, and a Practical Utopia: Social Constructivism
and Civic Planning in the Laws (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing,
2012); Richard Kraut, “Ordinary Virtue from the Phaedo to the Laws,”
in Plato’s Laws: A Critical Guide, ed. Christopher Bobonich (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 51–70; Sean Fraistat, “The Authority
of Writing in Plato’s Laws,” Political Theory 43, no. 5 (2015): 657–
77. See also Julia Annas, Virtue and Law in Plato and Beyond (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017), which argues not only that the political
philosophy of the Laws is consistent with that of the Republic, but that
the utopia conceived in the former is not a “fall-back” from the Kallipolis
envisioned in the latter.
55. Annas and Waterfield, “Introduction,” xix.
56. Leo Strauss and certain scholars influenced by his interpretation of the
Laws have in fact read sympathetically the dialogue’s central theme. As I
explain below, I have tried to learn from their willingness to take seriously
the proposition that customary and ethical authority may be rooted by
nature in irrational dogmatism.
57. Pace Danielle S. Allen, Why Plato Wrote (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010).
58. In the Republic, Socrates characterizes the beliefs of citizens as dream-
like, mistaking artificial likenesses for natural essences. They are unable to
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 35

accept the many “noble” particulars as less real than some “idea” of the
noble (475d ff.).
59. Admittedly, this distinction between the aporetic dialogues and the more
emphatically political works is crude, for not infrequently do the former
show Socrates’ dialectical examinations building up opinion even as
he more or less quietly tears it down. The distinction remains illumi-
nating because it underlines the extent to which the Republic and the
Laws emphasize the construction of opinion as nomos while keeping the
dogmatic status or quasi-truth of the nomoi they extol very much in
abeyance.
60. For an overview of the textual evidence attesting to this point, see Mark
J. Lutz, “Political virtue and Socratic Virtue,” Polity 29, no. 4 (1994):
568–71.
61. In this vein, Robert Metcalf refers to the “skiagraphic” character of sub-
philosophic perception, which according to the Athenian Stranger in the
Laws leads human beings to misperceive the just and unjust things. See
Metcalf, “On the Human and the Divine,” in Plato’s Laws: Force and
Truth in Politics, eds. Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2013), 127–28.
62. Compare Laws 925e–26b, Republic 506c; Aristotle, Politics, 1269a7–25,
1286a10–16; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–ii, Q 94, A 4; Q
96, A 6. Translations of the Statesman are based on Statesman, trans.
Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newport: Focus Publishing,
2012). For the Greek, I have relied on Plato: Statesman and Philebus,
trans. H. N. Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1962).
63. Harvey C. Mansfield, “On the Majesty of Law,” Harvard Journal of
Law & Public Policy 36, no. 1 (2012): 121. For the Procrustes myth, see
Plutarch, Lives, vol. 1, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, MA: Loeb
Classical Library, 1914), 23.
64. So Balot argues persuasively that the Athenian’s metaphysical arguments
should be interpreted as reflections of the political needs of his inter-
locutors and the citizens of the city in speech. The Stranger’s political
arguments, then, are not deduced from his metaphysical claims, as most
mainstream interpreters assume. Ryan K. Balot, “‘Likely Stories’ and the
Political Art in Plato’s Laws,” in Probabilities, Hypotheticals, and Coun-
terfactuals in Ancient Greek Thought, ed. Victoria Wohl (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014), 65–83 and “Polis and Cosmos in
Plato’s Laws,” Polis 37 (2020): 516–33.
65. Examples include how the city ruled by law might at the same time be
ruled by reason (713e–14a), why certain criminal acts must be declared
“voluntary” (861c) if purposeful malice is impossible (731c–d, 860c–d),
and why the regime would emulate divine despotism (713c–d, 713e–14a)
36 R. A. BALLINGALL

if despotic power is so dangerously tempting to mortal beings (691c–d,

874e–75d).
66. See also Randall Baldwin Clark, The Law Most Beautiful and Best: Medical
Argument and Magical Rhetoric in Plato’s Laws (Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2003), 2. Klosko too has sensibly called for recognizing the array
of inconsistencies with which the Laws confronts us but does not in my
view propose an interpretive framework capable of making sense of them.
George Klosko “Knowledge and Law in Plato’s Laws,” Political Studies
56 (2008): 469.
67. This is the name by which the Athenian refers to the city that his interlocu-
tors intend to found upon the conclusion of their conversation (860e).
The name apparently refers to an archaic “Magnesia” on whose deso-
late site the new city is to be founded. See Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City,
30–31, 95.
68. Compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1195b20–21.
69. Still, the Athenian does see that such measures expose the city to impru-
dence. Some of those who will manage to free themselves of customary
authority will recklessly malign it. Accordingly, the Athenian suggests that
the city will rightly censure and persecute those who openly do (e.g.,
634d–e, 909d).
70. Thomas L. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” in The Laws of Plato, 388–96,
479, 486; Lorraine S. Pangle, “Moral and Criminal Responsibility in
Plato’s Laws,” American Political Science Review 103, no. 3 (2009):
456–73; Lutz, Divine Law, 96–100; 116 ff.; and Lorraine S. Pangle,
Virtue Is Knowledge: The Moral Foundations of Socratic Political Philosophy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 212–46.
71. The importance of reverence in the Dorian regimes is attested in many
sources. One thinks especially of the first speech of Archidamus in Thucy-
dides (1.84) or of the account in Herodotus in which Demaratus explains
to Xerxes why the Spartans will fight voluntarily against such long odds.
“They [the Lacedaemonians] accept nomos as their master,” he unforget-
tably says. “And they fear this master much more than your subjects fear
you” (7.104). See also Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians,
8–9.
72. It is political moderation qua reverence—not courage—that in the Laws is
“the footstool of the virtues,” to use the phrase of Robert Louis Stevenson
memorably adopted by Balot (Courage, 162). In speaking of “political”
virtues, I am following another pillar of Strauss’s interpretation of Plato,
that which distinguishes the comprehensive virtue of the philosopher—the
excellence identical to a kind of knowledge—from the habit-bred virtue
of the citizen. See Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1964), 125.
73. Melzer, Between the Lines, 168–88.
 1 REVERENCE AND THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY 37

74. Translations of the Phaedrus are from Alexander Nehamas and Paul
Woodruff in Plato: Complete Works, eds. John M. Cooper and D. S.
Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 506–56.
75. For an elaboration of this reading, see my “Platonic Revivalists? The Cases
of Simone Weil and Leo Strauss,” in Brill’s Companion to the Legacy of
Ancient Greek Political Thought (Brill, forthcoming).
76. See Myles Burnyeat, “Sphinx Without a Secret,” New York Review of Books
32, no. 9 (1985) and the reply by Strauss’s students in Cropsey, Joseph;
Jaffa, Harry V.; Bloom, Allan; Weinrib, Ernest J.; et al., “The Studies of
Leo Strauss: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books 32, no. 15 (1985).
For a more recent articulation of the same complaint, laid in this case
against “Straussian” interpretations of the Laws, see Klosko, “Knowledge
and Law,” 467.
77. Leo Strauss, “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,”
Social Research 13, no. 3 (1946), 353; City and Man, 52–60. Strauss asks
us to consider the implications of Socrates’ identification in this passage of
good writing with “a healthy animal,” all of whose parts are necessary to
doing “its proper work well.” Compare Diskin Clay, “Plato’s Magnesia,”
in Nomodeiktes: Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald, eds. Ralph
M. Rosen and Joseph Farrell (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2000), 110–14; Catherine Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of
the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 5–7. Balot
suggests that another reasonable control on this type of interpretation
is provided by “the more mainstream or even ‘orthodox’ community of
interpreters who hail from departments of Classics or Philosophy.” See
Ryan K. Balot, “An Odd Episode in Platonic Interpretation: Changing
the Law in Plato’s Laws,” in Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature: Aspects
of Ethical Reasoning from Homer to Aristotle and Beyond, ed. Maria Liatsi
(Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020), 67.
78. As maintained in Malcom Schofield, “The Laws ’ Two Projects,” in Plato’s
Laws: A Critical Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 12–
28. Such an argument simply attests to a failure to discover a satisfying,
coherent interpretation, as Balot rightly notes (Odd Episode, n13).
 CHAPTER 2

Plato’s Laws and the Enigma of Godlikeness

In the poetic tradition of ancient Hellas, reverence is the virtue

keeping men from a fatal conceit. Consider the words of the messenger
in Euripides’ Bacchae, reporting the brutal dismemberment of King
Pentheus. “To practice moderation and reverence for the divine [to
sōphronein de kai sebein ta tōn theōn],” he says, “this is best. And I think
it the wisest practice in use by mortal men” (1150–53).1 The “lawless”
king has dared to mock the cult of Dionysus. Pretending to a forbidden
knowledge, he has judged the god whom the Bacchantes worship a false
idol and has committed outrages against Bacchus and his maenads accord-
ingly. Although the god is “new,” the young king’s refusal to accept or
even consider his divinity presents a threat to ancestral piety and therewith
to nomos itself. As the chorus had earlier sung:

Slowly it proceeds
But trustworthy nonetheless
The might divine.
It calls to account those among mortals
Who, with mad conviction, honor senselessness
And fail to extol the divine things.
The gods lie hidden in manifold ways
The long tread of time
And hunt the irreverent (ton asepton) down.
For never must a man think

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 39

Switzerland AG 2023
R. A. Ballingall, Plato’s Reverent City, Recovering Political Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31303-5_2
40 R. A. BALLINGALL

And habitually do
That which is stronger than law (tōn nomōn).
For it is a light expense
To think this to have strength:
Whatever is divine.
That which remains lawful over a long span
Is lawful by nature for all time. (877–96)

According to the chorus, nomos is sustained less by worship of any

particular god than by the veneration of “divine things” and thus by
the observation of human limits. It is reverence for the divine that lies
behind the authority of ancient custom. Pentheus might claim to defend
the customary things against innovation, but he ends up attacking them
unwittingly, pretending as he does to knowledge of the gods to be
worshiped. As far as the chorus is concerned, doing so is to “to think
thoughts not mortal.” It is to put oneself above nomos. To this extent,
the fate of Pentheus is an object lesson in the neglect of reverence, one
that those who would defend the law would do well to learn.
We saw in the previous chapter that Plato might seem to disavow
this virtue: his dialogues appear to enjoin the transcendence of mortality.
Whereas reverence presides over the boundary between mortal and divine,
the virtue praised by Socrates in the Republic, Phaedrus, and Theaetetus
and by the Athenian Stranger in the Laws seems to invite the erasure
of that boundary. In this chapter, I want to show that this appearance
is misleading. The Athenian urges political men to assimilate themselves
to the divine as far as possible, but he also insists that they feel rever-
ence for “the god” whom they would strive to resemble. In fact, he
suggests that it is precisely in their reverence, in their “moderation,” that
lawgivers and citizens might transcend their humanity as far as they are
able. Godlikeness therefore presents a curious paradox in the Laws. One
becomes like the god by remembering that one is no god at all. This enig-
matic idea becomes especially visible in the fourth book of the dialogue,
as we shall see. But it figures prominently in the opening passages as well,
close scrutiny of which helps illuminate the Athenian’s later exhortations
to become like god.2
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 41

Irreverent Beginnings
The Laws famously begins with the word “god” and the question of
whether a deity is to be “given credit for laying down [the] laws” of
Crete and Sparta (634a1–2). The nameless old man who asks this ques-
tion cannot be in earnest; a well-traveled Athenian, he presumably knows
already its answer, a presumption confirmed in any case by his subse-
quent citation of Homer.3 Seeing as the men to whom he puts his query
belong themselves to the Cretan and Lacedaemonian regimes, the ques-
tion has rather the character of a test: in what light do these sons of Crete
and Sparta regard the founding myths of their cities?4 The answer proves
instructive. The Cretan, Kleinias responds: “A god, stranger, a god—to
say what is at any rate the most just thing.” It is Zeus who is believed
to have originated the laws of Crete, through the medium of his son,
King Minos (624a7–b3; Minos , 319c1–20d7). In apparent homage to
that story, the action of the dialogue will unfold on the way to the cave
and temple of Zeus, high upon Mt. Ida (625a5–b7).5 It is there that the
god is said to have instructed the king and furnished him with the Cretan
laws. As we later learn, Kleinias is to lead a committee in the drafting of
potentially novel laws for a new colony in Crete (702b4–d5). He too is
to be a Cretan lawgiver; he is making the pilgrimage to Zeus’ cave in
emulation of Minos. But how seriously does Kleinias take the Minoan
story? Does he hope to be visited by divine inspiration, as the myth tells
of the legendary king? Or is Kleinias wilier than that? His answer to the
Athenian’s question suggests he is wily indeed (compare 641e6–7). To
ascribe to Zeus the origin of the Cretan laws, he avers, is to say only what
is just or lawful, but what is just or lawful is not necessarily what is true.6
Kleinias implies that Minos merely claimed to have conversed with Zeus
in devising his laws, when in fact he relied on none other than himself.
Inasmuch as Kleinias would emulate Minos, he must similarly intend to
be his own authority, his own god. And he must similarly intend to use
the name of god to enhance the authority of the laws he would himself
lay down.
In this way, Plato introduces Kleinias as a paradigm of irreverence.7
He would do himself what pious Cretans believe belongs to gods.8 Pious
Cretans believe their laws good because laid down by a benevolent, super-
human power. As with other ancient regimes, their laws define the way
of life around which Cretan sociability is organized, something on whose
behalf the regime makes great claims. Kleinias and his Spartan companion
42 R. A. BALLINGALL

Megillus acknowledge that laws such as theirs aim at nurturing virtue as a

whole (630e2–3), which is to say the excellence of character attending the
best human life. As we saw in the previous chapter, such matters presup-
pose ethical questions about which people are prone to deep disagreement
and confusion. It makes sense that societies whose laws would answer such
questions would regard human nature as inadequate to the task of laying
such laws down. But another reason to think lawgiving the task of a god
is the self-dealing reasonably suspected of human leadership (691c5–d1,
713c6–8, 714b3–d3).9 Especially where laws are demanding—enjoining
rigorous self-control, obedience, and altruism—citizens want to know
that their sacrifices redound if not to personal advantage then at least to
the common good. But precisely laws of this kind attract self-interested
rulers and lawgivers; the sacrifices they enjoin can be profitably exploited
by acquisitive leaders.10 If Kleinias intends to become a lawgiver himself,
without seriously expecting the help of divine inspiration, then from
the pious Cretan perspective he minimizes the task at hand and either
misjudges or conceals his own selfish motives.
That these fears are well founded is in the sequel confirmed. When
asked the reason for the Cretan laws ordaining common meals, gymnastic
training, and the employment of special weaponry, Kleinias responds with
an amazing speech.11 Without mentioning Zeus at all, he claims that
Minos “condemned the mindlessness of the many, who do not realize that
for everyone throughout the whole of life an endless war exists against all
cities…For what most humans call peace, he [Minos] held to be only a
name; in fact, for everyone there always exists by nature an undeclared
war among all cities” (625e5–26a5). Seeing as all good things depend
on victory in war (626b1–3), it follows that good things cannot be held
in common, even that there is no common good. The good things are
acquired by some by being taken from others, which is why the indispens-
able condition of enjoying them is military strength, if only to defend
against others’ depredations. Kleinias might blunt the full repulsiveness
of this view; he takes care to attribute what he says to Minos rather than
personally vouching for it and speaks of never-ending war only among the
cities themselves. But if the cause of war is the private, zero-sum nature
of the good things, then why think of war as confined to foreign affairs?
Shouldn’t domestic politics harbor the same undeclared conflict, not only
among certain groups but even among private individuals? Criminal law
and patriotic norms might forestall such conflict from being acknowl-
edged openly. But if the good things really can’t be enjoyed in common,
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 43

then a deep antagonism must abide among seemingly cooperative people;

friendliness must belie necessity or subterfuge. Indeed, the laws them-
selves must reflect this antagonism. The laws of Minos might look to
victory abroad, but such victory would be merely the first if obligatory
step in an even uglier game. On Kleinias’ premises, Minoan law must
look equally to victory at home, securing for the lawgiver or his succes-
sors what has allegedly been obtained for the city.12 That Kleinias accepts
these premises himself and is fully alive to their implications we learn in
due course. The Athenian spurs him not only to affirm his agreement
with the Cretan lawgiver (626b6–c3), but to acknowledge the regressive
logic of his argument. Victory in war, he concedes, is as necessary for a
neighborhood, household, and even “for one man in relation to another”
(626c11–12) as it is for the city in relation to foreign powers. “All are
enemies of all in public” (626d7–8).
The foregoing attests to the wisdom of the pious outlook that Kleinias
overturns: lawgiving is the task of a god, not least because human
lawgivers abuse the prerogatives that they assume. Supposing the good
things to be harshly scarce and privately obtained, human lawgivers are
prone to using public authority for personal gain.13 The laws they decree
merely claim to redound to the good of the commons. Still, it remains
unclear how the pious interpretation of Cretan law would ultimately avoid
this problem. Most people agree with Kleinias about the nature of the
good things (686e4–8), even if they resist or ignore the conclusions at
which he arrives. Many people observe the demands of justice believing
they thereby serve the common good. Some even consider such obser-
vance inherently good in its own right. But few simply identify justice with
the good itself, to say nothing of personal happiness (662a5–8). Most
assume what is good for themselves to be limited by and in tension with
the good of others, which is why practicing justice seems so impressive.
The good things are conventionally held to be private and competitive.
But if that’s right, then can there really be a common good for justice to
serve? Isn’t justice always another’s good, inasmuch as it involves forgoing
the good things ourselves that others might enjoy them (Republic 343c,
Gorgias 492b–c)? If pious Cretans regard the good in this light, then it is
hard to see how they avoid the problem that Kleinias has spied out. Aren’t
the pious simply chumps, inviting others’ exploitation? Their reverence
for law keeps them from breaking it and from becoming lawgivers them-
selves. But precisely these behaviors enable the irreverent to get ahead at
others’ expense.
44 R. A. BALLINGALL

An even greater problem for Cretan tradition is that the mortal

lawgiving it proscribes seems unavoidable. Tradition holds that Zeus gave
his laws not to the Cretans but to Minos, and it is Minos who is said
to have conveyed Zeus’ laws faithfully to the people. Prophesy is the
privilege of loners; the gods do not speak directly to the assembled multi-
tude. But if lawgiving is the task of gods because of the fallibility of
men, then why trust lone men to convey faithfully what the gods have
given them? Shouldn’t prophets always be suspected of forgery just as
Pentheus suspected the long-haired stranger from Lydia? And what of
the worry that future lawgivers simply won’t be visited by the same inspi-
ration from which Minos is believed to have benefited? If ever new laws
need laying down or when old laws need equitable interpretation, how are
lawgivers and judges to proceed if the voice of god is not forthcoming?
To make law themselves is to transgress mortal limitations. But to leave
lawmaking alone may be to ignore what is urgently needed. Reverence
would thus forbid what necessity demands. The cure for predatory lead-
ership to which tradition turns would prove worse than the malady from
which it claims to deliver us.
At the very outset of the Laws, then, we find the paradox that Plato
writes into its heart: the rule of law both prohibits and requires the imita-
tion of god. Law cannot safely originate with human beings; yet human
beings must involve themselves nonetheless in laying law down. Trust-
worthy lawgivers must revere the gods while at the same time emulating
them, must somehow make law themselves while regarding that very task
as beyond their ken. The central place that this puzzle will assume in the
dialogue suggests that the stranger who takes the lead neither rejects the
Cretan tradition of divine law nor ignores the many problems confronting
it. Rather, he shows, as we will see, how to broaden and deepen that tradi-
tion and others like it, that they might better navigate these problems
and better achieve the ends at which they already if implicitly aim. To do
so, however, he will need to iron out the grave inconsistencies that such
traditions harbor. Above all, he will need to make explicit and expand the
understanding of human ends that such traditions convey.

Humbling Kleinias
This project the Athenian begins immediately. Indeed, it is an ambi-
tion that he seems to have conceived well before joining Kleinias and
Megillus on their pilgrimage. It is he who initiates the conversation and
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 45

who, without needing to be told, identifies Kleinias by name and city

(629c3).14 He similarly has foreknowledge of the destination of the men
he joins (625b1–2) and later (848d3, 860e6) is the first to speak the name
of the city that Kleinias is to found. As Albert Keith Whitaker observes,
Kleinias is wrong to think it a stroke of luck to have chanced upon the
stranger (702b4–5), who proves himself so able in matters political. “The
stranger knows who Kleinias is, where he is from, and where is going
before he interrupts him…it seems not unreasonable, then, to conclude
that the stranger has sought out a conversation with a serious political
actor in order to affect profoundly his prosecution and his understanding
of his political task.”15
The Athenian’s first step in this direction is to avail himself of Kleinias’
character, which proves more conventional than the Cretan had initially
let on. However much he might disdain the mindlessness of the many,
Kleinias remains attached to popular notions of nobility and justice, and
susceptible to shame.16 He may have ceased believing in the founding
myths themselves, and thereby given himself over to selfish ambitions, but
his character proves open to reverence’s reanimation. With great tact, the
Athenian humbles Kleinias and awakens him to the magnitude of the task
before him and to the indispensability of his aid.17 He invites Kleinias to
draw a surprising but telling conclusion from his Minoan reasoning: just
as there exists a ceaseless if undeclared enmity between all men, so there
exists a war within our very selves. Of his own accord, Kleinias declares
victory in this internal war to be “the first and best of all” while calling
self-defeat “most shameful” (626e1–3). He thus betrays a concern for
goods apart from those won or lost in conflict with others. We don’t
seize possessions from nor lose them to ourselves. Rather, we say that we
master ourselves when we overcome deviant impulses; we speak of being
defeated by ourselves when we yield to shameful passions (633e, 644b
ff.). In other words, victory is best not when securing for ourselves the
good things, but when expressing in ourselves certain virtues. Or rather,
victory is good not merely in an instrumental, mercenary sense but as
something inherently meritorious, something noble and seemly. To admit
as much, however, is to throw the Minoan view into incoherence. For
if victory is best as something seemly, then seemliness must impinge on
how we use victory for acquiring other goods.18 Laws should be ordained
with a view not just to any triumphs but to noble ones.
The Athenian brings out these implications by reversing the Minoan
argument. If each of us is at war with ourselves because of war’s ubiquity,
46 R. A. BALLINGALL

then must not each family, neighborhood, and city be at war itself too
(626e–27a)? And seeing as internal victory in the case of ourselves implies
the mastery of our lesser parts by the better, must the same not also hold
in these other cases? But if it does, then families, neighborhoods, and
cities are victorious over themselves only when their virtuous members
rule over their vicious peers (627b). As much would seem to follow from
the parallelism between individual and group. Self-mastery implies the
triumph of virtue over vice. This inference from ourselves to groups is
one that Kleinias has never drawn from his view. “What is now being said
is very odd,” he remarks; “yet it is very necessary to agree to it” (627b).
He believes that composite groups are at war with themselves because he
thinks of their parts as cities unto themselves. He looks on internal conflict
from the perspective of foreign affairs and its attendant contest for scarce
resources (cf. 628d). But if internal conflict in the city and among its
lesser groups can be understood on the model of the composite soul, as
Kleinias now recognizes, then the victory of those groups over themselves
cannot be, or cannot only be, a matter of some group members securing
possessions against the others. Victory and laws that aim at victory must
engender virtue.
Having taken Kleinias this far, the Athenian delivers his coup de grace
(627c). Drawing on another aspect of self-mastery, he drives home the
extent to which internal conflict must differ from war with foreigners.
Foreigners can be killed or banished; not so parts of the soul. To master
or be superior to ourselves is not to vanquish our desires and aversions
but to tame them. If self-mastery in composite groups is relevantly similar,
then groups too must accommodate themselves to their defeated parts.
The Athenian appeals to the family to make Kleinias feel the force of this
point; vanquishing or destroying our kin seems as abhorrent or absurd as
doing so with ourselves. Nevertheless, “where there were many brother-
s…it wouldn’t be at all surprising if more of them turned out unjust and
fewer of them just” (627c). In the family that is superior to or master
of itself, how should the just brothers rule the unjust? Is doing so even
possible given the strength of the greater number?19 The Athenian asks
his companions to consider how a consummate judge would resolve quar-
rels among such brothers and Kleinias grants that he would do so not
simply by destroying the wicked brethren. Rather, he would make “the
worthy men rule and [allow] the worse to live while making them willing
to be ruled” (627e). Self-rule in the family is a matter of persuading the
many wicked brothers to be ruled by the few worthy ones. It is a matter
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 47

of reconciliation rather than destruction.20 Having agreed on this much,

the Athenian asks Kleinias to reconsider the city. Won’t its own quarrels
be best resolved through civil peace instead of civil war? And seeing as
civil peace is the political analogue to the first and best victory, shouldn’t
it take precedence over external war and victory over foreigners? On the
premises to which Kleinias has agreed, both conclusions would seem to
follow. But then it also follows that laws laid down for the sake of victory
must look primarily to internal peace. Kleinias must either deny that self-
mastery is the most splendid victory or must give up on the Minoan thesis
that law is properly dedicated to war. The Athenian has uncovered their
mutual inconsistency.
In a sense, the Athenian has merely vindicated the cynical assessment
of the Minos myth: the Cretan laws cannot be divine because on exam-
ination they are incoherent. They should not command our veneration
because they do not stand above our finitude. Yet the Athenian has also
begun to disabuse Kleinias of his complacency. If Kleinias has been cynical
of the old stories surrounding the Cretan laws, it has been because cyni-
cism excuses playing god and thus seizing goods. But since the good
things include the virtues, as he has admitted, playing god makes less
sense than Kleinias had supposed: the best thing of all cannot be acquired
by force. Indeed, ordaining laws to subdue others looks like permitting
the worse part of one’s soul to subdue the better. Playing god looks like
the most shameful defeat. The incoherence brought to light in the Cretan
law thus reflects the incoherence in Kleinias himself. After all, it is the
latter’s construal of Cretan law that the Athenian has undone. Seeing as
that construal speaks to Kleinias’ reasons for becoming a lawgiver himself,
the Athenian’s reduction redounds to the coherence of those reasons, or
rather to the lack thereof. If Kleinias really would get what he wants or
even know what he truly desires, then he had better think harder about
the enterprise on which he has embarked. Who better to help him do so
than this thoughtful, provocative stranger upon whom he seems to have
so happily chanced?

Divine Law According to Reason

Having opened a void in Kleinias’ self-understanding, the Athenian now
moves to fill it: he revitalizes the myth of which Kleinias had become
contemptuous. His efforts so far may have moved the Cretan further from
reverence for that myth, but he refuses Kleinias his old conclusion that
48 R. A. BALLINGALL

no law is really divine, and that all law reflects the lawgiver’s competitive
self-interest. Without challenging the claim that Minoan law makes on its
own behalf—that it originates with the highest god—the Athenian invites
consideration of what truly divine law would require. If the Minoan law
seems to fall short of those requirements, he suggests the blame be laid
not on the law itself but on the shortcomings of its interpreters (630d).
“He appeals as it were from the accepted interpretation of revelation to
revelation itself, which discloses its true meaning only to those who never
forget that, being divine, it is supremely reasonable.”21 In other words, he
shifts the burden of proof for law’s divinity. God speaks to lawgivers not in
historical time, through miraculous messages inaccessible to others, but in
the judicious use of human reason whose fruits are demonstrable to others
at any time, in any place. As the Athenian will famously claim, divine law
is that which is “ordained by intelligence” (tēn tou nou, 714a1–2). The
gods themselves can be identified with intelligence (897b1–2).22 Because
humanity has a share of intelligence, we can reveal divine law to ourselves.
With this subtle but profound modification, the Athenian begins to solve
the problem bedeviling Cretan legal tradition. Lawgivers and their succes-
sors need not wait on Zeus to reveal his will; they can access divine law
by consulting human wisdom. Nor are those who would be ruled by
divine law incapable of scrutinizing those who claim to lay it down on
the gods’ behalf. The pretensions of a Minos can be put to the test by
sufficiently reasonable people. In the event, the Cretan laws themselves
fail this test, even if the Athenian never makes explicit the implication
that they cannot be divine. To this extent, he vindicates cynicism of the
Cretan laws. But the Athenian shows such cynicism to be misplaced in
the case of the best possible laws. The best possible laws really would
descend from “gods,” whom the Athenian will delicately reconceive as
the most uncommon human beings. There are some like himself whose
wisdom transcends the mortal nature of other men (645b3–8, 835b5–c8,
875c3–d5). Truly “divine” laws would also better accommodate the polit-
ical necessities associated with lawgiving. Their genesis would be most
unlikely but would at least be brought within the ambit of the naturally
possible; such laws have a superhuman, but not supernatural, cause.
Still, one could be forgiven for thinking the Athenian’s solution to
come at the expense of reverence for law, which may prove a political
necessity in its own right. Reverence arises in the presence of that which
calls to mind human finitude; if the human comprehends the divine, as it
must if divine law originates with certain human beings, however godlike
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 49

they may be, then divine law appears to lose its awesome character. The
Athenian seems to collapse the affective distinction between gods and
men in claiming divine law to be known through human reason. And
doing so seems only to place him on the other horn of the dilemma.
Either we revere law but cannot know it apart from unaccountable inspi-
ration or we know law through responsible human reason but then cannot
reverence it as something divine. Seeing as men like Kleinias are wont to
abuse the authority they would assume in making law themselves, won’t
forsaking reverence for law simply invite their lawless plunder? If human
nature is as corruptible as tradition maintains, then suggesting that revela-
tion is accessible to unaided human reason would seem to yoke reason to
the ministry of corrupt impulses. The Athenian’s noetic account of reve-
lation would restate rather than resolving the problem with which the
dialogue begins.
The puzzle only deepens with the Athenian’s subsequent account of
what rational revelation ordains (631b–32d). Supremely reasonable laws,
he says, adopt as their end the happiness not only of those who conceive
and administer them but of all who use them (631b5–6 with 875a6–
b1). This they accomplish because they provide all good things (631b6
with 631a5–8). The good things he divides in two: human and divine,
adding that the former “depend on” (ērtētai, 631b7) the latter in that
the city that receives the divine will acquire the human goods as well but
if lacking the former will lack the latter too. Among the human goods
he lists in rank order health, beauty, strength, and wealth. The divine
goods he identifies with prudence or intelligence (phronēsis, 631c6; nous,
631c7), moderation, justice, and courage, again rank-ordered, although
to justice he assigns a special place inasmuch as it is a mixture of the
others.23 Truly divine laws, he seems to say, aim at the common good
rather than the good of the lawgiver or rulers exclusively and such laws
understand the good at which they aim as the happiness of those who use
them. Happiness they conceive as the favoring of goods of the soul to
those of the body, and as the prioritizing of certain goods of either class
to others of that class, all without excluding goods of any class.
Needless to say, much is going on in this difficult passage, more even
than is attested by the wide-ranging disagreement that it has provoked
among interpreters. For what exactly does the Athenian intend when he
says that the human goods “depend” on the divine? Does this dependency
obtain only at the level of the city, or does it apply to the individual person
as well? Why is justice alone described as a mixture of the other virtues,
50 R. A. BALLINGALL

including intelligence? And why call the virtues divine? Does he mean
to say that they transcend human nature? Does he therefore imply that
divine law aims at that which human beings cannot obtain? If so, how
does divine law engender happiness? If not, does the Athenian forsake
reverence after all, bidding men become gods?
Some scholars have thought he means that the human goods depend
on the divine in the sense that the latter are a sufficient cause of the
former. Julia Annas, to take a recent example, argues that the Athenian’s
point is consistent with one she finds everywhere in Plato: virtue of soul is
enough for a flourishing human life.24 But the claim in the Laws appears
to be even stronger than that. Divine laws ensure the happiness of those
who use them not by furnishing their users with the virtues alone but by
providing the human goods as well. Divine laws “provide all the good
things” (panta…tagatha porizousin, 631b6). Reading this passage as a
sufficiency thesis would be faithful to the text only if the virtues somehow
guaranteed health and the other human goods, only if being virtuous
entailed among other things being beautiful, strong, and wealthy. Indeed,
that is precisely how Strauss understands the passage: “the divine goods
are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the human goods, at least as
far as the city is concerned; virtue guarantees happiness, which includes
the well-being of the body…and even the right kind of wealth.”25 But
then, as Strauss reasonably concludes, the Athenian’s taxonomy of goods
becomes “a patent falsehood.”26 It ignores, among much else, the extent
to which the human goods depend on forces beyond the full control of
either the virtuous person or the best regime. Annas avoids this conclu-
sion only by deciding that Plato is confused. Seeing as “he is the first
philosopher to develop a position that a happy life requires the priority
in it of living virtuously…he has not established a clear position on what
was to become the main ethical debate in the ancient world.”27
Others have read the Athenian as laying down a less implausible
view. According to Christopher Bobonich, the Athenian subscribes to a
“dependency thesis”: it is the value of the human goods that depends on
the presence of the divine.28 In other words, the human goods are benefi-
cial only to the extent that they are enjoyed in accordance with or directed
by virtue, where virtue is conceived as ethical knowledge. Of course we
can acquire health, beauty, strength, or wealth without such knowledge,
just as we can lose such things with it. But in the former case, the human
goods cease to be of benefit and are therefore no longer “good.” In fact,
such things can provide greater scope for harming ourselves and others;
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 51

possessing them without virtue transforms them into evils (661b4–c5).

Virtue guarantees only the capacity for using the human goods well,
provided we are not obstructed by forces beyond our control. Whoever
acquires the divine goods acquires only the usefulness of whatever human
goods he happens to possess. The Athenian never claims that virtue could
somehow guarantee the acquisition of bodily powers and material pros-
perity. That would require conquering chance, a prospect he explicitly
disavows (709a–c, 879b).
Alternatively, Susan Sauvé Meyer distinguishes a “political version” of
the Athenian’s claim from a “personal version” and argues that he intends
only the former.29 This political version holds that the divine goods guar-
antee the human goods to the city as a whole while the personal version
claims that they guarantee those goods to individual people. The polit-
ical version allows that the virtues and the human goods they supposedly
secure can be scattered in the city. The same people need not have all the
virtues in order for the city to acquire health or prosperity or whatever
else, nor need such things be guaranteed to those in whom the virtues are
actually present. In other words, the political version accommodates the
intuition that virtue is noble, involving the sacrifice of personal advan-
tage for the common good. It also nicely squares with the grammar of
the relevant sentence (631b8), whose subject is polis. Yet Meyer’s reading
does not escape the difficulty that virtue—understood in anything like
its conventional sense of moral altruism—does not always or even usually
produce health, beauty, strength, or prosperity, whether in the virtuous
person herself or in those she dutifully serves. Meyer appeals to the
authority of Hobbes on this point, but the virtues extolled by Hobbes
are anything but qualities of noble altruism nor is the end they serve
among the human goods that the Athenian enumerates.

The Persistence of Tradition

As interesting and important as these disagreements are, they do not
yet take us to the heart of the puzzle introduced by the Athenian’s
remarks. This we can appreciate only by considering what is in some
ways their most obvious yet perplexing aspect: their presentation of the
virtues as goods that are divine. Interpreters usually assume that the Athe-
nian intends the divine as a beacon for human improvement; they are
struck by his reform of classical piety away from a transactional exchange
of services and towards the imitation of perfection.30 But interpreters
52 R. A. BALLINGALL

seldom dwell on the problem introduced if he also means for the divine to
delineate human capabilities, as it is does in traditional accounts of divine
law. The Athenian’s rational account of such law might radically trans-
form tradition, not least by adhering to the Socratic practice identifying
the divine with philosophic autonomy.31 Yet precisely that identification
suggests tradition inasmuch as the virtue associated with the philosopher
is radically inaccessible, precious, and rare. Such virtue is “divine” not
only because it alone can be the source of law in the strict sense but also
because it transcends human nature as it overwhelmingly presents itself.
The virtue that is divine is off-limits to the citizen who remains a “human
being,” in whom the divine should inspire feelings of respect and awe.
Interpreting the Athenian along these lines does raise a number of
difficulties, for on this view he speaks of piety as a matter of emulating
“god” and of revering the divine at the same time. Does that make sense?
How can we resemble that which we foreswear? Doesn’t the invitation to
become like god work at cross purposes with exhortations to reverence
him? Why extend such invitations at all if the Athenian would preserve the
traditional curb against unjust lawgivers? Indeed, it is tempting simply
to dismiss these questions by reading the Laws as a more thorough-
going repudiation of tradition. If the Athenian holds that all men should
become as philosophic as they are severally able, then he need not stress
the need of reverence to keep some or most from overreaching them-
selves.32 Popular enlightenment brooks no great risk. As we have already
begun to see, however, this cannot be his real position. Insofar as polit-
ical men remain like Kleinias, the Athenian suggests emulating his own
tactful approach to handling them. Men like Kleinias must practice poli-
tics in a spirit of humble service and according to rules over which they
have little input. They must refuse to be their own authority lest they
abuse their own prerogatives. And what is philosophy if not the quest
to replace opinion believed on authority with wisdom won by thinking
for ourselves? Far from encouraging such philosophic daring in Kleinias,
the Athenian unsettles his self-assuredness only to replace it within a safer
dogmatism. He “softens” and “melts” the Cretan only to forge his soul
in new molds (compare 671b–d and 853e). It is true that citizens living
under truly divine law would be morally superior to Kleinias.33 They
would benefit from the rigorous education that such law puts into effect.
But the Athenian speaks of the precise nature of that education in the
most ambiguous of terms. Occasionally, he seems to say that it would
bring out the whole of virtue in its pupils, helping them achieve the
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 53

serene internal harmony of “a perfect human being” (653a9–b1). But

more often he describes the virtue to which education aspires as a form
of self-mastery grounded in habit-bred “moderation” (compare 696d–
e with 716d, 732b, and 733d–34c). He seems to imply that the virtue
for which civic education prepares citizens is not so removed from the
condition into which he guides Kleinias.
The Athenian turns to the topic of education in the course of
interrogating Megillus, whom he has asked to demonstrate the divine
provenance of Sparta’s laws. Having laid down the rationalist criteria for
recognizing divine law, the Athenian challenges his companions to show
how the Dorian lawgivers of Crete and Sparta live up to that standard. In
particular, he bids them show the ways in which the Dorian laws educate
citizens in the whole of virtue, and not just in some of virtue’s parts. The
laconic Megillus he thus goads into speaking up by impugning the laws
of Lacedaemon for neglecting moderation (635e5–6, 636a4–e3). The
response he solicits proves well suited to his broader purpose. Rather than
defending Sparta against the Athenian’s censures, Megillus attacks Athens
for falling short in its own right: he inveighs the symposium and the
debauch revelry connected with the festival of Dionysus (636e4–637b6).
Megillus thus allows the Athenian to play the patriot, challenging the laws
of Sparta by respectably defending his own.34 He also permits the Athe-
nian to use drunkenness as an allegory for education, as he subsequently
does throughout the remainder of the dialogue.35 Whatever else might be
said against the laws of Athens and the Athenian will in time show that
much can be said against them (698a9–701c4, 866b10–e2), permitting
great pleasures, not least those of “intoxication,” is not necessarily among
them. Drunkenness, properly managed, can make a decisive contribution
to education, if only we understand education correctly (641c8–d3).
Understood correctly, the Athenian explains education treats of chil-
dren at play.36 It makes use of games to direct the pleasures and desires
of the young “toward those activities in which they must become perfect”
(634c8). The core of education, he thus concludes, “is a correct nurture,
one which, as much as possible draws the soul of the child at play toward
an erotic attachment to what he must do when he becomes a man who
is perfect as regards the virtue of his occupation” (643d1–3). This he
intends as an improvement on the Dorian approach to pleasure, which
amounts to a harsh prohibition. The laws of Crete and Sparta recognize
that early and sustained exposure to pain and fear is needed if citizens
are to learn courage37 ; they neglect the analogous exposure to pleasure
54 R. A. BALLINGALL

and desire through which citizens might learn moderation. Nevertheless,

more “balanced” though it may be, the virtue conceived by the Atheni-
an’s education remains far from the godlike condition of the philosophic
soul, so much so that it would be a stretch to describe it even as a dim
approximation. If civic education were to teach an approximation to that
capacity, one would expect such education to become liberal education.
One would expect it to go some way towards liberating the citizen from
unexamined opinions, equipping him to grasp for himself the grounds
for the “true opinion” behind the law. Accordingly, one would expect
the citizen to obey divine law because of the education in the virtues that
it confers, understanding that the virtues are good in and of themselves.
One would not expect his obedience to depend overwhelmingly on iden-
tifying lawfulness and virtue with pleasure, unlawfulness and vice with
pain. Yet these are precisely the identities at the core both of the educa-
tion that the Athenian holds out for the city and of the exhortations that
would establish its authority. As the Athenian had said a few lines before,
“…about human beings who inquire into laws almost their entire inquiry
concerns pleasures and pains” (636d5–7, cf. 732e, 713c, 875b, 947e).
That appeals to pleasure and pain represent concessions to human
weakness is attested by the paternalistic language with which the Athe-
nian speaks of civic education. Children sense pleasure and pain before
they are able to reason. That is why childhood education can at best
habituate the passions to accord with what reason might later affirm. But
the Athenian denies that the intellectual virtue standing beyond child-
hood education is broadly accessible to adults. “As for prudence, and
true opinions that are firmly held,” he says, “he is a fortunate person to
whom it comes even in old age” (653a7–9). It is such a person whom
he calls perfect without qualification. Education, however, is preoccupied
with becoming perfect only as regards the virtue of one’s occupation (tēs
tou pragmatos aretēs, 643d3). Is the perfect citizen really to be identified
with the perfect human being?38 Apparently not, seeing as the Athenian
immediately hives off (apotem[nei], 653c2) “that part of virtue which
consists in being correctly trained as regards pleasures and pains” and
asserts that it is the attainment of only this part that is to be called educa-
tion (653b6–c4). The perfect citizen who benefits from such education
would seem to remain like a child. He can be trained to love and hate that
which reason endorses and rejects, but the reason with which his passions
agree does not necessarily abide within himself.
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 55

In this vein, it is important to see that the Athenian does not

confine the language of children, games, and play to the very young and
their activities. He likens certain adults to children (646a4–5, 685a7–8,
687d10–e1, 712b1–2), just as he describes certain men as beasts (777b,
781d–e, 808d). Indeed, he characterizes the overall relationship between
law and the city as akin to that between father and son (662e–663a2,
687d–688a, 859a1–6). This point he makes especially clear in dialogue
with Megillus, while explaining how to think of the failure of the archaic
Peloponnesian confederacy. He attributes the collapse of this old alliance
between Sparta, Argos, and Messene to “ignorance regarding the greatest
of human affairs” (688c), but the ignorance he has in mind is of a pecu-
liar sort. Cities are afflicted by the greatest ignorance not because they
lack prudence or intelligence per se, as we might expect, but because they
refuse to follow the prudence or intelligence of others. Just as fathers
should not wish for the prayers of their sons to be fulfilled indiscrimi-
nately, seeing as they are young and irrational (687d6–8), so laws should
not be laid down such as are simply most gratifying to the populace
and the majority, as the Peloponnesian founders had apparently done
in looking to military force above all else (684c1–5). Fathers who want
what is best for their sons should wish, not for their sons’ prayers to be
answered, but for their prayers to follow prudence and intelligence; “it
is dangerous for one who lacks intelligence to pray” (688b6–7). Anal-
ogously, lawgivers should not pander to what is popular but persuade
the majority to obey intelligent rulers and lawgivers. And just as fathers
cannot rely on reason alone to persuade young children, so lawgivers
cannot do so with sub-philosophic citizens. In the soul, the Athenian
explains, “the part that feels pain and pleasure is like the populace and
the majority in the city” (689b1–2). In the perfect human being, this
“popular part of the soul” (tou plēthous…tēs psychēs, 689a9) is directed by
the part capable of “knowledge, or opinions, or reason” (689b2). In the
city, meanwhile, “the majority” (to plēthos ) should obey the rulers and
the law (689b4–5), assuming the latter give voice to the opinions of a
consummate lawgiver, not some charlatan. The crucial and massive point
is that the parts of soul and city capable of ethical knowledge or even true
opinion are distinct from those characterized by pleasure and pain. The
latter’s obedience to the former cannot be achieved by rational persua-
sion, if by that term we mean persuasion that treats those to whom it is
56 R. A. BALLINGALL

addressed as rational agents, responsive to more than anticipation of plea-

sure or expectation of pain.39 Citizens stand to divine law as do children
to their parents.
Such frank paternalism presents interpreters with a problem, particu-
larly those who read the city of the Laws with Bobonich, as “a community
of the virtuous.”40 For how can the virtues that the Athenian marks out
as divine be accessible to the city if civic virtue is so profoundly dependent
on others’ leadership? The divine goods are led by intellectual virtue, but
the Athenian unambiguously denies such virtue to the city. Indeed, it is
hard to see how the childlike citizen even vaguely approximates the god
or godlike man whom he is called to emulate. There is between them
a difference of kind, not just degree (see also 835b–c). But why then
enjoin political men to imitate god at all? Why claim that truly divine
law provides goods it cannot give? The problem is not insoluble within
the logic of the dialogue, as we shall see. But untangling the knot that
Plato ties does require accepting the Athenian’s paternalism at face value.
Civic education under divine law does not in ordinary citizens realize
the virtues that are divine. It achieves the excellence of the acolyte or
follower (690b8–c1, 716b8–9, 728c6–8), not the sublime self-sufficiency
of wisdom.

Puppets of the Gods; Drinkers at the Banquet

As demeaning as all this may sound, the Athenian does recognize a
certain dignity in the diligent follower. Civic virtue is not only a matter
of humble obedience to lawful authority. It is also a proud distinction,
fruit of an ongoing regimen through which the citizen is habituated to
serve the community before himself. Public service he describes as issuing
not merely from fear of punishment or blind obedience but also from
learned passion for the noble deeds that it entails (643e4–6). Meanwhile,
noble deeds he speaks of less as valor in battle than as zeal in friend-
ship (729d, 730e, 738d, 740e, 743c). Indeed, contra Kleinias, citizenship
is expressed paradigmatically in the care that we ought to have for the
character of fellow citizens (730d, 738e); civic education teaches citizens
to become educators in their own right, surveilling and where necessary
chastising their compatriots. Such language can of course seem chillingly
intrusive,41 but that impression has more to do with idiosyncrasies of
modern liberalism than with anything uniquely Platonic. In emphasizing
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 57

civic friendship as the acme of political life, the Laws articulates an aspi-
ration familiar to classical politics more broadly.42 Our abhorrence of the
practical requirements of that aspiration attests to how radically expec-
tations of citizenship have changed in modern regimes. As a matter of
principle, liberal democrats don’t involve themselves in others’ “private”
affairs, certainly not in the question of the fitness of others’ characters.
Our virtue as citizens is expressed in refraining from such involvement,
which is to respect others’ rights. Even so, the thought that good friends
implicate themselves in our lives in these intimate ways is not utterly
foreign to us. Most of us wish for friends (if not for neighbors) good
enough to intervene if ever we are seized by destructive passions or delu-
sions, lest we debase ourselves or otherwise do wrong. Good friends want
what is best for each other, not least when it comes to moral excellence.
Nonetheless, the Athenian tempers this charming picture in ways that
should not escape our close attention. He is perfectly aware of how civic
friendship can slide into malign surveillance and libelous incrimination.43
He commends many criminal and administrative procedures in anticipa-
tion of that very threat (879a, 917d, 937c–d, 947e–49c, cf. 943d–e). Nor
does he innocently suppose that love of noble deeds can on its own estab-
lish and sustain a robust ethic of public service. He recognizes that public
spiritedness sits uneasily in the citizen with desires for private satisfac-
tions, many of which are inconsistent with justice. That is why he speaks
of the virtue to which civic education aspires in terms of self-mastery. In
keeping with the intuition of Kleinias, he illustrates civic virtue with an
image of psychic conflict. We might “assume” (tithōmen, 644c4) that we
are each of us one person, but in fact most of us have within ourselves
“two opposed and imprudent counselors [symboulō aphrone], which we
call pleasure and pain” (644c6–7), connected to which are opinions about
the future that lead to either fearful expectation or eager anticipation
(644c9–d1). These “counselors” the Athenian likens to puppet strings,
“drawing and pulling against one another in opposite directions and
towards opposing deeds, struggling in the region where virtue and vice lie
separated from one another” (644e1–4). According to the image, virtue
consists in following the pull (tēn agōgēn) of a separate, “sacred,” and
“golden” string, which he calls “calculation [logismos ] as to which of them
[pleasure, pain, and their associated opinions] is better and which worse”
(644d1–2 with 644e4–45a1). But adherence to calculation is described in
the same agonistic terminology. Calculation’s pull is “gentle rather than
violent,” yet in the virtuous puppet it must nonetheless prevail or “be
58 R. A. BALLINGALL

victorious” (nikai) over the other strings (645a5–7), which threaten to

lead the citizen astray.44
If the virtue that the image illustrates cannot be described as psychic
consonance, it should not be understood as an affirmation of personal
agency either.45 The myth ostensibly clarifies “the notion of being supe-
rior or inferior to oneself” (645b2–3), but the Athenian could hardly have
chosen language more suggestive of external directedness. The virtuous
puppet may be “divine” (644d8), but it remains the plaything of outside
powers; it is not pulled by an intelligence or prudence all its own. Even
the logismos that the puppet does follow takes the form of “the common
opinion of the city” (dogma poleōs koinon, 644d3; compare 645a1–2). The
Athenian allows that a “private individual” might “acquire within himself
true reasoning (logon alēthē) about these strings and live according to it”
(645b4–5), but such a case he marks out as exceptional. As far as the
city is concerned, it should “take over (paralabousan) its reasoning either
from one of the gods or from this knower of these things, and then set
up the reasoning as the law for itself” (645b6–7). The citizen rules or
is superior to himself only by permitting lawful opinion to govern his
appetites and aversions, as the puppet imagery unmistakably suggests. He
does not pull his own strings. He is not a god or godlike man.46
These points too suggest that the virtue towards which divine law leads
the citizen is not so different from the condition into which the Athe-
nian leads Kleinias. Education might “train” his likes and dislikes to agree
more adequately with what divine law would have him think and do.
But even under divine law, passions incongruent with intelligence would
seem to endure, requiring the citizen to reject many of his impulses and
to be at odds with himself. Civic virtue is a matter of self-mastery. Not
in vain does the Athenian devote the passages succeeding the puppet
image to the praise of awe and shame (esp. 647a8–b1), whose helpful-
ness implies vicious passions that must be overpowered. “One should
not feel shame. And to be the sort of person to do anything shameful
is the mark of someone base.”47 But the Athenian suggests as a model
for education the symposium or drinking party precisely because of how
it might strengthen a sense of shame. A well-led symposium can become a
“gymnastic training in combatting [shamelessness],” he explains, making
the citizen “a victorious fighter against his own pleasures” (647c8–10).
Under the influence of wine, we lose the inhibitions that otherwise give
us pause. We forget ourselves, becoming less cognizant of others’ judg-
ment and opinion. Insofar as our sober behavior is shaped by fear of such
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 59

opinion, we will deviate from it while drunk, succumbing to impulses that

our sense of shame ordinarily keeps at bay. That is why a “sober and wise
ruler” (640d4), set over the drunkards, might intensify the watchfulness
over themselves that they otherwise keep, lest they do again that for which
the symposiarch shames them.
The Athenian might seem to speak of a separate sort of education when
later describing the symposium as a pedagogical “safeguard” (sōtēria,
653a3).48 It is here that he describes as education the training of passions
to harmonize with reason. But he evidently foresees grave limits to such
training, which “tends to slacken in human beings, and in the course
of a lifetime becomes corrupted to a great extent” (653c9–10). For this
reason, he says, divine law ordains myriad festivals, apparently modeled on
the symposium, that would literally fill the calendar (835d–e). The invigo-
ration of shame would seem so needful that it can never be left alone. The
prophylactic “safeguard” would seem after all the primary treatment.49
The Athenian also connects the shame that the symposium would
intensify with reverent awe (aidōs, 647a10, 671d2). As citizens, it is not
just anyone whose good opinion we should be afraid of losing, he says. We
should feel especially ashamed of falling short in the eyes of the lawgiver,
“whose laws must be fellow drinkers at the banquet” (671c). We should
be most fearful of disgracing ourselves before the gods whose laws we
would have thus transgressed; the good lawgiver decrees laws that are
divine. Seeing as the well-instructed symposium intentionally leads the
citizen to dishonor himself in just this way, in the eyes of gods, it also
brings home to the citizen the extent to which he remains a human being.
While drunk, he betrays an “ignoble boldness” that he would otherwise
have concealed (671c8). He reveals to himself his true colors and is hope-
fully awakened to his need of leadership. But under divine law, the shame
that he subsequently feels takes on a greater, even cosmic significance;
the standard he fails to meet is not only ordained by the gods; it is in
some sense to become like the gods. The virtues he would practice are
goods that are divine. The analogy of education to drinking thus returns
us once again to the enigma with which we began. For why feel ashamed
of falling short of that which we cannot attain? Shouldn’t reverence itself
keep us from adopting the divine as the criterion for ourselves? Why lose
face merely for betraying our nature as human beings?
60 R. A. BALLINGALL

The Measure of All Things

These questions become especially sharp once the dialogue turns explicitly
to constructing “a city in speech” (702d1–2). Having tempted Kleinias
into revealing his purpose of founding a city in deed, the Athenian begins
the dialogue anew.50 He agrees to help the Cretan establish “the city that
is going to exist” (702d4) by imaginatively rehearsing the considerations
that Kleinias will have to take into account.51 We therefore expect the
conversation to take a practical turn, despite the theme of utopia; the
Athenian offers to guide a practical—if vastly difficult—task.52 But the
guidance that he provides comes as a shock to his companions and raises
serious questions about the viability of the enterprise on which Kleinias
has embarked. The new beginning that the Athenian makes does at first
seem practical enough: he leads the Dorians through considerations about
where the city should be located and whom it should invite as colonists.
But he shortly contrives to discuss “the natural genesis of the best regime”
(712a2–3), which he attributes to the unlikely coincidence of a “true”
lawgiver with a “moderate” tyrant (709e–10b, 711d–12a). To Kleinias,
who is personally unacquainted with tyrannical rule (711a6–7) and whose
own, “mixed” regime looks on tyranny with deep hostility, this is an
astonishing assertion.53 “How and by what argument,” he asks, “could
someone say this and persuade himself that what he is saying is correct?”
(710c). Don’t tyrants rule with violence and for their own private advan-
tage? How could a tyrannized city engender “the political regime whose
possession will make [the city] most happy” (710b)? Kleinias himself may
be attracted to tyranny, but even he acknowledges that it is unjust and
shameful.
To allay this incredulity, the Athenian suggests that his remarks be
interpreted “like a myth, pronounced in oracular fashion” (712a4), as
though he were the medium of divine voices.54 He then invites his inter-
locutors to “invoke a god in the setting up of the city” and to pray the
deity join them in their quest to found the city in speech. Does the Athe-
nian imply that he and his mind are the “god” to be invoked? Certainly,
it is the Athenian whose guidance answers this prayer and who later iden-
tifies god with intelligence. Perhaps intelligence must clothe itself in the
form of traditional gods if it is to have authority with men like these. Be
that as it may, the Dorians remain dumbfounded when asked to name the
regime that is to be: surely the Athenian doesn’t mean it to be a tyranny?
(712c3–5). So rather than openly concluding what his interlocutors can
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 61

hardly accept, the Athenian proposes “a little more use be made of myth”
(713a6) and conjures another “oracular report” (713c2).
He now describes a golden age of the most distant antiquity, when
Zeus’ father and predecessor, Kronos, is said to have governed the
cosmos. Like the Eleatic Stranger of Plato’s Statesman, who tells his own
myth of Kronos (268e–74e), the Athenian in the Laws revises this tradi-
tional tale. Indeed, he renders it much friendlier to tradition itself, and to
the ancestral authority on which tradition relies. No mention is made of
the violence with which Kronos overthrew his own father and earned for
himself and his siblings their pejorative epithet—“Titans…[who] strained
[titainontas ] and did presumptuously [atasthaliēi] an awesome deed”
(Hesiod, Theogony 207–10).55 Rather, the Athenian speaks of “a certain
very happy rule and arrangement” that came into being under Kronos, of
which “the best of arrangements of the present time is in fact an imitation
[mimēma]” (713b1–4). According to the Athenian,

Kronos understood that…human nature is not at all capable of regulating

the human things, when it possesses autocratic authority over everything
[autokratōr panta], without becoming swollen with insolence and injustice
[hybreōs…kai adikias ]. So, reflecting on these things, he set up at that
time kings and rulers within our cities—not human beings, but demons
[daimonas ], members of a more divine and better species. (713c5–d2)

Apparently, these daimones ruled as benevolent masters or despots (713a,

d5), caring for their mortal subjects and keeping them from the winner-
take-all struggle that attends political life now that human beings rule over
one another (715a–b). The rule of god “provided peace and reverence
[aidō] and good laws and justice without stint” (713e1–2); the rule of
men leaves “no device for salvation” (714a7–8; 713e4–6). It would seem,
then, that the best regime does not merely emerge “out of tyranny”;
the best regime is a tyranny, if one that redounds to the good of the
ruled.56 Due to the infirmities of “human nature,” however, the best
regime cannot be tyrannized by “human beings.” It can come into being
only thanks to the intervention of deities and can be emulated only by
setting up law as a despotic ruler in their stead (715d). Humanity should
“imitate by every device [mimeisthai…pasēi mēchanēi] the way of life that
is said to have existed under Kronos” (713e6–7), yet we can do so only
by “obeying whatever within us partakes of immortality, giving the name
‘law’ to the distribution ordained by intelligence” (713e8–14a2).
62 R. A. BALLINGALL

By so boldly altering the traditional myth, the Athenian has made

it more consonant with traditional society, or at least appear that way.
Instead of a parricidal Titan, the deep past was presided over by a wise,
philanthropic godhead. The myth of Kronos might vouch for the worthi-
ness of despotism and tyranny, but it gives ancestral authority a shot in
the arm. Even Kleinias, whose respect for tradition is shaky, as we have
seen, is mollified by the Athenian’s speech. “Presumably it is necessary to
obey it,” he concedes (714b2). For a more careful audience, however, the
myth must be a provocation to ponder what it is that the Athenian is really
up to. For if “human nature is not at all capable” of wielding autocratic
rule, then why call the best human regime “an imitation” of autocracy?
He cannot mean that mortal rulers should seek to become good-enough
tyrants. That possibility would seem excluded by calling for the rule of
law and by naming appropriate, mortal rulers “servants” (715c7) and
even “slaves” of the laws (715d5).57 As such language suggests, his
account of the rule of law explicitly contrasts the latter to autocracy and
tyranny.58 “Where law itself is ruled over and lacks sovereign authority
[archomenos…kai akyros ], I see destruction at hand for such a place”
(715d3–4). One wonders, then, how the rule of law can be an imitation
of tyranny.59 One equally wonders why the Athenian champions tyranny
at all, given that the regime he encourages Kleinias to arrange for his city
would foreswear autocracy so emphatically. Does eliciting respect for the
tyranny of god and calling for its imitation not present men like Kleinias
with a dangerous temptation?60 Would it not be more prudent of the
Athenian simply to aver that the best regime subordinates its rulers to
law? Does it even make sense to exalt a regime that presupposes super-
human rulers? If the necessity of such rulers implies the impossibility of
the regime in which they are needed, then the Athenian must deny that
the good be limited by the possible. But can that position be sustained?
Analogous questions are raised by the Athenian’s subsequent exhorta-
tion to the individual citizens of the city in speech. Having moved the
Dorians to accept the unacceptable as concerns the regime, he imag-
ines the three of them addressing the assembled colonists who are to
comprehend the city’s first generation:

‘Sirs,’ let us address them, ‘the god, just as the ancient saying has it,
holding the beginning and the end and the middle of all the beings,
completes his straight course by revolving, according to nature. Following
him always is Justice, avenger of those who forsake the divine law. He
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 63

who is going to become happy follows Her, in humility and orderliness

[tapeinos kai kekosmēmenos ]. But anyone who is puffed up with boast-
fulness, or who feels exalted because of riches or honors or good bodily
form accompanied by youth and mindlessness, anyone whose soul burns
with insolence [meth’ hybreōs ] and hence regards himself as needing neither
ruler nor any leader but rather considers himself capable of leading others,
is left behind, abandoned by the god’. (715e–16b)

Just as rulers of the godlike regime would avoid hybris by submitting to

the external direction of “law,” so its citizens would observe reverence
by following “the god,” thus accepting “the divine law” and the human
need of a leadership that no mere mortal can supply. Indeed, in calling
for citizens to be tapeinos (716a4), the Athenian could hardly be more
chastening; as Annas points out, the adjective carries with it a pejora-
tive valence of spinelessness and groveling, which the Athenian elsewhere
brings to the surface (728d, 791d).61 Be that as it may, Kleinias seems to
grasp the pith of the Athenian’s meaning: “this at least is clear,” he says.
“Every man must think about how he may become one of the followers
[hōs tōn sunakolouthēsontōn] of the god” (716b).
But no sooner has the Athenian directed the citizen to become such a
lowly follower or acolyte (akolouthos ) than he charges him to become like
the god he follows. He asks Kleinias to identify “the activity that is dear
to and follows god” and answers his own question:

There is one, and it is expressed in a single ancient saying: ‘like is dear

to like, if it is measured’; things that lack measure are dear neither to one
another nor to things that possess measure. For us, the god would be the
measure of all things in the highest degree, and far more so than some
‘human being,’ as they assert. He who is to become dear to such a being
must necessarily do all in his power to become like him; and according to
this argument the moderate man among us [ho sōphrōn] is dear to god,
because similar [homoios gar], while the man who is not moderate [ho de
mē sōphrōn] is dissimilar and unjust—and the other things follow thus,
according to the same argument. (716c–d)

Notwithstanding the connection of godlikeness to moderation

(sōphrosunē), it seems that the Athenian is once again asking mortals
to emulate the very thing against which he warns them. For if “god is the
measure of all things,” then to “do all in [one’s] power to become like
him” is to try to become the measure oneself, one who “all alone…will
64 R. A. BALLINGALL

follow reason alone” (835c; compare 645b).62 Yet the Athenian has just
said that the citizen must do the opposite and must regard himself as
needing a ruler and leader and authoritative framework outside his own
subjective judgment. To think otherwise is to burn “with insolence”
(meth’ hybreōs, 716a7), i.e., to fail to observe the boundary between
human and divine. Presumably, it is to discourage hubris that he qualifies
godlikeness with moderation and due measure. But doing so does not
dissolve the problem in any obvious way, for if being moderate is to
be subordinate to “the divine law” (716a3), then to that extent being
moderate is to be unlike god. The god’s moderation must be consistent
with his autonomy, the god being his own measure and source of wisdom
(see also 899b). It is, then, of the greatest moment that the Athenian
neglects to mention wisdom or intelligence or prudence in connection
with the “moderate” man at 716c–d. One could be forgiven for thinking
these two moderations not at all the same; imitating god with due
measure hardly seems like imitating god at all.63 The questions arising
from the Athenian’s myth of Kronos thus recur in the Athenian’s speech
to the colonists. On his account, there is an implicit disanalogy between
the virtues of citizen and god. How then can we understand the one
as an imitation of (or bearing a resemblance to) the other? Similarly,
the citizen must disavow the autonomy vouchsafed to god. So why bid
him become like the deity he would revere? Doing so would seem only
to confound the political calling, unnecessarily tempting the citizen to
transgress the boundary from which he is supposed to pull back.

Our Task
There is a manifold enigma at the core of Plato’s Laws, yet interpreters
have never built an interpretation around unriddling it. Scholars have
addressed the puzzling aspects of the passages that we have examined, but
they have always done so in asides or without recognizing the common
thread running through them. The full depth of the puzzle has not yet
been fathomed, an omission that attests to the neglect of reverence as a
theme—even the theme—of the dialogue. The strangeness of the Atheni-
an’s exhortations to become like god becomes clear only once we grasp
how godlikeness conflicts with the virtue that the Athenian would other-
wise revive and preserve, and how this conflict runs through the whole
work. Reverence is shown in the presence of the divine—that which calls
to mind one’s finitude as a human being. And reverence is needed in
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 65

citizens and lawgivers like Kleinias, who must recognize the dangers of
overreaching themselves, dangers they especially brook inasmuch as they
regard law as something merely human. At the same time, however, the
Athenian intimates that divine law itself is ordained by human beings.
It is revealed, not in miraculous messages inaccessible to others, but in
the application of human intelligence—that within us which “partakes of
immortality” (713e8). This novel presentation of divine law has its advan-
tages, but, as we have seen, it conflicts with the reverence for law whose
importance the Athenian is otherwise at pains to stress. It is this same
paradox that crops up time and again as the Laws unfolds. In the Atheni-
an’s curious typology of goods, in his ambiguous treatment of education,
in his initial account of the best regime, and in his imagined speech to
the first Magnesians—in all these places, we read of the importance of
emulating god, the source of divine law, but are always reminded of our
insuperable humanity, and hence of our need to follow laws external to
or above ourselves. Indeed, the Athenian suggests that one becomes like
god precisely by remembering that one is no god at all; observing the
gulf between the human and divine, one somehow transcends it.
Seeing as Plato assigns this enigma such a central place within the
dialogue, we are compelled to seek a reading that accounts for that impor-
tance, and that clarifies the questions that this puzzle poses. Accordingly,
each of the ensuing three chapters is devoted to unpacking one such
question. Given the apparent conflict between divine model and human
imitation, Chapter Three asks how the Athenian intends the latter to
resemble or become like the former. What does he mean by “imitation”?
Chapter Four asks why the Athenian encourages imitations that cannot
be brought to completion. The city is threatened by tyranny that does
not submit to divine law and by citizenship that insists on independent
judgment. Why, then, speak of the divine in ways that flirt with precisely
these outcomes? Finally, the fifth chapter asks how observing “modera-
tion” permits the citizen to assimilate himself to god. The Athenian might
claim that truly divine law aims at the whole of virtue, but the education
and exhortations that would be law’s tools appear to realize in citizens
only a shadow of divine excellence. After all, it is the moderate man who
is said to be dear to god, because similar. How then does this limited
moderation relate to the goods that are divine? Can a person have a part
of virtue without having the whole?
66 R. A. BALLINGALL

Notes
1. Translations of the Bacchae are adapted from Paul Rahe, Republics Ancient
and Modern, vol. 1 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1992), 215–16. Note again the close association of reverence with
moderation.
2. The paradox that I find in the imitation of god has hardly been noticed
by scholars working on this theme in Plato, in part because they have
seldom devoted attention to its role in the Laws. Studies of the imita-
tion of god in the Platonic dialogues include Culbert G. Rutenber, The
Doctrine of the Imitation of God in Plato, Ph.D. dissertation, Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1946); Michael L.
Morgan, Platonic Piety: Philosophy and Ritual in Fourth-Century Athens
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); David Sedley, “‘Becoming like
God’ in the Timaeus and Aristotle,” in Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias:
Proceedings of the IV Symposium Platonicum, eds. Luc Brisson and Tomás
C. Martínez (Sankt Augustin: Academia, 1997), 327–39; David Sedley,
“The Ideal of Godlikeness,” in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion and the
Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); John M.
Armstrong, “After the Ascent: Plato on Becoming Like God,” Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy 25 (2004): 171–83; Julia Annas, “Becoming
Like God: Ethics, Human Nature, and the Divine,” in Platonic Ethics, Old
and New (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 52–71; Jean-François
Pradeau, “L’Assimilation au Dieu,” in Les Dieux de Platon, ed. Jérôme
Laurent (Caen: Presses Universitaire de Caen, 2003), 41–51; Gabriela
R. Carone, Plato’s Cosmology and Its Ethical Significance (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
3. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” in The Laws of Plato, 379. The identity
of the Athenian Stranger is a question that has provoked a wide range
of speculations. Mainstream readers working in the tradition of analytic
ancient philosophy typically interpret him as Plato’s mouthpiece. See,
e.g., Klosko, Development, 198. Strauss suggests that he represents a
counterfactual Socrates who took up Crito’s offer to flee Athens rather
than drinking the hemlock (Argument and Action, 2). See also Leo
Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1959), 31. Zuckert argues that the Athenian is rather a singular
pre-Socratic philosopher whose project in the Laws represents a dead end
upon which Socratic political philosophy improves (Plato’s Philosophers,
31–33, 53–58). Schofield proposes that he is a latter-day Solon (Plato,
75–76).
4. That the Athenian is testing or probing his interlocutors is confirmed
at 633a1–5. Compare Lutz, Divine Law, 38, which treats these tests as
part of an open-minded inquiry into the claims made on behalf of divine
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 67

law. My own view is that the Athenian approaches the conversation with
Kleinias less neutrally. He rightly suspects and confirms Kleinias’s disre-
spect for the customary account of Cretan law. For an excellent account
of Kleinias’ disrespectful attitude in this regard, see Pangle “Interpretive
Essay,” 379–82. See also Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 65.
5. For the famous distinction between the argument or “speeches” of a
dialogue (the things said by one or more of its characters, ostensibly in
support of some controversial proposition) and its action or “deeds” (the
ways in which the characters interact with one another, as well as with the
setting or framing device), see Strauss, City and Man, 59–60.
6. Strauss, Argument and Action, 3. If what is just is what is lawful, which
it must be if the lawful is what is enjoined by the gods, then Kleinias
seems to be referring to the law the Cretans share with the Lacedaemo-
nians, the one that forbids the young from inquiring into the integrity
of the laws and that “commands all to say in harmony, with one voice
from one mouth, that all the laws are finely made by gods” (634d). To
ascribe to Zeus the origin of the Cretan laws is to conform to this “law of
laws” (Strauss, Argument and Action, 11). Readers of the Republic are of
course already familiar with the Socratic proposition that just speech is not
necessarily truthful. Compare Republic 539c–d. For an alternate reading
of this passage, see Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, 260n22.
7. The beginning of the Laws is thus an allusion to Odyssey XVII, 485–
87: “For the gods do take on all sorts of shapes, appearing as strangers,
and thus they range through the cities, watching to see which men are
lawful, and which irreverent [hubrin]” (trans. Lattimore, with modifica-
tions). Like Odysseus, the Athenian is a godlike man who goes about
incognito, testing the reverence of others. Kleinias does not prove an
incorrigible Antinous, against whom the Odyssey’s warning is directed,
but he does betray a hubris all his own. Compare Albert Keith Whitaker,
A Journey into Platonic Politics: Plato’s Laws (Lanham: University Press
of America, 2004), 7–11 and Lutz, Divine Law, who interpret Kleinias as
pious, religiously conservative, and more or less simple-minded. Bobonich,
Plato’s Utopia Recast, helpfully stresses the extent to which Kleinias thinks
that “goods other than virtue are much more important that virtue itself”
(122) while acknowledging Kleinias’ enduring if contradictory and subter-
ranean attachment to virtue’s intrinsic merit (133). Even so, Bobonich
neglects the antinomian character of Kleinias’ corruption.
8. I try to adhere to a distinction between piety and reverence that is not
always clear in the classical sources. Piety (hosios ) I take to be a species of
justice: viz. that part of justice that pertains to the gods. Reverence (aidōs,
sebas, eusebeia) I take to refer to the virtue governing the key “emotions of
self-assessment,” viz. awe and shame. The two virtues are obviously related
and can even collapse into each other in ways not unlike how piety can
68 R. A. BALLINGALL

collapse into justice. Consider, e.g., Euthyphro 5d–6a, where Euthyphro

claims to act justly because he imitates Zeus. As Strauss rightly remarks,
one must contrast the “orthodox” view of piety as doing what the gods
tell us to do with Euthyphro’s notion, which is doing what the gods do.
“Euthyphron’s view of piety is heretical” because irreverent. Leo Strauss,
“An Untitled Lecture on Plato’s Euthyphron,” Interpretation 24, no. 1
(1996): 13.
9. As the context of the second and third passages makes clear (esp. 712e–
13a), the Athenian somewhat exempts Crete and Sparta from his dispar-
agement of human rulers (somewhat, because the context of the first
passage suggests that Sparta at any rate has succeeded in avoiding tyranny
only through good fortune). His point in all three passages is that only
where “a god” rules rather than human beings, through the medium of
divine law, only there will rule redound to the common advantage rather
than the narrow interest of rulers. Human nature is too selfish to be
permitted the latitude of legislating and governing without reverence.
10. “…it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who
lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather
than his preservation. For a man who wants to make a profession of good
in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good.”
Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1985), 61.
11. In response to the disturbing conclusion that Kleinias draws from this
speech, the Athenian addresses him as an “amazing man” (ô thaumasie,
626e1).
12. See also 706a4–b1, where the injustice of Minos is intimated more
explicitly.
13. As the dialogue unfolds, it becomes clear that Kleinias desires tyranny
(661d6–e5). This may account for Plato’s decision to assign Kleinias
the same name as the father and son of Alcibiades. Zuckert, Plato’s
Philosophers, 71n39.
14. By contrast, neither Kleinias nor Megillus ever speak the stranger’s name,
nor seem to have any other prior acquaintance with him. Whitaker,
Journey, 14.
15. Whitaker, Journey, 15. In the same vein, it is no doubt significant that
certain biographical details especially endear Megillus and Kleinias to the
Athenian’s leadership. Megillus comes from a family of proxenoi to Athens
(642b–d), while Kleinias claims descent from Epimenides (642d–43a), a
seer and legendary friend to the Athenians. It seems incredible that the
Athenian would have been ignorant of these facts before his well-timed
intervention.
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 69

16. Compare Lutz, Divine Law, 39, which argues that Kleinias represents “the
serious citizen who lives under divine law” and who, as such, “closely
associates reasoning about the laws with the divinity of the laws.”
17. Indeed, by the end of the dialogue, the Athenian’s leadership appears so
needful to Kleinias and Megillus that they vow, in an apparent allusion to
the beginning of the Republic, to compel the Stranger to stay and “share
in the city’s founding” (969c6–7). The Athenian may have sought out
the conversation with the Dorians, but like Socrates he proves reluctant
to become too involved in their political activity. As Pangle observes, he
remains silent in the conclusion as Kleinias and Megillus express their need
of him. “Interpretive Essay,” 509.
18. The Athenian’s reasoning in this regard reflects a familiar Socratic move
when dealing with sophisms. Those who would reduce the good to
successful acquisitiveness or bodily pleasure betray on examination a fear
of the opprobrium that conventional morality attaches to greed. In light
of their fear, such persons must acknowledge a good that places limits on
the greediness that they had previously identified with the good. See, e.g.,
Gorgias 499c–500a. For an illuminating analysis of the tensions inherent
in such acquisitiveness, see Ryan K. Balot, Greed and Injustice in Classical
Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
19. The difficulty being the problem of justice that comes to sight in the
Republic: the unjust are attracted to rule and are ruled only against their
will, all the while being more numerous and thus stronger than the just
and therefore unlikely to be coerced successfully. The just meanwhile are
unlikely to force their rule upon the unjust, not only because they are
fewer and thus weaker but because they are uniquely repelled by rule
itself. For an account of how this problem unfolds in the first book of the
dialogue, see Devin Stauffer, Plato’s Introduction to the Question of Justice
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001).
20. Matters might seem complicated by the third option canvassed by the
Athenian: a judge-cum-lawgiver whose laws permit the unjust a share
of rule. Despite the Athenian’s pejorative comment against this judge
(627e3–4), Kleinias prefers him to the others. Even so, the point about
the need to accommodate injustice rather than vanquishing those attracted
to it applies to both second and third options. Just as the best judge
allows the worse to live while making them willing to be ruled, so
the lawgiver-judge is “capable of taking over a single divided family
and destroying no one, but rather reconciling them…thus securing their
friendship for one another” (627e3–28a3). The bigger, unacknowledged
difficulty is that political reconciliation—unlike psychological harmony—
implies a dilution of virtue, which presumably explains why the Athenian
holds the first, violent judge superior to the third, lawgiving one. See
Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 384.
70 R. A. BALLINGALL

21. Strauss, Argument and Action, 7.

22. The Athenian refers to “the god” or gods with a variety of names, and
in both the singular and plural. He calls intelligence (nous ) “god, in
the correct sense” (897b1–2), but he also speaks of gods as “souls”
(899b), whose visible bodies move about the heavens (898c), and as the
anthropomorphic Titans, Olympians, and Chthonians. These diverse ways
of speaking of the divine have led commentators to ponder the gods’
metaphysical status, either as inanimate principles of the intelligible realm
or as animate and sensible intermediaries between the intelligible and
the visible. For the former tendency, see Stephen Menn, Plato on God
as Nous (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995); Robert
Mayhew, Plato: Laws 10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); and
Robert Mayhew, “The Theology of the Laws,” in Plato’s Laws: A Crit-
ical Guide, ed. Christopher Bobonich (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), 197–216. For the latter tendency, see Gerd Van Riel,
Plato’s Gods (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Few, however, have dwelled on
the puzzle introduced by exhortations to imitate god with which I am
concerned here. Van Riel does recognize something of the problem, but
he explains it away by distinguishing “moral” from “intellectual” resem-
blance; man resembles god in becoming virtuous rather than in thinking
god’s thoughts. In my view, this distinction does not resolve the most
important part of the paradox. It is precisely because the god is a “moral”
paradigm that the exhortations to emulate him present a puzzle; it is the
god’s comprehensive virtue (899b, 900d–e) that makes him the measure
of human excellence and a law unto himself.
23. As noted in Susan Sauvé Meyer, trans., Plato: Laws 1 & 2 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 112–13, the “intelligence” to which
moderation is related is in the most authoritative MS in the accusative
(meta noun “after intelligence”), although interpreters including Meyer
herself have often substituted the genitive (meta nou, “with intelligence”).
I follow Pangle in keeping with the MS accusative. The resulting sentence
is puzzling in that it leaves justice as the only virtue to be “mixed” with
intelligence, despite being in third place after moderation, but the puzzle
reflects the multiplicity of virtue that truly divine law aspires to culti-
vate, as I suggest below and argue elsewhere. To anticipate: truly divine
law makes room for law-bred virtues guided by opinion and at the same
time for philosophic virtues that transcend opinion. The former consist
in a certain moderation and courage but lack intelligence and ultimately
justice, whereas the latter encompass all four virtues in their strict sense.
Sub-philosophic moderation is ranked second after intelligence, I suggest,
because in the sub-philosophic soul it “stands in” for intelligence. For a
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 71

different, and ultimately condescending solution, see Stalley, Introduction,

58.
24. Annas, Virtue and Law, 106–111.
25. Strauss, Argument and Action, 8.
26. Strauss, Argument and Action, 28. See also Meyer, Plato, 109. Strauss’s
judgment is complicated by the fact that it refers to the Athenian’s claim at
660e2–6 which, though certainly related to 631b6–d1, can be read rather
differently. In the earlier passage, the Athenian says that the human goods
depend on the divine; in the later, that (certain) divine goods are suffi-
cient for happiness even when the human goods are lacking. Nevertheless,
Strauss claims that the second passage echoes the first; his judgment of the
second presumably applies to the first.
27. Annas, Virtue and Law, 108.
28. Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, 126. A similar view is adumbrated in
Pangle, Virtue Is Knowledge, 214 but see 261n3.
29. Meyer, Plato, 109–10.
30. See, e.g., Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City, 469 and Annas, Virtue and Law,
128–129.
31. Compare 951b–c and 966d with Phaedo 81a, Republic 500c–d, Sophist
216b–c, Theaetetus 175e–76c; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b26–
34.
32. See, e.g., Robert W. Hall, Plato (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981);
Cohen, “Law, Autonomy, and Political Community,” and Bobonich,
Plato’s Utopia Recast.
33. Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, 110–111 and Balot, “Odd Episode,” 72.
34. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 395–96.
35. Eli Friedland makes the intriguing claim that Megillus thus “colludes”
with the Athenian, having intimated the Stranger’s purpose and become
motivated to help see it through by lending it an authority with Kleinias
that it could not otherwise have. As part of this unspoken “partner-
ship,” Megillus conceals his own, proto-philosophical distance from the
Dorian laws. Eli Friedland, The Spartan Drama of Plato’s Laws (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2020). See my review in Interpretation 47, no. 3
(2021), 555–62 for an appreciative analysis.
36. For a study of the metaphor of play in the Laws, see Emanuelle Jouët-
Pastré, Le Jeu et le Sérieux dans les Lois de Platon (Sankt Augustin:
Academia Verlag, 2006).
37. Although it takes the Athenian to identify virtue as the end of the Lacedae-
monian laws enjoining the endurance of suffering (633c7–8), Megillus
had followed Kleinias in holding their end to be victory in external war
(633a4–6).
38. Compare Aristotle, Politics 1276b28–36. Pace Strauss (Argument and
Action, 22), for whom this passage implies a twofold change to the first
72 R. A. BALLINGALL

definition, confining education to the sub-rational part of the soul and yet
replacing the perfect citizen with the perfect human being as its proper
end. Neither of these claims seems right. Read in context, the first defi-
nition is already confined to the sub-rational part of the soul, as we saw
above. Nor does anything in the second definition explicitly link education
to the perfect human being.
39. Bobonich contrasts rational persuasion, which appeals to “good epis-
temic reasons” for the “true beliefs” and actions urged on the addressee,
with a non-rational alternative that appeals to emotions and “false but
useful beliefs.” See Christopher Bobonich “Persuasion, Compulsion, and
Freedom in Plato’s Laws,” Classical Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1991): 365–66,
369.
40. Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, 416–17.
41. As Karl Popper famously claimed, the Laws “elaborates coolly and care-
fully the theory of the inquisition. Free thought, criticism of political
institutions, teaching new ideas to the young, attempts to introduce new
religious practices or even opinions, are all pronounced capital crimes”
(Open Society, 195). See also Stalley, Introduction, 41; Saunders, “Pla-
to’s Later Political Thought,” 471–73; and Klosko, Development, 161–69,
241–46.
42. Paul Woodruff, “In Place of Loyalty: Friendship and Adversary Politics in
Classical Greece,” in Loyalty: NOMOS LIV , eds. Sanford Levinson, Paul
Woodruff, and Joel Parker (New York: NYU Press, 2013), 39–52.
43. Pace Annas, Virtue and Law, 103–104.
44. The Athenian goes on to refer to the golden string as a “race of gold”
(chrysoun genos, 645a7) that in the virtuous soul prevails over “the other
races” (i.e., the other strings). His puppet image thus alludes to the golden
age of Hesiod (Works and Days, 109–127) and to the myth of the metals
of Plato’s Republic, both of which describe the superlative virtue of a
golden genos. Socrates of course calls his own myth a gennaion…pseudo[s]
(Republic, 414b9–c1).
45. As the image is interpreted in Annas, Virtue and Law, 86–88. Compare
Lutz, Divine Law, 123–27, which argues that there are in fact two
accounts of self-rule being laid down in this passage. Lutz finds the first
such account in the lines immediately preceding the puppet image and
suggests that it describes how “the prudent individual” disposes himself
towards pain and pleasure. He argues that the puppet image describes a
different sort of self-rule in which the “virtuous” person “does not hear
the passions counseling anything at all. Instead, the passions [for him]
inarticulate strings or cords, brute forces that pull on him as if he were a
puppet” (125).
46. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 69.
47. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1128b25–27.
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 73

48. Some interpreters have thought the initial, agonistic image of education
a rhetorical concession to the Dorian view of virtue. The Athenian is
believed to accommodate this view in his initial image only to supplant it
with a more refined account as he proceeds. Virtue as self-conquest gives
way to virtue as self-harmony. See, e.g., Meyer, Plato, 210. The Athenian
might cast doubt on whether the “perfect human being” is to be iden-
tified with the perfect citizen; he defines civic virtue as “being correctly
trained as regards pleasures and pains.” But might such training not yield
an internal harmony, inasmuch as the trainee’s appetites and aversions
are made consonant with divine law? The citizen might lack the well-
springs of intelligence within himself, but does the Athenian not expect of
him passions that agree with what the consummate lawgiver would have
him do? The highly restrictive regulations prescribed for mature Magne-
sian citizens, even those who earn considerable accolades, suggest that the
answer must be no; civic virtue at its best remains discordant and hence
“fragile,” in need of constant external pressure and surveillance. See Kraut,
“Ordinary Virtue,” 66–67.
49. On this point, see Dorothy Frede, “Puppets on Strings: Moral Psychology
in Laws Books 1 and 2,” in Plato’s Laws, ed. Bobonich, 121–22.
50. In fact, the dialogue appears to begin anew on several other occasions as
well (632e, 682e, 723d–e, 781d–82a). For discussion of this theme of
new beginnings, see Strauss, Argument and Action, 54–55 and Jon Sallis,
“On Beginning after the Beginning,” in Plato’s Laws: Force and Truth
in Politics, eds. Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2013), 75–85.
51. The Laws does not quite dramatize the practical implementation of the
city in speech but rather the first (and still theoretical) step in that process.
See André Laks, “The Laws,” in The Cambridge History of Greek and
Roman Political Thought, eds. Christopher Rowe & Malcom Schofield
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 273–74.
52. In what follows, the Athenian calls special attention to the magnitude of
the task before Kleinias. “It really is the case,” he says, “that lawgiving
and the founding of cities is the most perfect of all tests of manly virtue”
(708d). No doubt this remark is intended to humble the Cretan yet
further, reminding him of his great need of the Athenian’s guidance. But
it also underscores an important sense in which the utopianism of the
Laws differs from its modern successors. As his subsequent comments
make clear (709a–c, 710c–d), he is much less ambitious than a Machi-
avelli, Hobbes, or Marx about the “power” of knowledge to dominate
nature and banish chance. Rather, by the Athenian’s lights, much of the
lawgiving art consists in knowing that for which one should wish or
“pray.” Compare Aristotle, Politics 1288b23. See also the discussion in
74 R. A. BALLINGALL

Leo Strauss, “What Can We Learn from Political Theory?” The Review of
Politics 69 (2007), 522.
53. Kleinias has indicated that he is to share in the founding of the new
city with a committee consisting of himself “and nine others” (702c5),
apparently ruling out the tyrannical founding that the Athenian has in
view.
54. Modern political philosophy cleaves more closely to this aspect of the
Athenian’s thought: “And truly, there was never any orderer of extraor-
dinary laws for a people who did not have recourse to God, because
otherwise they would never have been accepted. For a prudent individual
knows many goods that do not have in themselves evident reasons with
which one can persuade others.” Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans.
Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996), 35.
55. See also Laws 701c, where the Athenian likens the irreverence for which
he blames contemporary Athenians to what he calls “the ancient Titanic
nature.” Of course, the Stranger at 713a–14a is alluding to the Hesiodic
golden age, which is also described as “the Age of Kronos” (Works and
Days, 111). But Hesiod does not ascribe the creation or happiness of “the
golden race” to any benevolence on the part of Kronos. The Athenian
takes the golden age trope a step further than Hesiod in this regard. Still,
the tension between the barbarism of the deep past and the nostalgia for
its fictional virtues is there in both the Hesiodic and Platonic versions of
the myth.
56. Inasmuch as its rulers are despots, unaccountable masters who do not wait
on the consent of the ruled. Presumably, the Athenian does not intend
the further notion that tyranny is violent rule in for the private advan-
tage of the tyrant. The genesis of the best regime is at hand only when
tyranny is moderated (or ruled) by a wisdom that sees to a good that
is common. For an account of the Athenian’s favorable remarks in the
context of tyranny more broadly, see Waller R. Newell, Tyranny: A New
Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 108–24.
Newell makes the provocative suggestion that “the discussion of a tyran-
nical founder guided by a wise man in Book 4 of the Laws is a locus
classicus for Machiavelli’s advice in chapters 22 and 23 of The Prince on
what kind of counsellors the prince should have. Whereas Plato gingerly
concedes for a few Stephanus pages of the Laws that sometimes the emer-
gency situation will have to take priority over the normal situation, for
Machiavelli, the emergency situation is the normal situation: All politics is
a series of continual re-foundings” (113).
57. See also Crito 50e–51a. This language recalls the boast of Demaratus,
who speaks of the nomos responsible for Spartan virtue (and freedom!) as
a despotēs, a master of slaves (Herodotus 7.104). One reason the Athenian
 2 PLATO’S LAWS AND THE ENIGMA OF GODLIKENESS 75

may have for seeking out specifically Dorian interlocutors is this pre-
existing notion of being enslaved to law. At any rate, Demaratus’ remark
explicitly contrasts enslavement to nomos with the despotic rule enjoyed
by Xerxes, apparently supplying a template for the same distinction in the
Laws.
58. Pace Annas, Virtue and Law, whose central claim is that the rule of law
in the Laws is an extension of rather than a contrast to the authoritarian
rule of wisdom conceived in the Republic.
59. Christopher Rowe identifies a similar problem in Statesman 300c–e.
See “The Politicus and other Dialogues” in The Cambridge History of
Greek and Roman Political Thought, eds. Christopher Rowe and Malcolm
Schofield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 247.
60. The Athenian elicits from Kleinias the confession that tyrannical power is
appealing, even for the man who possesses “courage” but otherwise lacks
the virtues (661d–e; compare 687a).
61. Annas, Virtue and Law, 130. Bury translates tapeinos as “lowly” in this
context. R. G. Bury, trans., Plato X: Laws, Books 1–6 (Cambridge, MA:
Loeb Classical Library, 1926), 295. Strauss apparently observed, in a
seminar on the Laws, that this “is the only occasion, as far as I know,
in which Plato praises [tapeinos ],” the term extolled as “humility” in
the New Testament, a usage that Plato seems to inaugurate in this very
passage. See Leo Strauss, Plato’s Laws: A Course Offered in 1971–72 at
St. John’s College, Annapolis, ed. Lorraine Pangle (Leo Strauss Center,
University of Chicago, 2016), 282–83.
62. “Piety, after all, has always acknowledged the impossibility of one law for
gods and men: the divine, as the source of law, cannot be held to account
before law. Imitation of the gods is hybris, the ultimate outrage against
the divine.” Clifford Orwin, The Humanity of Thucydides (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994), 105.
63. Socrates in the Theaetetus discusses the doctrine of Protagoras that “man
is the measure of all things” (152a), to which the Athenian in the Laws
refers at 716c5–6 and apparently repudiates. According to Socrates, the
Protagorean doctrine implies that every man is “the equal in wisdom” of
every other, “even of a god” (Theaetetus 162c) and is built on the premise
that “every man [is] self-sufficient in wisdom” (autarkē…eis phronēsin,
169d). To say that man is the measure of all things is therefore to
efface the gulf between the human and divine and to ignore the mani-
fest superiority of certain people, at least in certain respects. By claiming
that god is the measure, the Athenian ostensibly refuses these conclu-
sions. But since, in the same breath, he exhorts his addressees to become
divine, he in fact urges them to become what Protagoras had merely found
them already to be. Taking god as the measure might place self-sufficient
wisdom in a loftier prospect than Protagoras allows, but the exhortation
76 R. A. BALLINGALL

to become like god might well seem to share with the Protagorean view
an insolent disregard for the frontiers of mortality. See also Robert C.
Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy: Protagoras’ Challenge to Socrates
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 2016), which argues that Socrates in
the Theaetetus shares the Athenian Stranger’s alternative to Protagorean
relativism.
 CHAPTER 3

Classical Utopianism in Plato’s Laws

When modern readers pick up a classical text like Plato’s Laws, we

naturally bring to our reading of it certain anachronistic prejudices.
We unthinkingly project into its pages presuppositions that we take for
granted but that its author does not share. Successful interpretation of
such texts depends on curbing this tendency, not only by awakening
ourselves to prejudices of our times but by provisionally suspending them,
lest they blind us to the full force of a distant point of view. This admoni-
tion must be especially borne in mind when considering why the Athenian
Stranger speaks the way he does of the best regime, as a divine “model”
or “paradigm” (paradeigma). As we saw in Chapter 2, it is puzzling
that he bids men like Kleinias create an “imitation” (mimēma) of such a
model, given the importance he places on revering the divine. He seems
to exhort citizens and statesmen to become the very thing from which
they must respectfully keep their distance. Part of our puzzlement attests
to our expectation that an account of the best regime implies an “ideal”
to be approached and worked towards as much as possible. But might
this expectation reflect an anachronism that we unthinkingly bring to the
text? In this chapter, I’m going to argue that indeed it does.
The point is not that the alternative found in the Laws reflects the
common sense of Plato’s contemporaries. The Athenian concedes that
it must appear strange even to the Magnesians themselves (e.g., 739a2–
3).1 What is to be considered is rather that a seldom spoken premise

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 77

Switzerland AG 2023
R. A. Ballingall, Plato’s Reverent City, Recovering Political Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31303-5_3
78 R. A. BALLINGALL

of modern political thought, one that has become common sense for
modern readers, makes it especially difficult for such readers to grasp
what the Athenian intends in constructing the Laws ’ utopia. The word
“utopia,” of course, is an early modern neologism coined by Sir Thomas
More. But More invented the word to reflect his free imitation of Plato’s
Republic, whose city in speech he rightly understood as a “good/no
place.” A place that does not exist, or that does not exist in practice, in the
sensible world of human experience, might serve as a model for the world
of experience (Republic 472c4–7, 592b); but it is not at all obvious that
it does so in a straightforward way. A utopia may serve just as well as “a
subtly playful thought-experiment meant to reveal the limitations on what
we can expect from all actual political life.”2 Its usefulness may lie as much
in clarifying why it remains a “no place” as in illuminating why it would be
a “good place.” At any rate, an approximation in deed to what seems best
in speech may of necessity be quite dissimilar to what is best in speech.
The gap between the doable and the thinkable may require doing things
very differently than we might think them (Republic 473a1–4; compare
Laws 636a, 736b, 778b).3 That modern readers tend to think otherwise,
tend to assume an account of the best implies a “regulative ideal” meant
to guide practice in the non-ideal world,4 can obscure such complications.
As we shall see, thinking of the model for Magnesia in these terms is
especially misleading. In Plato’s Republic, the city in speech is presented—
ultimately—as the simply-best regime. In the Laws, however, the utopia is
emphatically “second best” (deuterōs…pros to beltiston 739a4–5; see also
739e, 746b–d, 853c, 875d). Magnesia might be set up as a paradigm for
the benefit of Kleinias and other lawgivers; but it is also an imitation in
its own right,5 a regime that imperfectly emulates the rule of god and a
model very like the Republic’s Kallipolis.6 The trouble is that Magnesia
itself seems very unlike the regime on which it is modeled, so much so
that it is difficult to see the one as an approximation of the other. The best
regime is autocratic; the rule of reason is there pervasive and undiluted,
its citizens unfree and impotent. The best regime is also radically commu-
nistic and meritocratic (739c–d, 757b–58a). Magnesia, by contrast, is a
constitutional republic7 ; rulers and citizens alike are slaves of the laws
while otherwise “free” and intensely involved in public life. Magnesia
also permits private property, traditional families, and material inequality
within certain limits. How can a model serve as a regulative ideal if the
“practice” that it regulates diverges from the model so starkly?
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 79

In this chapter, I argue that the Laws requires we think of the rela-
tionship between models and imitations in a subtler way. Through a
close reading Laws V, which calls attention to and justifies Magnesia’s
second-best status, I show how the Athenian makes good the suggestion
of Socrates in the Republic that it is “the nature of acting to attain to
less truth than speaking” (473a1–2), but not merely in the sense of being
always an approximation to what is said or thought. Sometimes what is
done resembles what is said or thought only by being done differently.8
The city in speech is a case in point: it stands to the practical best as
the far bank of a swift-flowing stream. Just as there is no good-enough
crossing of such a stream, so there is no good-enough despot or tyrant.
The imitation of the best regime does not try to set up a rational, thera-
peutic despotism, nor to take itself for the measure of things. To aim at
the second best from the start, as the Athenian urges, is rather to avoid
this mistake, seeing as trying for the simply best, for the best in speech
or thought, is to neglect the implications of falling short. The swimmer
must cross the stream only where he knows he can make the far side; the
lawgiver must ordain only what he knows the city can safely observe, even
if he must judge what he ordains according to what in practice must be
avoided.
The necessity of diverting from straightforward approximation in these
ways is of course counterintuitive. It is appreciated only on careful reflec-
tion. The Athenian should not and does not expect men of action to
grasp it of their own accord. But he can and does expect such men to be
responsive to the gulf between the human and the divine. The virtue that
demands pulling back from what is vouchsafed to the gods is accessible
in a way that prudence and wisdom are not. It is in this light that we
begin to see method in the Athenian’s madness. For it is by presenting
the simply-best regime as a “divine” way of life that he keeps his mortal
addressees from overreaching themselves, even as he relates to them a
dangerously impossible object of admiration. Properly managed, rever-
ence permits political men to grasp what would otherwise be known to
very few, and to put into practice what must otherwise remain in speech.
Politics at its best depends on observing how practice must divert from
speech, but without losing sight of what speech itself marks out as best.
And it is the pathos of distance felt by the reverent man that allows him
to adjust his practice accordingly.
80 R. A. BALLINGALL

Reason and Law, Monophony and Polyphony

The Athenian makes plain the second-best status of Magnesia in the
course of a long, uninterrupted soliloquy spanning the fifth book of
the dialogue. The monophonic quality of the text here is unexpected,
given what the Athenian had proudly claimed in the final pages of Book
Four. He had told us there that no previous lawgiver has recognized how
compulsion might be “mixed” with persuasion in the setting down of
laws; all previous lawgivers have “employed unmitigated violence alone”
(722c). He did not mean that these lawgivers literally harmed the citizens
to whom they gave their laws. He had referred rather to how every law
threatens disobedience with punishment (719e9) and in addition assumes
a violent “shape” (718b6). Law takes the form of general rules that have
difficulty accounting for the particulars of circumstance. As the mythical
innkeeper Procrustes maimed his guests that they might all fit into his one
bed, law mars reality. It speaks to the diverse, ever-changing human things
in a single, unchanging voice. What no previous lawgiver has understood
is that these “violent” aspects of law can be mitigated by attaching “a bit
of persuasion to…legislative edicts” (720a). Just as preludes to speeches
“artfully attempt to promote what is to come” (722d), so preludes to
laws “would contribute something to making the hearer listen in a more
agreeable mood to the advice” (718d; compare 723a). Such preludes
(prooimia) would reduce the need for punishing disobedience, or at any
rate would try to do so (compare 718d4–7 and 853b–d). But they would
also allow the lawgiver to speak more like the poet, able “to make two
speeches about one subject” (719d2). Laws with preludes, the Athenian
had said, are laws that “will differ from themselves” (dioisousin heautōn
723b6). They ostensibly describe the motives behind the general rules
they lay down, thus making room for the equitable application of those
rules. In a word, preludes qualify the monophonic nature of law, which is
why it is so striking that a lengthy monologue should come on the heels
of the preludes’ introduction. Even as the Athenian delivers what he flags
as the prelude to the lawcode as a whole (734e), he declines to invite or
permit his interlocutors to get in a word edgewise.
One reason for this contrast may be to underscore the second-best
character of the city in speech. The preludes might seem to point to a
“legislative utopia” wherein the dogmatic, violent character of law is tran-
scended beyond what is possible for the second-best Magnesia.9 Just as
a “free doctor” treats his patients by “communing” with them, gently
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 81

teaching and taming them to adopt his regimen voluntarily, so a lawgiver

might treat his citizens. Investigating their ethical pathologies “from the
beginning and according to nature,” he might care for their souls in
such a way that he need never issue commands or threats. The Athe-
nian had analogized this technique to the legislative preludes and had
contrasted it with the practice of the doctor’s “servants,” which he had
likened to the law itself (722e–22a). Strictly speaking, he had said, law is
a “tyrannical command” (722e7–8); likewise, the doctor’s servant “gives
his commands like a headstrong tyrant” to patients whom he treats as
slaves (720c). Seeing as the city cannot do without law in this strict sense,
it cannot transcend the tyrannical violence of the slave-doctor metaphor;
it must deviate from the “gentle,” dialogic technique of “free” medicine.
It would perhaps be fitting, then, for the text itself to mirror that devi-
ation in the very place where its necessity is announced most explicitly.
The monophony of Laws V reflects the degree to which the city must be
ruled by monophonic law.
Intriguingly, however, this attractive interpretation does not hold up.
The Athenian never associates the best regime with freedom, nor with
gentle, respectful dialogue. Instead, he consistently (and boldly) connects
it to tyranny and despotism. The best regime would be at hand only if
a consummate lawgiver could partner with—or himself become—a tyrant
(709e–12a).10 The best regime is not “mixed” like Sparta and Crete but
under the sway of “the god who truly rules as despot (despozontos ) over
those who possess intellect” (713a3–4). And the best regime presupposes
a purge or purification (katharmos ), which the Athenian likens to the
culling of a “herd.”

If the same man were a tyrant as well as a lawgiver he could employ the
purges that are harsh and best; if a lawgiver who lacks tyranny is setting up
a new regime with laws, he should be glad if he can purify using even the
gentlest of purges. The best method is painful, like medicines of this kind,
since it involves punishing with justice and retribution, and completes the
retribution by means of death and exile. That is how the greatest offenders,
those who are incurable and who represent the greatest harm to the city,
are usually gotten rid of. (735d3–e5)

Against this best method, the Athenian contrasts “our method of purifi-
cation,” which is “gentler” (praioteros 735e5) and would use “the
euphemistic name ‘colonization’” to expel the undesirables. In fact,
82 R. A. BALLINGALL

because Magnesia would itself be a colony, the necessary purification

could be milder still. It could consist of “testing” prospective citizens,
“with every sort of persuasion,” and preventing the bad from entering the
city in the first place (736b). But in any case, the gentler method is not
an aspiration but a fall back. A lawgiver who lacks tyranny is compelled to
abandon the most choiceworthy purge, just as he must turn away from
the simply-best regime. Indeed, when the Athenian finally announces that
the city in speech is to be merely second best, he allows that someone
might not accept this “because he is unfamiliar with a lawgiver who is not
a tyrant” (739a5–6). The best regime, then, is simply not a “legislative
utopia” embodying the metaphor of the free doctor; the Athenian could
hardly use language less consonant with that image to describe it. Rather,
he consistently speaks of it in accord with the contrasting image of the
slave doctor, as a tyranny or the product of tyranny that makes use of
compulsion and violence.11
If the Athenian’s monologue in Book Five is, as seems likely, an allusion
to law’s “tyrannical” nature, then what might the preceding suggest? That
the monophony of the text here reflects a proximity to the best regime,
rather than a falling short of it? That would certainly be surprising; the
Athenian’s contrast of monologue and dialogue is hardly favorable to the
former. It is Magnesia’s mixture of slave medicine with free medicine
that renders it superior to a tyranny of unmixed law. Yet the seeming
parallelism of the rigidity of law to the tyranny of reason appears to fore-
close the alternative possibility—that the best regime would transcend
dogmatism and embody the free-doctor metaphor of which Magnesia
falls short. Book Five’s monophony cannot allude to that shortcoming,
if only because the best regime does not correspond to the free-doctor
image. What, then, does Plato intend in contrasting the polyphony of the
preludes with the monophony of Laws V?
We can gain some clarity here by considering a third possibility: the
sense in which law is tyrannical is distinct from the sense in which the
best regime is a tyranny. The slave-doctor image calls attention to the
ignorance and hollow pretensions of law. Claiming to know with preci-
sion the matters about which it legislates yet understanding these things
only on the basis of opinions and experience, “not by following nature,”
law is authadôs: presumptuous or “headstrong” (720c7). Law’s tyranny
is connected to a wisdom that is exaggerated. By contrast, the Athe-
nian always speaks of the best regime in connection with a wisdom that
is genuine. It takes its name, he says, from the god who “truly rules”
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 83

rational men (713a3–4). It adheres to “the truest and best equality,”

giving due measure to each according to their nature (757b–c). It knows
the true political art (875a5–6) in a way that “is true and really free
according to nature” (875d1–2). In this last passage in particular (874e–
75d), the Athenian makes clear that it is the knowledge with which
the best regime rules that engenders its autocratic authority. Its ruler
“wouldn’t need any laws ruling over him. For no law or order is stronger
(or better, kreittôn) than knowledge, nor is it right for intelligence (nous )
to be subordinate, or a slave, to anyone, but it should rule over every-
thing” (875c5–d1). Were a ruler ever to have such knowledge, strict
justice would require those who lack it to follow his orders without
question. Inasmuch as law demands similar obedience, it implicitly lays
claim to a like authority. To this extent, then, reason and law—nous and
nomos —are both “tyrannical.” Both lay claim to the greatest title to rule
(690b–c).12 But whereas nous deserves the authority on which it insists,
nomos taken in its strict sense does not. The rule of law merely imitates
the rule of reason. Law merely “wishes to be the discovery of what is”
(Minos 315a3).
The fact that law cannot assimilate itself to reason has implications for
how law rules in emulation of reason. For one must be a god to merit
tyranny yet the reach of mortals must not exceed our grasp; human beings
must repudiate the good-enough tyrant. As much can be gleaned from
common sense and the traditional hostility to tyrannical government. But
if god is to mortals what reason is to law, as the Athenian implies, then
law too must disavow or mitigate its tyrannical pretensions. Seeing as it
cannot become the thing it claims to be, law should not simply strive to
resemble the rule of reason as much as possible. Doing so would be like
trying to cross a river wider than one can swim. Just as we should reject
the care of the doctor who merely pretends to know his art with precision,
so we should not permit the law to rule “unmixed” with persuasion. Only
“divine” knowledge has the right to rule unaudited.
Where, then, does that leave the free doctor and the preludes to which
his technique is likened? Scholars have overwhelmingly assumed that it is
he who represents rational, divine rule and who is the foil to the rule of
law.13 But this can’t be the whole story, seeing as the rule of reason—
like the rule of unmixed law—is tyrannical, or at least autocratic. True,
the free doctor knows an art and makes inquiries kata phusin, “according
to nature” (720d3). But he does not use his art coercively or without
regard for the consent of his patients. “He doesn’t give orders until
84 R. A. BALLINGALL

he has in some sense persuaded; when he has on each occasion tamed

the sick person with persuasion, he attempts to succeed in leading him
back to health” (720d6–e1). To our ears, of course, consent is a term of
approbation. But might this effort to secure consent be in Plato’s view
a regrettable necessity? After all, he who would persuade must meet his
audience where they are and must adapt or dilute his message accordingly
(cf. 684c). The free doctor might “teach the one who is sick,” but his goal
is to persuade or “tame” (hêmeroun) the patient.14 Indeed, the Athenian
is not above appealing to beliefs in the efficacy of magic when illustrating
the lengths to which the corresponding political art must go. Legislative
preludes can take the form of charming “incantations” or “enchantments”
(epōdai 773d, 812c, 903b). The free-doctor image might call to mind
the rationalistic art of Hippocratic medicine, as Randall Baldwin Clark
has argued, but the Athenian suffuses his account of its political analogue
with examples from the subrational therapies of ancient homeopathy, as
Baldwin Clark himself has shown.15
Thinking of the preludes as concessions to human nature instead of
aspirations to transcend it makes better sense of the wide range of persua-
sive techniques in the Laws. But it also helps us understand how the
second-best regime imitates the simply best way of life. It points to the
view that the former is not simply an approximation of the latter. Human
beings ought to emulate the rule of god by subordinating rulers to law
rather than by installing mortal despots. Similarly, the rule of law ought
to emulate the rule of reason, not by insisting on the authority owed
to reason, but by diluting reason in the name of consent, by means of
legislative preludes. The latter represents deviations from the ordinances
of reason, from what reason would ordain were those to whom law is
given fully prepared to heed its commands. Seeing as the overwhelming
majority are unprepared to do so, that is do so fully, a wise lawgiver should
not carry on as though they were, untroubled by the degree to which his
imitation must fall short of its model. He should be cognizant of the
greater harm that would come from widespread disobedience, were he to
enjoin on others what only he himself would do. The wise lawgiver should
equally recognize that his art will not be known kata phusin by most of
his successors.16 Even if Magnesia could produce Socratic philosophers of
its own or recruit them from abroad (951b–c, 953c–d)—big ifs, to say the
least—there would never be enough to ensure the law is everywhere and
always equitably applied, in accordance with political wisdom (compare
Statesman 294e–95b).17 To keep with the Athenian’s analogy, the free
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 85

doctor must usually be absent; there must be “servants” to carry out his
orders. But rather than emulate his care by laying claim to his knowledge,
the political analogs of these servants should temper such pretenses; they
should be made wise to their own imperfection, and to that of the regime
which they serve. To mix law with preludes is thus, among other things,
to bring these deficiencies to the surface. It is to make plain the second
(or third)-best character of the practically-best regime.18 Indeed, as we
shall shortly see, the preludes are conspicuous for how they humble those
to whom they are given. They frequently appeal to the aidōs of their
addressees and emphasize the gulf between the human and the divine.19
Still, the Athenian intimates that the authority of law can endure only
so much self-awareness. The preludes are merely mixed with law; they
do not supplant it. Law must remain dogmatic and pretentious even as it
acquires a degree of polyphony and humility. It must claim to be divine
even as it knows itself to be mortal. In later chapters, we will examine
with care the political psychology implied by this paradox, and whether it
is coherent. For now, it is enough to see how these points redound on the
dramaturgy of Book Five. It would seem that readers have rightly under-
stood the contrast between the free-doctor metaphor and the Athenian’s
monologue as an allusion to the persistent dogmatism and pretentiousness
of law. What has been grasped only rarely, though, is that the preludes
which improve the law are themselves concessions to human weakness.
And what has hardly been understood at all is how the preludes, as part
of a second-best state of affairs, represent a divergence from straightfor-
ward emulation of the best simply. Magnesia comes as close as possible
to the best regime, not because the latter treats citizens as free men, as
Magnesia does, but because fallible men can’t adhere to reason without a
rhetoric that mutilates reason itself in the course of treating men as free.

The Problem of Property

This interpretation is borne out by the monologue’s content in Book
Five, which begins where the Athenian had left off before discussing
the legislative preludes. Having digressed from the speech that would
be delivered to Magnesia’s first citizens, he goes on now to complete
it. Before his digression, the Stranger had been laying down a hierarchy
of honor and respect that the citizen ought to observe. To practice the
godlike moderation he had extolled (716d1–2), it was understood that
86 R. A. BALLINGALL

one must take as the “target of reverence” (tou tês eusebeias skopou 717a8–
b1) the Kthonian gods after the Olympians and the gods of the city (the
Athenian had not said which god should be honored first, leaving room
for the god who stands above the Olympians) while worshiping, after
these, daemons, heroes, ancestors, and living parents. Despite coming
last in his list, the Athenian had laid great stress on filial piety, asserting
that citizens ought to think of themselves as owing a tremendous debt
to parents, so much so that all one’s property, including one’s very body
and soul, are to be regarded as belonging to them. Indeed, it was this call
to transcend self-ownership that had immediately preceded the preludes’
introduction. Seeing as a—if not the—primary purpose of the preludes
is to make the hearer “listen in a more tame and agreeable mood to
advice,” the Athenian had spotlighted as an obstacle to good advice the
preference that we naturally give to what we regard as our own.
This same obstacle recurs when the Athenian resumes his hortatory
speech in Book Five. Here he turns from discussing the gods and ances-
tors who should be revered before oneself to how one might correctly
honor that which is one’s own. Of these latter things, he says, the
better are the more “masterful” and ought consequently to be shown
greater respect. That which is best and hence most masterful, deserving of
greatest respect, is the soul, seeing as it is most divine, yet also “most one’s
own” (oikeiotaton 726a3). This latter claim might seem surprising: the
Athenian had said previously that one’s soul in truth belongs to parents,
not to oneself. It also seems inconsistent with his later remark that it
is the body and its parts that are “by nature private” (739c7). Given
that this speech is a prelude in its own right, could these inconsisten-
cies attest to a distortion of reason needed for persuading unreasonable
men? Certainly, it is given to very few to transcend a preference for their
own. Perhaps most can honor their souls only if permitted to regard their
souls as belonging to themselves.
Be that as it may, the Athenian goes on to issue a thoroughgoing
admonition of his addressees, indeed of all human beings, on the grounds
that we are as a rule excessively attached to ourselves. “There is no one
among us, so to speak, who assigns honor correctly,” he says, “though we
are of the opinion that we do” (727a2–3). The problem is that we assume
that we make our souls “greater” by indulging them, by praising them,
and by encouraging them “to do whatever [they] might wish” (727b2).
We assume that we know what is good, that our desires spontaneously
direct us towards it, and that we honor ourselves by heeding our desires
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 87

to get it. To think and act this way, however, is to harm rather than honor
the soul, for it is to “honor” it before or ahead of the gods (727a1–2,
727b3–4). As the Athenian has already stressed, it is not we, nor anything
that belongs to us, that is the measure of all things, not least of what is
good and bad, but “god.” What we assume to be good and bad does
not correspond to the truth of the matter; our own souls are sickly and
untrustworthy. To honor the gods first is thus to honor the soul too, not
by feeding its spontaneous appetites and aversions, corrupt as they are,
but by repudiating them. To honor the soul is “to change its condition
from worse to better” (727a6). It is to seek the good as “god” sees it,
not as it comes to sight for us.
The Athenian continues his admonition by deploring the related
tendency to refuse responsibility for errors and evils (727b4–c1). We are
partial towards ourselves, not merely in the complacency with which we
look on our own well-being, but in our evaluations of the good and bad
that we do to others. We seem to honor our souls by minimizing or
ignoring our vices, as though harming others did not involve harming
ourselves at the same time. But again, what is good for the soul is not
giving in to what it spontaneously wants; it is rather to train the soul to
listen to and follow good counsel. As the Stranger goes on to say, “for
us, ‘honor,’ means following the better things” (728c6–7).
What is it that the soul spontaneously wants that earns such a fierce
dressing down? Judging by the Athenian’s remarks in this extraordinary
speech, the answer is the affirmation of selfhood, something to which the
concern for honor is obviously connected. He identifies in this vein a slip-
page between what is good and what is ours, which becomes stronger the
more intimately connected is the object of evaluation to ourselves. We
tend to assume that because a thing is our own, it is therefore good and
deserving of respect. “Everyone who cares for something,” he remarks,
“is blind when it comes to the thing cared for, and hence is a poor judge
of what is just and good and noble, because he believes he should always
honor his own more than the truth” (731e5–732a1). As he later empha-
sizes, the thing that is most intimately and naturally our own is our body,
a fact that becomes especially clear in the face of death. The mortality of
which we are so characteristically conscious as human beings threatens the
integrity of our bodies and therewith our sense of self and personhood.
Fear of death is rooted in attachment to one’s self as a discrete conscious-
ness, which can stand apart only because it arises from a mortal body. It
is this connection between mortality and personhood that then fuels our
88 R. A. BALLINGALL

identification of the good with our own. For rather than challenge the
opinion at the root of our fear, we tend overwhelmingly to distract from
it. We forestall our confrontation with death by reasserting and expanding
the selfhood it threatens. We marry, have children, acquire property, and
seek accolades in no small part to extend the reach of what is ours, and
to bury the dread oblivion that awaits our particularity. We minimize the
faults and exaggerate the virtues of what is ours, so much do we prefer
a thing for its connection to ourselves ahead of its being good. And we
place what is ours at the center of things, fancying that the very gods take
an interest in our personal affairs. In short, we respond to our human
self-awareness by working hard to forget that which menaces it, and we
do so—as a rule—by affirming and expanding our sense of self.
Seeing as self-affirmation is so deeply rooted in the fear of death, it is
understandable that the Athenian temporizes with it. He does not expect
his addressees to transcend completely their preference for themselves and
what is theirs, nor to cease extending the compass of what they consider
their own. So much is unsurprising, perhaps. What is unexpected, though,
is the manner and degree to which these accommodations diverge from
the ethos implied by the Athenian’s censures. For even as he makes room
for the basic demands of self-love, he blames self-love in the strongest
possible terms. He calls excessive friendship for oneself “the greatest of all
evils for the mass of human beings” (731d6) and even “the cause of all of
each man’s wrongdoings on every occasion” (731e3–5). By impugning
self-love so categorically, the Athenian might seem to create the expec-
tation that it might be overcome. He appears to point towards an ethos
of calm, rational transcendence of ownership and egocentricity, as though
it were accessible to his addressees. Why else blame the attachment to
ownership so loudly? One can reasonably be blamed only for failing to
be that which is in one’s power to become. Ought implies can. But as
we consider the prelude more carefully, it becomes clear that the ethical
standard implied by its admonitions and the practical expectations that
are actually laid upon the citizen differ more in kind than degree. Rather
than call on Magnesians to live up as much as possible to that standard,
the Athenian moves the target closer to their capabilities. His exhortation
is not to live blamelessly free of shame; it is to live in such a way that the
shameful need of self-affirmation is accommodated, if minimized.
To take the most telling example, the prelude impugns the love of
money even for the sake of one’s children and avers that “children should
be left an abundance of reverence [aidô] rather than gold” (729b1).
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 89

Partiality for one’s kin is no excuse for immoderate accumulation and

excessive concern with property. Children need a sense of shame, not an
abundance of things. Yet in the next breath, the prelude admonishes the
mistake of supposing that adults themselves can leave reverence behind,
along with childhood. “The prudent lawgiver would instead urge the
elderly to be ashamed before the young, and to take care above all lest any
young person ever see or hear them doing or saying anything shameful”
(729b5–c1). To suppose that one can do without reverence is to believe
that one has attained a degree of perfection that the Athenian does not
foresee, at least among the citizens to whom the lawgiver speaks. The
goal in practice is not the virtue of the man who has no need of fearing
the opprobrium of others or of exceeding his limitations. The important
thing is that the young never witness the failings of their elders, not that
the elders live without fault.20 As troubling as money loving may be, the
prelude implies that it is a vice that will endure and must therefore be
accommodated or accounted for in the political psychology of citizenship.
The same pattern of accommodation continues as the prelude unfolds.
As Pangle notes, the rank of honor it lays down quietly diverges from
the order that readers were led to expect.21 In Book Four, the Athe-
nian had spoken of the living and dead ancestors “as those who come
after the gods” but before our souls, bodies, and properties (724a).
In Book Five, however, the prelude ranks the family and family gods
beneath not only the soul (which now comes second after the gods and
is described as the possession of each person), but beneath each person’s
body and external property as well. Indeed, when it does get around to
mentioning family, the prelude in Book Five appeals to the longing for
self-assertion, promising great broods of children for those who honor
family ties (729c). The desire to extend our selves in these ways may be
blameworthy, implying as it does an equivocation between what is good
and what is ours, but the prelude is not above appealing to that very thing
and elevating its dignity beyond what reason strictly ordains.
That the Athenian is moving the target of civic virtue becomes still
more evident once the prelude turns from laying down the rank of honor
to describing “the sort of person one should be oneself if one is to lead
the most noble sort of life” (730b3–4). Atop the list is an exhortation
to partake of truth and to “live as a truthful man for as long a time as
possible” (730c3–4). Is the citizen to become a lover of wisdom and the
sort of person who transcends the fear of death that stands in wisdom’s
way? Some readers have thought as much.22 But the manner in which
90 R. A. BALLINGALL

the prelude illustrates the truthful man could not be more ambiguous.
He is praiseworthy, it avers, because he is “trustworthy” (pistos 730c4,
cf. 738e).23 He is no lover of lies. What the prelude does not mention is
that one can hate lies without loving wisdom, just as one can love wisdom
without disavowing lies. It makes all the difference whether one lies to
oneself out of ignorance or to others out of prudence, lest they do harm
(Republic 382c–d). In any case, the prelude adorns the truthful man by
appealing, not to the pleasure of learning or the utility of wisdom, but to
how trustworthiness secures for him the company of friends and family in
“the hard time of old age, near the end of life” (730c7–8). The prelude
teaches that the trustworthy man need not fear death, but not because he
overcomes his attachment to himself as a discrete being. He is consoled
rather by the knowledge that he is loved and that he is leaving something
of himself behind.
From truthfulness, the prelude turns to justice, and again the sort of
person for which it calls cannot be described as a would-be philosopher, a
fact that the prelude seems to underline. As before, it secures the consent
of its audience to what reason marks out as good; but again, this it does
by so diluting reason that the life held up as noble would seem cut from
a different cloth. The prelude now asks its audience to accept the Socratic
paradox that no one does wrong willingly. “No unjust man is ever volun-
tarily unjust,” it claims. “For no one anywhere would ever voluntarily
acquire any of the greatest evils” (731c2–4). Yet the prelude does not
conceive of its addressee as a person like the Athenian himself, one who
calmly pities all unjust men without retributive anger. Instead, it distin-
guishes between what it calls “curable” and “incurable” injustices and
asserts that only the former are to be pitied by the “man” (731b3) it now
evokes. Every such man, it says, should be as gentle as possible towards
those whose wrongdoing can be cured but should otherwise give “free
rein” to his moral indignation (731d4). Moralistic anger makes sense only
if the wrongdoer has acted voluntarily. If no wrongdoing is voluntary,
as the prelude has just claimed, then the retributiveness that it sanc-
tions is irrational, strictly speaking. What is more, the prelude speaks of
such anger in terms of “spiritedness” or thumos, an emotion insuperably
connected to our sense of self. Moral indignation might lead us to risk
ourselves in the cause of “justice,” but as thumos it grows from the sense
that what we love and hold dear as our own is threatened or violated.24 As
the Athenian will later assert, the class or kind to which thumos belongs
“is that of pain” and includes fear (864b). Thumos moves a person “to
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 91

fight and defend himself” (731b5–6); fear moves him to flee. The point
is that both passions are rooted in the ultimately irrational attachment
to ourselves as discrete beings of exaggerated significance. The unique
power that belongs to spirited anger and fear alike to overwhelm all other
psychic motions would seem to arise from this fact. As for the prelude
that holds out the prospect of rising above self-centeredness, it does so
only to make peace with it, catering to the very affect that expresses it.
The prelude thus calls attention to how reason must disfigure itself to
find authority with human beings of diverse ethical capabilities. It does
not call on all men to become as like the Athenian as they are severally
able. It points out the path up which most might ascend so as to approach
a virtue of a different “peak.”25

The Game of Lawgiving

That the virtue enjoined on the city is a summit apart raises anew the
puzzle we examined before. The Athenian speaks of the one in the same
breath as the other, as though civic virtue was an imitation of the more
comprehensive excellence he seems to apprehend and embody. Just as the
citizen should assimilate himself to “god,” so he should live as a “truth-
ful” man and accept that vice is ignorance. Yet the life at which he is
ultimately asked to aim is unambiguously distinct from the godlike virtue
of the apathetic philosopher. The citizen should not try to become the
ethical measure in his own right. He becomes like the measure of all
things by observing “moderation,” disavowing autonomous judgment.
Nor should he try to transcend all retributive anger. “The great man
in the city, the man who is to be proclaimed perfect and the bearer of
victory in virtue, is the one who does what he can to assist the magistrates
in inflicting punishment” (730d, my emphasis). Such a man is hardly a
waypoint on the path to the peak on which the Athenian stands. His
virtue is of a different kind. That is why it is so curious that the Athenian
construes such virtue both as an end in itself and as an imitation of his
own character. Does that make sense? Can one thing resemble another
without approximating it, or even by diverging from it?
I want to suggest that Laws V affords an answer inasmuch as it goes
on to justify a disavowal of the simply-best regime. “Anyone who uses his
reason and experience,” says the Athenian, “will recognize that a second-
best city is to be constructed” (739a3–5). The way of life of this city
might be oriented towards a still better regime, but it would be foolish
92 R. A. BALLINGALL

even to try to realize that regime in practice. From the outset, even in
the most propitious practical circumstances, allowance must be made for
the diversity and limitations of human beings. The simply-best way of life
cannot be a regulative ideal in politics. No city as a whole can lead such
a life; were one to try, the consequences of falling short would be dire.
Better to aim from the first at a different target altogether.
The Athenian makes this argument once he concludes “the speeches
that constitute the prelude to the laws.” Having been impersonating
the lawgiver in issuing these speeches, he now resumes his role as the
lawgiver’s advisor, all the while continuing to speak uninterrupted. It is
presumably necessary, he now says, repeating his long-running pun, that
the prelude be followed by a law (or song),26 the first of which is, “in
truth, the outline of the laws of a political regime” (734e5–6). Like Aris-
totle in the Politics (IV.1, 1289a11–20), he explains that every regime
has two parts or forms: the appointment of rulers and the laws by which
the rulers are constrained (735a5–6).27 But instead of turning to these
subjects, he makes a series of digressions. First, in a passage we have
examined already, he sees a need to purge the body politic of “those who,
because they lack food, show themselves ready to follow men who lead
the have-nots in an attack on the property of the haves” (735e6–36a1).28
He then spotlights the “good fortune” of a lawgiver like Kleinias who
has no need to court “the terrible, dangerous strife occasioned by redivi-
sion of land, cancelling of debts, and redistribution” (736c). Starting from
scratch, such a lawgiver can ensure the allocation of property is sufficiently
equal and doesn’t have to rely (or rely as much) on a willingness in the
rich to share with the poor.29 Be that as it may, it is striking that the Athe-
nian feels obliged to dwell on these matters at all, seeing as they require
deviating so conspicuously from his stated agenda. The problem of prop-
erty would seem to loom so large that he can scarcely discuss the outline
of the regime without returning to this problem again and again.30
Finally, at 739a ff., the Athenian takes up the topic of regime in earnest,
but his focus remains the question of property and not the ruling offices
or appointment procedures as we might have expected. It is here that
he announces that “a second-best city is to be constructed,” which he
describes in terms of concessions made in the name of privacy and owner-
ship. “That city and that regime are first, and the laws are best,” he says,
echoing Socrates in the Republic, “where the old proverb holds as much
as possible throughout the whole city: it is said that the things of friends
really are common” (739b8–c2). Like Socrates, the Athenian spells out
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 93

as implications of this proverb the community of women and children

and the assimilation of the city to a single body, with the aim of every
person praising and blaming the same things; delighting in and feeling
pain at the same things; and even seeing, hearing, and acting in unison,
as though all shared the same bodily organs. But unlike Socrates, who
tendentiously argues for the possibility of such a regime, the Athenian
invokes the reverence of his audience. “Such a city is inhabited, presum-
ably, by gods or children of gods,” he says (739d6–7). For legislators of
mere human beings, he implies (cf. 853c), such a regime is not in the
cards. Mortal citizens must be permitted traditional families and the laws
they observe must account for the natural divergence of citizens’ evalua-
tive judgments, perceptions, and opinions. Even so, the legislator should
look to this city of gods as a “model” (paradeigma, 739e1) and should
“hold on to this and seek with all one’s might the regime that comes as
close as possible (kata dunamin) to such a regime” (739e2–3).
What does it mean to say that the second-best city is kata dunamin
to the simply-best regime? Interpreters have overwhelmingly assumed the
one to be simply an “approximation” of the other. According to Malcolm
Schofield, for example, the Laws recapitulates “the ideal” of the Republic
“and then announces as its own project an enquiry into the political
system that so far as humanly possible approximates to it.”31 Or, as Trevor
Saunders puts it,

[Magnesia and Kallipolis] are the same Platonic state—but placed at two
points on a single sliding scale of political maturity. Now a politically
mature Platonic state is, essentially, one governed by persons with meta-
physical insights; and the hypothesis of Callipolis is that that kind of rule is
achievable. The hypothesis of Magnesia is that it has not yet been achieved,
and may indeed never be; nevertheless, Magnesia contains as an integral
part of itself machinery embodying a continuing aspiration to it. It is
crucial to this aspiration that the demotic virtues possessed by the second
and third classes of Callipolis be fostered and stabilized in Magnesia as
far as circumstances and the character of the inhabitants permit: hence
the elaborate social and educational provisions that occupy so many pages
of the Laws. In this carefully prepared soil, the rule of philosophy may
take root and gradually grow. But even if the philosophical aspiration
were to come to nothing, at least a superior “law state” will have been
constructed.32
94 R. A. BALLINGALL

For Schofield and Saunders, the best regime is a regulative ideal. If

practice can’t assimilate itself completely to that ideal, it should aspire
nevertheless to that end; striving for the best and falling short is an
afterthought. It’s as though the city were tasked with climbing as high
as it can up some great mountain, knowing it won’t make the top. The
higher it goes the better. But as we’ve already seen, the Laws throws
up reasons to reject that interpretation. The “demotic” virtue that it
conceives is hardly an approximation of the philosophic way of life. It
belongs to a different peak. Nor is it at all clear how the rule of law—
with its audits, scrutinies, and preludes—would resemble the unaudited,
tyrannical rule of wisdom. What is clear is that mere mortals must be
wary of overreaching themselves. Human law should imitate the divine
but not by disregarding the human need for privacy and self-love. Nor
should human law simply issue commands, nor set up rulers as autocrats.
There is no good-enough autocracy. The goal may be to climb as high
as possible, then, but trying and failing to reach the highest peak would
be worse than successfully reaching the top of a lesser mountain. Why
else emphasize the riskiness of lawgiving, “the most perfect test of manly
virtue” (708d6–7, cf. 810e, 835c, 968e–969a)?33
As I’ve argued elsewhere,34 it’s helpful to think of this subtler utopi-
anism in terms of a three-fold distinction. As a model or paradigm,
the simply-best regime admits of diverse “parts” or properties (668d10,
746c), some relatively superficial, others more fundamental. An imitation
can therefore resemble that model superficially, fundamentally, or compre-
hensively (in both respects). An imitation need not bear a comprehensive
resemblance to such a model in order to resemble its fundamental proper-
ties. It can resemble a paradigm fundamentally without also resembling it
superficially. Indeed, the Athenian suggests that fundamental resemblance
to the best regime requires “abandoning” comprehensive resemblance
(739a, 746c). The worth of the model depends on how it combines its
superficial properties, how it possesses the fundamental property of being
“consistent with itself” (homologoumenon auto hautoi 746c8) because of
the simultaneous presence of certain superficial parts (cf. 669c–670c).35
An imitation lacking even one such part could therefore be less like the
original in terms of self-agreement than a discrete set of superficial parts,
and so less meritorious as well. If it is likely that some of the model’s
superficial parts will not be reproduced, then attempting to imitate the
model comprehensively will be self-defeating. The lawgiver might succeed
at reproducing some of the model’s superficial parts, but if he fails to
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 95

reproduce the others, then he will fail to imitate the model in the respects
that ultimately matter. Like a poet who jumbles together dissonant sounds
and images, his imitation will lack consonance and harmony. As a second-
best alternative, then, he ought to pursue consonance indirectly, using
superficial parts unlike those of his model.
The Laws articulates and justifies this view in passages bookending the
account of the simply-best regime in Book Five (739a–b, 745e–46d), the
first of which likens the disavowal of that regime “to the move made by
someone playing draughts, who abandons his ‘sacred line’” (aph’ hierou
739a1–2). Pangle notes that the game of “draughts” (petteia) is in fact “a
generic name for several board games whose precise rules are unknown
to us.”36 However, we do have evidence independent of the Laws for a
game, apparently called “five lines” (pente grammai), where each player
tried to keep his pieces on a “sacred line” (hiera grammē).37 As Leslie
Kurke has shown, it seems that moving from this line “was a last resort
for a player who was being beaten.”38 From the third-century Academic,
Pollux, and Byzantine scholiast, Eustathius, Kurke quotes proverbs asso-
ciated with such a move: “he moves the piece from the sacred line” and
“for people who are desperate and in need of final aid.”39 While winning
a game of pente grammai is associated with keeping one’s pieces on the
sacred line, it seems that one might have to move them from that line
to do as well as possible, either to win outright through a come-back
strategy or perhaps to consolidate a decent position in a game of several
rounds. If this is right, then the draughts analogy is relevant to the Athe-
nian’s purpose because at least one version of such games admits of a
second-best strategy that is not a straightforward approximation of the
preferable way of playing. This strategy takes a rather different approach
towards a player’s ultimate objective. One “abandons his sacred line” and
the superficial property of keeping one’s pieces on it in order to realize
successfully the fundamental property of victory. The player would lose
the game in cases where he adhered to the preferable strategy but was
unable to reproduce all its superficial parts—those needed to make the
strategy of keeping to the sacred line choiceworthy, whatever those were.
If lawgiving is akin to draughts-playing, as the Athenian suggests, then
the lawgiver should likewise be prepared to abandon his own “sacred
line,” here analogous to tyrannical rule (739a5–6). Ruling as a tyrant,
without regard for the consent of the ruled, may be to command that
which reason ordains without adulteration, as we’ve seen. But if the ruled
simply refuse those commands, being predictably unreasonable, then the
96 R. A. BALLINGALL

fundamental property of rational governance is better served by a different

tack. Like the draughts player, the lawgiver should abandon the preferable
strategy, lest it takes him further from rather than closer to his ultimate
objective. This may be “unexpected” and “seem amazing to the hearer
at first”—not only because he might be unfamiliar with a lawgiver who
is not a tyrant, but also because it amounts to abjuring “correctness of
imitation” (668b6). It is to abstain from imitation that bears a compre-
hensive resemblance to its model. But those familiar with pente grammai
are already accustomed to this kind of necessity; the Athenian apparently
hopes to enliven us to its existence beyond this more familiar context.40
The Athenian then introduces what he calls “the most correct proce-
dure” (to orthotaton 739a6). This procedure is first to describe the best
regime, and the second best and the third, and then having done so to
give the choice among them to whoever is to lead in the city’s founding.
He duly speaks of the best regime in the terms that we’ve just exam-
ined, as a city very much like the Republic’s Kallipolis, before turning
to the second best, leaving the third aside for the time being. Staying
with the question of property, he explains that the godlike communism
of the best regime “would be too demanding for the birth, nurture,
and education that we have now specified” (740a). Magnesia’s prop-
erty laws would remain exceptionally ambitious: citizens are to consider
their private allotments to be at the same time the common property of
the whole city (740a); are to submit to the public regulation of family
size, lest the number of households changes (740d–e); and are strictly
forbidden from adding to or subtracting from the family lands (741b–c),
as well as from possessing currency recognized abroad (741e). But they
would be permitted to live in private households, to have wives and chil-
dren of their own, and to accumulate to a modest extent wealth above a
guaranteed basic level (744e).
Despite these accommodations, though, the Athenian anticipates the
likelihood of mass disobedience. The problem of property is so tenacious
that Magnesians may reject even the more accessible arrangements of the
second-best regime. If a necessary aspect of any regime is the possibility of
consenting to what it holds as lawful, then the lawgiver may be compelled
to dilute reason yet further, choosing a third or fourth-best alternative.
The Laws thus conceives an iterative procedure where the initial “move”
abandoning the simply-best regime may have to be repeated.41
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 97

The things that have now been described are never likely, as a whole,
to find such favorable circumstances that every single detail will coincide
precisely as the argument has indicated. That presupposes men who won’t
object to living in such a community, and who will tolerate a moderate
and fixed level of wealth throughout their lives, and the supervision of the
size of each individual’s family as we’ve suggested. Will people really put
up with being deprived of gold and other things which, for reasons we
went into just now, the lawgiver is obviously going to add to his list of
forbidden articles? What about this description of a city and countryside
with houses at the center and in all directions round about? He might
have been relating a dream, or modeling a city and its citizens out of wax.
These criticisms are not altogether unfair, but the lawgiver must recon-
sider it as follows (this being, then, a reprise of his address to us). “My
friends, in these discourses we’re having, don’t think it has escaped me
either that the point of view you are urging [in aiming at Magnesia] has
some truth in it. But I believe that in every project for future action, when
you are displaying the model that ought to be put into effect, the most
just procedure [ton dikaiotaton] is to depart not at all from what is most
noble and most true. But if you find that anything is impossible in prac-
tice, you ought to turn away [ekklinein] and not attempt it: you should
see which of the remaining alternatives comes nearest [toutou tōn loipōn
engutata] to the model and is most nearly akin to it, and arrange to have
that done instead. But you must let the lawgiver finish describing what
he really wants to do, and only then join him in considering which of his
proposals [tōn eirēmenōn] for legislation are feasible, and which are too
difficult. You see, even the maker [dēmiourgon] of the most trivial object
must make it consistent with itself [homologoumenon auto hautoi] if he is
going to get any sort of reputation”. (745e–46d)42

The final sentence of this passage is especially significant; it explains

by analogy the preceding lines, which contain an important ambiguity.
As a consummate demiurge, the lawgiver would never find a regime
inconsistent with itself, which would apparently occur were he unable
to reproduce every part of the model on which his imitation is based.
Creating a whole without every part would be like painting a portrait
without some conspicuous feature of the model’s face. But how should
the lawgiver handle such cases? Should he simply replace the part that
proves impossible to imitate? Or should he replace the whole imitation,
on the grounds that its parts are mutually consistent only because of the
simultaneous presence of these particular things? Is this self-contradiction
a question of the possibility of separate parts taken by themselves or of
98 R. A. BALLINGALL

their mutual compatibility taken altogether? Interpreters and the major

English translators of this passage have assumed the issue to be of the
former kind.43 But doing so erases the ambiguity at its heart and ignores
other textual evidence suggestive of the second reading.
The second reading is suggested by the fact that the Athenian reiter-
ates, at 746b6, the claim about the lawgiver’s procedure made initially at
739a–b. As we’ve seen, he asserts initially that “the most correct proce-
dure is to state what the best regime is, and the second and the third, and
after stating this to give the choice among them [dounai de…hairesin] to
whoever is to be in charge of the founding in each case” (739a–b, my
emphasis). This seems to be what is referred to at 746b6. He observes
that he and his companions have continued to discuss the second-best way
of life as though all of its defining elements were possible, as though they
were “modeling the city and its citizens out of wax.” But he reassures us
that this is in keeping with what he now calls “the most just procedure,”
that which allows the lawgiver to “finish describing what he really wants
to do” (746c4–5). Only after this has been made clear should one attend
to what would prove impossible and adjust one’s aspirations accordingly.
If this “most just procedure” refers back to “the most correct procedure”
introduced earlier, then it is natural to assume that the “remaining alter-
natives” of 746c2–3 from which the lawgiver would choose, after turning
away from the impossible best (or second-best), refer to discrete regime-
imitations (the second- or third- or fourth-best, etc.) and not “details” or
“parts” of the simply-best regime.
The confusion on these points derives from the ambiguity of the direct
object at 746b5–c4. Plato uses the indefinite pronoun ti, relative pronoun
hōi, and demonstrative pronoun toutōn at 746b8–c1 to refer to the aspect
of “what is most noble and most true” (746b8) that might prove impos-
sible. He then uses the phrase “toutou tōn loipōn engytata” to refer to
“[that] of the remaining alternatives that comes closest” to what is “most
noble and most true.” The vital point is that the demonstrative pronoun
preceding tōn loipōn engytata does not have to refer to remaining parts
or details of the paradigm associated with “what is most noble and most
true.” The “remaining alternatives” (tōn loipōn) that qualify this pronoun
equally permit it to refer to alternative regimes that do not consist of
impossible parts. This same ambiguity is present in the subsequent lines as
well. Nothing in the Greek requires that the “proposals” (tōn eirēmenōn)
of the lawgiver (those from which he would choose in the second step
of his procedure) be interpreted as “parts” of his preferred legislation, as
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 99

Pangle has it, for example. In neither case, in fact, does the Greek unam-
biguously refer to a choice among parts, aspects, or details of the best
regime. Instead, one can just as easily understand the choice in question
as referring to a choice among regimes themselves, “remainders” from
the most correct and most just procedure. Since this rendering fits best
with the passage as a whole; with 739a–b, as we have just seen; with the
prefatory draughts analogy; and indeed with the dramatic context of Book
Five; we have good reason to prefer it over the major translations.

Utopianism, Not Idealism

The Athenian’s argument in these passages, then, is not as insipid as it
might seem. His claim is not merely that the lawgiver should strive for
a second-best fallback in the event the simply best should prove impos-
sible. Nor is his point fully captured by the more interesting idea that
the lawgiver should disavow the simply best from the get-go. Rather his
argument—to use some helpful anachronisms—is that the best regime is
a utopia, not a regulative ideal. Like such an ideal, it is good place that is
also a no place. It is also the place against which all lesser regimes must
be judged. But as a utopia, it cannot guide or regulate political action
in any straightforward way. For precisely because it exists only in speech,
it abstracts from the limitations of deeds. The qualities that account for
its merit cannot all find expression in action. This means that action in
emulation of the best regime must be wary of falling short.44 Sometimes
the nearest, we can come to such a distant goal requires acting very differ-
ently than we might wish. It might even require retreating from it in the
opposite direction. Indeed, neglecting this fact would seem the enduring
temptation of all political reformers and revolutionaries. In their zeal for
the city of our prayers, they disregard—naively and often destructively—
the extent to which the city of experience cannot be assimilated to our
hopes and fantasies. Acting on those fantasies is not innocent idealism; it
leaves the earth much further from heaven than it has to be.
The Athenian’s teaching in this regard depends on recognizing what it
is that ultimately redeems a political way of life and how this redeeming,
fundamental property can be built from or undermined by different super-
ficial properties. In the abstract, what is wanted is self-agreement. The
different superficial parts must be consonant with one another, as they
are in the model against which all regimes must be judged. But where
even a single such part proves impossible to reproduce, replacing it may
100 R. A. BALLINGALL

not be enough to bring the resulting imitation as close as possible to the

model. An overall approximation of the model, then, one that reproduces
all but a few of its superficial parts, will not necessarily be the best imita-
tion. A lawgiver who knows his business will consistently approximate
only the self-agreement of his model, even if doing so requires super-
ficial parts radically unlike the model’s. Like a mountaineer who would
climb as high as possible, or a swimmer who would cross a swift-flowing
stream, he will choose a peak whose summit he knows he can reach or a
ford whose crossing he is confident he can make. There may be higher
mountains and more convenient fords but biting off more than one can
chew in such cases would obviously invite disaster. A successful ascent,
for example, depends on a myriad of factors all coming together at once.
The climber’s skill, experience, equipment, and colleagues must all be
equal to the task. If any one such factor proves insufficient, the prudent
course is not to try for the highest summit nonetheless, settling for a
frayed length of rope, or an untested companion. One should choose a
different mountain altogether if any one critical prerequisite is lacking.
The relationship between the best and second-best regimes cleaves to
this pattern. The fundamental property after which the lawgiver strives is
adherence to reason. In the paradigm case, as we’ve seen, such adherence
would be absolute, so much so that the city would resemble the body of
a single, thoroughly reasonable person. Its members might be less than
reasonable themselves, but they would at least obey without question
that which the reasonable command. The Athenian underscores the
impossibility of total obedience for fallible human beings (cf. 752b–c).
The problem of property and the fear of death that is its germ stand in
the way. But the lawgiver’s fallback is not to emulate the rule of reason as
though his city were made of wax. His “material” must consent to what
he ordains, and this it will do only if its irrational need for self-assertion
can be met. This is what it means to say that the lawgiver cannot be
a “tyrant.” He cannot simply ordain what reason marks out without
altering the manner in which reason speaks and even the content of what
it counsels. To become law, reason needs to clothe itself in seductive
rhetoric and accommodate its commands to the mortal natures of its
audience, praising certain forms of moral retributiveness, for example,
and permitting traditional family life. In these ways, the second-best
regime takes a different route to get as close as possible to its destination.
Its founder does not imitate his model by trying to approximate all its
superficial parts. For to do so would be to leave the rule of reason in the
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 101

city much the weaker. The city would simply refuse reason’s edicts were
reason to speak in the city in the same voice and about the same things
as it would in the mind of the rational man.
These points also explain why the justification for turning away from
the simply-best regime must come on the heels of the prelude to the
lawcode as a whole. The very need of legislative preludes attests to the
prudence of second-best imitation, while the content of the first such
prelude articulates the pattern that such imitation takes. The preludes
represent the lawgiver’s efforts to secure the city’s consent, without
which the regime cannot be consistent with itself and reason cannot
rule, even dimly. To secure such consent is to repudiate the “violence”
and “tyranny” that otherwise attaches to law. But the Athenian speaks of
tyranny in these contexts as a mark of distinction, as the rule of reason
undistorted by efforts to persuade unreasonable people. The rule of law
through preludes is not only a fallback, then, as important as that point
is. Such rule is also an imitation that uses a distinct set of superficial parts.
For law that rules without regard for consent is superficially closer to the
best regime. It simply orders what reason counsels. In practice, however,
abstracting from the consent of the ruled will not achieve the life nearest
to the best. Simply ordaining the forgiveness of all injustice and the elim-
ination of all private ownership will hardly result in a city that observes
these things as far as humanly possible. Trying and failing to approximate
in deed that which seems best in speech is in such cases to leave practice
much further from theory than it has to be. To decree laws unmixed with
persuasion is to neglect how we must sometimes do things very differently
than we might think them.
Where does all this leave the citizen who would become like god? His
case would seem very much akin to the lawgiver’s. He too must imitate
a model that he cannot fully reproduce. Likewise, the details of his own
imitation seem starkly dissimilar from his model’s. And in both cases, the
model itself is identified with the divine. Indeed, as I argue in Chapter 5,
“human” virtue stands to the divine in much the same way as the second-
best regime stands to the best way of life. Rather than become like god
by thinking for himself, for example, the “human” citizen follows reason
only by deferring to external authority. His life comes closest to what
matters by means of separate, superficial parts. Like Kleinias—the lawgiver
who needs the guidance of a god or godlike man—the citizen must stop
himself from playing god even as he follows god. That is why the Athe-
nian lays such stress on observing reverence. The point of casting the
102 R. A. BALLINGALL

simply-best way of life as divine is to help a Kleinias avoid naive idealism

on the one hand and selfish cynicism on the other hand. By inspiring a
fulsome awe in those called upon to imitate awesome things, the paradigm
associated with these things can push such people away from superficially
imitating god. Whether from an ardor for the political best or from more
corrupt motives, men like Kleinias must never think that such imitation
can be complete.
Still, if it’s so important to keep political men from such conceits, then
why call attention to the second-best character of Magnesia at all? Does
doing so not present an unnecessary temptation to reach beyond one’s
grasp? Why not simply declare as best what is in fact imperfect? Certainly,
the Athenian does not otherwise shrink from speaking deceptively. Why
not do so in this context too? Moreover, if reverence for the god is the
superficial property by means of which such men most resemble the god,
then what is the relationship between reverence and godlikeness? How
does reverencing the divine bring the citizen as close as possible to the
divine and how does doing so realize the promise of divine law? These
are the questions still very much on the table. It shall be our task in the
subsequent chapters to shed light on them as well.

Notes
1. Compare, e.g., 739a2–3 with 965e4–5.
2. Thomas L. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and
Intellectual Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006),
46.
3. For the argument that these passages profoundly qualify Socrates’ insis-
tence in the Republic on the possibility of the city in speech, see Laks,
“Legislation and Demiurgy.”
4. See, e.g., Paul Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1933); Joseph Beatty, “Plato’s Happy Philosopher and Politics,”
Review of Politics 38, no. 4 (1976): 569; Rex Martin, “The Ideal State
in Plato’s ‘Republic’,” History of Political Thought 2, no. 1 (1981): 1–30;
and Dorothy Emmet, The Role of the Unrealisable: A Study in Regulative
Ideals (London: St. Martin’s, 1994). We shall find the notion of a regu-
lative ideal implicit in most readings of the Laws as well. For the locus
classicus, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A644/B672. As the notion
of a regulative ideal implies, the mainstream reading does not assume that
Plato’s political paradigms are intended to be practically possible, only
practically useful in a more-or-less straightforward way.
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 103

5. As is the Kallipolis of the Republic, though Socrates does not make that
fact explicit.
6. There is disagreement about whether the best regime of the Laws is to
be identified with the Kallipolis of the Republic. For the affirmative view,
see André Laks, “In What Sense Is the City of the Laws a Second Best
One?,” in Plato’s Laws and Its Historical Significance, ed. Francisco L.
Lisi (Sankt Augustin, 2001), 108–9 and Schofield, Plato, 9–11, 75. For
the negative view, see Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, 11–12.
7. Or at any rate is presented as being one. In fact, Balot interprets the
Stranger’s final remarks in the Laws as taking back much of the consti-
tutionalism envisioned for Magnesia. “The Athenian’s parting comments
about the philosophical ‘head’ of the city are designed, I think, to suggest
to other philosophers, including those of Magnesia itself, that they might
rule in accordance with nous, free of servitude to the laws.” Balot, “Odd
Episode,” 77. This idea might seem supported by the testimony of Aris-
totle (Politics 1265a), as Balot points out (75). My own view, as I explain
in subsequent chapters, is that the Athenian imagines philosophical “rule”
in Magnesia as being more indirect and limited, a kind of institutionalized
Socratic dialogue and advice-giving, presumably akin to the conversation
modeled by the Stranger himself with Kleinias and Megillus. The corollary,
though, is that the sub-philosophic officers who would run the day-to-day
affairs of Magnesia remain in need of the rule of law. Nor does the coher-
ence of lawfulness necessarily fall apart in the face of the indirect, limited,
and even invisible tutelage imagined of the Magnesian philosophers. For
this last point, see Robert A. Ballingall, “The Rule of Law and the Imita-
tion of God in Plato’s Laws,” Perspectives on Political Science 51, no. 4
(2022): 190–200.
8. This same passage has been fruitfully studied by Laks (“Legislation and
Demiurgy”), who argues that it forms the basis of a complementarity
between the Republic and the Laws. Socrates in the Republic anticipates
the need for political practice to divert—or, as Laks puts it in subsequent
work (“The Laws ”), “retreat”—from the political paradigm. Meanwhile,
the Athenian in the Laws fills in the details of what that retreat must
involve. In this way, Magnesia represents the sense in which the Kallipolis
is possible. It is what the Kallipolis would become if it were to be
translated into practice. As many others have appreciated, Laks is onto
something here. But he has not shown how his idea can account for the
striking dissimilarity between Kallipolis and Magnesia. His concern has
been to show—implausibly in my view—that the likening in the Laws of
the best regime to a city of gods does not imply that the Kallipolis was
impossible all along.
9. André Laks, “L’Utopie Législative de Platon,” Revue Philosophique de la
France et de l’Étranger 181, no. 41 (1991): 417–28. Others have found
104 R. A. BALLINGALL

the ethos allegedly implied by the preludes to be an ideal in its own

right, expressive of a concern for citizens’ “rational freedom” and even
anticipating the theory of deliberative democracy associated with Jurgen
Habermas. See Schofield, Plato, 84–88 and Cohen, “Law, Autonomy, and
Political Community.” In a similar spirit, Bobonich (Plato’s Utopia Recast )
interprets the preludes as attempts to “rationally persuade” citizens of the
ethical and cosmological truth. For a good survey of analytical interpre-
tations of the preludes, see Julia Annas, “Virtue and Law in Plato,” in
Plato’s Laws: A Critical Guide, ed. Christopher Bobonich (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71–91.
10. The references to tyranny in this passage should not be misconstrued with
Bury (Plato X , 273) as indicative merely of “monarchy.” Like other such
references in the Laws, they carry with them pejorative connotations of
violence and disregard for the consent of the ruled. Certainly, that is how
Kleinias interprets them (710c). It’s true that the Athenian attributes to
the tyrant whom he conjures up certain virtues, including moderation, but
he is thinking of a willingness to follow the counsels of a lawgiver and not
to act gently towards the ruled. Cf. Malcolm Schofield, Saving the City:
Philosopher-Kings and Other Classical Paradigms (London and New York:
Routledge, 1999), 45–50.
11. See also 861b, where the Athenian seems to describe law given in accor-
dance with the method of the slave doctor, without any argument spoken,
“as if uttered by a god.”
12. 690b–c is complicated by the fact that the Athenian seems to identify the
rule of reason with “the natural rule exercised by the law over willing
subjects, without violence.” At this point in the dialogue, he has yet to
distinguish the tyranny of law from the consent of the governed, which
he will do explicitly only when introducing the preludes.
13. E.g., Laks, “The Laws.”
14. The verb “to be tamed” (hēmerousthai) is “used quite naturally of an
animal.” Richard F. Stalley, “Persuasion in Plato’s Laws,” History of Polit-
ical Thought 15, no. 2 (1994): 170. In the Republic, e.g., it is used to
describe the subordination of the “bestial” part of the soul, the part that
might be “put to sleep and tamed [koimizetai kai hēmeroutai]” (591b2–
3). The same verb is used by Aristotle to classify beasts such as elephants
that “can be tamed quickly [hēmerousthai dunatai taxu]” (History of
Animals 488a28–29). See also LSJ, s.v. hēmeroō.
15. Anticipating popular resistance to his legislative initiatives, the Stranger
recommends such things as “purifying shamans, exorcistic witchcraft,
temple incubations, oracular prescriptions, mystery rites, voodoo dolls,
musical harmonization, intoxicating drink, aphrodisiacs, hallucinogenic
drugs, magic spells, and enchanting poetry.” Clark, Law Most Beautiful, x.
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 105

16. The Athenian foresees that no “mortal” lawgiver can succeed without
“successors.” Like a painter whose work can always be improved with
touch-ups and restorations, he must anticipate that his own enterprise will
fall short of its potential if he doesn’t compensate for his own “artistic
weaknesses” (769c5–6). Here, the lawgiver whom the Athenian has in
view would seem to be Kleinias. Likewise, the successors he has in mind
would seem to depend on what Kleinias—with the Stranger’s help—is able
to pass down. The Athenian duly speaks of “some device” (769e5) that
might “teach” such a successor “how he ought to guard and set right
the laws” (769e7–8). The implication is that the successors do not have
independent access to the prudence on the basis of which the lawgiver
himself had acted.
17. Marquez argues that, for the Eleatic Stranger of the Statesman, law at its
best is a partial compensation for the “special” and “temporal” scarcity
of the political art. Xavier Marquez, A Stranger’s Knowledge: Statesman-
ship, Philosophy, and Law in Plato’s Statesman (Las Vegas: Parmenides
Publishing, 2012). In this connection, it seems important that the Platonic
Socrates lays claim to the true political art (Gorgias 521d). This assertion
obviously has ironic resonances; he elsewhere calls attention to the private
nature of his life (e.g., Apology 23b). But it also has a serious dimension
that can be understood as overlapping with the political arts discussed by
the Athenian and Eleatic Stranger. In all three cases, the basis of political
expertise is knowledge, not only of the human good, but of the natural
weakness of ethical knowledge in political life. The Athenian, for his part,
identifies as “the greatest title to rule…the one bidding the ignorant to
follow and the prudent to lead” (690b8–10). But he recognizes at the
same time the claims of six other titles in the face of which the rule of
wisdom must bow.
18. As I discuss below, the Athenian anticipates the need for subsequent
deviations from the second-best regime.
19. Many of the preludes invoke or speak of aidōs, as Sakunanandan observes
(“Drawing Rein,” 342). See, e.g., 717a–18a, 729b–c, 879c, 920d–21a,
943e, 917a–b.
20. It is not for nothing that the prelude claims that “no one, so to speak,”
assigns honor correctly (727a2) or takes into account the harm to his soul
from failing to do so (728b).
21. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 451.
22. E.g., Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast and Annas, Virtue and Law, both of
which interpret civic virtue as an approximation of philosophic excellence,
different in degree than in kind.
23. Read in light of later passages such as 738e, the trustworthiness that Athe-
nian here praises seems to be a compensatory device for the privacy that
106 R. A. BALLINGALL

will be permitted in Magnesia. For where citizens have a private life invis-
ible to the community, they can more easily conceal vicious habits and
attitudes and thus avoid restorative punishment.
24. Thomas L. Pangle, “The Political Psychology of Religion in Plato’s Laws,”
American Political Science Review 70, no. 4 (1976): 1063–64; “Interpre-
tive Essay,” 452–55. See also Waller R. Newell, Ruling Passion: The Erotics
of Statecraft in Platonic Political Philosophy (Lanham MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2000), 105–11.
25. Strauss, Argument and Action, 67.
26. Throughout the discussion of the legislative preludes, the Athenian avails
himself of the homonymic meanings of nomos, which can mean both
law/custom and song. For readings that especially emphasizes this fact,
see Gerrard Naddaf, “Literacy and Poetic Performance in Plato’s Laws,”
Ancient Philosophy 20, no. 2 (2000): 339–50 and Eleonora Rocconi, “The
Music of the Laws and the Laws of Music,” Greek and Roman Musical
Studies 4, no. 1 (2016): 71–89.
27. But compare Politics IV.14–16, where Aristotle discusses the regime in
terms of three parts.
28. Aren’t these very much crimes of necessity? How can it possibly be better
to visit men with “death and exile” (735e2), in keeping with “the best
method” of purification, merely because they are driven by hunger to
steal? My suggestion is that the Athenian has in mind the problem of
property that we have just examined. He regards hunger as a kind of test:
those who refrain from the property of others, even under the pressures
of hunger, show themselves exceptionally able to overcome self-love. If
self-love is the root of political dysfunction, and hunger makes visible
those who are less in its grips, then an ambitious lawgiver might invite
as colonists to a new city only those who pass such a test. The point is
not to harm the hungry thieves but to exclude them, on the supposition
that some people really are able to overcome bodily compulsion, and it is
these whom the lawgiver especially wants as citizens.
29. The Athenian suggests that an absence of money loving is, nevertheless, an
indispensable device for preserving political activity. It provides “a sort of
sturdy foundation” (736e5), he says, and “a kind of buttress” (737a7) for
the city. Property should be allocated so as to minimize hatred among the
citizens, and the Athenian goes on to describe the desirable allocation in
some detail, arguing for the fixed establishment of 5040 households, each
of which is to be assigned a plot in the country “large enough to support a
certain number of people living moderately, and no more” (737d). But the
city is not to rely merely on an equitable division of property to prevent
civil strife. The citizens themselves should be selected and educated with
a view to how they privilege justice and friendship ahead of money. In
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 107

this context, the Athenian describes the value of friendship itself in instru-
mental terms, as a way of discouraging citizens from concealing from each
other their vices, as privacy enables them to do.
30. The Athenian’s behavior in this regard is of a piece with his reluctance
to gratify Kleinias’ eagerness to begin “legislating.” He repeatedly demurs
in this face of this eagerness (e.g., 737d, 768c, 768e). On the theme of
“delays” and “deferrals” in the Laws, see Laks, “The Laws,” 263–66 and
Balot, “Likely Stories,” 81–82.
31. Schofield, Plato, 10, emphasis in the original.
32. Saunders, “Plato’s Later Political Thought,” 483.
33. Especially telling are the Athenian’s remarks when he finally treats of the
ruling offices in Book Six. “Observe,” he says, “how much courage and
willingness to take risks will be needed to found our city in the present
circumstances” (752b). Why do those circumstances carry such risk? For
the same reason he identifies at 745e–746a: the likelihood that citizens
won’t consent to such demanding laws. Mass disobedience is obviously
not part of the second-best condition at which the Athenian is aiming. It
is that which must be avoided in the setting down of laws. After all, laws
that are ignored or disdained are no laws at all. But this means that the
second-best regime cannot be that which occurs when the lawgiver tries
for the simply best and falls short. Rather, he must adapt his laws to those
to whom he gives them.
34. Robert A. Ballingall, “Distant Goals: Second-best Imitation in Plato’s
Laws,” History of Political Thought 37, no. 1 (2016): 1–24.
35. This means that what I am calling superficial properties are those respon-
sible for the presence of fundamental properties, while fundamental
properties are those responsible for how a paradigm and imitation ought
to be evaluated. Note, though, that the causal power of superficial prop-
erties depends on how they combine with one another; they do not
engender fundamental properties in isolation. That self-agreement is the
preeminent, fundamental property of the divine paradigms in the Laws is
attested throughout the dialogue, but see esp. 3.689a–d, 696c, 5.739c–
e. It is also important to note that the Athenian refers to this property
(that according to which a regime should ultimately be evaluated) with
different names, depending on context. He will variously call it “virtue,”
“wisdom,” and “consonance” (symphōnia) in reference to individuals;
“friendship,” “freedom,” “intelligence” (nous ), and “unity” in reference
to cities. Nevertheless, as he clarifies at 3.693b–c, “…these goals are not
different but the same” (693c3–4). To make sense of how these could all
be names for the same thing, it is helpful to think of the attributes they
signify as instantiations of self-agreement, broadly interpreted as rational
order. See also note 28 below.
36. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 527n16.
108 R. A. BALLINGALL

37. R. G. Austin, “Greek Board Games,” Antiquity 14 (1940): 257–71.

38. Leslie Kurke, “Ancient Greek Board Games and How to Play Them,”
Classical Philology 94, no. 3 (1999): 257.
39. Kurke, “Ancient Greek Board Games,” 257. N.b.: I have used Austin’s
translation of Pollux (“Greek Board Games,” 268) but kept with Kurke’s
construal of Eustathius.
40. As I discuss in the next chapter, likening the legislative art to a game is
also used to evoke the tragic side of piety, from whose prospect the human
things appear trivial and unworthy of great seriousness.
41. This procedure is anticipated in the “capstone” to the discussion of
drinking at the end of Book Two. There, the Athenian claims that the
value of inebriation, and the symposium by implication, depends on the
city treating the practice “as something serious,” making use of it “…in
conformity with laws and order, for the sake of moderation” (673e). If
the city cannot use symposia correctly, the Athenian claims that the best
course would be to revert to an even more extreme version of the Dorian
practice that simply forbids indulgences in pleasures considered poten-
tially harmful (674a–b). This is an astonishing confession, given that the
symposium appears to represent a useful forum for the correct habitua-
tion of desire, a process characterized by controlled exposure to (rather
than flight from) pleasures. Recall that “correct law” is concerned with the
education of citizens to virtue (1.632e, 4.705d–e), something that presup-
poses the “consonance” wrought by the habituation of desire (2.653a–c).
Assuming that something like this education would be an essential insti-
tution of Magnesia, the “capstone” passage introduces what one might
call “third best reasoning.” The Athenian does not maintain that the
symposium model should be approximated when it cannot be reproduced
comprehensively. Rather, he implies that failure to reproduce the habitua-
tion of desire in accordance with this model (that is, treating the practice
of tasting pleasures “as something serious”) should prompt the lawgiver to
abandon it altogether. Even the second-best regime, then, admits of the
same need to “abandon” comprehensive resemblance, where some super-
ficial properties prove impossible to reproduce. Morrow, who sees the
point quite clearly, calls this a ‘second-best policy.” See Morrow, Plato’s
Cretan City, 442n150.
42. Based on Trevor J. Saunders, trans., “Laws,” in Plato: Collected Works,
ed. John M. Cooper and Douglas S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1996), 1318–616, with significant modifications.
43. Consider how the passage is construed in the major English translations:
Bury, Plato X : “…the person who exhibits the pattern on which the
undertaking is to be modeled should omit no detail of perfect beauty
and truth; but where any of them is impossible of realization, that partic-
ular detail he should omit and leave unexecuted, but contrive to execute
 3 CLASSICAL UTOPIANISM IN PLATO’S LAWS 109

instead whatever of the remaining details comes nearest to this” (746b6–

c4); Pangle, The Laws of Plato: “…when some aspect of these things turns
out to be impossible for a fellow, he should steer away and not do it.
Instead, he should contrive to bring about whatever is the closest to this
from the things that remain, and by nature the most akin from among the
things that are appropriate to do” (746b8–c4); Saunders, “Laws:” “…the
most satisfactory procedure is to spare no detail of absolute truth and
beauty. But if you find that one of these details is impossible in practice,
you ought to put it on one side and not attempt it: you should see which
of the remaining alternatives comes closest to it and is most nearly akin
to your policy” (746b5–c4).
44. The need to be wary of falling short, as testament to utopianism: great
risk in setting up even a second-best regime (opening of book vi, esp
752b; end of book xii) cf. 810e. It’s true that regulative ideals also exist
only in speech, but the point is that they don’t abstract from the limita-
tions of deeds to the same extent and therefore don’t generate the same
complexities.
 CHAPTER 4

The Athenian’s Rehabilitation of Tragedy

One of the great motifs of Plato’s Laws is the analogy of the political
art to imitation and image making. It is at work in the Athenian’s
complex utopianism, as we saw in the previous chapter. It runs through
the lengthy defense of drinking parties in the dialogue’s second book.
But undoubtedly the theme announces itself in the most striking way at
817a–d, where the Athenian asks how a lawgiver might aptly respond to
tragic poets from abroad hoping to practice their art within the city. The
scene asks to be compared with an episode from the Republic (398a–b).
Like Socrates in that dialogue, the Athenian in the Laws stresses the
need to harmonize the arts with the ethical aspirations of the regime.
He counsels that the foreign poets be refused a chorus unless their
works can be shown either to agree with the regime’s civic education
or to improve on it (817d6). Yet he goes much further than Socrates,
proclaiming the regime he has persuaded his companions to found—not
merely in speech, but in deed (702a–d)—to be an “imitation of the most
beautiful and best way of life, which we at least assert to be really the
truest tragedy” (817b3–5). As would-be lawgivers, he and his compan-
ions are poets themselves, he says. They are “rivals” (antagōnistai) of
the traditional tragedians, “artists and performers of the most beautiful
drama, which true law alone can by nature bring to completion—as we
hope” (817b6–c1). In having the philosophical persona of the work utter
these (apparently adulatory) words, does Plato take back the Socratic

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112 R. A. BALLINGALL

disparagement of tragedy? Or does tragedy’s rehabilitation in the Laws

somehow comprehend the Socratic critique?1 What is ultimately at stake
in determining the appropriate orientation to tragedy anyway?2
As we shall see, the Laws incorporates the critique of tragedy from
the Republic, despite identifying (or because it identifies) the second-best
regime with tragedy. To call that regime a tragedy, then, however “beau-
tiful,” is quietly to insult it. Indeed, it is to disparage human life itself;
it is the second-best regime that would make possible the best way of
life for human beings.3 What is human is not worthy of great serious-
ness, as the Athenian frankly asserts. Nevertheless, it is necessary to be
seriousness about the human things, and it is tragedy that stands for the
imitative art most connected to what is serious. Tragic poets are known
as the ones who are serious (tōn spoudaiōn, 817a2). They pronounce on
things supposed to be grave and important (ta spoudaia). In light of the
Socratic critique of tragedy, these poets exaggerate or distort what is truly
serious. They take the human things more seriously than they deserve.
But in doing so, they also humble human beings. They teach reverence.
For it is also characteristic of tragedy to emphasize the awesome vulner-
ability and mysteriousness of the human condition and thus to remind
humanity of that which separates us from what is divine.4
My purpose in this chapter is to show that the Laws incorporates both
aspects of tragedy: the regime that it conceives exaggerates the seriousness
of what is human and at the same time teaches reverence for what stands
beyond humanity. At its practical best, politics overstates the degree to
which imitation of god can be accomplished by human beings, even as it
paradoxically calls attention to how such imitation must fall short. To be
sure, the Athenian would inspire reverent awe very differently than the
traditional poets; he emphasizes the orderliness and providence of nature
and speaks of human vulnerability more obliquely.5 But neither does he
foresee a politics that would dispense with the humble affects that tragedy
summons up. Magnesia remains “tragic” in that its exaggerated serious-
ness militates against pride. The pretensions of its laws are intended to
make citizens and office holders feel small and to look outside them-
selves for moral guidance. It is of the greatest importance that Magnesians
refrain from believing themselves capable of moral independence, lest they
betray an impious “insolence.” It is such insolence that takes the place, in
the Magnesian tragedy, of the oblivion of human vulnerability and divine
mysteriousness traditionally dramatized by the tragic poets.
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 113

Within the context of our broader inquiry, these points help to explain
why the Athenian appears the invite the very thing that he teaches citizens
to avoid. The city is threatened by rule that does not submit to divine law
and by citizenship that insists on independent judgment, or so he claims.
Yet he speaks of politics in ways that might seem to flirt with these very
perils. Ventriloquizing the lawgiver, he bids political men become divine
as far as they are able. He speaks of the best regime upon which Magnesia
would be modeled as an unaudited tyranny. And he describes the law
that would seek the consent of the ruled as a fallback from authoritarian
commands. If the politics that the lawgiver would put into practice takes
aim at lower, more “humane” targets, then why present that politics as
the imitation of inhuman goals? Why speak of it as the imitation of that
which must be avoided? Doesn’t doing so simply tempt political men to
transgress the boundaries that they ought to observe? As we shall see, the
answer lies in the Athenian’s rehabilitation of tragedy. For the reasons that
Magnesia can be called a tragedy are the very ones explaining why its poli-
tics must be cast in such a paradoxical way. On the Athenian’s account,
tragedy is the imitation of the best way of life, where that imitation exag-
gerates its own seriousness yet at the same time fills the soul with reverent
awe. It is therefore of some interest that this definition should precisely
correspond to the Athenian’s formula for the practically-best regime.

Reverence and the Socratic Critique of Tragedy

That the Laws would reconcile itself to tragedy might seem strange in
view of the trenchant critique of the poets found in other dialogues,
above all in the Republic. This critique singles out tragedy for special
reproach, being the target of Socrates’ “greatest accusation” (605c6)
and is echoed elsewhere in the Platonic corpus (esp. Gorgias 502a–c and
Minos 321a–b).6 Indeed, it is the Socratic disapprobation of tragedy that
leads Paul Woodruff to regard Plato as such a thoroughgoing opponent
of reverence, the virtue especially extolled in tragic poetry. For Woodruff,
“[t]he writer who does the most to challenge this traditional notion of
reverence is Plato.”7

Religious reverence in the Republic and the Laws is more a quality that
rulers should foster in their subjects than a quality they should cultivate
in themselves. As a result, these rulers look suspiciously like the rulers we
read about in tragic poets—kings like the Creon of the Antigone, who
114 R. A. BALLINGALL

think they know what is best for their people and who therefore do not
think they need to listen to those below them. Plato thinks he must reject
the tragic view of reverence insofar as it predicts disaster for rulers who
take this attitude. The Philosopher Kings do know what is best.8

There is of course some truth in Woodruff’s point. Both Socrates and the
Athenian Stranger present philosophy as a divine way of life that tran-
scends ordinary human limitations. If “tragic reverence” is a matter of
using awe and shame to remember one’s “humanity” and to respect its
limits, then philosophy really would seem opposed to reverence, or at
least to its “tragic” formulation. Likewise, the Republic and the Laws
both look to the rule of philosophic reason as the mark of the best
regime. Even the second-best Magnesia makes room for philosophic rule.
And are philosopher kings not archetypes of the very irreverence that
is blamed in tragedy? Is Plato’s (putative) endorsement of philosophic
rule not of a piece with his rejection of tragedy and therewith of rever-
ence too? I believe that Woodruff is wrong to think so. To see why,
though, it is necessary to begin with two further points concerning Plato’s
understanding of this virtue.
First, Plato’s Socrates and Athenian Stranger do not literally think
themselves gods.9 They do speak of the philosopher in ways that might
seem to suggest as much. They conceive of human nature as embracing
a natural diversity or rank, the highest rung of which is radically dissim-
ilar from the others, at least in certain respects. For example, the tension
between political justice and private happiness that obtains for most
human beings is on the Socratic account overcome, or nearly overcome,
in the philosopher’s case.10 What is “natural” to most of us does not
limit the philosopher, at least not in the same way. Yet for all that, the
Socratic philosopher remains mortal. He too can reach beyond his grasp.
The natural limits that he must observe might differ from those faced by
others. But they exist for him nonetheless, not least in how they prevent
him from undertaking to rule. His way of life affords no leisure to arrange
the affairs of human beings (Republic 496a, 500b–c, 519c)11 ; he cannot
rule while remaining what he is (496c–d), particularly if his quest for the
most needful human truths remains unfinished, as Socrates teaches of his
own case (450d–e). Nor can he neglect his own dependence on the city.
The philosopher remains a citizen in body, if not in spirit. His security
and sustenance are needs that can hardly be met without the political
community. He is thus mindful of how the community relies on a moral
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 115

zeal that philosophy itself can seem to threaten (537d–39c). He “mod-

erates” his inquiries accordingly, presenting them as the acme of the civic
virtue that he himself calls into question and overcomes (368b–c and esp.
Apology 28b–35d).12 Above all, the Socratic philosopher appreciates the
limits of his rationalism. He maintains a distinction between a “human
wisdom” and one that is divine (Apology 20d, cf. Theaetetus 162c). He
can never cease inquiring into the questions at the root of his wisdom;
his answers are never capable of silencing all reasonable alternatives. For
all these reasons, reverence—or its philosophic analogue—must remain at
the heart of Socratic virtue. However “godlike” the philosopher might
become, his way of life is rooted in a unique appreciation of what limits
him as a human being.
A second point to bear in mind in considering Woodruff’s view is that
Plato’s Socrates and Athenian Stranger give every indication of being
alive to the problem of tyrannical overreach, even as they characterize
the best regime as a divine tyranny and rational despotism. In the Laws,
where the best regime is unambiguously excluded as a practical possibility,
any notion of good-enough despots and tyrants is rejected, explicitly and
repeatedly. It is not for nothing that the Athenian describes the rulers of
the best practical regime as “servants of the laws.”

I hold that it is this above all that determines whether the city survives
or undergoes the opposite. Where the law is itself ruled over and lacks
sovereign authority, I see destruction at hand for such a place. But where
it is despot over the rulers and the rulers are slaves of the law, there I
foresee safety and all the good things which the gods have given cities.
(715d1–6)

Even if we allow that the Socratic philosopher has little need of reverence,
the rulers of Magnesia need it very much, assuming with Woodruff that
reverence is inconsistent with despotism. Magnesia’s rulers must think of
themselves not as masters but as slaves, serving the gods and the laws
over which the gods preside (715c3–4).13 The Athenian might carve out
a space in this regime for the indirect rule of philosophy, as we have
seen in previous chapters and will go on to see again in our analysis of
Magnesia’s Nocturnal Council. But that role remains very much advisory.
The philosophers of Magnesia are never conceived as on-the-spot rulers,
administering day-to-day affairs of state.14 This makes sense in light of
Socrates’ images in the Republic underscoring the unlikelihood of the
116 R. A. BALLINGALL

best regime. The philosophers who would rule Kallipolis would need to
be compelled to take up the reins, so much do they prefer philosophy to
managing public affairs. Yet those who would have to compel them would
need to have benefited already from the therapeutic rule of philosophy in
order to see its advantage.15 In all existing cities, the philosophers are
useless because no one tries to make use of them (488a–89a); everyone
believes himself to know already what is good and bad and seeks power,
wealth, and fame for himself accordingly. What is more, Socrates describes
how in all actual cities the philosophic nature is either corrupted by public
opinion and its presumptuous love of rule (492–93c) or is preserved
uncorrupted only by withdrawing from public life (496a–e, cf. Apology
31d–32a). In short, the Republic adduces sundry reasons for doubting the
viability of philosophic despotism, in keeping with (rather than in contrast
to) the Athenian’s arguments in the Laws.16 In neither work does Plato
“reject the tragic view of reverence,” if by that we mean the disavowal of
tyrannical government out of respect for the limitations of humanity. It is
precisely because of a respect for such limitations that the Athenian repu-
diates tyranny as a viable politics, a view that Socrates implicitly shares.
What, then, are we to make of the critique of tragedy found in the
Republic and elsewhere? How does that critique square with the reha-
bilitation of tragedy in the Laws ? On Socrates’ account, tragedy invites
sympathy for the spectacle of human suffering (Republic, 605c10–d5).
But the suffering that it represents depends on false beliefs about what
is good and bad. To sympathize with tragic representations is to rein-
force these false beliefs. The Athenian for his part does not explicitly
connect such beliefs to tragedy,17 but he does regret their appeal. Human
beings, he says, are inclined by nature to identify happiness with human
goods such as health, beauty, strength, wealth, tyrannical power, and
immortality (Laws, 631c1–4, 661a5–b4, cf. 661d6–e5). For him, as for
Socrates, attraction to such goods is bound up with attachment to one’s
individual existence. Human goods are related to self-love and to the plea-
sures of the body, the thing that is most one’s own and that can least
be held in common.18 But the virtues on which the city relies look to
the common ahead of private advantage. They seem to stand in painful
tension with private happiness; they demand the transcendence of natural
self-love. This is especially true where virtue is misrecognized or otherwise
unrewarded with human goods. It is true above all where circumstances
conspire to thwart virtuous action itself, along with its external rewards.19
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 117

Because the attraction of tragedy is owing to how it recognizes and solem-

nizes the suffering that this tension creates, the pleasure that tragedy
affords is politically dangerous. It confirms the austere appearance of the
virtues and the indifference or even malevolence of the larger whole in
which human life is led (cf. Republic 363e–64b).
The Athenian duly agrees with the Socratic proposal to censor the
tragic arts. But in keeping with his dramatic role as a teacher of lawgivers,
he is more realistic about the payoffs of doing so. He does not foresee
rulers for whom virtue and happiness are harmonious ends and who
might therefore be entrusted with significant personal authority. Rather,
he stresses the importance of persuading political men that they misap-
prehend the virtues from the start, especially justice. He allows that the
just things must inevitably seem painful limits to the happiness sought
by non-philosophers, even if the lawgiver must teach—as a “profitable
lie” (pseudos lysitelēs )—that justice is a necessary condition of happi-
ness (631b7–c1, 661b4–c5).20 The Athenian thus indicates that “human
beings” will always be prone to sympathizing with tragic suffering. The
city might suppress the spectacle of such suffering and uphold a more
edifying poetry. It might represent to the citizen a cosmos that is, despite
appearances, hospitable to both human happiness and the political virtues
at once. But the regime will always be vulnerable to the re-emergence of
the tragic dispensation. Paradoxically, it is to stave off that dispensation
that the regime itself becomes a tragedy. For like the traditional tragedy
it censors, Magnesia takes itself more seriously than it deserves. Its civic
education represents as truth what is at best an exaggeration—political
justice does not necessarily align with human happiness. The consonance
of these goods is vouchsafed to the “gods” or to “divine” (i.e., philo-
sophic) men. The lawgiver teaches otherwise lest Magnesians waver in
their dedication to virtue. Like the poets, then, he solemnizes what is not
truly serious. But he does so without reinforcing the appearance that the
good and noble things are in painful tension and terribly vulnerable to
changes in fortune. That is why it is the political imitation of god that is
the true tragedy.21 Political men must believe themselves to be nearer to
god than they truly are and yet respect the massive extent to which they
remain merely human beings. So much the true lawgiver understands.
118 R. A. BALLINGALL

The Human Puppet and Its Tragic Flaw

We can begin to appreciate how Plato leads us towards this reading
by returning to the passage with which we began (Laws 817a4–c4).
The Athenian Stranger is here discussing how the city under divine law
would regulate poetry, as an addendum to his earlier account of music.
Having introduced the Supervisor of Education, the magistracy charged
with overseeing these matters, he asks about how this officer should be
educated himself and about the laws in accordance with which he should
rule. The task is a great one, he warns, seeing as it requires speaking
against the overwhelming force of “myriads of mouths” (810d), all of
which assert that a correct education consists in mastering the works of
poets. If not to these hallowed works, then where to look for a model
of how to judge what the young should and should not learn? If not in
public opinion, then in which authority should one place his trust in this
great question? Becoming bold, the Athenian adduces the very dialogue
that he and his companions are in the midst of having. Our speeches, he
says, appear to have been spoken with some inspiration from the gods
and to resemble in every way a kind of poetry all their own (811c). The
Supervisor of Education should work through the poems of poets, as well
as any other of the written or recited things, and compel the teachers of
the young to learn and praise only those writings and speeches that agree
with the dialogue that the Athenian himself is in the course of leading
(811d–e). It is in revisiting the various forms of music and how they
might be regulated in light of this new standard that he asks how the city
should deal with tragic poets in particular.

Suppose some of them should at some time come to us and ask something
like this: “Strangers, shall we frequent your city and territory or not? And
shall we carry and bring along our poetry, or what have you decided to do
about such matters?” What kind of a reply regarding these matters would
we correctly give to the divine men? For my part, I think it should be as
follows: “Best of strangers,” we should say, “we ourselves are poets, who
have to the best of our ability created a tragedy that is most beautiful
and the best; at any rate, our whole political regime is constructed as the
imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life, which we at least
assert to be really the truest tragedy [ho dē phamen hēmeis ge ontōs einai
tragōidian ten alēthestatēn]. Now you are poets, are we too are poets of
the same things; we are your rivals as artists and performers of the most
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 119

beautiful drama, which true law alone can by nature bring to perfection—
as we hope. So don’t suppose that we’ll ever easily, at any rate, allow you
to come among us, set up your stage in the marketplace, and introduce
actors whose beautiful voices speak louder than ours.”

The first thing to notice about this passage is that the pronoun ho (817b4)
introducing the relative clause (“which we at least assert to be really
the truest tragedy”) is in the neuter. Strictly speaking, the antecedent to
which the clause refers can be neither “our…regime” (politeia, which is
masculine), nor the most beautiful and best “way of life” (bios, which is
feminine). The relative clause must refer to the entire preceding idea.22
The “truest tragedy” must be the imitation of the most beautiful and best
way of life, of which the regime conceived in the Laws is an example.23
The Athenian does not say what it is about such imitation that suffuses
it with tragedy, but he does supply a clue. At 817a2–3, while intro-
ducing his thought experiment about the itinerant poets, he refers to
“our [Athenian] tragic poets” as “what they [the Athenians] call the ‘seri-
ous’ poets.”24 In saying as much, he echoes references to tragedians in
the Laws and elsewhere as poets who are “serious,” who claim to speak
of the genuinely serious things.25 Earlier in Book Seven, in fact, he had
laid down a kind of sermon on the serious. And when we attend to this
sermon and to its dramatic context, we notice that it explains why the
city’s second-best imitation must be founded on a false hope and must
for that reason among others be a tragedy.
The Athenian delivers this speech about the serious things while revis-
iting the topic of civic education, something he had addressed already
in the first books of the dialogue. He had first discussed education in
an attempt to illuminate the “serious goal” (659e) of the political art,
which he had identified as the “consonance [that] in its entirety is virtue”
(653b).26 As we saw in Chapter 2, he had also been careful to identify
merely civic or political education with “being correctly trained as regards
pleasures and pains” (653b–c). In Book Seven, he makes explicit what had
earlier only been implied: that the political life for which civic education
prepares its pupils is not a very serious thing after all, at least compared
with the life of the gods or “god” (cf. 897b) whom the city would revere.
The Athenian justifies returning to this topic on the grounds that
“things were omitted” from its initial treatment (796e). He seems to be
referring to the importance of what he calls “the character of games”
(to tōn paidiōn genos, 797a7) in determining “whether the established
120 R. A. BALLINGALL

laws will persist.” Innovation in children’s play will lead to innovation in

the city’s way of life (798c–d), so the lawgiver who would avoid innova-
tion must follow the Egyptians in sanctifying games, must exhort citizens
to treat “playing” with the utmost seriousness. Curiously, this explana-
tion makes sense only if one has forgotten how education was addressed
initially. Indeed, the Athenian had placed children’s games and “play” at
the center of his reformulation of the Dorians’ gymnastic-based peda-
gogy in Books One and Two. “The core of education,” he had then
proclaimed, “is a correct nurture, one which, as much as possible, draws
the soul of the child at play toward an erotic attachment to what he
must do when he becomes a man…” (643d, cf. 653b). In Book Two,
he had also called attention to the same Egyptian method of sanctifying
music as a way of protecting “the correct play” from unwanted innova-
tions (657c). By Book Seven, then, the argument has hardly “omitted”
discussion of “the character of games” and the need to conserve those
deemed “correct.” Rather, it has already addressed these things directly
and at length.
Another surprising feature of the return to education is the wariness
the Athenian affects in initiating it. “Even though you’ve listened before,”
he warns, “care must be taken now too, as something very strange and
uncustomary is spoken and heard. For I’m going to present an argument
that is somewhat frightening to utter; yet becoming bold, somehow, I will
not flinch” (797a). Seeing as he has already spoken of the need to take
play “seriously,” and that Kleinias and Megillus had heartily welcomed his
proposal to sanctify children’s games with an unremitting conservatism,
why does the Athenian now express such trepidation?
My suggestion is that he is playing his own serious game with his inter-
locutors. To make the action of his speech with them reflect its content,
he uncovers the extent to which they have missed the grave limits to the
dignity of politics that he has quietly limned. The Dorians’ cluelessness
about these limits is itself a testament to those limits, a fact that the Athe-
nian brings home by means of eliciting from his partners a shameful assent
to a strategically placed question. The trepidation he affects at 797a (and
again at 810d–e) refers to the new status that he will assign the polit-
ical art in view of these limitations that he uncovers in his companions,
and especially to his efforts at revealing something of this status to those
who are, like them, in the grip of such hindrances. He may have already
discussed Egyptianizing children’s games and rendering law immutable,
but only now does addressing these topics become “somewhat frightening
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 121

to utter.” Only now does he dare to cast the putatively serious business
of public affairs as a series of “games,” not merely in the sense of the
pleasurable activities of children, but also in the sense of the low and
trivial.
The first such moment occurs at 792b–c when the Athenian provokes
Kleinias into agreeing that one should “apply every device in an attempt
to make the three-year period for our nurslings contain the least possible
of suffering and fears and every sort of pain” (792b4–6). As part of his
new account of education, he addresses gymnastics and a novel policy
of physical exercise for expectant mothers, infants, and young children.
The point of this policy appears to be twofold. First, by introducing
from the very earliest age exercises that ostensibly harmonize with the
civic virtues to be cultivated later in life, the lawgiver might improve the
ethical prospects of adult citizens. Second, the lawgiver might “mold” the
nurslings to be receptive to courage in particular by alleviating the terror
to which the very young are accustomed. The Athenian duly recommends
continuous rocking motions which assuage “the fear and mad motion
within” (791a2–3), on the supposition that “every soul that dwells with
terror from time of childhood would be especially likely to become accus-
tomed to feeling fear; and presumably everyone would assert that this
is practice in cowardice rather than courage” (791b5–8). The reader is
already aware that something is amiss here inasmuch as he recalls the
Athenian’s eagerness in Book One to extol a fictitious “fear drug.”27
There, he had claimed that courage is cultivated precisely by becoming
accustomed to feeling fear, in what he had called a “gymnastic exercise
against fear” (648d3, cf. 694d–96a). But Kleinias has already forgotten
that early part of the conversation and now falls headlong into the Athe-
nian’s trap. He agrees not only that one should limit the pain and terror
the nursling feels but adds that “clearly” it would be best “if one should
provide many pleasures for it” (791b9–c1). In a startling volte-face, the
Athenian seizes on this casual remark and makes a point of harshly
disavowing it: “In this I would no longer go along with Kleinias, you
amazing man! That kind of behaviour is for us the greatest of all corrup-
tions” (792c2–4).28 He then uses the opportunity he has contrived to
remind his companions and readers that “the correct way of life should
neither pursue pleasures nor entirely flee pains” (792c9–d1) and adds
that “this is how we all characterize precisely the situation of the god”
(792d4–5).
122 R. A. BALLINGALL

The Athenian has shown Kleinias to be at odds with himself—he both

agrees (793a1–5) and denies that the good consists in taking pleasure
and avoiding pain. Being virtuous, in contrast, is being in agreement
with oneself (653b) and knowing how to pursue pleasure and flee
pain in right measure (636d–e), on the basis of “knowledge” and the
qualities of soul that constitute genuine excellence (cf. 667e–68a). What
the Athenian has exposed in Kleinias is corruption. But why do so at
this particular moment in the drama? Does he mean to underline the
“flaw” characteristic of human nature to which the political art must
accommodate itself? Certainly, he speaks of such a flaw more openly, if
abstractly, as the conversation proceeds. He will shortly present political
life—and the education that should be its chief business (803d7)—as
“unworthy of great seriousness” (803b4), on the grounds that “what is
human, as was said earlier, has been devised as a certain plaything of god”
(theou ti paignion, 803c4–5), humans “being puppets (thaumata ontes ),
for the most part, but sharing in small portions of the truth” (804b3–4).
Indeed, when one follows the prompt (“as was said earlier”) to consider
this subsequent passage alongside the initial “myth of virtue” about the
human puppet (644c–45c), one notices that it reflects mythically, in an
image, what the Athenian has brought to light in Kleinias’ character
dramatically at 792b–d.
In that initial image, as we saw in Chapter 2, the Athenian had likened
each living thing to a divine puppet (paignion, 644d7–8), pulled by
various cords. Most of these cords, he had said, are “hard and iron”
(645a2–3) and seem to be pulled in contrary directions by the “two
opposed and imprudent counselors” that each of us possesses “within
himself…which we call pleasure and pain” (644c6–7). But one cord, “the
golden and sacred pull of calculation [logismos ]” and “the common law
of the city” should always be followed above the others, which should be
used as its helpers (hypēretai, 645a6). If this image clarifies what is meant
by virtue, vice, and self-mastery, as the Athenian said it does (645b–c),
then it seems to suggest that the kind of virtue that is to be called self-
mastery amounts to following the law, with the help of pleasure and pain
properly managed (presumably using the “expectations” connected to
them, 644c–d).29 As the marionette imagery suggests, such “virtue” is
not very lofty. It is not governed by intelligence or prudence, the leader
of the divine goods (631c), nor by the “knowledge” (636e) necessary to
draw appropriately from pleasures and pains. It does not equip a person
to be a law unto himself; it does not endow him with a comprehensive
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 123

likeness to god. It equips him, rather, to be a follower or puppet of god.

The Athenian is accordingly ambivalent about its worth. We don’t know,
he says, whether we have been put together for the play of the gods “or
for some serious purpose” (644d).
By Book Seven, he is less ambivalent. Citizens are puppets and play-
things because they really are rather insignificant. Conversely, humans are
insignificant because they are puppets and playthings, in the sense that
they are insuperably moved by the iron cords of the image, by the expecta-
tions of pleasure and pain. As the Athenian goes on to claim in his prelude
to the lawcode as a whole, “[b]y nature, the human consists above all in
pleasures and pains and desires. To these every mortal animal is, as it were,
inextricably attached and bound in the most serious ways” (732e4–7). It
is this very attachment that is the mark of what is human and mortal, as
opposed to what is divine. Yet true virtue is a divine good, so it would
seem to involve overcoming the attachment to pleasure and pain—or at
any rate the typical, human manner of that attachment. In citizens who
remain human beings, such self-overcoming would seem out of the ques-
tion. Human virtue must be fitting for human beings; it must avail itself
of pleasure and pain as they pull on the mortal animal. That is why human
virtue is self-mastery but not autonomy; it can be represented by an image
of a puppet that does not pull its own strings. The puppet would not be
in agreement with itself if it did. Its own desires and aversions would not
help the golden string that it ought to follow. Nor is that string called
wisdom, intelligence, or prudence. The Athenian calls it calculation and
law.30 As we saw when first examining this image, he allows that a “pri-
vate individual” might internalize the truth behind it and live accordingly
(645b3–5), but a city he had said “should take over a reasoning either
from one of the gods or from this knower of these things, and then set up
the reasoning as the law for itself” (645b6–7). Law-bred “virtue” cannot
be rational self-rule. Rather, it involves obedience to an external source of
reason, motivated by appeals to pleasure and pain. It looks to an ethical
framework or civil religion within which these appeals harmonize with
the demands of law, much as Kleinias depends upon the Athenian.31 The
humiliation of Kleinias in Book Seven thus mirrors the plaything image
inasmuch as it reveals the extent to which Kleinias and others like him
are at best puppets and playthings, willingly obedient to a “virtue” that is
externally directed.
A second moment that the Athenian contrives in Book Seven to reduce
the seriousness of the city emerges more quietly. Indeed, it completely
124 R. A. BALLINGALL

escapes the notice of his companions. Having reminded them of Kleinias’

ignorance, the Athenian now indulges their hopes. He suggests that
the laws Kleinias might set down be immutable, like those the Egyp-
tians managed to sustain “for ten thousand years” (656e). “Change,”
he announces, “is much the most dangerous thing in everything except
what is bad” (797d); “the lawgiver must think up a device” by which it
might be avoided entirely (798b). Although the Dorians happily accept
this claim, it invites further reflection to say the least. Just as our interest
was piqued by the return to the topic of education, its having been justi-
fied on the basis of the Dorians’ forgetfulness, so the proposal to render
law immutable similarly leaves us scratching our heads. The assertion that
change is dangerous in everything except what is bad is true as far as it
goes, but it is more natural to say that change is necessarily bad only in
the singular case of the one perfect thing. Only when something flawless
has changed can one say for sure that it has been made worse, that change
is necessarily bad (cf. 949e–50a). However, this reasoning becomes falla-
cious when reversed. Change tells us nothing about the condition of the
altered thing, nor does the persistence of that thing imply anything about
its merit. Persistence merely goes with perfection. It does not cause or
indicate it. In any case, the Athenian’s proposal does not seem applicable
to the regime that he and his companions are discussing. This city of the
Magnesians, he has said, is merely an imitation of the best. As something
less than perfect, changing it will not necessarily worsen it.32
In fact, in an earlier passage, the Athenian had claimed that Magnesia
will live up to its promise only if it is improved over time. Responding to
Kleinias’ assertion that their conversation about lawgiving “is a noble and
serious pursuit for real men” (769a), he had apparently corrected him by
comparing lawgiving to painting.

Suppose someone once took it into his head to paint the most beautiful
figure possible, one that would never get worse but would always improve
as time went by. Don’t you see that since he’s mortal, he’ll have to leave
behind a successor, able to make it right if the painting suffers some decay
at the hands of time, as well as to make future touch-ups that improve on
the deficiencies left by his own artistic weaknesses? (769b–c)

The Athenian’s allusion to painting seems intended to qualify the seri-

ousness of the city, of the founding that might be accomplished by a
“mortal.” Perhaps the city would be of greater significance if the founder
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 125

were deathless and possessed of absolute knowledge and power (like a

painter without artistic weakness). But such a demiurge would be uncon-
strained by human nature; he would be divine (657a, cf. 853c). Merely
human lawgivers must allow their works to be improved if they are
to live up to their full potential.33 The subsequent solicitation of the
Dorians’ consent to render law immutable is thus contradicted in this
earlier passage.34 Precisely at their best, the human things cannot remain
unchanging. Yet the Athenian advertises the very opposite opinion to his
companions.
To understand why he would do so, it is helpful to revisit the flaw
he exposes in Kleinias. People like Kleinias are lamentably human. They
are predisposed to human goods at the virtues’ expense. Wherever rule
is entrusted to their hands without further interference, it is used to “set
up laws aimed primarily at…what is in the interest of the maintenance
of [their] own rule” (714d). In such cases, “the ruling offices become
matters for battle, and those who are victorious take over the city’s affairs
to such an extent that they refuse to share any of the rule with those who
lost out” (715a). For his part, the Athenian refuses to call such arrange-
ments “regimes” nor their laws “correct” nor their inhabitants “citizens”
(715b). Why, then, does he apparently believe that Kleinias and those like
Kleinias can imitate a genuine regime? His answer seems to be twofold.
First, the laws that such men might administer can originate in a more
divine sort of person. They can be taken over “from one of the gods”
or from some “private individual” or “knower,” someone less attached
to the human things than those who would receive his law. Second, such
laws might rule as a “despot” over the mortal legislator who would set
them up, and especially over the city that would administer and obey his
ordinances. As we’ve seen, the human beings to whom the law is given
should regard their obedience as a “service dedicated to the gods” and
themselves as “servants” of the law and its “slaves.” But if those who
are so drawn to rule and profit are to be made so obedient and tame,
then every device will be needed to adorn the laws they would obey.
They cannot be suffered to think themselves capable of creating law or
permitted to deviate from its commands. That is why law must appear
exceedingly perfect. It must seem to be something only a god could
fashion. Since perfect things do not change, law must appear immutable
as well, despite the fact that it will change, at least if it is ever going to
be improved or equitably applied.35
126 R. A. BALLINGALL

Coming back to the Athenian’s putative reasons for taking up the

discussion of education a second time, we can now see the real reasons
for his trepidation at 797a. In the first books of the dialogue, he had
succeeded in his initial goal of demonstrating that the political art is
serious only in taking as its principal objective the virtue of citizens,
understood not merely as “courage,” but as “the rest of virtue” too.
Now, in Book Seven, he brings the conversation around to a reassess-
ment of the life that the political art might bring into being. He exposes
a grave flaw in its raw material, in the character of political men. And
he sets down the appropriate response to this flaw that someone in his
position should take. He must walk a fine line between reducing the self-
confidence of those to whom he would give law and augmenting their
faith in the exquisite correctness of law. This delicate balance is reflected
in his summative remarks on the serious and the playful:

Ath. Of course, the affairs of human beings are not worthy of great seri-
ousness; yet it is necessary to be serious about them. And this is not a
fortunate thing. But since we’re here, if somehow we would carry out
the business in some appropriate way it would perhaps be a well-measured
thing for us to do. But whatever am I saying? Someone would perhaps be
correct to take me up in this very way.
Kl. Indeed!
Ath. I assert that what is serious should be treated seriously, and what is
not serious should not, and that by nature god is worthy of a complete,
blessed seriousness, but that what is human, as we said earlier, has been
devised as a certain plaything of god and that this is really the best thing
about it. (803b3–c6)36

Although he tries to humble his companions and, through them, the citi-
zens of the city that they might found, the Athenian is coy about what
it is that so reduces their seriousness.37 Claiming to have been “looking
away toward the god” (804b7–8), he avails himself of their reverence,
such as it is. He reminds them that, as mortal creatures, they must be
wary of reaching too high. But he also gives his most careful listeners (or
readers, 811d) sufficient clues to grasp his deeper meaning.38 If human
affairs cannot be taken as seriously as the god, then human beings must
remain unlike god. God is a paradigm of perfection; human beings must
remain imperfect. The merit of legislative immutability, however, depends
on flawless laws, and such laws can be created only by flawless lawgivers, if
they can be created at all. It follows that immutability cannot be practiced
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 127

well by mortal men. Nonetheless, the Athenian maintains that it is neces-

sary to be serious about the human things. Being serious is being like
god, so such necessity implies a need to obscure the extent to which the
human cannot really become divine. And given that this remark comes
in the midst of discussing legislative immutability, we are invited to make
the conjecture: it is unfortunately necessary that the law appears more
authoritative than it really is.39
It is with these points in mind that we can make some sense of the
cryptic claim that Magnesia is a tragedy. As we have seen, the Stranger
doesn’t simply associate tragedy with “the serious things”; he identifies
it with the imitation of those things. It is because the “whole regime”
performs this sort of imitation, he says, that it is the truest tragedy. Since
god is the most serious thing, one becomes serious by becoming like god.
Tragic imitation, therefore, is serious to the extent that it is an imitation of
god. Yet the Athenian has claimed that the practically-best regime will fall
short in its emulation of what is divine. He correspondingly avows that
human affairs are not worthy of great seriousness. At most, the status
they achieve is second best. We are entitled to conclude that tragedy is,
for the Athenian, the imitation of god that falls short. Moreover, just as
the imperfection of law must be concealed in the second-best regime,
so that regime must be artificially serious about human affairs. It must
pretend to internalize divine intellect when in fact it obeys opinion. It
must have “hope” (elpis, 817c1) that its law is sufficiently true that it
brings to completion the most beautiful drama, even if that hope is ulti-
mately unfounded. The truest tragedy would seem to be the imitation of
god in view of this unfortunate necessity. It is tragic not only because it
must fall short of its goal, but also because it must obscure the full extent
of its failure.

Reverence Recast
As pregnant as the Athenian’s claim has proved to be, there are still more
dimensions to his meaning. To pronounce it the truest tragedy is to imply
that the regime overstates its own merit, but it is also to imply that it
challenges men’s vanity. Magnesians must accept the god’s perspective
and its relevance to their own way of life; they will truly consent to his
commands only if they recognize the extent to which they remain beneath
his Olympian prospect. Adorning customary beliefs with divine authority
is of a piece with the disavowal of private judgment, with a visceral sense
128 R. A. BALLINGALL

of being distant from and less than the gods. Custom and law need to be
venerated. It is this need that explains why politics should be conceived
as the imitation, not only of the best regime or the most beautiful way
of life, but of god. For god or the divine is the thing before which the
reverent person feels awe. It is that which makes him feel insignificant and
evokes respect. It is not just any image of perfection, but one that can be
personified in frightening, anthropomorphic beings jealous of their lofty
rank. The awe that it inspires is a species of fear, and thus a genus of pain
(644c10–d1), so the divine can move mortal nature to shrink from what-
ever it comprehends. Reverence for the gods can pull the iron cords of the
puppet image, regardless of whether a person’s other desires and aversions
are misaligned with the law. It is the passions that reverence summons up
that can serve as law’s helpers, enhancing the law’s gentle but noble force.
In this way—compelling the reverent man to doubt his own perception
of the good and the pleasant—reverence destabilizes the painful appear-
ance that mortal nature otherwise imparts to virtue. It can thereby lay
the foundation for customs that are genuinely useful to the city, those
that demand cooperative behavior that often seems painful. And since it
is reverence that is extolled above all in tragedy, the Athenian’s praise of
this virtue is of a piece with his rehabilitation of the tragic.
The Stranger alludes to how reverence can play this role in his initial
account of music. This account anticipates the later speeches about the
serious and the tragic, as we have begun to see. But it also treats more
explicitly of awe and shame and how these passions can be trained to
support civic virtue. The Athenian turns to music in an effort to replace,
as the authoritative source of law, Zeus and Apollo, Minos and Lycurgus,
with “the god” reflective of his own reason. This effort centers on his
claim that the mark of truly divine law is how it provides “all the good
things” and thus secures the happiness of those who use it. So much we
recall from Chapter 2. What we did not have occasion to consider when
first examining this criterion was the one Dorian law that the Athenian
goes on to praise in accord with it. This is the law that permits criticism
of other laws, provided such criticism is done is secret and by the old
(634e4–6). It otherwise prohibits critical inquiry into the laws and even
“commands all to say in harmony that all the laws are finely made by
gods” (634e1–2). What is it about this “law of laws” that promotes a
comprehensive happiness, as truly divine law must apparently do?40 I want
to suggest that it points to how the dilemma facing divine law in general
might begin to be resolved. This dilemma has to do with how reverence
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 129

for law seems inconsistent with the rational critique of law. Either we
revere law but cannot know it apart from unaccountable inspiration or we
know law through responsible human reason but then cannot reverence it
as something divine. If, however, the critique of law occurs like a mystery
rite behind closed doors, or is otherwise made invisible, as the law of
laws requires; and if such critique is limited to those who have long been
habituated to venerate the law; then making law responsible to reason
need not be as inconsistent with reverence as at first it might have seemed.
Correctly understood, divine law might confer both of these good things.
This possibility is borne out by the way in which the Athenian reflects
the law of laws in his conversation with Kleinias and Megillus. Rather
than directly criticize the Dorian regimes, he sustains the conceit that
their laws really are divine; he feigns “perplexity” at how they don’t seem
to conform to that criterion (635b3). Divine law promotes the happiness
of all who use it. It is therefore the task of such law to teach the whole of
virtue (630e, 632e, 688b). But certain virtues are learned only by permit-
ting citizens to “taste the greatest sorts of pleasure and play” and it is
from these that the Dorian laws command citizens to abstain (635b4–6).
How, then, can those laws be divine? What would they have to command
concerning pleasure and play to live up to that standard? It is in response
to this question that the Athenian comes to the topics of wine drinking
and music. He presents the education of which these topics are ostensibly
a part as the correct training of pleasure and pain. Rightly understood,
education trains our likes and dislikes to conform with good taste and the
demands of justice. Yet he speaks of the contribution of wine drinking and
music in a most curious way. These practices teach “moderation” (647d),
he says, and they shape our pleasures and pains (653b). But they would
also seem to be ancillary or extraneous to education itself. Their contri-
bution is either a “safeguard” against education’s failure (653a1–3) or a
search for those who have little need of education at all (648c–e). The
drinking of wine and the enjoyment of music turn out to protect against
the persistence of bad taste more than they teach good taste itself.41 That
they make a great contribution to education is a claim that the Athenian
declines to endorse. “To be sure of the truth in such matters, when so
many disagree, would belong to a god” (641d6–7).
It is in this way that reverence begins to emerge as the lynchpin of
the Athenian’s civic pedagogy. For the passions that reverence governs
are tied to our limitedness and moral failures. According to the Athe-
nian, it is the training of these passions in particular, and not pleasure
130 R. A. BALLINGALL

and pain in general, to which the drinking party rightly used contributes.
Wine dissolves the effects of shame and awe; it makes us forget the
judging gaze of other people and of the gods, filling us instead with
transgressive audacity (649a–b).42 Drinking thus exposes people whose
“virtue” depends on their sense of shame and reverence for the gods. It
is they who do and say while drunk what they would hardly ever do or
say while sober. How, then, does tempting such people to do and say
shameful, insolent things contribute to education? The Athenian’s answer
is not that it teaches them to stop desiring what is shameful and inso-
lent. Rather, he claims that it teaches resistance to the enduring desire
for those things. It is, as he later puts it, a medicine intended “to put
aidōs in the soul” (672d). Those who act shamefully while drunk can be
made to feel ashamed of themselves once sober. Shame is so universally
and acutely painful that most anyone will do very much to avoid feeling
it. Being shamed makes us more afraid of doing again whatever made us
feel ashamed in the first place. By tempting people into shaming them-
selves, the well-run drinking party would increase people’s fear of shame
and thus their watchfulness over themselves.43 Drinking wine can thus
become a “gymnastic training in combatting [shamelessness]” (647c8–9).
It is by having a well-developed sense of shame, learned through being
shamed, that a person benefits from this institution.
As the Athenian goes through this initial account of wine, he shifts
focus from the educational benefits of drinking to its usefulness as a
psychological diagnostic. He begins to speak of the drinking party as a
means of safely testing the natures and habits of souls, which he claims to
be of the greatest use to the political art, whose business it is to care for
souls (650b). In the private circumstances of the symposium, under the
rule of someone sober and wise (640d), the drunkards lose their fear of
disgrace and show their true colors without risking outrages against the
public good. They can be shamed, but without setting a bad example.
Alternatively, if they remain stalwart in their propriety, the drunkards can
prove themselves to have a virtue deeper than a reverent sense of shame
and awe (648d–e).44 Either way, the “training” that wine drinking confers
is also a “test” that reveals the natures of the drinkers. Its use is presum-
ably to enable the lawgiver or symposiarch to tailor his therapeutic rule
to the diverse needs that he thus uncovers (cf. 666e–667a). The testing
function would therefore seem rather different than the training function.
The one diagnoses pathologies (or excellences) of soul; the other trains
the sense of shame and awe in the citizen who betrays such pathologies
lest he give in to them.
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 131

The fact that these two functions are distinct makes the sequel some-
what puzzling. For what ought to be investigated next, the Stranger says,
is whether the only good (monon agathon) of correctly managed drinking
parties is the insight that they afford into the natures of the drinkers
(652a1–5). In saying as much, he seems to ignore the very argument that
he has just concluded. He has introduced wine drinking as a part of civic
education in its own right, not merely as a means of parsing those who
need such education from those who don’t. The knowledge of the natures
and the habits of souls was a benefit that he adduced only later, following
his initial account of awe and shame. Now, at the beginning of Book Two,
he is strangely silent about the good for whose sake he had ostensibly
taken up the topic of wine to being with. Nor is the great benefit that he
next proposes investigating whether wine drinking really does contribute
to education of its own accord. Rather, the question becomes whether the
drinking party, when nobly directed, affords a means of protecting educa-
tion (653a). The Athenian thus pretends to have forgotten the manner
in which the drinking of wine was introduced. Why? Why suddenly speak
of wine drinking as if its only benefit, or the only one that he has so far
considered, is to supply a means of seeing into other men’s souls?
Given what the Athenian has so far implied about education, the
answer would seem to be that, whatever the well-run drinking party
teaches, it is a response to the failure of education proper. If the mark
of the educated person is to cease depending on shame and awe, having
learned to love and hate the correct things in the correct ways (653b–
c), then the training in shame and awe that the drinking party teaches
must be superfluous to education itself. Such training teaches a virtue
that is extraneous (if still very necessary); it is needed only as a means of
revealing those in whom education has been successful and as a precaution
against those in whom it has not taken hold. Perhaps, then, the Athe-
nian ceases to speak of the drinking party as a contributor to education
because the passions that it trains and hones are needed only in response
to or in expectation of moral imperfection. The sort of education to which
the well-led symposium belongs is of a lower rank than the sort that he
has in mind at the beginning of Book Two. Another possibility, and one
not inconsistent with the foregoing, is that the Stranger is anticipating
the line that he later walks when discussing the tragedy of second-best
politics. He wants his companions and those like them to take civic educa-
tion seriously, but he also wants to call attention to the pervasiveness of
education’s failure and to the significance of that fact. Even in Magnesia,
132 R. A. BALLINGALL

few would overcome the need to reverence the law. That would require
becoming “a perfect human being” whose likes and dislikes conform with
what reason marks out as best. The virtue that the drinking party teaches
does not amount to the consonance that is of a piece with perfection. It
is not the most serious thing. Nevertheless, it is necessary to take it seri-
ously. To take it seriously is the only means by which childlike men might
be put in touch with the intelligence that ought to command the greatest
respect.

Music and the Problem of Authority

The Athenian’s subsequent account of music attests to both of these
interpretations. It is only because education “tends to slacken in human
beings” (653c8–9), he says, that the gods have ordained holidays and
given us as fellow celebrants the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus. Like
the wine drinking to which it is analogized, musical education is less
about learning to love and hate what one should than about compen-
sating for the failure of such learning. Be that as it may, human beings
have received from these gods a gift that sets us apart from other crea-
tures, as the Stranger’s argument goes on to explain (or rather to sing,
653d6). Like other animals, we begin life in a kind of chaotic motion.
Unlike other animals, though, we are aware of “orders and disorders in
motion” (653e4–5) and take pleasure in orderly motion (i.e., in rhythm
and harmony, 654a1–3). It is by using this attraction to orderly motion,
he says, that the gods “move us, and lead us in choruses” (654a3). He
thus alludes once more to the image of humanity as a puppet or plaything
of the gods.45 One of the cords by means of which the human puppet is
moved would seem to be the pleasure that human beings take in orderly
motion. But how reliably does musical training in such motion teach a
person to love and hate the correct things in the correct ways? The allu-
sion to the marionette might suggest severe limitations in this regard.
After all, the reasoning that “the city” should follow in its puppet-like
motions does not exist within itself; it is adopted from one of the gods or
from some individual knower. The education in pleasure and pain that the
Athenian foresees for the city is not so successful that the citizen becomes
a knower of the truly pleasant and painful.
The foreseeable shortcomings in musical education explain why the
Stranger proceeds to blame the criterion that “most people” use in
judging music. No one claims that we ought to judge musical imitations
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 133

of vice more beautiful than those of virtue. But most people do say that
we ought to judge music by “its power to provide pleasure to souls.”
And that, he claims, is neither acceptable nor at all pious to utter (655c5–
d3). As Kleinias agrees, different people take pleasure in different music
(655b9–c1). Musical performances are imitations of character (655d) and
a person’s character comes to resemble those performances that he finds
pleasant (656b). He who takes pleasure in imitations of poor character is
thereby corrupted, even if he conceals his pleasure or otherwise dismisses
it as something merely playful. Pleasure is the wrong criterion for judging
music because not everyone takes pleasure in the imitation of virtue.
Indeed, were someone to set up a contest to see which poet would most
please the spectators of a whole city, the winner would hardly be the one
who plays most to good taste (658a ff.).46 Children would judge as best
the man who presents puppets; young men, the one who presents come-
dies. Tragedy would be judged most pleasant by the women, younger
men, and “almost the majority of the whole” (658d3–4).47 The elders,
meanwhile, with whom the Athenian invites Kleinias and Megillus to
identify, they would judge the rhapsode most pleasing. It would be “nec-
essary,” he adds, to declare that poets chosen by men such as they be
“the correct winners,” seeing as only men like themselves have benefited
from the best available “habitation” (658e). The Athenian seems to allow
that music should be judged by pleasure after all, only not the pleasure
of any chance listener. “Almost the finest Muse,” he says, “is she who
pleases the best men and the adequately educated men, and especially
finest is she who pleases the one man who is distinguished in virtue and
education” (658e8–659a1). Regardless of the relationship between these
best men and the elders, a question about which the Athenian remains
equivocal, the immediate and massive problem at which he is driving
is the scarcity of these men and therefore the paucity of good taste. If
virtue is something that we have to learn from music itself, then none
of us will spontaneously find good character appealing. As the Stranger
later claims, the just and virtuous character appears pleasant only to the
just and virtuous man (663b–c). But if we become just and virtuous by
taking pleasure in imitations of justice and virtue, then there is a chicken-
egg problem at the heart of musical education. The poets make music
that their audience finds appealing, yet music that teaches good char-
acter doesn’t appeal to most audiences. We would already need to be
virtuous in order to create a demand for the music needed to make us
134 R. A. BALLINGALL

virtuous. Education presupposes the very thing that it is needed to create

(cf. 654d).
The Athenian’s response to this problem is in part to appeal to the
“charm” of musical harmony. By nature, he has said, human beings
take pleasure in perceiving orderly motion. Now (659e–660a), he begins
discussing how such charming images of order can be attached to other-
wise unpleasant things, much as pleasant tasting foods might be added to
bad-tasting medicine. “To prevent the child’s soul from becoming habit-
uated to feeling delight and pain in a way opposed to the law and to those
who are persuaded by the law,” he says, “to make the child’s soul follow
and feel the same joys and pains as an old man, the things we call songs,
but which are really incantations for souls, have now come into being”
(659d4–e2). It is possible, in other words, even for the young and the
many, to find music appealing before they have acquired a taste for the
virtuous character that correct music extols. We all take pleasure in images
of orderly motion; by associating charming harmonies with what most of
us would otherwise find unappealing, we can enjoy what we would other-
wise reject. Since we assimilate ourselves to imitations that we enjoy, we
can thus become better people even before we have acquired a taste for
what is good.
At first blush, this solution seems rather helpful, but in fact it will take
us only so far. Harmony and order might be universally charming, but
the Athenian’s own premises suggest that the uneducated will always be
prone to taking greater pleasure in imitations of characters resembling
themselves. They will always be drawn to a corrupt muse if permitted to
shape the taste in accordance with which the poets sing. Kleinias himself
illustrates as much. Swearing by Zeus, he claims to have knowledge of
no place except among his own people and the Lacedaemonians where
things are now done as the Athenian says (660b1–4). It is only among
the Dorian cities, he implies, that the Athenian’s standard for divine law is
met. Yet those like Kleinias who have shaped the Cretan music have rein-
forced rather than resisted the corrupt taste of mass opinion. The Cretan
laws may prevent disorderly pleasures from leading music into a chaotic
pursuit of innovation (660b–c), and they may have bred in the respectable
citizens a belief in the shamefulness of injustice (662a). These are no small
victories. But the Cretans hardly impart authority on “the one man who
is distinguished in virtue and education.” The Athenian brings this fact
to light by inviting Kleinias to agree that his people “compel the poets
to say that the good man, being moderate and just, is happy and blessed,
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 135

whether he be great and strong or small and weak, whether he be rich

or not” (660e2–5). For, he adds, “the things said to be good by the
many are not correctly so described” (661a4–5). Bodily goods like health
and beauty, along with wealth and political rule, are not the best things.
They are good “only when possessed by just and pious men, but all very
bad when possessed by unjust men” (661b5–7). If Kleinias is a model of
Cretan habituation, then his inability to agree with these claims (661d5,
661e5, 662a6) does not speak well of the Cretan laws, at least by the
standard that the Athenian has in view. The music that Kleinias finds
appealing reflects a corruption of a common kind. The Cretan laws may
have snuffed out aesthetic innovation. They may have taught the Cretans
to be ashamed of their vices. But the authority of such laws does not
rest on any challenge to the popular tastes that inspire innovation and
corruption to begin with.48
For all that, the Athenian remains sympathetic to the claim of the
Cretan laws to be divine. They have taken an important step in the direc-
tion of laws that truly live up to the ordinance of reason. By his lights,
divine law compels the poets to sing in accordance with the judgment
and taste of the truly distinguished judge. It teaches mass audiences and
young people, as a necessary propaedeutic, to withhold or even disavow
their own, uneducated judgment and to follow instead the taste of the
well-educated person. This much the Cretan laws fail to do. But what
they do accomplish in keeping with divine law is root their conservatism
in the authority of age. The Athenian shows just how helpful such conser-
vatism can be in his praise of the Egyptians, who represent “an extreme
in the lawgiving and political art” (657a4). In most cities “nowadays,” he
says, the poets are allowed to teach the children and young men what-
ever the poet himself finds pleasing. The result is a “search, dictated by
pleasure and pain, for a music that is continually new” (657b4–5).49 In
Egypt, however, one discovers a society in which for eons aesthetics have
remained seemingly unchanged. “For ten thousand years,” he insists,
Egyptian conventions have persisted, “not ‘so to speak’ but really ten
thousand years” (656e5–6). This “astounding” conservatism is possible
only because the Egyptian poets are compelled to make music in strict
accordance with certain rules and because those rules are believed to have
remained the same since time immemorial and even to have been handed
down by the gods themselves. Returning later in the dialogue to the
Egyptian case, the Athenian explains the psychological mechanism at work
here. If human beings are brought up under laws that have “remained
136 R. A. BALLINGALL

unchanged for a great length of time,” he says, “if they neither remember
nor have heard that things were ever otherwise than they are at present,
then the entire soul reverences and fears (sebetai kai phobeitai) changing
any of the things that are already laid down” (798a8–b4, cf. 838d–e). It
is the affects associated with reverence to which divine law looks in its
efforts to get around the problem lying behind musical education.
The Athenian’s idea seems to be that musical audiences must be filled
with awe, in part by confusing cause and effect. Something held to have
never changed can be believed to be perfect and thus worthy of rever-
ence.50 As the Athenian avers, change “is much the most dangerous
thing in everything except what is bad” (797d9–10)—which is really to
say that change is necessarily bad only in the case of something abso-
lutely good. A necessary consequence of remaining perfect is to remain
the same, at least in the relevant respects. In that one case, change is
always a movement away from what is good. But remaining the same is
hardly the cause of perfection. As we observed before, persistence merely
goes with perfection; it does not create or indicate it. However, this cum
hoc fallacy can be easily obscured, which is part of why perceiving some-
thing to be immutable can inspire awe and respect, keeping us from
thinking it prudent or permissible to change it. Perfect things don’t
change; if something has long remained the same, it can seem perfect.
“That which remains lawful over a long span/ Is lawful by nature for all
time” (Euripides, Bacchae, 895–96).
Another reason that antiquity can inspire awe is simply because it
evokes the presence of something big. If the laws are believed to come
down to us in an unbroken chain from the most ancient ancestors, then
the majesty of that immemorial patrimony can attach to them. It is one
thing to reject the authority of contemporary critics, who are a small
group, to say nothing of the one truly competent judge. It is quite
another thing to reject the consensus of the ancestors, who are many,
perhaps infinitely so (cf. 810d7–e4). The greatness of the ancestors can
even dwarf that of the public or indeed of anything “with a lot of power
and strength” (686e4–5). Public opinion gets tremendous strength from
how it overshadows our private judgment, or the judgment of the few
critics who disagree with it. But that strength can be curbed by appealing
to those who have come before us, who are even more numerous than
the public. And unlike the living public, whose opinions are known, the
ancestors have the great advantage of being dead. They are like a blank
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 137

canvas on which the lawgiver and tastemakers can draw the values they
want to teach to the young.
It is true that the originators of ancient customs may have been quite
useless as lawgivers. As the Athenian’s subsequent account of the remote
past attests, the chronological “origin of legislation” lies not in some
impressive, trustworthy title to rule, but in the natural compulsion faced
by ignorant simpletons (cf. 681c with 690a–d). Customs that really are
inherited unchanged from the earliest times are likely to reflect the abom-
ination of those times.51 It is in this spirit that the Athenian remarks to
Kleinias that there are features in the Egyptian law “that you would find
pretty poor,” despite (or because of) their astonishing endurance (657a5).
If the Egyptians used antiquity to enhance customary authority, they did
so despite the poor quality of the ancient things and the ignorance of the
ancestors. Indeed, they found success only because they held the ancient
things to have originated in “the work of a god or someone divine”
(657a8–9)—that is, a figure that inspires awe in its own right. According
to the Athenian, it was ultimately through this device of sanctification (tou
kathierosai, 799a4, cf. 657b6, 839c4–4) that the Egyptians sufficiently
enhanced the magnificence of the ancestral and secured its authority.
Personifying the old in flawless paragons, they projected intelligent purpo-
siveness into otherwise imperfect, even arbitrary customs. Apprehending
the laws as gifts bestowed by divine ancestors, they compelled them-
selves to be exceptionally wary of violating the laws or innovating upon
them. To do so would have been to set themselves up as somehow supe-
rior to the divine and ungrateful of its benefactions. It would have been
to forget their own humanity, showing themselves insensitive to what is
awesome and shameless before their superiors. It was, then, by adorning
the ancestors with the mantle of gods that the Egyptians backstopped
the authority commanded by the ancestral laws. And it is by appealing
to their example that the Athenian shows how age might stand in for
wisdom as the arbiter of good music. Age has greater authority than the
one wise and virtuous person; the many sanctified ancestors can inspire
reverence in a way that one living person never can. But the Athenian
never forgets that wisdom and virtue are rare accomplishments. They are
achieved only by the few, if they are achieved at all. In the event, they
do not seem to have been achievements of the Egyptians or the Dorians,
whose regimes didn’t leave room for intelligence. Under truly divine law,
cultivating intelligence would be as much a priority as forestalling inno-
vation. Truly divine law would use legislative conservatism to translate
138 R. A. BALLINGALL

the judgment of the wise into that which can be revered by the many, a
difficulty to which we shall return.

The Object Lesson of Old Athens

For now, our purpose must be to follow the thread of the Athenian’s
account of music and reverence to its culmination—a vivid chronicle of
his own city’s decline. He comes to this sobering argument in the course
of completing his delicate critique of the Cretan and Spartan laws. Having
shown the Dorian laws concerning education to fall short of their claim
to being divine, he turns to showing how the Dorian lawgivers themselves
evidenced an all-too-human ignorance. Without mentioning the revered
Lycurgus, he blames “the statesman and lawgivers of old” for permitting
the archaic Peloponnesian rulers excessive political power. The Dorian
legislators proved themselves ignorant, he says, of the Hesiodic dictum
that “the half is often more than the whole” (690e2–3, cf. Hesiod, Works
and Days, 40). In declining to check the power of the first kings, they
went against what he calls “due measure” (691c2); they neglected how
human nature cannot bear broad prerogatives without becoming “filled
with insolence” (691c3) and liable to prey upon the ruled. Happily for the
Lacedaemonians, their regime was preserved by the inauguration of the
dual monarchy, the gerousia, and the ephorate, which together brought
due measure to the ruling offices (691d–692a).52 But the Athenian
declines to praise the Spartans or their lawgiver for this accomplish-
ment; he points rather to blind luck and the philanthropic concern of
“some god.”53 It is in this context that he takes up his own regime,
which he presents as a foil. If Sparta became a constitutional republic
from a poor beginning, Athens degenerated from a golden age into a
lawless calamity. It stands not for the school of Hellas but as an object
lesson in undertaking too lightly the task of lawgiving (cf. 690d). For the
Stranger attributes Athens’ decline to the same problem of authority that
he has brought to light in his treatment of wine and music. If the Dorian
laws have failed to resolve this problem, as the dialogue with Kleinias
(and Megillus, 686c–d) has confirmed, then the Dorian cities too risk
succumbing to Athens’ fate.
On the Stranger’s account, Athens represents one of two possible
extremes the avoidance of which is the mark of a mixed regime or
republic. The other is represented by Persia. Like Athens, Persia was of old
a well-governed republic but, “by going too far in depriving the populace
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 139

of freedom, and by bringing in more despotism than is appropriate…[it]

destroyed the friendship and community within the city” (697c–d). In
the Stranger’s dichotomy, Persia stands for the principle of despotism; it
is monarchy taken too far. Athens, on the other hand, stands for the prin-
ciple of “total freedom from all rule” (698b). Athens is democracy taken
too far. Yet the chronicle of Athens’ decline begins with a remarkably
laudatory speech. We learn that it was the “ancient regime” of the Solo-
nian constitution that solved the problem of authority. In the Stranger’s
schema, no other historical regime managed that feat. It was thanks to
the use they made of reverence, he says, that the Athenians could be free
without succumbing to the rule of popular taste and opinion. “Under
the ancient laws, our populace was not sovereign over certain matters but
was rather voluntarily enslaved, in a certain sense, to the laws” (700a).
Though the city was not ruled as a despotism, it did acknowledge “a
certain despotic mistress—Aidōs —on account of whom we were willing
to live as slaves of the laws that then existed” (698b). Instead of vener-
ating a man, the Athenians felt reverence for the law. They worshiped
reverence itself as a goddess, with the happy consequence of curbing
voluntarily the commands of their own souls (cf. 687c).54 Herein lay the
secret to overcoming the problem associated with musical education.
Athens’ alleged accomplishment was not an unqualified success. Like
Sparta, it apparently benefited from circumstances that the lawgiver did
not intend or foresee. The salutary effects of aidōs were enhanced tremen-
dously by the terror of the Persian invasion of the early Fifth Century
(699c). Athens too depended on blind luck. In calling attention to this
fact, the Stranger would seem to weaken any claim of Solon to being a
model for future lawgivers, although he may command greater admira-
tion than the predecessors of Lycurgus, about whom the Stranger has
been much more critical. Undercutting Solon would be of a piece with
his efforts to set himself up as the source of good counsel, and as the
medium through which Kleinias and Megillus might access divine law.
In any case, the Stranger makes clear that it is for using reverence to
combat a persistent and pervasive miseducation that he credits the ances-
tral regime of Athens. “[I]f our populace had not at that time been seized
by this sort of fear” (viz. aidōs, 699c), he says, they would have been
overwhelmed by their fear of the invaders and by their love of private
happiness. “[T]hey would never have banded together as they did to
defend themselves, nor would they have defended the temples, the graves,
the fatherland, and their relatives, as well as their friends” (699c). Saying
140 R. A. BALLINGALL

as much implies that the Athenians were tempted to do these shameful

things. Their virtue did not consist in a consonance of pleasure and pain
with correct opinion. The Athenians showed such valor in repulsing the
Persians by dint of a safeguard to the education of which they fell short. It
was their reverence for the laws commanding them to resist the Persians
and thus to honor the gods and the ancestors that compensated for their
wavering passions. It was their enslavement to Awe that prevented their
enslavement to the King.
Still, it is the unhappy fate of the Athenian regime to which the
Stranger points as most instructive. “My people,” he says, find themselves
in something like the predicament of the Persians, but from the opposite
cause. The excess and surfeit of freedom ultimately bring about the same
affliction (699e). It is now that he avails himself of the groundwork that
he has laid concerning the drinking of wine and music. At Athens, he
explains, it was the reverence shown to the city’s musical laws in partic-
ular that had underwritten the voluntary enslavement to the law more
broadly. In the presence of the musical things, which were once revered
as the Muses, there was a bracing sense of awe. It was for this reason
that the Athenians showed respect to the city’s cultural leaders, whose
taste they once modestly followed. It was this respect that then kept self-
gratification from becoming the accepted standard, not only of aesthetic
distinction, but of political authority too. For under the ancient ways,
the citizens would habitually forswear their own judgment as the appro-
priate gauge of what is pleasing and unpleasant and their willingness to
be ruled in music then carried over into their acceptance of authority in
politics.55 This was why political rulers didn’t have to pander to popular
demands and prejudices. But as the people stopped revering the musical
things, they learned to assert their own tastes in music and this self-
assertion had correspondingly deleterious effects in politics. In place of
“the educated,” the poets themselves became rulers and “held sway over
unmusical lawlessness” (700d). “They asserted that there was no such
thing as correct music, and that it was quite correct to judge music by
the standard of the pleasure it gives to whoever enjoys it, whether he be
better or worse” (701a). The poets thus led the many into shamelessness
(or irreverence, anaischuntia), engendering the opinion that “everyone is
wise in everything” (701a–b). It was this opinion that led the city to reject
all authority beyond each person’s private inclinations, which is to say all
real authority. For these inclinations command each man, mortal creature
that he is, to put the seemingly pleasant first, ahead of the just and lawful
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 141

things which he began judging for himself as painful (cf. 661d–62a). The
rule of nomos —of the city’s foundational moral beliefs—could not survive
the emergence of this “wretched theatocracy” (701a). The Athenians lost
the willingness to be enslaved to “rulers.” Musical critics, parents and
elders, laws and customs, ultimately the gods themselves—inasmuch as
any of these traditional figures commanded anything apart from what
each person spontaneously desired, they ceased to be obeyed. Irrever-
ence, then, as attested by the opinion that each is wise in everything, led
the Athenians to “display and imitate what is called the ancient Titanic
nature—arriving back again at those same conditions, and introducing a
harsh epoch in which there is never a cessation of evils” (701c).56
Before unpacking the political psychology chronicled in this story of
decline, something that we shall do in the next chapters, it is enough to
notice just how important reverence is to the Stranger’s account, and how
this account is connected to his later claim that he and his companions
are poets of the truest tragedy. As he comments on the heels of that
claim, lawgivers and rulers would be almost completely mad if they did
not closely monitor and censor the music performed by and for citizens
(817c–d). No city should willingly tolerate a music that contradicts the
education enjoined by its laws. Athens itself—or at any rate its caricature
in the Stranger’s story—stands as a dire warning in this regard.57 But in
appealing to the Athenian example, the Stranger is also alluding to the
program of censorship that he endorses with such pregnant trepidation.
Where music remains unregulated, the poets will cater to popular tastes,
so much so that they will teach an aesthetic subjectivism that seems to
validate those tastes. The trouble is that good taste is rare. It is given to
very few to realize a genuine education. Even in the utopia of the Laws,
the training of pleasure and pain would hardly succeed with most people.
That is why it is the drinking party that models education in practice.
Citizens predictably like and dislike the wrong things in the wrong ways,
even when they have benefited from the best habituation. The training
they need is more a matter of learning to follow the likes and dislikes of
those in whom genuine education really has found success. It requires
doubting the validity of their own taste and judgment and fearing the
shame that can be attached to thinking otherwise. It requires reverence.
The traditional poets might seem to teach reverence too, but they neglect
its proper use. Like the Dorian lawgivers, they fail to mobilize awe and
shame against popular taste. If they inspire these passions, they do so in
ways that reinforce the perception that the just things and the pleasant
142 R. A. BALLINGALL

things are insuperably at odds, and that the whole in which human life is
led is therefore mysteriously indifferent or malevolent. The truest tragedy,
by contrast, the one that divine law might bring into being, would teach
that these things are seen by most of us “from a distance” and thus appear
obscure (663b). To see them close up would require the prospect of the
god or godlike man, to whom alone the just things appear consistently
pleasing but whose perspective we ought to trust, mortals that we are.
We have, then, uncovered compelling reasons to reject the view that
for Plato “the reverence of perfection is contrary to tragic reverence.”58
Plato’s Athenian certainly “urge[s] people to emulate the gods,” but he
also presents the gods as objects of reverence from which he expects
human beings to keep their distance, lest they “insolently” fall back on
their untrustworthy scruples. It is not for nothing that he calls himself and
his partners as rivals of the tragic poets; they would rehabilitate the tragic
virtue par excellence. Political men should feel awe before the god they
would emulate; to present political life as the imitation of god is not, or
not necessarily, to overlook the need of respecting human limits. In fair-
ness to Woodruff, political life hardly needs to be presented in this way.
If the lawgiver’s purpose is to inspire awe and a fulsome sense of shame,
then we have every reason to ask why he would speak of imitating god at
all, and not simply present politics as the observance of divine commands.
The answer, though, cannot be that the Athenian is replacing reverence
for the gods with “reverence for moral perfection” and “set[ting] moral
goodness on the throne that the gods have left.”59 He presents the gods
themselves as fearsomely above and beyond the human beings who would
follow them. He warns, in the most dreadful terms, against imitating
god without measure. If Plato is sympathetic to the project on which his
Athenian Stranger embarks, then he appreciates the importance of tragic
reverence to political life. To continue unriddling the puzzle at the heart
of the Laws must be to entertain alternatives to Woodruff’s reading.

Notes
1. For another take on the tension between Socrates’ criticism of tragedy in
the Republic and the Athenian’s seeming embrace of tragedy in the Laws,
see André Laks, “Plato’s ‘truest tragedy’ (Laws, 817a–b),” in A Critical
Guide to Plato’s Laws, ed. Christopher Bobonich (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 218. Laks notes, however, that the Republic does
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 143

not “decisively exclude…a redefinition of tragedy, i.e. a positive appropria-

tion of something rejected under a different description” (221n17, Laks’s
emphasis). Cf. Jacob Howland, “Plato’s Apology as Tragedy,” The Review
of Politics 70, no. 4 (2008): 522. For the view that the Laws does not
rehabilitate tragedy at all, see Penelope Murray, “Paides Malakon Mouson,”
in Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws, ed. A. Peponi (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 294–312.
2. Whatever our answer, it should bear in mind how Plato understood
tragedy not merely as a genre of poetry or theater, but as “a medium for
an overarching sense of life…[and for the expression of] ultimate values
and commitments (paradoxically designated ‘the best life’ in the Laws ),
to which philosophy must pose its own alternatives.” The Aesthetics of
Mimesis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 107. Besides
Laws 817b, Halliwell adduces in support of this claim Philebus 50b (“the
tragedy and comedy of life”), Cratylus 408c (“the tragic life”), and Phaedo
115a (“a tragic man”).
3. Cf. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 376–77.
4. Woodruff, Reverence, 11, 80–98. See also Saxonhouse, Free Speech, 76,
and Zdravko Planinc, Plato’s Political Philosophy: Prudence in the Republic
and the Laws (Columbia, MI: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 161.
Saxonhouse suggests that, in “exposing” the shame of his protagonists
and inviting sympathy for their suffering, Sophocles uncovers “what
is vile about ourselves and our passions,” which our sense of shame
would normally lead us to conceal from public sight and therewith from
ourselves. Paradoxically, then, it is by shamelessly dragging into the light of
day what would normally be shrouded in darkness that Sophocles teaches
us to know ourselves and our “relationship to the divine.” Planinc claims
that “in tragedy men aspire to be gods and come to recognize the nature
of their mortality,” an excellent characterization of Magnesian citizenship.
5. On the untragic character of the Athenian’s cosmology, see Pangle, “Polit-
ical Psychology”; Pangle, Virtue is Knowledge, Ch. 5; and Balot, “Polis
and Cosmos.” For the standard “analytic” account of the metaphysics and
theology of the Laws, see Mayhew, Plato: Laws 10.
6. Socrates’ charge is leveled against Homer especially. On the significance
of Homer as a paradigm of tragedy, see Halliwell, Aesthetics of Mimesis,
108–11.
7. Woodruff, Reverence, 226. Woodruff is here drawing on the long tradi-
tion stretching back to Nietzsche and Hegel that presents the Socratics as
enemies of the tragic worldview. However, recent scholarship has pushed
back against this dichotomy. For an interpretation of Sophocles, e.g.,
as a quasi-Socratic, critical of rationalism in public life but otherwise
approving of it, see Peter J. Ahrensdorf, Greek Tragedy and Political Philos-
ophy: Rationalism and Religion in Sophocles’ Theban Plays (Cambridge:
144 R. A. BALLINGALL

Cambridge University Press, 2009). My own view, which I develop below,

is that the Athenian Stranger shares with the Platonic Socrates an under-
standing of tragedy as a poetic reflection of ethical and political life as
it appears to the sub-philosophic perspective—riven by painful distortions
that even at its practical best politics cannot extirpate and must therefore
accommodate.
8. Woodruff, Reverence, 230.
9. But what of the philosophic rulers (or advisors) whom they envision?
Some interpreters have argued that the godlike philosopher kings of the
Kallipolis conform to the political needs of the city in speech, rather
than to the political philosophy practiced by Socrates. Socrates speaks of
them as having knowledge of the most important things and as imposing
that knowledge on the city. Socrates, meanwhile, always appears erotic,
in search of a wisdom he may already grasp but whose basis he interro-
gates endlessly. See Mary P. Nichols, “The Republic’s Two Alternatives:
Philosopher-kings and Socrates,” Political Theory 12, no. 2 (1984): 252–
74 and Roslyn Weiss, Philosophers in the Republic: Plato’s Two Paradigms
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016). See also Allan Bloom,
“Interpretive Essay,” in The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books,
1968), 409. Precisely if we accept these arguments, however, and the
philosopher kings really do reflect sub-philosophic, political needs for an
action-guiding and hence self-certain knowledge, then we should be wary
of concluding that that image conforms to the philosophic life as Socrates
understands and lives it himself. If the philosopher kings are gods, that
is because only gods could command the obedience that political justice
would require, if taken to its most thinkable extreme.
10. This I take to be the upshot of Republic 592a–b, where Socrates claims
that the city in speech is “a pattern laid up for the man who wants to see
and found a city within himself on the basis of what he sees.” After all, the
avowed purpose of the city in speech is to redeem the inherent goodness
of justice in the soul, even if Socrates anticipates that it won’t succeed
rationally with his interlocutors (368b, 435c–d). If the soul modeled on
its pattern belongs indeed to the philosopher, then it is the philosopher
whose justice harmonizes with what is good (or whose good is simply
defined as justice). Like the city whose parts perfect their natural tasks, his
soul achieves a serene internal order in which the appetites and sentiments
are in consonance with reason. See also Strauss, City and Man, 127.
11. Strauss, City and Man, 125.
12. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1953), 123; What is Political Philosophy, 30; City and Man, 19.
13. In the Epinomis, in an attempt to gratify Kleinias’ wish to know the
wisdom needed of the Nocturnal Council, the Athenian Stranger claims
that “no one will ever be able to persuade us that there is a more
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 145

important part of virtue than reverence” [eusebeias ]” (989b1–2, trans.

McKirahan). Most scholars regard the Epinomis as spurious, likely the
work of Philip of Opus, who is also said to have transcribed the Laws.
See, however, W.H.F. Altman, “Why Plato Wrote Epinomis: Leonardo
Tarán and the Thirteenth Book of Plato’s Laws,” Polis 29 (2012): 83–
107. Regardless of the question of authorship, the fact remains that the
Epinomis presents itself as the sequel to the Laws, was likely written by
an Academic well acquainted with the Laws, and calls special attention to
the importance of reverence as the virtue needed of Magnesia’s rulers (cf.
986c).
14. See Ch. 3, n. 7 and Ch. 5, no. 7.
15. Bloom, “Interpretive Essay,” 407.
16. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 376–77.
17. Though he does so implicitly at 800c5–d5.
18. Strauss, City and Man, 16. Cf. Laws 739c6–d1 with Republic 416d5–
6, 464d8–9. As we saw in the previous chapter, attraction to the human
goods is also related to the fear of death, for death implies the extinction
of the body and the self and hence poses the ultimate obstacle to self-love.
19. The significance of such circumstances is helpfully illuminated by the
concept of “moral luck” invoked by Bernard Williams. See Moral Luck:
Philosophical Papers, 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), 20–39. For the most ambitious application of the concept in clas-
sical political thought, see Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness:
Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984). See also Williams, Shame and Necessity.
20. Pace Strauss, Argument and Action, 8 and Meyer, Plato, 108–110. I agree
with Pangle that the Athenian’s claim at 661b ff. is a species of “moral
eudaimonism,” i.e., he implies that virtue is necessary for happiness, but
not sufficient. Virtue is Knowledge, 14.
21. Cf. Helmut Kuhn, “The True Tragedy: On the Relationship Between
Greek Tragedy and Plato,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 52
(1941): 1–140, which argues that the “truest tragedy” of the Laws refers
to the culmination of a philosophy immanent within the extant tragic
dramas. Here, “the conception of the tragic” signifies a “working out of an
antithetical vision of reality, … a solution to the problem of suffering and
evil, and…a deepening of the human self-consciousness” that amounts to
“an awareness of moral responsibility.” Laks develops this view in “Plato’s
‘Truest Tragedy’,” grounding it in Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in the
Poetics. See also Létitia Mouze, “La Dernière Tragédie de Platon,” Revue
de Philosophie Ancienne 2 (1998): 79–101, which helpfully confronts
Kuhn’s reading with the objection that it is as legislator rather than
philosopher that the Athenian claims to have outdone the tragic poets.
22. I owe this point to Ryan Balot.
146 R. A. BALLINGALL

23. Compare Susan Sauvé Meyer, “Legislation as a Tragedy: On Plato’s Laws

VII, 817B-D,” in Plato and the Poets, eds. Paul Destrée & Fritz-Gregor
Herrmann, (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 392, which construes the “tragedy” to
which the Athenian refers as “a depiction of the best life,” and Mouze,
“Dernière Tragédie,” 84–85, which focuses more closely on the signifi-
cance of “imitation” in the Athenian’s definition but neglects its pejorative
valence. Both these articles rightly dwell on the close connection that
Plato assumes between politeia and bios. Cf. Aristotle, Politics 1295a40:
“the regime is the way of life [bios ] of a city.” In my view, however, Meyer
is wrong to deny that Plato attaches an “evaluative meaning” to tragedy.
For my critique of her article in this regard, see Robert A. Ballingall,
“The Platonic Rehabilitation of Tragedy” in Classical Rationalism and the
Politics of Europe, ed. Ann Ward (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017),
75–95.
24. In “Legislation as a Tragedy,” 399–400, Meyer takes these same lines as
the key to her own interpretation, holding that they attest to the idea that
tragedy is the genre that pronounces on the serious things.
25. Laws 810e, 838c; Gorgias 502b; Republic 545e, 568a–b; Aristotle, Poetics
1449b9–11, 24–25. Cf. Jouët-Pastré, Le Jeu et le Sérieux, 140–47.
26. As Pangle notes, the phrase can also be rendered “this consonance is virtue
as whole.” The Laws of Plato, 518n2.
27. The following interpretation of the passage beginning at 792b can be
contrasted with the alternative proposed by Thomas Pangle in his “Inter-
pretive Essay,” 479–81, and developed by Lutz in Divine Law, 102 and
Pangle in Virtue is Knowledge, 241. According to that reading, the Athe-
nian in Book Seven begins to elaborate a novel conception of civic virtue
grounded in “stoutness of soul” (eupsychia), a popular form of courage
hostile to tragic lamentation.
28. Pace Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 65.
29. Thus, on my reading, the “helpers” of the golden cord are actually
versions of the iron cords, as I elaborate below. They are “nonrational
servants,” as Morrow helpfully points out (Plato’s Cretan City, 557),
despite his otherwise optimistic understanding of Magnesians’ political
virtue.
30. Bobonich (Plato’s Utopia Recast, 539n77) notes that the Athenian clas-
sifies “calculation” as a “passion” for the purposes of the puppet image
(644e1) but insists—implausibly in my view—that the Athenian does not
mean to minimize its connection to intelligence in doing so. See also
Frede, “Puppets on Strings,” which argues that the puppet image “serves
only a limited purpose and does not fully disclose Plato’s psychology in
the Laws.”
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 147

31. In speaking of a “civil religion,” I follow the formulation proposed by

Ronald Beiner: “the empowerment of religion, not for the sake of reli-
gion, but for the sake of enhanced citizenship—of making members of the
political community better citizens, in accordance with whatever concep-
tion one holds of what constitutes being a good citizen.” Civil Religion:
A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 2.
32. Cf. Sophist 248a–249a.
33. See also 840e, where the Athenian describes the need for the Guardians
of the Laws to become lawgivers in their own right.
34. Others have read this passage as referring merely to an initial “trial”
period after which the lawcode really would be made immutable. See,
e.g., Jeremy Reid, “Changing the Law in Plato’s Laws,” Ancient Philosophy
41 (2021): 413–41. However, these interpretations seldom consider the
rhetorical and psychological function of legislative stability and how the
Athenian imagines that function being served while limiting the obvious
problems with legislative fixity. For the argument in favor of this alterna-
tive, see Balot, “Odd Episode.” See also the important point in Zuckert,
Plato’s Philosophers, 128n131.
35. On this point, as on so many others, the Athenian Stranger seems to
anticipate Aristotle. The keynote of Aristotle’s critique of Hippodamus,
e.g., is the rootedness of legal authority in habit, and habit in legisla-
tive stability (Politics 2.8). For an interpretation of the Laws that focuses
on the connection between legal authority and habit, see Brent Edwin
Cusher, “How Does Law Rule? Plato on Habit, Political Education, and
Legislation,” The Journal of Politics 76, no. 4 (2014): 1032–44.
36. Cf. Republic, 604b.
37. David Roochnik suggests that this coy attitude reflects dramatically the
playfulness with which the Athenian says he looks on human affairs. In so
quickly taking back his denial of human seriousness (804b), responding to
the indignation that he thus arouses in Megillus, he mirrors Aristophanes’
response to Eryximachus in the Symposium. Having incurred the latter’s
ire, the comic replies “let what was said by me be unsaid” (Symposium
189b3–4). See David Roochnik, “The ‘Serious Play’ of Book 7 of Plato’s
Laws,” in Plato’s Laws: Force and Truth in Politics, eds. Gregory Recco
and Eric Sanday (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 146–47.
38. Cf. 822e–23a with 811d–e.
39. Balot, “Likely Stories,” 80–81. Balot shows that the authority the Athe-
nian tries to attach to his speeches is self-consciously dubious, not only
because it depends on treating clumsy dogmas as the very truth, but also
because the Athenian himself lacks certain knowledge.
40. Again, for this felicitous nomenclature, see Strauss, Argument and Action,
11.
148 R. A. BALLINGALL

41. Strauss Argument and Action, 22.

42. Mark Blitz describes Socrates’ strategy of “seduction” very much in
these terms. Plato’s Political Philosophy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2010), 19.
43. Compare Elizabeth Belfiore, “Wine and the Catharsis of the Emotions
in Plato’s Laws,” Classical Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1986): 421–37, which
argues that the education conceived by the Athenian’s symposium
metaphor is “a process of allopathic catharsis,” in which temporary
and artificial increases in “anti-rational emotions” creates the basis for
therapeutically ordering them.
44. Cf. Euripides, Bacchae, 314–19.
45. He may also be anticipating one sense in which his own speeches are
tragic. Like other tragic poetry, they speak of the whole in which human
life is led—only they represent that whole as a knowable cosmos rather
than a capricious chaos. But like other tragic poetry, the Athenian’s myth-
ical speeches are pleasant to hear because they pretend to a seriousness
they don’t deserve.
46. As of course we in late modernity can confirm, permitting as we do market
forces to shape cultural production and consumption.
47. Cf. Republic, 608a.
48. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 413.
49. Like the desire for self-gratification, the love of novelty appears to assert
itself in the absence of countervailing forces. As with the former desire, the
Athenian counsels that the lawgiver curb the latter by conceding it some
ground. Although he appeals to reverence to help the citizen disavow his
own perception of the good and the beautiful, he recognizes that the
sub-philosophic perspective of the citizen is persistent and to be accom-
modated. The civic way of life must be adorned with the promise of
pleasures, and these adornments must seem to be continually changing
(665c), even as the way of life they embellish remains the same.
50. On the importance of an “object of reverence” to the general psychology
of the virtue, see Paul Woodruff, “Reverence, Respect, and Dependence,”
in Virtues of Independence and Dependence on the Virtues, eds. Ludvig
Beckman and Uddhammar (New Brunswick and London: Transaction,
2003), 22; Reverence, 113. Woodruff’s basic point is that reverent awe can
be inspired only by contemplating objects that manifestly stand above the
human, either because they cannot be changed or controlled by human
means, are not fully understood by human experts, were not created by
human beings, or because they transcend cultural boundaries.
51. Another way of understanding the difficulty would be that it is the mere
possibility of progress that threatens ancestral authority. The sanctification
of antiquity requires that this possibility be concealed, which is why tradi-
tional societies often perceive the present as a corrupted diminishment
 4 THE ATHENIAN’S REHABILITATION OF TRAGEDY 149

of the past. If the Egyptians represent the extreme of such sanctification,

then the testimony of Herodotus is instructive (2.37–42).
52. Compare Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 8.4, which likens
the authority of the Spartan Ephors to “tyrants.”
53. The Athenian does attribute the origins of the Gerousia to “some human
nature, having been mixed with some divine power,” but he conspicuously
refrains from naming Lycurgus as the responsible party. Cf. Herodotus
1.65 and Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, 5.3, 5.6.
54. The worship of reverence is well attested elsewhere. Hesiod sings of Aidōs
as a goddess (Works and Days 200); she appears in several extant tragedies
(e.g., Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 821); and Pausanias describes altars to
and images of Aidōs at Athens and Sparta (Description of Greece 1.17,
3.20).
55. Compare 659a–c and Aristophanes Clouds 960–72.
56. The Athenian is apparently referring to the violent insurrection led by
Kronos to usurp his father, Ouranos, at the behest of his mother (Hesiod,
Theogony 131–210). Ouranos names the Titans to call attention to their
irreverent transgression, as we observed in Chapter 2. Cf. Sophist 246a ff.
57. Readers have sometimes been critical of the Stranger’s account of Athens
on the grounds of historical inaccuracies. But why should we assume
that his purpose here depends on faithfully describing his own regime?
Certainly, Plato’s readers should be familiar with his use of fictional polit-
ical paradigms as spurs to greater thoughtfulness or moral seriousness. For
the argument that classical Athens need not be regarded as an actionable
“blueprint to invite serious thinking about political psychology,” see Ryan
K. Balot, “Recollecting Athens,” Polis 33 (2016): 92–129.
58. Woodruff, Reverence, 139.
59. Ibid.
 CHAPTER 5

Reverence and the Ambiguity of Political

Virtue

Plato’s Laws has long suffered a reputation for betraying the Socratic
spirit that had infused the so-called early dialogues. Whereas these
works indisputably take up certain “Socratic paradoxes” and culminate
in arresting perplexity, the Laws can seem philosophically dogmatic and
given over to political advocacy. After all, the only dialogue (besides the
Epinomis ) from which Socrates is altogether absent is uniquely devoted to
the most thoroughgoing political deed. In its pages, philosophy becomes
ministerial to politics; “in legislation the higher is in the service of the
lower.”1 Readers have frequently seen in Socrates’ absence a turn away
from the rich and sympathetic portrayal in the Socratic works of the
philosopher’s interlocutors, and even from the philosophical problems
about which Socrates had been so keenly concerned. To these inter-
preters, the mysterious stranger by whom Socrates is replaced in the Laws
reflects the impatience of his ageing and jaundiced author. “The Laws is
an old man’s work,” writes George Klosko. “The lack of dialectical inter-
change indicates something about Plato’s temper …in many ways it shows
a mood of tiredness and resignation.”2
As we have seen, however, the Laws too articulates philosophical quan-
daries in the drama between its characters. Even its relative monophony
serves a dramatic purpose all its own. Likewise, the enigma around which
the dialogue is written echoes the problems with which the Platonic
Socrates is preoccupied. In presenting political life as the imitation of

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152 R. A. BALLINGALL

god, the Laws points to the question of how a form-like paradigm can
find expression in a mutable “participant.”3 The Laws similarly exam-
ines how the good must in practice take a different shape than it does in
speech. Again like Socrates, the Athenian appears to deny the possibility
of voluntary injustice. And by likening himself to a tragic poet, even as
he accepts the Socratic critique of tragedy, he raises anew the “ancient
quarrel” between poetry and philosophy.4 In this chapter, I examine yet
another way in which the Laws takes up and recasts a Socratic paradox.
The god whom the city emulates is said to possess every virtue and is
even identified with intelligence, the leader of the virtues (cf. 631c with
897b). Yet the citizen “is to be proclaimed wise” only inasmuch as his
soul does not oppose “what in his opinion is noble or good” (689a),
an opinion that he would “take over” from law (645b). In fact, as we
saw in the previous chapter, the Athenian implies that even this limited
internal consonance must remain an exceptional achievement. Education
might aspire to train desires and aversions to harmonize with reason, but
it relies for its safeguard on a “moderation” rooted in awe and shame, so
much so that cultivating this safeguard must remain education’s primary
task. In the same vein, the god to whom the city looks up is said to be
the cause and measure of all things, yet the citizen who becomes like god
is merely “moderate,” precisely because he refuses to measure all things
by reference to himself (716d). He looks, rather, to the divine law for the
guidance that he knows he needs (716a). It would seem that the political
man whom the Athenian exhorts to godlikeness achieves his goal precisely
by refusing to become a god. How can we make sense of this paradox?
What does political moderation have to do with divine intelligence?5
These questions become especially sharp in light of the Socratic
problem of the unity of virtue, a problem to which the Athenian connects
the imitation of god and the study of which he claims must be among the
highest duties of the city under divine law (965c–d). Echoing Socrates,
he observes that virtue appears to be both one and many (963c). It
seems to involve excellences that can at once be distinguished from—yet
identified with—each other. What, then, is the relationship between this
unity and plurality? Courage, for example, governs fear and is a virtue
in which even animals and young children share (963e3–6, cf. 807b).6
Prudence, however, presupposes reason and is achieved only in human
beings (963e6–8). Yet both courage and prudence are somehow parts of
the same thing. How can this be? To understand virtue, both its particular
incarnations and its general form or idea, it would seem necessary to grasp
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 153

a “definition” (logos ) that covers all such cases (964a). But the cases can
appear so different that any general definition would seem inadequate.
Conversely, looking at virtue through a general definition can make its
multiplicity disappear. Either virtue has many parts but then no general
definition, or it has such a definition but then no longer distinctive parts.
The problem proves especially vexing given the orientation of divine
law. The goal of the city under such law is to promote the whole of
virtue and thus to make those who use the law happy. But the city cannot
teach the same virtue to all citizens. As the Athenian claimed at the outset
and clarifies in the conclusion, even the “guardians” whom the lawgiver
should install are not all “grounded in prudence.”7 Some (most?) must
settle for “true opinion” (632c) and become a mere “image of intelli-
gence” (965a). Apart from the “more precise education” to which he
alludes (965b), the education that divine law would make its chief busi-
ness aims at virtues of a lower grade. At best, it harmonizes pleasure and
pain with lawful opinion; more typically, it teaches the self-control born
of shame and awe. How do these diverse goals of education cohere? How
can they all be described as the imitation of divine reason, of virtue in the
strict sense?8
In previous chapters, I suggested that the Athenian takes the Socratic
view that only the philosophic life lived to its full potential is truly
deserving of virtue’s hallowed name. For only in philosophy do the
pleasant and the just, the good and the noble, truly align.9 The lawgiver
might teach all citizens that these things are mutually consistent, but the
Athenian flags that claim as necessarily dubious from the perspective of
his addressees, as indeed it seems to Kleinias (661d–662a). What appears
pleasant to them, and what counts as virtue for them, must often pull in
opposing directions. It is fortunate that the argument that does not split
the pleasant from the just or the good from the noble can be persuasive
nonetheless, if only as a lie (cf. 663b with 663d). For the Socratic philoso-
pher, however, this argument can reflect the truth. Such a person finds
his happiness in the search for truth; he regards the preoccupations with
public esteem, political rule, and private property as so many hindrances
to zetetic contemplation—tolerated as necessary, but never chosen for
their own sake (Republic 485d–e). Because such things are scarce, espe-
cially in the ancient economy, the yearning for them implies an attraction
to what belongs to others by legal convention and therefore to injustice.
But being free of such attraction, the philosopher is uniquely averse to
taking more than his share. The longing to gaze upon eternity is not
154 R. A. BALLINGALL

naturally at odds with the conventional goods of others, not least the
freedom of others. In the philosophic life, happiness really is consistent
with the demands of justice, or at any rate with the duty to respect what
belongs to others by law.10 The philosopher observes the law not from
fear of disgrace, punishment, or divine fury, but out of indifference to the
ephemeral strivings that lead others to break it, and owing to a firm grasp
of the material and psychological prerequisites for his inquiries. In short,
the good and the noble are for him uniquely consonant; in the order of his
soul, virtue realizes all we can reasonably hope from it. Strictly speaking,
then, the virtues are different parts of this soul that is turned towards
the truth; they are elements of the whole that is wisdom.11 Courage, for
example, is in the strict sense a psychological endurance in the face of
things from which others usually but wrongly shrink in fear (cf. Republic
428c, 442c with 486b).12 Death and the removal of things pursued to
distract from death is less threatening to those who sees themselves sub
specie aeternitatis. What is to be feared is rather the fear of death and
all that is done to mollify it. It is these distractions that prevent us from
turning fully towards the truth and from leaving others and their property
well enough alone.
The case of the philosopher begins to answer the problem of the unity
of virtue. The common-sense intuition that a person can be wise without
justice or courageous without moderation is belied by how, on exami-
nation, each of the virtues reflects a kind of knowledge (Protagoras 350a
ff.).13 The many virtues prove to be united by the philosophic orientation
towards the truth; the distinctions between the virtues can be understood
as different parts of this orientation, different aspects of the psychology
supportive of it.14 Intriguingly, however, this neat solution falls apart
within the context of the Laws. The lawgiver is concerned with the whole
of virtue, which apparently extends beyond or beneath the philosophic
life. Neither Socrates nor the Athenian ever supposes that the city as a
whole can philosophize (cf. Republic 494a). Yet divine law would make
those who use it happy and it would do so by educating them to virtue.
It is therefore necessary to follow the Athenian’s suggestive identification
of “popular virtues” (dêmosios aretai, 968a) and to ask how these relate
to the virtues of the philosopher. “The core of the difficulty…is the unity,
or commonality in aim, of philosophic and political virtue.”15
In this chapter, I argue that whatever unity exists between these
virtues is found in mitigating the tension between them. All virtue has in
common the propensity to follow intelligence. But different virtues lead
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 155

us to follow intelligence in different ways. The philosophic virtues look to

an intelligence within the soul in which they themselves reside. The polit-
ical virtues look to an intelligence whose residues might be preserved in
the law. For the Athenian, divine law originates in the mind that is turned
towards the good and that spies out the good in the diverse circum-
stances of human life.16 But the shape of law limits the wisdom that it
can express. By its nature, law is inflexible and coercive; it can command
only what is good for the most part, as a general rule (Statesman 295a,
cf. Laws 925d–26b). Of course, general rules judiciously applied can
do tremendous good. As a blunt instrument, law can remove some of
the impediments standing in the way of virtue, especially when law is
conceived as something divine. It can then lead fallible, closed-minded
men into fertile self-doubt out of which can grow opinions more consis-
tent with what is truly good for themselves and others. The trouble, as the
Athenian intimates, is that divine law must attach to itself such authority
that it risks smothering the embers of the intelligence needed to guide it,
not only in its inception, but in its ongoing application. Political virtue
requires obedience to lawful authority; philosophic virtue calls into ques-
tion all authority and law. If the criterion of divine law is that it strives
towards the whole of virtue, then it would seem to require some device
for simultaneously enhancing and undermining its own authority.
As we shall see, it is to reverence that the Athenian looks for a solu-
tion in this regard. Reverence makes possible a deep respect for what is
recognizably imperfect. What we revere may stand above imperfection,
but what is imperfect can be connected to what we revere, as an attempt
to imitate or become like it and thus to accomplish what is tremendously
difficult. It is when that difficulty is brought home to us that we can
deeply respect even what we perceive as flawed. For why think less of
what tries for but falls short of what is awesomely hard? Who are we
to think we can do better ourselves what we recognize as exceptionally
challenging? It is by availing itself of this attitude that divine law can
command respect even as it invites critical interrogation, even as it reveals
something of its human stain. It can thus present the regime of which it
is a part as an imitation and merely second-best without compromising
itself altogether. Reverence-based authority proves uniquely open to its
own transcendence.
The Athenian is mindful of the limits of this solution. He counsels
severe restrictions on any reproaches against the law, especially in public
156 R. A. BALLINGALL

(e.g. 907d ff., 938a, 951a, 952c–d), and recommends harsh punish-
ment for persistent offenders. He likewise presents the law-bred virtues
as grounded as much in ignorance of alternatives to the law as in appre-
hension of the law’s true merits. The political virtues incline us to respect
the law ahead of thinking for ourselves. Even so, where law is guided by
a measure of philosophic intellect, the citizen too can be led, however
dimly, by that which unites the philosophic virtues and makes them
divine. We thus begin to see why it is the moderate citizen who becomes
like god by revering god, by refusing to believe that he knows already
the most important things.17 Strictly speaking, such moderation is not a
virtue. It exists alone in the soul, without the rest of the virtue that is
wisdom.18 But insofar as it moves the citizen to follow the law, and the
lawmaker has followed the counsel of the wise (on the model of Kleinias
and the Athenian), such moderation brings the citizen as close as he might
come to wisdom without becoming wise in his own right. Political moder-
ation becomes a “stand in” or “prosthetic” for the intelligence that is
divine (689a–d, 696d–e). It helps a person heed intelligence because the
law it leads him to respect is shaped by intelligent men. And because the
Athenian identifies the moderation to which he refers with reverent awe
and shame (cf. 635e with 647c–d, 649b–c, 672d, and 673e), he implies
that it is the man who respects the limits of his nature (as reverence moves
him to do) who comes closest to that which surpasses those limits. If in
the philosopher the virtues are a unity in wisdom, they are in the citizen
a unity in reverence and the lawfulness that reverence supports. For the
citizen, then, common sense proves to be correct—one can have a part of
virtue without the whole; one can be courageous and moderate without
wisdom and justice.19 But courage and moderation only count as political
virtues when it is moderation that stands in for wisdom in the soul—when
as reverence it leads the citizen to follow the residues of wisdom in the
law. Political virtue is in this sense insuperably ambiguous.

The Insufficiency of Gerontocracy

A device for judiciously breaking through the authority of law and piety
would seem especially important in a regime like Magnesia, which would
enhance such authority with unusual vigor. In fact, we can recognize the
need of such a device from the moment the Athenian starts fleshing out
his understanding of divine law. The good things that such law secures
all depend on the leadership of prudence and intelligence, he says. The
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 157

one who frames such law must install “guards” over its apportionment of
honor and shame, some of whom will be grounded in prudence, others
in true opinion, “so that intelligence will knit together all these things”
(632c). Similarly, the one Dorian law that earns the Athenian’s plau-
dits is the one that permits critical inquiry into law itself, including ipso
facto its claim to be divine. If law would live up to that claim, then it
must accommodate the intelligence born of calling law into question. The
Athenian incorporates this law of laws into his conversation with Kleinias
and Megillus, as we have seen. But he also applies it in his account of
music and especially in his handling of the problem that musical educa-
tion raises—how it presupposes the good taste that music itself is needed
to teach. He argues that this problem can be met by appealing to the
ancestors, and to their living representatives. So much we recall from
Chapter 4. It is necessary to proclaim the taste of elders to be superior to
and more trustworthy than the taste of the young. But how far does that
proclamation capture the truth? Are those most experienced in the correct
habituation really less liable to err in what they find pleasant and repul-
sive? Kleinias and Megillus would seem to belie that notion. The Athenian
claims it necessary to declare (phanai) as correct and reliable the judg-
ment born of “our kind of habitation” (658e), and the Dorians prove to
be poor judges of what is truly pleasant and painful. The education from
which the elders would benefit in Magnesia would be superior to that
which has shaped the Dorians. It would teach endurance, for example,
not merely in the face of pain and fear, but under pressure from pleasant
temptations as well. Even so, the Athenian suggests that the elder Magne-
sians would also need to look up to a more adequate arbiter of good taste.
The Muse who is especially finest is she who pleases the one best man
(658e–659a).
The need to ensure that ancestral authority is informed by genuine
virtue and intelligence is reflected in the institution of a chorus conse-
crated to Dionysus. The Athenian introduces this chorus as the last of
three into which divine law would divide the citizens (664d), who are to
perform the music that they should enjoy, not simply observe it.20 This
Dionysian chorus would consist of the oldest performers, men between
the ages of thirty and sixty.21 Its task is apparently to set the cultural tone
for the young, singing “incantations for the tender young souls of the
children, repeating to them all the noble things we have been saying and
will say later on” (664b). It is the Dionysian chorus to which the city as a
whole should look in its aesthetic and moral judgment. It is the “best part
158 R. A. BALLINGALL

of the city—the part that is most persuasive of those in the city because
of its age and also its prudence” (665d). But why is this venerable institu-
tion to be dedicated to the god of wine? Initially, the reason seems to be
that the old are too bashful and moderate to sing and dance themselves
and thus to set a good example (665e).22 They will need to drink to be
“rejuvenated” and less ashamed to sing (666c). Curiously, though, the
Athenian reminds us in the same breath of how the oblivion and bold-
ness induced by wine can be the basis for enhancing the fear of shame.
Wine, he says, turns the disposition of the soul “from harder to softer,
so that it becomes more malleable (euplastoteron), like iron when it is
plunged into fire” (666b7–c2). If the drinking of wine is needed merely
to arouse the audacity of prudent men, then why should such men also
need to be malleable or plastic? Isn’t he suggesting that the elders are not
sufficiently prudent to set a good example after all?
As much would seem confirmed by what the Athenian goes on to say.
He asks about the muse who would be fitting for the Dionysian chorus,
as well as she who would best suit “divine men.” Would these muses be
the same? (666d3–7). On behalf of his own people and the Lacedaemo-
nians, Kleinias admits they would not. Men such as they are unable to sing
any song besides those learned when they were habituated in their own
choruses, a frank confession on which the Stranger seizes (666e–67a).
The Dorians “have never really attained to the most beautiful song,” he
says. Their regime is really “an armed camp.” It is uncivilized. It treats
the young like a herd of animals, without attending to the idiosyncratic
needs of promising individuals, needs that can be met only by drawing
the talented youth away from the “grazers.” Were the regime to give
each such youth “a private groom,” then he might become more than a
good soldier. He might become capable of ruling human beings, having
learned to honor courage as a part of virtue rather than the whole, and
certainly not as the first part. Such a private education would seem to
go beyond the “habituation” afforded by the choruses, however superior
those of Magnesia might be. It would involve learning to love a muse
more beautiful than the common, choral muse. At any rate, the Athenian
proposes that this highest muse be given “to these men whom we assert
are ashamed of that one [the muse of the choruses] and seek to share
in this one that is most beautiful” (667b1–3). The men he has in mind
cannot be the elders of the Dionysian chorus; no chorus can possess the
most beautiful muse. Those to whom this highest muse is given must be
rather the beneficiaries of the private education that he has just blamed
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 159

the Dorians for neglecting. Despite its authoritative judgment within the
city, then, the Dionysian chorus will not know the most beautiful song
nor possess the highest muse. It will need to look up to the judgment of
the divine men to whom the Athenian here alludes.
The Stranger turns next to discuss what one really must know in order
to judge well of the musical things. Here too, he quietly puts daylight
between the elders and the truly competent judge. Earlier (658e), he
had seemed to agree with the many that the correct criterion for judging
music is pleasure, provided we are speaking of the taste of the correctly
educated person. Later (667d–e), he rejects even this qualified position.
He observes that every resemblance produced by the image-making arts
consists of three parts: the pleasure it gives (i.e. its “charm”), the corre-
spondence that it has to that on which it is modelled, and the benefit
that it confers on those who enjoy it. The “correctness” (hē orthotēs )
in such things, he says, is not the pleasure they give but their fidelity
to what they represent. Here we must bear in mind how human beings
are especially charmed by the perception of order (653e–654a) and how
the poets ought to mix such charms into their musical representations,
just as a doctor might mix something sweet into bitter-tasting medicine
(659e–660a). In this way, the uneducated might take pleasure in correct
representations. They might thus begin to assimilate themselves to the
good characters that they would otherwise secretly or unconsciously
disdain. But the pleasure that the uneducated take in such music is not
reliable. It does not equip them with the kind of discriminating taste
that the true judge of music would need. For what happens if they are
presented with an imitation that is charmingly ordered but incorrect?
Indeed, won’t they take pleasure in certain images precisely because of
the latter’s incorrectness —because those images represent in a flatteringly
light corrupt characters like their own? This would seem a problem if
the chorus of Dionysus is to set the aesthetic and moral tone of the city.
To do so reliably, it is not enough to find appealing the harmony that
might be attached to what is correct. Rather, “in the case of each creation
one must know what it is [the thing imitated], in order to avoid making
mistakes about it. If one doesn’t know the being (tēn ousian)—what is
intended and what the image is really of—one will scarcely know whether
it is correct in its intention or mistaken” (668c). The true judge knows
the being that the musical image represents. He knows the truly virtuous
soul. Can the city’s elders possibly live up to that measure?
160 R. A. BALLINGALL

That the answer has become doubtful is attested by the fact that it
remains a question whether it is noble to speak out in favor of the
Dionysian chorus, as the Athenian invites his companions to consider at
671a. A superficial listener might have thought the question settled. The
chorus of Dionysus is to be followed as the arbiter of good taste; how
could it be ignoble to extol it? But the Athenian now revisits the func-
tion of wine drinking among the old men and connects their drinking to
the earlier account of awe and shame. Since the meetings of this chorus
involve such drinking, he says, it follows—on the necessary hypothesis laid
down from the beginning—that the drinkers will forget themselves and
become shameless (671c). Each will insolently consider himself capable
of ruling the others as well as himself (671b). So much for the nobility
of the elders. But when such “ignoble boldness” appears, it paradoxically
creates an opportunity for these men to be easily led “by someone who
possesses the ability and the knowledge required to educate and mold
souls” (671b–c). Such a person can “send in as a combatant the noblest
sort of fear accompanied by justice, the divine fear to which we gave the
name ‘awe’ and ‘shame’” (671d). It is the elders, the living face of ances-
tral authority, for whom reverence proves to be especially needful. They
might use their authority to face down the insolence of the young and
the many, as well as the poets who would cater to popular taste, but the
elders themselves remain corrupt and in need of a guidance that outstrips
their habituation. The nobility in which they are clothed proves to conceal
grave shortcomings. If it is not as students but as teachers that they would
sit before the city (659b), then they themselves must become the students
in the privacy of their “meetings,” which the Athenian tellingly likens to
a “mystery-rite” (teletē, 666b4),23 accessible only to initiates.

Breaking authority’s Spell

For the city under divine law, then, much would depend on whether
it carves out a path for critical thinking and the culture of intelligence.
Otherwise, how can the Dionysian chorus perform its vital role? Critical
thinking is something taken for granted in tolerant, permissive democra-
cies. But in a regime like Magnesia, where there would be tremendous
social pressure to “master” one’s impulses and to follow the sometimes
painful guidance of traditions and customs, independence of mind might
seem harder to come by, or at any rate to face different obstacles.24 The
arts would be subject to a thoroughgoing censorship and citizens taught
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 161

to await quietly the judgment of respected elders, on pain of disgrace

and even corporeal punishment. Yet as we’ve just seen, the elders need to
look to another’s judgement in their own right and would be privately
shamed for considering themselves capable of excessive independence.
Who, then, under divine law is permitted to think for himself? Where does
such law make room for the thoughtful inquiry that would seem to be its
primary objective? Interpreters have often supposed that the intelligence
that would lead Magnesia must be that which informs its founding.25 Yet
the Athenian is clear that divine law isn’t merely the product of intelli-
gence; it is a source of intelligence too. It “provides all the good things.”
The ancestral authority with which Magnesia would lead its people must
itself be led by an enduring source of intelligence inside to the city, one
that would presumably need to be created anew again and again, with
each passing generation.
We can begin to see how divine law might open itself to such intel-
ligence by revisiting once more the example of the Egyptians. The
Athenian appeals to this example to show how customs that seem to
have remain unchanged for great spans of time inspire great respect and
awe. Their persistence can seem a testament to a superhuman perfec-
tion; what is human is never perfect and what is perfect does not change.
The Athenian calls particular attention to how this effect is enhanced by
the inability even to imagine how the law might be different. The entire
soul reverences and fears changing the law, he says, where human beings
neither remember nor have heard that the lawful things are, were, or
could be otherwise than they are now (798a–b). That is why it is so
intriguing that it should be the drinking party to which he points as
the model for civic education and as a medicine for putting awe in the
soul. For is drinking not an occasion during which are aired precisely
the sorts of unconventional opinions that tear away the veil of awesome
immutability in which divine law is adorned? Drunkenness is one of
“those experiences in which we are naturally inclined to become espe-
cially rash and bold” (649c), like a child whose pleasures, pains, spirited
passion and erotic longings completely overwhelm his “sensations, memo-
ries, opinions, and prudent thoughts” (645d–e). It is while drunk that we
“wind up being filled with complete license of speech” (649b, cf. 671b).
It is true that such license might enable a “symposiarch” to reinforce the
reverent fears of the drinkers who disgrace themselves. But if reverence for
law is born of ignorance of what is unlawful, then the symposium seems
an unnecessarily risky means of teaching it. The drinking party appears to
162 R. A. BALLINGALL

dissolve the reverence of the drinkers in the name of enhancing it, inviting
as it does the expression of transgressive opinions. The Athenian himself
acknowledges this risk in his “capstone” to the argument of Book Two
(673d–674c). If wine cannot be treated as something serious, he says,
used “for the sake of moderation,” then it should be forbidden entirely.
He reminds us that it can be safely used only in the company of “steady
and sober men” who might serve as “guardians” of the law, able to
protect it with “the noblest sort of fear.” Without such guardians present
to defend orthodoxy, the license of speech encouraged by the symposium
will undermine rather than intensify the reverence of the drinkers. Seeing
as reverence can be taught by safer means, as in Egypt and the Dorian
cities, the primary purpose of the symposium must be something quite
apart from the teaching of it.26
We have learned already that the benefits of the drinking party are
not limited to the enhancement of awe and shame. The Stranger made
as much clear when he observed how wine drinking can be a means
of testing souls. So beneficial would these tests be to the lawgiving art
that he pretended to forget the benefit for whose sake he had intro-
duced the subject of wine in the first place. But who are those who
pass such tests? The ones who do not disgrace themselves when the fear
of disgrace has dwindled? Or are they those who are benefited by the
expression of “disgraceful” opinions, in ways beyond the “moderation”
taught the others? Divine law needs a way of teaching the intelligence
that only critical thought can foster and of identifying and encouraging
those in whom critical thinking is safe—and not merely a convenience
for rationalizing pleonexia. The drinking party would seem to present
the perfect institution in this regard. The unconventional opinion that it
solicits helps participants break free of the spell of authority. The license
that it creates helps identify those who have less need of such authority,
and who can therefore proceed to inquiries that would compromise the
rectitude of others. And this it does while appearing the stalwart ally
of traditionalism. Sowing the seeds of philosophic questioning becomes
more defensible when put in the service of reinforcing reverence for law.
This insight would seem to be what the Athenian has in mind when he
concludes, cryptically, that the gift of Dionysus should not be blamed as
if it were an evil to the city. “Indeed, someone might say still more on
its behalf, but one must be wary of speaking in the presence of the many
about the greatest good it brings; human beings misinterpret it, and don’t
understand what is said” (672a7–b1). This greatest good cannot be the
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 163

enhancement of aidōs. That is the very thing the Athenian has just praised
the drinking party for delivering (671d2)27 ; it is not a good about which
he has shown much circumspection. Philosophy, by contrast, is a good
that he would seem to hold in the highest regard,28 yet about which he
remains exceptionally guarded, so much so that he never mentions the
word in the course of the entire dialogue.29 In any case, Kleinias betrays
certain vices common to the many; it makes sense that in response to
his question about the nature of this greatest good the Athenian should
simply repeat the connection between the well-led symposium and the
cultivation of awe. It is Kleinias and men like Kleinias in whose presence
one must be wary of speaking.
If the drinking party is indeed a model for education under divine
law, then we should expect to find its pattern throughout the regime
that the Athenian leads the others in setting down in speech. And if the
pattern that wine drinking represents is the breaking of authority’s spell
in the name of enhancing its grip, then presumably that procedure will be
repeated in the legislation that the Stranger goes on to propose. Without
going exhaustively through the remainder of the dialogue to test these
expectations, we can consider two moments in the text where they are
especially in evidence. The first occurs immediately on the heels of the
account of wine, when the Athenian suddenly invites his interlocuters to
consider the natural origins of political life in a post-cataclysmic wilder-
ness. The second occurs in the course of fleshing out the penology that
divine law must ordain in anticipation of education’s failure.

Drinking Under the Aspect of Eternity

One way in which divine law would lend authority to what would other-
wise seem incredible is by assimilating nomos to nature. Where citizens
are oblivious of opinions at odds with those taught by law and custom,
the lawful appears natural. It is then scarcely conceivable to doubt what
is habitually said and done; the distinction between custom and nature
disappears. In such cases, to the limited extent that we are even aware of
alternatives, we fear changing the customary things out of the reverence
that they command. They inspire awe when held to have always been so
or to be hardly capable of being otherwise. Because the Athenian claims
the lawgiver must ensure that such salutary ignorance prevails within the
164 R. A. BALLINGALL

city, it is remarkable that he says things himself that would seem to under-
mine it. The new beginning that he makes in the third book of the Laws
is one such case.
Here, the Athenian asks his companions to imagine the origins of
the political regime against the background of cosmic time and the
terrible vulnerability that must have preceded human civilization. It is by
ascending to this superhuman prospect or theateon, he says, that political
change towards virtue or vice is made manifest (676a). Under the aspect
of eternity, there have been civilizations beyond reckoning or memory,
now appearing now vanishing, always becoming better or worse as their
regimes have changed. What seems fixed and stable from the human
point of view appears in this light but a momentary pause in what is
otherwise always in flux. To grasp the cause of these many changes,
the Athenian appeals to the ancient stories that tell of dread cataclysms
engulfing humanity. Of the many such disasters, he focuses on accounts
of a great flood that left the few survivors isolated on the peaks of tall
mountains. Such an event must have erased all but the most rudimentary
kinds of knowledge, not least the knowledge necessary to lead a political
way of life (677c). For eons afterwards, human beings must have lived
without any sort of wisdom and without any of the things that accom-
pany civilization, whether noble or shameful (678b). If political life arose
in prehistorical time, the fact that no memory of it survives attests its anni-
hilation, and to the reduction of human beings to a barbaric, sub-political
state. The distant past can be properly described as “a vast and frightening
desolation” (677e). It is “from those men, in that situation,” that have
developed all the things that we associate with civilization, virtue and vice
in particular (678a).
By inviting the Dorians to look on the past from this prospect, the
Athenian draws them (and us) out of the comfortable oblivion with which
founding myths frequently enshroud the origins of the regimes in which
they are told. He reminds his audience of what had to be forgotten
that civilized life might begin (682b–c).30 Civilization relies on traditions
built on burying the truth about the past. Why, then, unearth the past
and thus undercut its authority? Why suddenly deny the past the noble
guise in which it otherwise clothes itself? That he does so by conjuring a
viewpoint “that embraces an infinite length of time” (676b) reveals some-
thing of his intentions. For is not the germ of philosophy the turning of
the soul towards eternity by doubting all traditions and authority? One
must always bear in mind the Athenian’s later claim that the whole of
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 165

his dialogue with the Cretan and Spartan should be written down and
studied by the citizens of Magnesia (811c–e, cf. 891a, Epinomis 980d),
or at any rate by those who aspire to the highest distinction as regards
virtue (822e, 922a, 957c–d) or who have persistent doubts and ques-
tions about the gods according to the laws (888a–d). In seeking answers
to their questions, these stubborn if studious and ambitious ones (903c)
will discover speeches that spur on their questioning still more. The Athe-
nian’s words are not infrequently delivered for the benefit of multiple
intended audiences.
Indeed, as provocative as these words might sometimes seem, they do
not altogether destroy respect for the ancestral and the traditional. The
cases of Kleinias and Megillus suggest as much. If the viewpoint of infi-
nite time helps liberate them from their own traditional beliefs, it does
not prove inconsistent with reverence for the past more broadly. Kleinias
has already lost his respect for the mythical past, as we saw in Chapter 2. If
he remains attached to the Cretan ways, it is to the conventional forms of
corruption that these ways have failed to stamp out. But as with most all
corruption, that of Kleinias betrays a confused, subterranean longing for
the noble and just things, on account of which he is susceptible to shame.
And like anyone about to execute some audacious, ostensibly transgres-
sive plan, Kleinias is afraid and thus sensitive to considerations that add
gravity to what he is about to do. The viewpoint into which the Stranger
invites him manages just that, revealing as it does the terrible fragility of
political regimes. The awesome desolation out of which political life must
have once emerged and into which it must someday return is enough to
complete the taming of the Cretan—by the end of Book Three, he is
ready to submit formally to the Athenian’s tutelage.
By the force of his example, then, the Athenian in these passages
shows how reverence does not have to rely on simple ignorance and
Egyptianism. He might extol such ignorance as a necessary buttress to
authority. But the law that is truly divine must aim at the whole of
virtue, the heights of which presuppose questioning what is held by dint
of habit and custom. Happy then is his apparent discovery that latent
within reverence is the possibility of reconciling such questioning with
authority, on the pattern of the well-led drinking party. The very “drunk-
enness” that dissolves aidōs can enhance aidōs too. A vision of cosmic
time, for example, invites reflection on the deceitfulness of all myth-
ical origin stories, which as a rule present the community’s ways as the
patrimony of time out of mind. But that same vision reveals a sobering
166 R. A. BALLINGALL

devastation and vulnerability in the face of which political founding seems

immensely difficult, even “the most perfect of all tests of manly virtue”
(708d). As the Athenian later avers, the human things are all in a simi-
larly ephemeral condition. Legislation in particular is more a matter of
chance and accident than of art (709a). By evoking this awesome disparity
between human art and political success, he shows how reverence can
grow from the very act of undercutting its traditional source. He accepts
the need for mythical genealogies, but he also points to alternate sources
of authority more consistent with the requirements of liberal education.
On the other hand, that the Athenian doesn’t simply turn his back
on the traditional source of reverence is attested by what he goes on
to say. For now we learn how it is the same ignorance that pervaded
the pre-political condition that the lawgiver tries to reproduce in burying
much (if not all) memory of that condition. It is for want of experience
of the many noble and shameful things that accompany civilization that
pre-political men must have been neither perfectly virtuous nor perfectly
vicious. The paucity of population, abundance of land, and lack of tech-
nical skill must have left them in a state not unlike those civilized people
with “the most well-bred dispositions” (679b8). Corrupted by neither
wealth nor poverty nor experience of mendacity, they must have possessed
a crude but impressive justice and been without insolence, envy, or ill will.
“They were good on account of these things,” the Athenian says, “and
also because of what is called naïve simplicity” (tēn euētheian, 679c2–3).

Whenever they heard something was noble or something was shameful,

they in their simplicity (euētheis ) considered what had been said to be the
very truth and believed it. No one had the wisdom, as they do nowadays,
to know how to be on the lookout for lies. They believed (nomizontes )
that what they heard about gods as well as about human beings was true,
and lived according to these things (679c).

The simpletons of the original desolation appear to have had by nature

what lawgivers must later cultivate by art.31 They had a certain virtue,
rooted not in wisdom but in ignorance of reasons to doubt what is praised
and blamed and said of the gods. Such simplicity or euētheia might have
left them open to exploitation, a risk about which the Athenian is silent.
But it must have also made them exceptionally willing to believe opinions
that civilized people wrongly reject. It does not take a Rousseau to see
that if most civilized people are on the lookout for lies, it is less for the
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 167

sake of the truth than for love of themselves. They fear being deceived by
the moralistic pieties that teach that the just and happy lives are one and
the same (Republic, 362e–365a). They worry that the apparent sacrifices
demanded by the public interest are very real and not truly rewarded. Yet
political life depends on suppressing such worries. It depends on believing
what our natural selfishness and critical sophistication leads us to question.
That is why the lawgiver who would perfect political life as far as
possible would make the citizen a “child for a second time” (646a) and
a puppet of the gods. The citizen must reject his private judgment lest
he waver in his public duty. But he cannot do his duty if he doubts the
prudence of his task, which he will be liable to do unless the lawgiver
can recreate artificially the natural innocence of childhood and of the pre-
political condition. Political virtue is built on opinions that are edifying
but incredible to most civilized people, who are clever enough to discern
the tension between what seems to be good on the one hand and noble
on the other, but not so wise as to grasp how the good and the noble
really do come together in a transpolitical way of life. If such people
would believe that only the just man is truly happy, as the Athenian claims
is necessary (661b), then they must accept that the just and unjust things
appear to fallible beings like themselves as distorted shadows. And this
they accept, on the Athenian’s account at any rate, only because they are
overawed by the majesty of the law. It is this awesome majesty that in
political life replaces the naïve simplicity of humanity’s origins. However
much reverence might survive the exposure of its roots, then, it cannot do
without burying those roots all the same. In politics, reverence depends
on the Egyptianism of the law—the belief in the permanence and divinity
in which law presents itself. The lawgiver might judiciously cast doubt on
such belief lest it stifle critical thinking, but he cannot do without it.
It is fitting that the Athenian’s ambivalence about euētheia should
mirror his equivocal praise of the Egyptians.32 Like the simpletons of the
original desolation, the Egyptians revere customs “that are pretty poor,”
lacking as they do the leadership of intelligence, as well as the means
of renewing it. On the other hand, because they scrupulously preserve
the appearance of legal stability, the Egyptians have inherited something
of the simpletons’ innocence. To a degree, “they neither remember nor
have heard that things were ever otherwise than they are at present.”33
Believing in the city’s “lies” in this regard, they are awestruck by the
city’s ways. Innocence is praiseworthy because it opens the door to rever-
ence. But as the example of both the Egyptians and the survivors of the
168 R. A. BALLINGALL

cataclysm attest, reverence is praiseworthy only if shown to things worth

revering. It is a virtue, a popular form of moderation, only to the extent
that it follows and is tutored by nous, and only insofar as its cultivation
would be consistent with philosophy.

Wisdom’s Prosthetic
That reverence is contingently virtuous in this way is a claim that the
Athenian goes on to make more explicitly as he proceeds in Book Three.
It figures especially in how he isolates in Megillus “an error” that allegedly
afflicts all humanity (686c). He calls attention to this error in the course of
merging his vision of cosmic time with the mythical origins of the Dorian
regimes, thus provoking Megillus into speaking up. It is as if, according to
a god, they are beginning their dialogue anew (682e), returning as they
are to the basis of the Dorian laws.34 Megillus, who has said not a word
since endorsing the Stranger’s offer to explain his adulation of drinking
(642b–d), has evidently been struck by the blame laid on the Dorian laws.
Whether from an eagerness to vindicate Lacedaemon or from a curiosity
whetted by the Athenian’s critique, he jumps at the chance to revisit the
questions that have been raised about the Spartan regime.

If, stranger, some god would promise us that if we make a second attempt
at an investigation into lawgiving we will hear arguments no worse and no
shorter than what were said just now, I at least would be willing to have a
long walk, and for me this day would seem to become short—even though
we are close to the day when the god turns from summer toward winter
(683b–c).

Has Megillus become intoxicated by the critical atmosphere into which

the Stranger has led him? The Athenian does seem to use the freedom
of speech that he affords the Spartan to embarrass him, on the model of
the well-led symposium. And it is surely significant that Megillus speaks
up only after his self-understanding has been placed in the antinomian
context of infinite time. It becomes possible to question the Spartan ways
as the natural appearance that has been attached to those ways is removed.
Be that as it may, the source of Megillus’ embarrassment is a reflec-
tion rather than betrayal of the Spartan ways. The standard against which
he is shamed is that of divine intelligence, which proves not to be iden-
tical with the (professedly) divine laws of Lycurgus. It is on behalf of
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 169

those laws that Megillus repeats his earlier defense of the Lacedaemo-
nian lawgiver. The (alleged) fact that Sparta puts to flight all peoples who
permit the drinking of wine had been enough for him to conclude that
the prohibition of wine is sensible (638a). It had taken the Athenian to
point out that victory is hardly a clear criterion of nobility. “The fact
is, bigger cities defeat smaller ones” (638a7–b1). In its Thermopylae, a
Sparta might create spectacles of sublime beauty, but its few will ulti-
mately be overpowered by their many. Indeed, the heroism of the Three
Hundred is beautiful because, not in spite, of the Spartans’ defeat. Could
Megillus really have been ignorant of so obvious a fact as the superior
strength of greater numbers? Or is it a testament to the genius of his
lawgiver that he seems hardly aware of such facts? One can believe that
military victory attests to nobility before strength only when the ugly
triumphs of despotic empires or rapacious democracies (bigger cities) are
blotted out and explained away. Once again, the authority of law proves
rooted in a certain oblivion.
Whatever the reason for Megillus’ ignorance in this regard, it attests
to a confusion characteristic of the Dorian regimes. The laws of these
regimes teach a love of the noble things ahead of the merely useful or
necessary things.35 But those same laws identify the noble things with
military strength—something good as a means, not as an end in itself. To
think of strength as a noble end is in fact to place the necessary above
the noble; much that makes a city strong is shameful to carry out. In the
name of subordinating the necessary to what is good for its own sake, the
Dorians subordinate what is inherently good to necessity. They confuse
means with ends, what is truly serious with what is basically important.
And such confusion opens the door to a dangerous permissiveness; it
allows for the moralization of injustice and of one’s own unhappiness.
For the useful and necessary things are good only when subject to a
limit such as justice (cf. Philebus 26b).36 Such a limit makes it possible
for many people to benefit from the necessary things at the same time.
It also prevents the necessary things from crowding out the goods for
whose sake we need military security or economic prosperity. To think it
noble to organize life around the latter is to deprive justice of this limiting
power. It is rather to put justice in the service of removing this power.
The simplicity responsible for the persistence of this confusion is therefore
blameworthy, or at any rate misused. The sort of naïveté taught by the
Dorian lawgivers might uphold a faith in the Dorian laws, but it prevents
those laws from securing the one thing that is unequivocally good and
170 R. A. BALLINGALL

on whose leadership depends the worth of all lesser goods. Cultivated

simplicity must not prevent the cultivation of intelligence.
The Athenian makes this point by inviting Megillus to ponder the
confederacy of the archaic Peloponnesians. It is said that in the distant
past the Dorian cities of Lacedaemon, Argos, and Messene swore oaths
to come to each other’s aid should anyone subvert the monarchies that
first ruled them (683e). As great an advantage as it would seem to have
been to have had two cities always ready to come to the aid of the third,
Argos and Messene were quickly corrupted, something Megillus acknowl-
edges but to which he has apparently given little thought (685a). Once
again, it falls to the Athenian to press the obvious but uncomfortable
questions that the Spartans artfully ignore. Why were the oaths on which
was founded the confederacy insufficient to uphold the regimes and laws
of Argos and Messene? Where was Lacedaemon in their hour of need?
That the answer isn’t already clear to Megillus attests to the very problem
at the root the confederacy’s failure. “[H]aven’t we now fallen into the
same error that affects all us human beings?” the Athenian asks (686c).
Are we not always assuming that we become happy by “performing many
amazing deeds” with the help of “something big, with a lot of power and
strength” (686e-87a)? When someone speaks this way, “he does so with a
view to the fact that through this thing one might gain all, or most—and
the worthiest part—of what one desires” (687b). This is perfectly under-
standable, for don’t “all human beings have one desire in common?” Isn’t
this the desire “to have things happen in accordance with the commands
of one’s own soul—preferably all things, but if not that, then at least the
human things” (687c)?
Having agreed that this is so and that this common desire explains the
attractiveness of everything big and powerful, Megillus is subsequently
embarrassed, for the Athenian shows this desire to be both insolent and
imprudent. However common it may be, it implies that one already
knows the things for which to wish; they are those that can be got with
military strength. But it also entails a prayer that “all things”—including
therefore the divine things—accord with one’s private wishes. It thus
involves a vulgar exaggeration of one’s own importance. It equally betrays
great folly. A father should never pray the gods grant all the wishes of his
naïve son; yet who as an adult has the wisdom to benefit from having
fulfilled all that he would want? Are not most of us “all-too-much a
youth” (687d10–e1), even as old men? The man who knows himself a
human being knows he would be harmed were he to gratify all commands
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 171

of his mortal soul. God alone can safely have all things follow his own
wish. For one who lacks intelligence, it is dangerous to pray (688b6),
dominated as he is by the imprudent counselors of the Athenian’s puppet
image. The only safe prayer such a man can utter is “to have his wish
follow his prudence” (687e), which for the citizen should be identified
with law (cf. 645a–b with 689b) and emphatically not with the wishes of
his soul.
The Athenian now recollects, somewhat tendentiously, what was said
at the beginning. He reminds his companions how they had claimed that
the good lawgiver lays down ordinances for the sake of war, while he
had pointed out that doing so amounts to setting up laws for the sake of
merely a part of virtue, not the whole (688a–b). To legislate with a view
to war is to set up laws for the sake of courage. It is to neglect the first part
and leader of all virtue, which the Athenian here identifies with prudence,
intelligence, and opinion (688b2–3). He thus intimates once again the
existence of a form or kind of virtue that is led in the soul by opinion
rather than prudence or intelligence. He equally invites consideration of
whether the Dorians had really had virtue in mind when first articulating
their view of law’s purpose. Does legislating for the sake of war really
imply what the Athenian says—taking aim at courage? Or had the Dorians
not supposed that victory in war is good because it safeguards material
property and political rule? Even in his restatement of their erroneous
view, the Athenian modifies it in the direction he wants to take it.
In any case, the Athenian uses his recollection of the argument to show
how the same human error for which he has shamed Megillus led to the
corruption of the archaic Peloponnesians. If the argument set forth earlier
is followed through, he says, it will become apparent that “the cause of
the destruction of the kings and of the whole plan was not cowardice,
nor a lack of knowledge of war…The corruption was caused by all the
rest of vice, and especially ignorance regarding the greatest of human
affairs” (688c). What is this greatest affair to which he alludes? Must it
not be philosophy, the most serious way of life and the path along which
such wisdom as humanity may find is won? Without such wisdom, the
leadership to which the Dorian cities looked could not have been much
different from the populace it had led. Without wisdom, the reverence
born of innocent simplicity must be for naught. If the first Dorians were
prepared to believe whatever they heard about the noble and shameful
and the gods, their lawgivers squandered that credulity. For their kings
were reflections of themselves, seized as they were by “the desire to have
172 R. A. BALLINGALL

more than the established laws allowed” (691a). They thus gave them-
selves more power than was safe and neglected the oaths they had sworn
accordingly. Military strength became for them more a liability than a
savior. Just as the divine goods all depend on intelligence, so the human
goods all depend on the divine.
Curiously, the Athenian equivocates between this genuine wisdom and
another that exists by proclamation (689d2). “We are now asserting,” he
says, “that the greatest sort of ignorance is what destroyed that earlier
power” (688e3–5). But “what would justly be called the greatest sort
of ignorance?” (689a1), he asks. Not, as we might expect, and as the
Athenian has just claimed (688c), the lack of knowledge about the most
important things. Rather, it is the “dissonance of pleasure and pain on the
one hand, and the opinion that is according to reason on the other” that
he asserts to be “the ultimate and greatest ignorance” (689a). He thus
conceives of a wisdom that is an internal agreement of desire and aver-
sion with opinion, a state of soul in which one likes what one believes to
be noble or good and hates what one believes to be bad or unjust. Such
consonance would seem a virtue only if one’s opinion really is “according
to reason.” That would explain why he likens the ignorance of which he
speaks to the majority’s refusal “to obey the rulers and the laws.” In both
cases, “the part that feels pain and pleasure…opposes knowledge, or opin-
ions, or reason—the natural rulers” (689b). The Stranger is accounting
for the many souls that can’t be ruled by an internal knowledge. Such
souls are to be called ignorant not in the absence of knowledge but in the
disagreement of the “major part of the soul” (the part that feels pleasure
and pain) with the legal shape that knowledge might take. He is defining
wisdom in terms of moderation. Indeed, his definition of wisdom corre-
sponds almost exactly to Socrates’ account of moderation in the Republic,
where the latter is “an accord of worse and better, according to nature,
as to which must rule in the city” (432a, 442c–d). And just as Socrates
points to the need of medicinal lies to bring about civic harmony (382c,
389b, 459c–d), so the Athenian connects “ignorance” to a vulgar shrewd-
ness that spies out and refuses the city’s rhetorical medicine. Those who
gratify their souls ahead of obeying law, he says,

are to be blamed for their ignorance, even if they are shrewd at calculating
and have been trained in all the elegant niceties whose natural effect is
to make the soul agile. It is just the opposite sort of soul who are to be
proclaimed wise—even if, as in the proverb, they “know neither how to
read nor swim” (689c-d).
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 173

The Athenian thus proposes a complex identity between moderation and

wisdom whose origins lie in innocent simplicity. Earlier he had been
ambivalent about the merits of euētheia. It may have been the source
of the veneration that the Egyptians showed their customs, and the
ancient simpletons “whatever they heard,” but the things to which it lent
authority in their cases were unworthy of being followed. Only now that
the venerated thing is informed by intelligence is he prepared to elevate
innocence to a virtue. Only when it produces obedience to intellect, even
if in the form of opinion taken over from law, does simplicity deserve to
be extolled. Like the human goods desired by the mortal soul, the polit-
ical virtues are goods that are dependent. They are virtues only by seeking
what wisdom marks out as worthy. But the wisdom that sees the good is
not a political virtue. It hardly belongs to the human things (875d). If
the human being is to profit from it, he must take over its diluted dispen-
sations before attending to wishes that are his own. In political life, it is
moderation that stands in for wisdom (cf. 710a), and only if the obedience
it inspires is devoted to the counsels of the wise.
This idea resurfaces a few pages later when the Athenian praises Sparta
for bestowing honors only on those whose gifts are accompanied by
moderation (696a–b). Judging by the Spartan’s puzzled reaction (696b),
and by the Athenian’s critique of Lacedaemon for neglecting this virtue,
the compliment is not entirely genuine. But though Megillus is at a loss
as to the Stranger’s meaning, his intuition attests to what the Athenian
says. He agrees that courage and wisdom are worthless in the immoderate
man and accepts that “what is just…does not grow apart from modera-
tion” (696b–c). Nor, he agrees, “does the man we’ve just now set down
as wise” deserve honors if he lacks moderation. His wisdom, after all,
is moderation. But moderation will only be “wisdom,” and thus confer
merit on itself and the rest of political virtue, if the obedience that it
produces is turned towards a wisdom that is real, and not merely the
commands of arbitrary tradition.
The Athenian suggests as much by allowing himself an indirect
reproach of Sparta, and all other regimes that neglect intelligence. “Sup-
pose,” he asks Megillus, “moderation exists alone in the soul, without
any of the rest of virtue: would it be just to honor it or dishonor it?”
Once again, Megillus is lost for words, but the Athenian avails himself
of his perplexity to make an important point. By itself, he says, moder-
ation is “an adjunct [prosthēma] to the things that qualify for honors or
dishonors” (696d11). The correct way to apportion honors is to praise
174 R. A. BALLINGALL

above all the thing which gives us the greatest benefit when combined
with this adjunct (meta tēs prosthēkēs, 696e4). The correct apportionment
is one which honors most virtue of soul, “provided it has moderation”
(697b4). The Athenian thus underscores the degree to which political
virtue is equivocal. Like wisdom, moderation can render praiseworthy the
other virtues. Unlike wisdom, it remains merely an “adjunct” or “pros-
thesis.” It confers merit only when accompanied by the wisdom of which
it is an image. Yet genuine wisdom is not a political virtue; moderation is
praiseworthy only when it follows an intelligence that stands outside the
political soul. If the other political virtues depend on moderation, then
political virtue as a whole depends on the wisdom to which moderation
must look. Without it, moderation is “worthy not of talk, but of some
silent sign” (696e), and so too the virtues it supports.
The Athenian does not suppose that moderation might look to wisdom
as Socrates imagines it might in the Republic. He does allow that the
greatest title to rule and the most according to nature is the one “bid-
ding the ignorant to follow and the prudent to lead and rule” (690b–c).
But he presents intellectual authority as “the natural rule exercised by
law over willing subjects” (690c) and says nothing about the govern-
ment of philosophers. Socrates suggests that philosophers cannot really
be the objects of authority; he says precious little about how moderation
might look up to and follow philosophic intellect.37 But having compelled
philosophy to insinuate itself into law, into a shape that can be revered
by political men, the Athenian does what Socrates did not. He attends
to moderation’s roots. He mixes the most natural title to rule with the
less, contorting philosophy into dogma. Similarly, the obedience that he
foresees might be voluntary, but it does not wait on compelling argu-
ments. It neither presumes an equality between leader and follower nor
allows for independent, rational judgment. It originates in a moderation
that belongs to the major part of the soul and the majority within the
city. In fact, the very need for such obedience implies important limits on
the moderation on which it is built. Moderation might be an agreement
between the part of the soul that feels pain and pleasure and the opinion
that is according to reason. But in the political man such agreement belies
an enduring conflict. Why else need he disavow the commands of his
soul if not because they would lead him astray were they heeded? Polit-
ical moderation is the learned resistance to the common human desire,
the one that wishes to have all things happen in accordance with those
commands. It is the means by which Megillus’ human error might be
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 175

corrected. The desires and aversions of the human being might always pull
away from reason when left to themselves, but they can also be turned
against themselves by means of reverence. For the awe and shame that
reverence governs are types of fear and therefore “expectations of pain”
in their own right. Reverence is a virtue of the soul’s major or popular
part. With the right leaders apportioning honor and shame and inspiring
awe, certain expectations of this part can overwhelm the others—the likes
and dislikes with which reason disagrees. In this way, even the corrupt
person can be “moderate.” His desire for honor and fear of shame can
follow reason, even as his other passions pull away from it.

Drinking in the Presence of Impiety

So far, we have considered how the pedagogical model of the drinking
party meets the divergent goals of divine law, and how the vision of eter-
nity into which the Athenian invites his companions reflects that model.
Divine law aims to cultivate the whole of virtue, yet some forms of virtue
are built on the very thing that stands in the way of the others. The
political virtues in particular arise from a repudiation of the independent,
critical thinking required of philosophic virtue, or so the Laws suggests.
The virtues of the citizen and philosopher alike begin in self-doubt, but
political action needs a firm resolve at odds with tenacious skepticism.
Even the doubt out of which such resolve is made is created from the
intensification of authority; the good citizen questions his personal judg-
ment only because he is overawed by lawful opinions in which he would
not otherwise believe. Believing them is beneficial, however, only if the
opinions themselves are informed by intelligence or wisdom, the learning
of which is threatened by the authority on which citizenship otherwise
relies. Somehow, divine law must both enhance and destabilize such
authority, and it is the drinking party to which the Athenian points as
a model for that contradictory operation.
The consumption of wine and all like practices can be plausibly
defended as a means of reinforcing the reverence for law. To “drink”
is to invite the expression of unlawful opinions, the kind for which a
person can be shamed and made more fearful of saying like things in
future. So much the Athenian argues. More quietly, he indicates that the
same transgressiveness that might enhance the fear of disgrace shatters
the awesome patina that attaches to unquestioned shibboleths. Ignorance
of alternatives to the law does very much to magnify the law’s authority.
176 R. A. BALLINGALL

The Dorian regimes that depend on ignorance prohibit wine for a reason.
To drink wine is to take away from ignorance some of this power. The
very institution justified on the grounds of amplifying reverence for law
thus disrupts reverence at the same time. The paradigm of wine drinking
proves to be the pattern on which divine law might aspire to the whole
of virtue. The Athenian’s great insight in this regard is to appreciate how
closedmindedness is not the only source of the reverence that law needs.
Without turning his back on closedmindedness altogether, he suggests
that law can command respect even as it is called into question. A degree
of openmindedness turns out to be consistent with reverence too. The
vision of cosmic time that he introduces as the sequel to his account of
wine is a case in point. Another is the prelude to the law against impiety
that he recommends the Magnesians adopt.
As we saw in Chapter 3, legislative preludes are one of the Athenian’s
proudest innovations. They would permit the law to speak polyphoni-
cally. By its nature, law is monophonic. It consists of rigid, general rules
that neglect the diversity of circumstances in which they are applied along
with the idiosyncrasies of each person’s needs. Law also depends on the
appearance of infallibility; it should rarely be seen to change or be refuted.
It harshly prosecutes anyone found guilty of persuading others of opin-
ions contrary to its own edicts. “For the law itself will say that there must
be nothing wiser than the laws” (Statesman, 299c). That is why the law
presents itself as a foil to the imitative arts, whose poets are compelled to
contradict themselves often, not knowing whether their inspired words
are true (Laws 719c). The lawgiver, by contrast, “must always exhibit
one speech about one subject” (719d). He must lay claim to a knowledge
that outstrips the poets (cf. 858e–59b). Even so, the Athenian suggests
that lawgiving consists of imitation in its own right. Lawgivers are “rivals”
of the poets, he says (817b7). Like the poets, they claim to be inspired
by the gods. And like the music of the imitative arts, the laws of the
political art can and should “differ from themselves” (723b6) by means
of poetic preludes. Indeed, despite contrasting law and poetry in Book
Four, the Athenian dubs himself and his companions tragic imitators in
Book Seven. His point is not that lawgivers are really ignorant blunderers.
It is that law must always claim for itself a seriousness that it doesn’t
deserve. In saying as much, however—in calling attention to this neces-
sity and recommending that his words be written down and studied as
part of the law—he lays bare the exaggerated seriousness in which the law
presents itself. Like a poet, he makes “two speeches about one subject”
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 177

and exposes the imitative character of the political art. He thus invites crit-
ical reflection on that art that the dead hand of authority would otherwise
snuff out.
The prelude to the impiety law adheres to this pattern with respect
to “the greatest thing,” the question of the gods’ very existence and
character (888b). In the name of defending the gods, the Athenian
canvasses not only the possibility of their non-existence, but the argu-
ments marshalled in support of atheism and sacrilege. In fact, as Pangle
observes, these arguments represent “the only contemporary account of
pre-Socratic philosophy which has come down to us in unfragmentary
form.”38 But given what the Athenian has said about the psychology of
reverent awe, why would he dare to rehearse such ideas? Is he not under-
mining the naïve innocence on which his theology would otherwise rely?
In the event, he alerts us to how this question is very much at issue by
pointing out something of signal importance to Kleinias. The Cretan’s
lack of sympathy with atheism, he says, originates in “the virtue” of the
Cretan regime, which has ensured that no one becomes familiar with
impious beliefs and the “writings” that contain them (886c). We are thus
reminded once again of the relationship between nature and reverence:
where none is aware of opinions dissimilar to the conventional beliefs
to which he subscribes, there the conventional appears natural and “the
entire soul reverences and fears changing any of the things that are already
laid down.” But instead of availing himself of this phenomenon, the Athe-
nian sets down in writing precisely those speeches that adduce impious
arguments, that claim the gods exist by convention and not by nature.
Such arguments are to be preserved and studied as part of the lawgiver’s
writings. In this way, they “provide for all time an opportunity for ques-
tioning” (891a). Behind a rhetoric of patriotism, of defending the city’s
orthodoxies, the Stranger compromises one of the ways in which the city
solidifies their authority.39
This is not to say that the Athenian’s rhetoric is wholly insincere. As
he points out, apparently speaking of his native city, once belief in the
gods abated, or rather was shown to be merely conventional, then arose
the belief that “the noble things by nature are different from those by
convention, and that the just things are not at all by nature” (889e).
Where the gods are not believed to be “such as the law commands they
must be conceived,” he reasons, there “civil strife is instigated” (890a).
Without their authority adorning political justice and humbling polit-
ical men, mortal nature reasserts itself. New beliefs about the whole are
178 R. A. BALLINGALL

sought, not because they better correspond to the truth, but because they
lend legitimacy to the headlong pursuit of human goods. “Nature” thus
replaces the gods as a means of authorizing a particular way of life, one
that consists in “dominating the rest and not [being] a slave to others
according to legal convention” (890a). If the way of life committed to
political justice and legal obedience is to prevail, so too must belief in the
gods. The Athenian’s philosophical purpose might therefore come at the
expense of the commitment to justice, an outcome he seems very much
to want to avoid.
The Stranger is able to walk a fine line between freeing a few from
customary beliefs and reinforcing in others a commitment to them
because the latter do not need logically coherent arguments to sustain
their devotion. If Kleinias and Megillus represent men whose virtue
depends on those beliefs, then it matters that they wholeheartedly accept
the Athenian’s arguments on behalf of the gods, despite having been
introduced to atheistic views by the Athenian himself and notwith-
standing the weakness of the Athenian’s reasons allegedly proving the
gods’ existence and character (cf. 907b–c). As is often pointed out by
commentators, the arguments that the Athenian marshals against impious
opinion are frequently question-begging, occasionally self-contradictory,
and ultimately resort to “mythic incantations” that threaten the unjust
with postmortem punishment (903b ff.).40 Like the other preludes, they
succeed less by rational persuasion than by “taming” those to whom they
are directed (890c). Their desideratum is “to convert [those desiring to
be impious] to fear” and to create within them “a sense of repugnance”
(887a). For those already committed to the justice that the gods adorn,
the Athenian’s arguments need only reinforce their desire to see vindi-
cated their pious devotion. After all, according to the Athenian we are as
human beings predisposed to taking pleasure in harmony and order and
to retreating in pain from “things that contradict one another” (812e).
Mortal nature might dispose us to being slaves of bodily desire, but it
also primes us to see cosmos in chaos. We are prejudiced against disorder
and tragedy insofar as it refuses to vindicate our suffering. By providing
authoritative speeches that supply that vindication, that give it meaning
within a more or less coherent whole, the Athenian gratifies a powerful
psychic drive that does not require rigorous logic.
Still, the weakness of his arguments implies no private adherence to
the beliefs he fails to refute, nor a wish to convert surreptitiously certain
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 179

citizens to them. Rather, it betrays a hope that a promising few will recog-
nize the city’s dogmas for what they are—opinions that masquerade as
truth, despite being affirmed by the practically best regime and needed
by its all-too-human citizens (cf. Epinomis 985d–86a). Philosophy abides
in the knowledge of ignorance, in the awareness of the difference between
knowledge and opinion. Since law cannot rise above opinion, philosophy
demands a certain distance from law. It requires a higher reverence that
sees through law’s conceit, perceiving the boundaries of the human things
more keenly than political reverence allows.41
That the Athenian’s purpose in the impiety prelude is as much to
provoke critical thinking as defend the gods’ existence is also suggested
by the punishments that he canvasses for inveterate atheism. Having
set down the prelude, he proceeds to discriminate between various
“unmeltable” souls (cf. 853e). On the grounds that he has identified three
kinds of impiety—outright disbelief in gods, disbelief in the providence of
the gods, and belief that divine providence can be altered by belated offer-
ings and rituals—he proposes a type of punishment for each kind. But
he introduces a further and more important distinction as well, isolating
those whose impiety is sincere and “full of frankness” from those whose
impiety originates in a “lack of restraint as regards pleasures and pains”
(908c). The latter, he says, may “possess strong memories and sharp
capacities to learn,” but they abuse these gifts; they have broken free of
pious opinion only to remain enslaved to mortal nature. The beliefs their
atheism supports originate in their bodily appetites and merely rationalize
their self-gratification. It is of some importance, then, that the Athenian
rehabilitates the former, sincere atheists. He allows that “a naturally just
disposition may come to characterize the man who doesn’t believe the
gods exist at all” (908c).42 Whereas the unjust atheists are to be severely
punished, those whose impiety is frank are to be sent to a “Moderation
Tank,” where they are to speak with no one besides “those who share in
the Nocturnal Council, who are to associate with them for the purposes
of admonishment and the salvation of the soul” (909a).43
This is a curious sort of punishment given what we learn in Book
Twelve concerning the duties of the Nocturnal Council. There, the Athe-
nian calls this institution “the council of those who will keep watch over
the laws” (951d) and the “safeguard for our regime and laws” (960d–
e). It should be composed, he says, of priests who have obtained prizes
for excellence; the ten eldest “Guardians of the Laws”; the “Supervisor
of Education,” along with his living predecessors; and a group of young
180 R. A. BALLINGALL

men, one of whom is to be invited by each of the older members. These

details, together with the duties described in Book Ten, might suggest
that the Nocturnal Council would serve a primarily conservative function,
vaguely akin to the “Assembly of Experts” and “Guardian Council” in
contemporary Iran.44 But the Athenian immediately dispels this impres-
sion. Its members, he adds, are to spend their time in intimate association
and conversation (synousia kai logoi, 951e5–52a1),45 discussing not only
“laws and their own city,” but “anything they may have learned elsewhere
that is different (allothi…ti) and pertains to such matters” (952a1–3).
Indeed, he takes up the Nocturnal Council in Book Twelve in the midst
of considering how the city might receive visiting foreigners (952d–53e)
and its own “observers” (theōroi, 951d–52b). These latter, he says, must
be sent abroad to examine the customs of other cities, and especially to
seek out.

Certain divine human beings whose intercourse is altogether worthwhile,

and who do not by nature grow any more frequently in cities with good
laws than in cities without. These the inhabitant of cities with good laws,
if he’s uncorruptible, must always seek and track down, by going out over
sea and land, in order to place on a firmer footing those legal customs that
are nobly laid down, and correct others, if they are lacking something.
For without this observation and search a city will never remain perfect
(951b–c).

It would seem that the intelligence that the city needs does not emerge
from the civic education that “good laws” would confer. In order to
guard its laws properly, the city must accept them “by knowledge and
not solely by habits” (951b3–4). But such knowledge implies seeing
beyond the law. The knower would have to perceive the law’s “goal”
(i.e. virtue, 963a3) in a way that transcends any of its particular (and
therefore limited) instantiations. He would have to know this goal in a
non-contradictory way, in accordance with its “idea” (965c2). He would
therefore have to perceive the law for what it really is, at best a dogma
and shadow of the living truth. That is why he would also have to be
“uncorruptible,” someone who, despite throwing off his reverence for
law, would persist in being just and friendly towards the city, someone
who would resemble the god comprehensively, being good “naturally,”
without the artifice of legal pressure (cf. 642c–d, 645b; 835c; 875c–d).
The need for such a person would also explain the council’s openness
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 181

to foreign ways and illegal opinions. It is in this light that the “punish-
ment” of the naturally just atheist must be understood. It appears less a
means to his “salvation” than a cooptation of his philosophic spirit.46 By
tracking down such people, receiving any who might come to the city,
and discussing their opinions, even those that disagree with the commu-
nity’s customary beliefs, the Nocturnal Council might supply the city with
a “head” (961d, 964d), an organ capable of rising above reverential awe
and passionate devotion.47

Noetic Nomos?
Despite the Athenian’s characterization of the Council’s duties as delib-
erative, readers have sometimes understood its belated introduction as a
repudiation of the rule of law defended in the rest of the dialogue.48
These scholars have been impressed by Aristotle’s remark that the Laws
brings the regime around by degrees toward the Kallipolis of the Republic
(Politics 1265a4–5). Aristotle seems to imply that the Nocturnal Council
of the Laws would ultimately rule the city like Socrates’ philosopher
kings—directly, and with despotic power (Republic 499d, 501e). This
reading may also be supported by the Athenian’s claim in the closing
passage of the Laws that “if, indeed, this divine council should come into
being for us, dear comrades, the city ought to be handed over to it”
(968d). If the Council really does amount to a reintroduction of philo-
sophic despotism, then the coherence of the Laws would seem to be
profoundly compromised. If the work reneges on the commitment to the
mixed regime ruled by law rather than men, then it simply revisits the old
problem that philosophers do not want to rule, in spite of the concern
with real politics suggested by the drama of the text. And since no explicit
provision is made for the Nocturnal Council to govern the city, its intro-
duction seems a kind of afterthought or even a “useless appendage to
Plato’s construction.”49
These worries need detain us, however, only if we assume the rule of
law and the rule of philosophic intellect to be mutually exclusive. In fact,
the most important innovation of the Nocturnal Council suggests that
they are not. The Athenian is clear that membership in the Council is
not to be confined to the “divine” and “uncorruptible,” but is to consist
mostly of the distinguished political men of the city, along with whichever
younger citizens they might invite to join them. As Glenn Morrow and
V. Bradley Lewis have argued, it is only through these officers that the
182 R. A. BALLINGALL

Nocturnal Council is conceived as ruling.50 The Council itself is never

assigned political prerogatives, only the officers who make up much of
its membership. It is they, in their capacities as priests, guardians, supervi-
sors, and auditors, who make effectual whatever sage advice the Council’s
deliberations might yield. By allowing their guardianship of the law to be
thus informed, these official members might permit the law to become
more equitable. As “human beings,” they cannot depart from law without
bungling their responsibilities and “irrationally fleeing pleasure and pain”
(875b–c), but they can pass their lives “in unbroken obedience to those
writings in which the lawgiver legislates, praises, and blames…writings
that reveal what seems noble and ignoble to him” (822e–23a). By thus
distinguishing law’s intention from its letter, the Athenian makes room
for equity without disrupting the reverence in which the law is held. The
guardians of law will become “lawgivers” in their own right (770a), but
only as “pupils” charged with “[filling] in the outline” of the lawgiver’s
awesome purpose (770b–c). They will assume their offices as servants
or even “slaves” (715d) of law but will exercise a certain discretion in
applying it. Accordingly, the object of their duties in the city—“the virtue
of soul that befits a human being” (770c–d)—reflects the subject of their
studies on the Nocturnal Council. Beginning every one of their days with
its meetings (951d), the law’s guardians are well-placed to implement its
advice and fine-grained analysis. Above all, their presence on the Council
allows the purveyors of this sage counsel to advise the administration
without having to rule in its stead. It is precisely because the Council
itself is not assigned any legal powers over the city that it is able to be its
“savior.”
These points shed some light on how law might become “the distri-
bution ordained by intelligence,” not merely in its inception, but in its
ongoing application. We are, however, still left with the question of how
the law’s administrators could accept the extraordinary subordination to
which the Athenian would subject them. If rulers characteristically rule for
themselves at the expense of those they govern, as the Athenian points
out repeatedly (691c–d; 712e–13a, 714b–15b; 875a–c), then what so
distinguishes the rulers of Magnesia as to release them from this temp-
tation? Indeed, one might suspect these rulers of being especially prone
to abusing their discretionary powers. They and the young men whom
they invite are to attend nightly meetings where novel—even impious—
ideas are discussed. Will these frequent exposures to subversive ideas not
corrupt all but the most philosophic souls, delivering the rulers into a
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 183

corrosive skepticism about the conventional beliefs that they are charged
with guarding (cf. Republic 537d–39c)?
The issue has not escaped interpreters of the Laws, but as far as I am
aware none has appreciated the importance of reverence to the Athe-
nian’s solution.51 Reverence, as part of the drinking party model, is
a “safeguard [sōtēria] for…education” (653a). It is put into the soul
like a medicine when, through “drunkenness,” men lose their “sober”
inhibitions, allowing themselves to say or do things from which they
would ordinarily shrink from shame and modesty. By thus reducing
grown men to “children,” institutions modelled on the well-run drinking
party can renew the slavery to law that abates with age and the temp-
tations of rule (cf. 653c with 665d–666c with 671b–e). Accordingly,
“the prudent lawgiver would…urge the elderly to be ashamed before the
young” (729b). Encouraging these most self-confident citizens to lose
their dignity before watchful eyes, “someone who possesses the ability
and the knowledge required to educate and mold souls” might renew in
them the “divine fear” that preserves law’s authority (671b–d).
I want to suggest that this same mechanism is in view in the operations
of the Nocturnal Council and is assigned responsibility for keeping its
political officers in line. The Council will discuss subversive ideas, but
the Athenian implies that these discussions will occur behind a protec-
tive rhetoric. One of the chief purposes of the Council, he says, is the
education of its members “to be more precisely accurate than the many,
in deed and word, concerning virtue” (964d) and to “become firmly
pious towards gods” (967d) by laboring “to grasp every proof that exists
concerning [them]” (966c). The sanctity of the laws ultimately depends
on the ability of their “guardians” to protect the laws with persuasive
speech. But, surprisingly perhaps, this ability does not presuppose any
philosophical dispensation. The elderly guardians are merely “an image
of intelligence.” Their education does not transform them into lovers of
wisdom. “The fact is, there are always among the many certain divine
human beings…who do not by nature grow any more frequently in cities
with good laws than in cities without” (951b–c). Philosophy emerges
despite—not because—of “education.” Still, civic education can be
reinforced by philosophy. As the metaphor of the drinking party attests,
bringing to light “shameful”—i.e. illicit—words can strengthen devotion
to the customary beliefs that such words would otherwise threaten. In
the name of teaching moderation, men can get drunk on impiety. It is no
accident that the Athenian in Book Twelve calls the Nocturnal Council
184 R. A. BALLINGALL

what he called the symposium in Book Two, a safeguard (sōtēria) of

education and the laws (960d–e). Like a “correctly instructed” banquet,
it is a place where reverence for the law is put into the soul by airing
irreverent ideas and shaming their transmitters.52 It hears transgressive
arguments, ostensibly for the sake of punishing their youthful promulga-
tors and blaming any of the venerable greybeards to whom they may have
become endeared. On the other hand, the heady atmosphere of these
discussions allows irreverent ideas to be insinuated into the conventions
that the guardians believe themselves to be defending. In the name
of defending against atheism, the Athenian apparently persuades even
Megillus to transform the core beliefs of his piety. Along with Kleinias,
he urges the Athenian to take the field in defense of the gods (891a–b)
and doesn’t raise a finger against the theology that the Stranger goes on
to pronounce, never mind that the gods the Athenian defends hardly
resemble those in whom the Spartan must have been raised to believe.
Seeing as this defense begins by laying out the case for rejecting theism
altogether, to be studied as the core of the city’s civil religion, the
Athenian shows how subversive ideas and the reflection they inspire can
safely coexist with the simple piety with which they are otherwise in
tension. Education in the arguments propping up the city’s dogma can
provide cover for the theoretical activity without which dogma loses what
intelligence it can admit.
Weaving these threads together, we can finally appreciate the full
import of the claim that the “moderate” man becomes like “the god.”
The moderation the Athenian has in view is reverence, the virtue
disposing us to feel and respond to emotions of self-assessment in appro-
priate ways. Because these emotions are types of fear, and fear a type
of pain, persons can be reverent without leaving behind the human
nature dominated by pleasure and pain. Above all, since reverence attacks
“ignoble boldness,” it can lead the human being to disavow his natu-
rally distorted perception of the just and unjust things. Reverence thus
opens us to customs that our nature would otherwise lead us to suspect.
And if such customs are suitably informed by philosophic intellect, then
the moderate person who follows them imitates the godlike person who
fashions them. The Laws does not take back the problems with the rule
of intelligence canvassed in other dialogues. It points instead to a way
around these worries by turning to the rule of law. If the conventions
embodied in law originate in philosophic intellect; if citizens obey these
conventions; and if the interpreters and guardians of convention follow
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 185

the counsel of philosophers, suitably adorned or disguised; then the city

might be ruled by nous, however dimly—and not simply become enslaved
to the commands of unjust, acquisitive rulers.
Plato is hardly sanguine about the prospects of even this second-best
regime. Its genesis depends on a litany of unlikely events. The Athenian’s
theory of second-best imitation implies that the failure of any one of these
events could jeopardize the helpfulness of all the rest. The Laws shows us
how the virtues of the many and the few can in a certain sense be called
one, but it suggests that the regime in which they would be brought
together is in all probability to remain imaginary. Like the Republic, then,
the Laws is not a work of political advocacy, despite its more practical
orientation. Rather, it is an examination of the preconditions for the best
possible regime, and thus a survey of the reasons its coming into being is
improbable.

Notes
1. Strauss, Argument and Action, 9.
2. Klosko, Development, 217.
3. The Athenian’s notion of second-best imitation can be related to the
Socratic theory of the ideas. Scholars working on the ideas sometimes
argue that Plato denies that an imitative “participant” resembles its
paradigmatic form because the paradeigma is self-exemplifying, sharing its
‘property’ with its participants. Rather than being a perfect exemplar of a
property (that is, a possible instantiation of that property), they suggest
that a paradigm is an abstract pattern, a standard or measure, in light
of which (imitative) exemplars might be judged. See William J. Prior,
“The Concept of Paradeigma in Plato’s Theory of Forms,” Apeiron 17
(1983): 33–42. See also Laks, “Legislation and Demiurgy”; Laks, “The
Laws ”; and Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Republic: A Study (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005): 201–26.
4. Republic 607b. For an illuminating account of “the quarrel” and how it
figures in the arc of the Republic, see Timothy W. Burns, “Philosophy
and Poetry: A New Look at an Old Quarrel,” American Political Science
Review 109, no. 2 (2015): 326–38. Burns argues that Socrates’ initial
hostility to the poets on behalf of justice is, in Republic 10, considerably
walked back, so much so that the poets’ teaching about death is in some
respects “indistinguishable” from the Socratic position.
5. Sophie Bourgault argues that “in the Laws …the ties between sōphrosyne
and the obedience of the lower ranks are almost entirely absent.” See
“Prolegomena to a Rehabilitation of Platonic Moderation,” Dissensus 5
186 R. A. BALLINGALL

(2013): 131. We shall see in the present chapter that there is strong
evidence against this reading.
6. Cf. Laches 196e–197c, where Nicias denies that wild beasts can be
courageous precisely because they lack understanding. In suggesting that
animals can be courageous, the Athenian in the Laws apparently agrees
with what Laches identifies as the view of “everyone” (197a). Still, seeing
as the Athenian distinguishes political from philosophic virtue, admitting
that a kind of courage can be shared with beasts does not commit him
to rejecting a view closer to that of Nicias, pace Daniel Devereux, “The
Unity of the Virtues” in A Companion to Plato, ed. Hugh H. Benson
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 337–38.
7. The Athenian first mentions “Guardians of the Laws” (nomophulakes )
at 752e, apparently referring to the city’s “first rulers.” Klosko, recog-
nizing a parallel with the guardians (phulakes ) of the Republic, maintains
that the office implies an equivalent kind of sweeping power, an implica-
tion that he claims to find confirmed in the discussion of the Nocturnal
Council, a body which would include the ten oldest of the guardians.
See George Klosko, “The Nocturnal Council in Plato’s Laws,” Political
Studies 36 (1988): 74–88. But, as Lewis argues following Morrow, the
Council itself does not have any specific powers. See V. Bradley Lewis
“The Nocturnal Council and Platonic Political Philosophy,” History of
Political Thought 19, no. 1 (1998): 1–20 and Morrow, Plato’s Cretan
City, 510–14. On their view, the Coucil rules only through the duties of
its various members, duties assigned independently of the Council’s own
prerogatives. Its membership, moreover, is hardly confined to the nomo-
phulakes (951d) who, in any case, are to regard themselves—qua rulers
(archontes )—as servants (hupēretai, 715d, 968a) which calls to mind the
auxiliaries (epikouroi, but also hupēretai, 552d), not the guardians, of the
Republic. For this last point, see Fraistat (“Authority,” 12, 17). For my
part, I understand the role occupied by philosopher-kings in the Republic
to be divided in the Laws between the subphilosophic nomophulakes
(along with the other office-holders) and the “divine men” with whom
their deliberations on the Nocturnal Council would hopefully proceed.
8. See also Lutz (Divine Law, 166–67), which reads the Athenian’s argu-
ments in Book Twelve as indicating that “the whole of virtue” cannot be
fostered by law as a single, coherent life of virtue.
9. Compare Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 507. The Athenian includes the
question of the relationship between the good and the noble in his
account of the problem of the unity of virtue in Book Twelve (966a) and
anticipates this dimension of the problem on several occasions, especially
at 661d–663b. In Book Nine, he limns a related disjunction that arises
because law must not only teach virtue but punish corruption (880d–e).
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 187

The justice that law embodies or should embody thus appears in these
cases to be ugly and shameful rather than fine and noble (860c).
10. Political justice may issue other demands that the philosopher respects
more superficially, such as the demand to believe in the gods held to exist
by public opinion and tradition. Here one must observe the distinction
between virtue in the strict sense and as a vulgarization. The justice of a
Socrates might respect the public need to believe in such gods even if for
very different reasons than the vulgar justice enforced by the city. For his
part, the Athenian Stranger calls that which pertains to the gods “one of
the noblest things” (966b); he does not call it the noblest thing.
11. Consider, e.g., Phaedo 69b.
12. Socrates claims that such endurance is also expressed in the face of things
towards which others typically but foolishly strive for pleasure. This latter
possibility might seem to define courage in terms of moderation but for
the fact that Socrates describes pleasure in these contexts as dislodging
the opinion about what is truly terrible. Courage, then, (in the soul that
looks to its own wisdom ahead of lawful opinion) preserves the knowl-
edge of what is terrible in the face of passions that might disrupt it,
whether these are painful or pleasant. Put more provocatively, courage
is the aspect of knowledge that involves the psychological durability of
knowledge, even or especially the knowledge of ignorance. This notion of
courage as endurance in the face of uncertainty would also seem to be a
path around the difficulty that Socrates raises with Nicias in the Laches
when the latter proposes that courage is knowledge of what is and is not
to be feared (197e–199e). On this possibility, see Angela Hobbs, Plato
and the Hero: Courage, Manliness, and the Impersonal Good (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), 76–112 with Balot, Courage, 147.
13. For other articulations of the Socratic paradox that virtue is knowl-
edge, see Apology 25c–26a, Gorgias 509e, Meno 77c–78a, Republic 589c,
Timaeus 86e. See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1144b28–30.
14. There remains considerable scholarly disagreement about just what this
position entails, of course. One reading holds that the virtues are under-
stood by the Platonic Socrates as different parts of a whole that is
knowledge, each of which depends on the others. See Gregory Vlastos,
“The Unity of the Virtues in Plato’s Protagoras ,” in Platonic Studies
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 221–69. Another denies
that the virtues are parts of a whole but rather are different names for
the same knowledge. See Terry Penner, “The Unity of Virtue,” Philo-
sophical Review 82 (1973): 35–68. Devereux argues that there simply
isn’t a consistent position about the virtue-is-knowledge paradox in the
dialogues. See “The Unity of the Virtues in Plato’s Protagoras and
Laches ,” Philosophical Review 101 (1992): 765–89. Bartlett and Pangle
contend that there is such a position, but that Socrates explores different
188 R. A. BALLINGALL

dimensions of it depending on the dramatic context. See Bartlett, Sophistry

and Political Philosophy and Pangle, Virtue is Knowledge.
15. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 507. Here, too, the Athenian echoes
Socrates’ identification of political or popular virtues (Republic, 430c,
500d). More than Socrates, though, the Athenian examines the political
and psychological sources of such virtue and its dependence on a wisdom
outside the soul the vulgarly virtuous person. For an account of the Laws ’
unique focus on this regard, see Kraut, “Ordinary Virtue.”.
16. E.g. the Athenian speaks of a “the private individual” whose virtue consists
in knowing how and when to draw from pleasure‘ and pain (636d–e,
644c–d, 645b). Compare Lutz, Divine Law, 125.
17. Again, I have found it helpful to contrast my interpretation of political
virtue in the Laws with the courage-based reading of Lorraine Pangle,
Thomas Pangle, and Mark Lutz. “If human beings cannot attain the
sublime, calm, painless self-sufficiency of a divine being,” writes Lorraine
Pangle, “they can most closely approximate it through self-reliance and a
calm acceptance of necessity, free from the tears that betray an inability to
accept what cannot be averted or undone. Eupsuchia [stoutness of soul]
turns out to provide, then, a unifying principle of all the virtues for the
citizens as well as a foundation for the clarity of the philosopher” (Virtue is
Knowledge, 242). Without necessarily disputing this idea, I argue that the
Athenian looks to reverence as the basis on which such toughness can be
built and reinforced. If citizens become like god by maintaining an equa-
nimity in the face of frustrated hopes and unexpected calamities, their
apotheosis begins in the moderation to which the Stranger calls special
attention in his imagined speech addressing the first colonists of Magnesia
(716d). Likewise, if political men at their best resemble the philosopher
in learning to accept necessity rather than think it wishfully away, this
they learn by first imitating the philosopher’s knowledge of ignorance (cf.
863c).
18. However, political moderation does appear to exist in the soul along with
political courage (696b, 731b, 762e, 816a, 840a), even if the natural
dispositions at their roots are “opposed” cf. 773c–d with Statesman 307c,
311a–b.
19. Justice being a mixture of intelligence with the other virtues (631c8–d1).
It is a version of this common-sense intuition about the divisibility of
virtue that would seem to lie behind the admiration sometimes shown
to manifestly vicious leaders. As Plato’s Protagoras admits, despite conde-
scending common sense, it seems possible to be wise without justice and
courageous without moderation (Protagoras 329e).
20. Plutarch (Lycurgus, ch. 21) describes three choruses divided by age as an
historical institution of Spartan festivals. This fact has led some scholars to
speculate that Plato may be drawing on a Spartan precedent in this passage
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 189

of the Laws. See Oswyn Murray, “The Chorus of Dionysus: Alcohol and
Old Age in the Laws,” in Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws,
ed. Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013), 109–22. As Murray cautions, however, “it may be that the Laws
provided the model for this alleged feature of Spartan society, rather than
knowledge of Spartan practice providing Plato with his theme” (117).
21. As for those over sixty, “since they aren’t able anymore to bear the toil of
singing, [they] should use their divinely inspired voices to present mythical
speeches about the same kinds of characters” (664d).
22. Meyer, Plato, 286.
23. Pangle, The Laws of Plato, ad loc.
24. Modern liberal democracies, e.g., present their own obstacles to inde-
pendent thought. The very presumption that conformist pressure is the
only or primary obstacle facing critical thinking may itself prove to be an
obstacle to such thinking, one all the more pernicious for the difficulty of
being recognized.
25. See, e.g., Klosko, “Knowledge and Law” and Schofield, Plato, 309–10,
which illustrates the Athenian’s efforts to enhance the authority of reason
by appealing to Machiavelli’s rationale for civil religion (Discourses on Livy
1.11).
26. See also Stalley (Introduction, 124), which observes that the argument
that the drinking parties teach moderation is not very convincing.
27. The Stranger here associates the visible, advertised good of the reverence-
teaching symposium with “willing obedience to the Dionysian leaders”
(671d9–e1) and with friendship between the sober leaders and the
drinkers (671e6–7).
28. Not least because philosophy would seem to be the basis for genuine intel-
ligence, the search for which is the priority of divine law on the Stranger’s
account.
29. Famously, the word appears in the Laws only in its verbal cognates and
even then on only two occasions (857d, 967c).
30. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 424.
31. Again, in light of the Athenian’s endorsement of the Egyptian device of
sanctification and artificial permanence (798b–799a, 839c).
32. He might also seem to anticipate the Rousseauian notion of the noble
savage. However, as Cusher, observers, “the Athenian does not suggest
that the sources of injustice are unique to life in regimes, such that the
forces of civilization create or develop passions in men that were absent in
the beginning.” See Brent Edwin Cusher, “From Natural Catastrophe to
Human Catastrophe: Plato on the Origins of Written Law,” Law, Culture,
and the Humanities 9, no. 2 (2011): 282–83. The Athenian does not say
that the simpletons lacked pleonexia or philonikia. Rather, he says that they
190 R. A. BALLINGALL

lacked the motivation to arouse and act on them (677b), like latent capac-
ities that remained undeveloped. This observation leads Cusher, following
Seth Benardete (Plato’s “Laws”: The Discovery of Being [Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2000], 93), to suggest that the need for law is
latent in the simpletons’ way of life, law being necessary to restrain the
passionate sources of injustice. Neither Cusher nor Bendardete connects
this observation to the Egyptian art of reproducing innocence by sanc-
tifying law, but their claim that the simpletons’ example points to law is
attested by the artifice that the Egyptians practice.
33. Consider once again the testimony of Herodotus. The Egyptians, he
says, “are the greatest record-keepers of any people with whom I have
been in contact” (2.77), but they do not preserve any memory of
customs different from those they presently revere. “They follow their
fathers’ customs and take no others to themselves at all” (2.79). Cf. 2.2.
Translation by David Grene.
34. This second treatment of the Dorian laws is conspicuously silent about
their divine origin.
35. Thucydides 5.104, Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 7. For
discussion of the paradoxes stemming from the Spartan way of identifying
the noble with the good of Sparta, see Orwin, Humanity.
36. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City, 560–61.
37. As emphasized in Kraut, “Ordinary Virtue.”.
38. Pangle, “Political Psychology,” 1065n22.
39. Pangle, “Political Psychology,” 1061, 1072.
40. See, e.g., Trevor J. Saunders, “Penology and Escatology in Plato’s
Timaeus and Laws,” Classical Quarterly 23 (1973): 232–44; Pangle,
“Political Psychology,” 1074–74; and Stalley, Introduction, 170–75.
41. Cf. Laws 819e with Apology 23a–b, 29b, Philebus 12c–d, Sophist 216a–b.
42. Throughout the dialogue, the Athenian has spoken highly of those capable
of self-sufficient or “natural” virtue, those who—like the gods in fact—
can “follow reason” without need of law (645b, 835c, 875c–d, 951b; cf.
642c–d). Who are these people if not philosophers, or potential philoso-
phers? As Ronald Beiner has pointed out to me, the Athenian’s claim
that atheism and justice are not incompatible undermines the widespread
assumption that it was Pierre Bayle who first articulated this view in the
Western theory tradition.
43. Scholars have sometimes complained that the widely used “Nocturnal
Council” is a loose translation of nukterinos sullogos. For one, the body to
which it refers would not meet at night, but “each day, from dawn until
the sun has risen” (951d, 961b). It is also referred to more frequently as
simply “the council” (ho syllogos, 952a8, b5, b9; 961a1, a7; c3, 969b2)
and syllogos is a rather generic term for meetings or gatherings, to be
contrasted with boulē, a term that refers more specifically to a formal
 5 REVERENCE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF POLITICAL VIRTUE 191

political institution and one that Plato does not use in connection to
the Nocturnal Council. We might have expected him to have done so if,
as Klosko has argued (“Nocturnal Council”), he intended this body to
be understood as directly ruling the city. For these points, see Morrow,
Plato’s Cretan City, 503n5; Marcel Piérart, Platon et la Cité Grecque:
Théorie et Réalité dans la Constitution des ‘Lois’ (Brussels, 1974), 232;
and Lewis, “Nocturnal Council,” 3n7, 14. Despite these reservations, I
follow common practice in keeping with “Nocturnal Council,” not only
to avoid confusion, but because doing so preserves two valences that Plato
may well have meant to attach to this institution. First, in keeping with
the imagery of the cave in the Republic, the Laws contrasts light and
dark to draw attention to the shadowy nature of opinion. The setting is
a pilgrimage to the Idean cave, where Minos is said to have received the
Cretan laws from Zeus. Insofar as the Nocturnal Council would “keep
watch over the laws,” it too would be the cave-like source of shadows.
Even at their best, the customary beliefs of law are images of intelligence.
Second, as Lewis rightly points out, Plato seems to leave the relationship
of the Council to the city deliberately ambiguous. The city “ought to be
handed over to it” (969b), but none of the duties to which it is assigned
involve concrete political prerogatives. So although “council” might seem
an overtranslation, keeping with the traditional rendering preserves the
sense that the syllogos might rule the city indirectly, in shadowy ways that
invite further reflection from the reader.
44. For a scholarly analysis of these institutions, see Saïd Amir Arjomand,
“The Kingdom of Jurists: Constitutionalism and Legal Order in Iran,”
in Rainer Grote and Tilmann J. Roder, eds., Constitutionalism in Islamic
Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 147–70.
45. Lewis, “Platonic Political Philosophy,” 5n13, notes the erotic implications
of synousia, which is used to indicate sexual intercourse at 838a6, b4, and
e6, and is associated with “the initiation of younger men by older ones
into archaic Greek cultural practices, which initiation sometimes involved
pederasty.” This association also reminds of the symposium metaphor,
although Lewis does not draw any such connection.
46. Pangle, “Interpretive Essay,” 503–04.
47. Cf. Republic 536c-d: youth is an advantage in philosophy.
48. Eduard Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, Sarah Frances Alleyn and
Alfred Goodwin, trans., (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888),
539–40; Ernest Barker, Greek Political Theory: Plato and his Predeces-
sors (London: Methuem, 1947), 406–10; George H. Sabine, A History
of Political Theory (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1957), 85;
Klosko, “The Nocturnal Council”; A. Brunt, “The Model City in Plato’s
Laws,” in A. Brunt, Studies in Greek history and Thought (Oxford: Oxford
192 R. A. BALLINGALL

University Press, 1993), 250–51; Klosko, Development, 253–54; Balot,

“Odd Episode,” 77.
49. Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City, 510, discussing the views of predecessors
such as Zeller, Sabine, and Barker.
50. See n. 7 above. Despite Klosko’s objections, Morrow’s view has prevailed
with most interpreters. See, e.g., Charles Kahn, Review of Plato’s Cretan
City, Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (1961): 421; Piérart, Platon et la
Cité, 232; Guthrie, Greek Philosophy, vol. 5, 369; Hall, Plato, 134; and
Stalley, Introduction, 112. I disagree with Morrow, however, inasmuch as
he maintains that the education that the political officers on the Council
would receive is intended to make them more philosophical. Again, if to
be philosophical is to think beyond the law, then that would preclude
all but the most “divine” men, men who “grow” by nature, irrespective
of civic education, and who are too rare and averse to politics to fill the
offices that comprehend most of the Council’s membership.
51. Most have followed Morrow in stressing the “scrutiny” and “audit” placed
on the city’s magistrates, measures that seem intended to select the most
devoted citizens for high office and to threaten any who might under-
mine the laws. See, e.g., Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast, 408. But even
if the city succeeds in electing officers who excel in devotion to its foun-
dational beliefs, such “virtue” would seem an insufficient qualification for
the Nocturnal Council. The more one is devoted to the established laws,
the less open he will be to the philosophical leadership that would critically
examine them. Others (Pangle, e.g.) have suggested the city’s rulers will
be like Kleinias: their ambition would open them to the critical scrutiny of
law. But the appeal to philotimia engenders the problems that the Athe-
nian flags when discussing the prothymia of the citizen (e.g. 727b1): the
pride and self-love characteristic of thumotic men makes it difficult for
them to disavow their own perspicacity (732a4–7).
52. If this is right, then there is a rather comic irony to the whole notion
of incorporating the “Moderation-Tank” into the Nocturnal Council. Its
purpose would be as much about embarrassing and therefore moderating
the complacent old as about teaching a more philosophical moderation
to the haughty young. The Sōphrontistērion is of course an allusion to the
Phrontistērion of Aristophanes’ Clouds, a fact that makes more sense when
its comic dimension in the Laws is appreciated.
 CHAPTER 6

Epilogue

Redeeming an Interpretive Hypothesis

In Chapter 1, I argued that the central problem of the Laws can be quite
invisible to modern readers. Among the dialogues, the Laws is uniquely
devoted to expounding dogma and is riddled with apparent contradic-
tions and lacunae. Some interpreters have seen in these facts the tired
resignation of a bitter old man, a Plato who has turned his back on
Socratic political philosophy. Others have found that they attest to a new
optimism that law and customary belief might include a measure of philo-
sophic insight. My own approach has considered how the emphasis on
authority and the recurrence of paradox reflect an antagonism between
law and philosophy. Law is “Procrustean” and conceals its partiality.
Philosophy meanwhile begins in the knowledge of ignorance—in the
recognition that customary beliefs are at best partially true. But if the
city cannot philosophize and needs to abide in authoritative opinions,
then we might expect the philosopher who is friendly towards the city
to help solidify those opinions, or at least healthy variants of them. On
the other hand, if the philosopher is equally a philanthropist who has in
view the highest interests of humanity, then we might also expect him
to aid potential successors. Can he help free these latter of customary
authority even as he works to make custom itself more reasonable and
compelling? In that case, he would need to teach the city opinions that

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Switzerland AG 2023
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194 R. A. BALLINGALL

somehow point beyond what it is that they exalt. He would have to

expose the contradictions that inhere in custom without dissolving its
popular legitimacy.
Having taken our bearings by this basic problem, we have approached
the paradoxes that the Laws throws up as invitations to examine the
work more carefully, rather than reasons to read it less seriously. We have
thus proceeded on a hypothesis: that the text uses aporiai as apertures
to a broader perspective than the one embodied in the customs that it
expounds. While we cannot claim to have fully consummated that philo-
sophical ascent, we have I think vindicated our interpretive supposition.
We have gleaned from the enigma that Plato situates at the heart of the
Laws several philosophical problems, all of which bear on the question of
why the quest for wisdom and the need of authority are mutually antag-
onistic and how that antagonism might be attenuated under the most
propitious circumstances. The Laws does not set down some doctrine
responding to this question, but it does supply the resources needed to
understand its natural origins and manifold complexity, at least by Plato’s
lights.
We have seen that the origins of this question lie in the distortive effects
of “human” desire. The Laws suggests that the mark of the philosopher
is to be “good by [his] own nature, without compulsion, by a divine
dispensation” (642c).1 He alone sees past the conflict between the just
and happy lives without obscuring that conflict from himself. He uniquely
finds his happiness in goods whose acquisition does not come at others’
expense. The Athenian shows, both by what he says and by what he brings
out of his interlocutors, that men such as they are unjust by their own
natures. Left to themselves, free from fear or expectation of reward, they
easily succumb to the “error that affects all us human beings.” Identifying
happiness with self-gratification, they indulge “the commands” of their
own souls. But souls such as theirs long for goods that are scarce; acqui-
escing in their desires implies taking from others what belongs to others
by legal convention. It implies domination and violence.2 According to
the Athenian, that is why political justice—the justice of political men—
can only ever be artificial. It requires abjuring the natural desire that
all “human beings” have in common. And it demands repudiating, at
the behest of lawful artifice, the apparent conflict between justice and
happiness that is the necessary consequence of this desire.
In Chapters 4 and 5, we saw how this need to doubt one’s ethical judg-
ment points to the necessity of reverence—the propensity for showing due
 6 EPILOGUE 195

respect for what exceeds and circumscribes the human things. If the souls
of citizens truly are as the Athenian says, “attached and bound in the most
serious ways” to bodily pleasures and pains and desires, then whatever
self-doubt they can achieve must be occasioned by artful redeployments
of those very passions. As the image of the “divine puppet” attests (644d),
political virtue consists in allowing oneself to become a plaything of the
gods. It involves following the “gentle” pull of law, using as “helpers” the
desire for pleasure and aversion to pain. The Athenian points to reverence
as the primary means of doing so because reverence consists in appropri-
ately feeling and responding to a kind of fear. Fear can be understood
as the anticipation of pain and therefore as having a certain purchase on
the human puppet. At the same time, the fear that reverence governs is
“divine,” in part because it is inspired by the presence of the gods. The
gods can evoke a disquieting awareness of our own fallibility and insignifi-
cance. They can inspire fear in the form of awe and shame. By associating
the just and lawful things with the gods, and by mobilizing shame and
punishment in their defense, the city might use reverence to help political
men disavow their delusional point of view.
Even so, the self-doubt that reverence inspires is most helpful only
when it invites the guidance of a genuinely virtuous soul. In regimes such
as Egypt, citizens might abjure their human nature and become orderly
and obedient. But if it is men like themselves who fashion and administer
the laws they obey, then their submission merely serves the acquisitive-
ness of their mortal lawgivers and rulers. Such regimes are misnamed
(712e–13a, 832b–c). They do not rule for the sake of “what is common
to the whole city” (715b). The justice to which they pretend is really
the (misjudged) interests of the stronger, unmixed with the intelligence
that perceives the real interests of the whole. In saying this, the Athe-
nian implies that the basic need of political man to repudiate his ethical
perception points to the higher need of the city to accommodate its
own transcendence. Only a “divine man” could give laws truly privi-
leging the common. Only a person who desires goods for himself that
does not impose on the goods of others could set up laws truly worth
revering. That is the other reason for calling reverence “divine.” It is
the fear attaching the citizen to the philosopher through the medium of
law. As we saw in Chapter 5, however, the laws that a philosopher might
set up would reliably promote their goal only if they could be watched
over by successors like himself. Citizens and the great majority are natu-
rally bound to mortal desire, while even the best laws must remain—qua
196 R. A. BALLINGALL

laws—dogmatic opinions. Revering them is hardly the same as perceiving

the living truths that have inspired them. If the intelligence out of which
they were born is to have a hand in their ongoing administration, then the
city must allow some people to ascend out of reverence for law. Law itself
must appear defective to some even as it seems eminently trustworthy to
others. It is in recognizing this necessity that we return to the antagonism
with which we began.
Our inquiries into the Athenian’s treatment of this tension also hit on a
strategy for allaying it. In large measure, that strategy looks to possibilities
latent within reverent awe.3 Aidōs uniquely combines fear with respect.
The gods in particular can at once be admired for their nobility and feared
for their greatness, for the extent to which their nature and purposes
are unfathomable and overshadow what is merely human. Awe in other
words comprehends divergent moments, which helps explain why the city
should understand itself as the imitation of an awesome being. Doing so
has this advantage: it allows the city to recognize itself as fallible without
diminishing its devotion to law. For those who can’t abide incoherence
in the way of life to which they are devoted, the gulf between the city
and the god that reverence safely brings to light becomes a spur to crit-
ical thinking and political theorizing. For men more averse to pain than
inclined to truth, however, reverence has quite another effect. For them,
recognizing the inequality between the human and divine reinforces the
desire to show the divine respect, to abide in the role allotted them by
law without pretending to what is vouchsafed to the gods. The imitation
of god can thus cooperate with reverent awe, helping the city achieve
otherwise antagonistic ends.4

Drawing Some Broader Implications

If our study of reverence in the Laws is right to stress the importance of
this virtue not only to customary authority, but to ethical maturity, then
it has some important implications, both for how we approach Plato’s
political philosophy and for how we think about our own irreverent poli-
tics. First, our inquiries attest to the basic soundness of the interpretive
framework proposed by Leo Strauss and developed by scholars inspired
by his hermeneutics. Precisely when we take the “surface” of the text
seriously—when we patiently account for the why of as many textual
and dramatic details as possible, on the supposition that the dialogues
are written in accordance with Socrates’ criterion for correct discourse in
 6 EPILOGUE 197

the Phaedrus —we recognize an implicit logic to the dialogues that makes
sense of their otherwise bewildering tensions and paradoxes. In our own
efforts to assemble such a logic in the Laws, we have uncovered reasons
for modifying the prevailing Straussian reading as it pertains to polit-
ical virtue. But these reasons have emerged for us because not in spite
of adhering to Strauss’s basic hermeneutical approach, which—notwith-
standing the perfunctory caricatures on the basis of which it is often
ignored or dismissed—allows for the refinement of (or outright chal-
lenges to) existing interpretations. Among scholars of the Laws working
within this approach, the prevailing reading places great store in the
fact that classical politics depend on moral self-confidence and psycho-
logical toughness. The dedication to the common good must overcome
formidable human impulses, consumed as we are by passions and ratio-
nalizations that overwhelm justice without firm conviction. The moral
skepticism or equanimity that philosophy teaches must then stand in
tension with the demands that justice makes, particularly when those
demands are frequent and onerous, as they very much are in the classical
city. Yet on the most textually faithful reading that I have been able to
achieve of the Laws, both justice and wisdom depend on the humility that
reverence inspires. The political virtues associated with justice do grow
out of moral passion, something from which the philosophic life achieves
a certain distance. But Plato’s Athenian argues that such passion is coun-
terproductive unless preceded by self-doubt. It otherwise permits us to
hide from and even solemnize our injustice. In reverence, then, philos-
ophy and politics, theory and practice, display a surprising kinship; their
natural antagonism is less stark than certain scholarship might suggest.
As we saw in Chapter 5, for example, what “unity” there is to polit-
ical virtue—the extent to which the political virtues become similar to
even indistinguishable from one another—is rooted less in courage, as
some readers have argued, than in moderation. On the Athenian’s view,
moderation is for the citizen a prosthetic or “stand-in” for the wisdom in
which the virtues cohere for the philosopher. It is the moderate citizen
who becomes like god, where “moderation” consists in a correctly trained
sensitivity to awe and shame. It is true that he describes an elementary
courage or “stoutness of soul” (eupsuchia, 791c) as the first virtue that
must be learned, lest the primal terror of earliest infancy endure into
adulthood and overwhelm what reason or conviction later tell us to fear
and not to fear (791b).5 But the Athenian argues that political virtue
builds a broader foundation on top of this primal toughness, one that he
198 R. A. BALLINGALL

describes in terms of moderation and reverence.6 Likewise, the Stranger

does speak of political virtue in terms of a spirited combativeness against
illicit fears and desires (829e ff.) whose ambition is to achieve an internal
calm in the face of psychological disturbance. He even likens this achieve-
ment to “precisely the situation of the god” (792d). But he also indicates
that this more refined courage can be learned only through the modera-
tion that he also associates with divine beings (716d). Righteous anger, in
particular, must be preceded by a certain humility and then guided by the
authority to which the latter leads. It otherwise becomes in most of us a
destructive arrogance. We are never more certain we are right then when
we give ourselves over to anger. Moral rectitude, though, depends on
remembering our ignorance in matters of right and wrong, the extent to
which the just and unjust things to us appear as shadow figures. It is when
we neglect this fact that ignorance becomes a source of serious transgres-
sion. For in that case, a person is irreverent. He “partakes of the opinion
that he is wise, and believes he knows completely things about which he
knows nothing” (863c, cf. 732a–b). It is important that the Athenian in
this vein points to spiritedness itself as a source of moral failure. He calls
thumos “a possession that is by nature quarrelsome and pugnacious, over-
turning many things with uncalculating violence” (863b). He warns that
if allowed to tyrannize in the soul, it becomes “in every way injustice;”
it then undermines the authority of “the opinion about what is best”
(864a).7 Thumotic self-assurance is hostile to lawful opinion if not built
upon a substrate of humility.
Another implication of our inquiries follows from how they have
engaged critically if appreciatively with the work of Paul Woodruff.
Woodruff has rightly called attention to the oblivion of reverence in
modern life no less than in the modern reading of classical texts. Yet we
have seen that his complaint in his regard is truer than he knows. For it is
Plato whom he identifies as the first great antagonist of the virtue, the first
to deny that reverence is a virtue at all. By exhorting humanity to emulate
the gods, the dialogues seem to Woodruff to discard the sentiment of
insignificance at the root of reverent awe. However, in the Laws espe-
cially, such exhortations must be read in light of the Athenian’s frequent
praise of aidōs. The Stranger does not straightforwardly urge humanity
to assimilate itself to what is divine. By insisting that human beings feel
awe for “the god” whom they would strive to resemble, he warns against
reaching beyond our grasp. He suggests that it is precisely in their rever-
ence that lawgivers and citizens transcend their humanity as far as they
 6 EPILOGUE 199

are able. A Kleinias or Megillus becomes like god by remembering that

he is no god at all.
By attending to the sense in which Plato is a theorist of reverence in his
own right, we have recovered a fuller picture of that virtue’s salience. One
of Woodruff’s most intriguing claims about reverence is that it is needed
for resolving what he calls “the paradox of respect.” Why should leaders
fulsomely and sincerely respect their followers, or teachers their students,
or parents their children, if the former truly are “better” than the latter?
Conversely, how can subordinates respect a superior before or until they
have learned the virtue or knowledge needed to evaluate the superior’s
claims to rule? According to Woodruff, the answer lies in how reverence
creates a basis of respect beyond the judgment of superior quality. It redi-
rects respect away from the human beings within hierarchical relationships
and towards a common goal of awesome magnitude. It is in the face of
such a goal that we can respect others for more than their bare humanity
but without needing to recognize in them some specific excellence.8 The
most important kind of respect grows from the seriousness with which
we take a shared purpose whose difficulty or urgency dwarfs our differ-
ences. Our study of the Laws has found reverence accomplishing much
the same thing within the law-bound polity. Far from representing the
repudiation of reverent awe, the imitation of god that is Magnesia’s self-
understanding represents the application of reverence to public life. The
divine law that Magnesia strives to grasp and observe is what Woodruff
would call “an object of reverence”— a reminder of the gulf between the
human and divine. To think of politics as the imitation of such law is to
see it as a humbling task that can never be consummated. It is to think
that politics, at its practical best, must remain self-consciously second best.
And thinking as much has the upshot of permitting the city and its leaders
to acknowledge openly their deficiencies. Their authority flows less from
putative infallibility than from the seriousness with which they take their
mission. It is true that the Athenian temporizes with Egyptianism. He
acknowledges the enduring need of representing the human law that
imitates the divine as more perfect than it really is—as an unchanged
inheritance from time out of mind, for example. It is, as he says, unfortu-
nately necessary to be serious about the human things. But in his novel
account of divine law, the Stranger claims to have discovered an alternate
source of reverence, one that relieves the city to some extent of having to
keep its citizens ignorant simpletons. On his account, law can retain the
200 R. A. BALLINGALL

authority it needs without smothering the critical inquiry on which philos-

ophy depends. Likewise, public figures can command respect—and can be
restrained by respect for those they serve—without needing to intimidate
the ruled or see them as their genuine equals.9 Plato, then, perceives how
reverence resolves the paradox of respect as well, only he presents that
resolution in the context of political life and tempers our expectations
accordingly. At its practical best, politics might be the imitation of divine
reason; but as an imitation of reason it necessarily falls short, not least in
how it relies unavoidably on distortions of the truth.
A related implication of our study has to do with the nature of the
utopianism that we have found in the Laws. Readers have always recog-
nized a contrast with the Republic on this question. The Laws appears
to accommodate itself to human nature more explicitly than that other
work. Yet the precise relationship between theory and practice in the Laws
has remained rather dark. Most interpreters have taken some form of the
“approximation” view discussed in Chapter 3. They have assumed that the
best practical regime is a comprehensive, if distant, imitation of the regime
on which it is modeled. But that assumption fails to account for the many
respects in which the second-best regime is starkly distinct from the simply
best, in kind rather than degree. Nor does it provide a satisfying account
of the Athenian’s disparagement of hubris, the transgression of bound-
aries around which the divine things are enclosed. The goal of political
imitation is apparently situated beyond these boundaries; the Athenian
seems to discourage the emulation of god even as he enjoins it upon the
city. Yet the explanation for these curiosities that we uncovered from the
Laws ’ fifth book suggests an unfamiliar, if eminently plausible, theory.
Intuitively, one thinks of striving for distant goals as though climbing a
mountain; the Athenian suggests that lawgiving is more like swimming
across a swift-flowing stream. Reaching nine-tenths of the way to the
opposite shore only to lose one’s strength would be catastrophic. More
prudent to cross at another ford altogether.
We have seen this same idea arise time and again in the Athenian’s
treatment of political life. The city should strive for the intelligence by
which all things can be measured, but political men must never presume
to have acquired that virtue for themselves. The best practical regime
becomes like the best soul, but only by repudiating some of its defining
characteristics. The best soul is ruled by a reason internal to itself. It
lives well without heeding an external authority. The regime, by contrast,
achieves intelligent leadership only by disavowing self-government. It
 6 EPILOGUE 201

cannot settle for the good-enough nous of its mortal officers. It must
subordinate rulers and subjects alike to laws given it by men of a different
kind, “divine” men unbound to the desires that animate “mortal” crea-
tures. It is to this closer shore that the city must swim. What is more, the
problem of second-best imitation admits of multiple, receding iterations.
This is attested by the “capstone” with which the Athenian concludes
the discussion of drinking parties in Book Two. He argues that the city
would be better off severely limiting the consumption of “wine” wherever
“drinking” cannot be used “for the sake of moderation” (673e). Seeing
as there is a metaphorical analogy between drunkenness and the audacity
needed by philosophy, the “capstone” suggests that the city cut itself off
from philosophy if it cannot selectively—and hence safely—suspend rever-
ence for law. From the city’s point of view, it is better to educate the many
to moderation than to help the few to philosophy, if choose between them
it must. For without moderation, the many lose all hope of virtue. They
refuse to obey any authority beyond the wishes of their mortal souls.
“Freedom” merely permits them license.

After Reverence
This last point calls us back to the wider prospect in whose light we
can recognize our own regime. Can we not readily see ourselves in the
Theatocracy and “titanic nature” of the Stranger’s Athenians? Indeed, his
account seems to resemble our political world more closely than it does
his own.10 It is we who “assert that it is quite correct to judge music
by the standard of the pleasure it gives to whoever enjoys it.” Among
us is run amok “the opinion that everyone is wise in everything.” It is
our shamelessness that has made men “so bold as not to fear the opinion
of someone who is better.” As the Athenian’s “capstone” would predict,
the path down which the moderns have trod has dissolved our sense of
awe. We have become drunk on the Enlightenment’s wine, “treat[ing]
it as something playful” (673e). On the other hand, of course, modern
irreverence has borne impressive fruit. The dream of transforming the
people into an image of the philosopher may have been delusional, but
the accompanying permissiveness has made possible intellectual feats of
breathtaking import. Our disregard of popular virtue has not obviously
come at the expense of the rarest kind; divine men, after all, “do not by
nature grow any more frequently in cities with good laws than in cities
without.”11 Modern societies, moreover, evince a phenomenon that Plato
202 R. A. BALLINGALL

does not seem to have anticipated. Human nature being what it is, the
Athenian claims that suspending reverence would occasion “total freedom
from all rule” (698b) and inaugurate “a harsh epoch in which there is
never a cessation of evils” (701c). But this hardly describes the modern
democracies, despite their profound irreverence and immoderation. As we
saw in Chapter 1, modern society actually creates order out of the very
vice that seems to threaten it. Of a piece with the project of universal
enlightenment is a casual cynicism, wherein the arduous virtues lose much
of their appeal. The proliferation of doubt achieves consensus in the
things whose goodness is most difficult to deny. Masquerading beneath
the banner of freedom, the bodily pleasures supplant the virtues. Posing
as moral autonomy, an easygoing complacency replaces genuine humility.
Because this consensus runs with the grain of mortal nature, it is the
easier to obtain. It demands very little and gives back very much. It would
seem, then, that modernity presents an alternative second best. Modern
society may have given up on political virtue and ethical authority, but
it permits something of the philosophic life while steering clear of the
political worst. It is surprisingly peaceful and orderly, precisely because it
is perennially “drunk.”
Does that mean the moderns have little to learn from the well-led
drinking party? Certainly, it is hard to see ourselves in the Dorian elders of
the Laws —rustic enough to believe what more civilized people contemp-
tuously doubt. However cynical a Kleinias may have grown, he proves
easily ensnared by one who knows the judicious use of awe and shame.
His elderly self-assurance can be reduced to childlike credulity. Can the
same be said of us? Or have we passed beyond the point from which
can be made anew the innocence that is the germ of political virtue
and among the materials needed by the lawgiver? Perhaps a new cata-
clysm would be needed to return us to such simplicity. In the event,
there is reason to fear that modern irreverence may be leading in that
very direction, despite its normally stabilizing influence. However much
hollow skepticism corrodes the appeal of the noble, there are those for
whom life is unlivable without self-effacing devotion. Modern society
may attempt to channel such yearnings into commercialism, constitutional
politics, and representative government, but these outlets hardly supply
the sense of participation in the greatest deeds after which such persons
yearn. Paradoxically, few can devote themselves to such deeds (and to
the long self-discipline that they presuppose) without the psychological
pressure that reverence supplies. Most of us both want and don’t want
 6 EPILOGUE 203

to overcome the bourgeois ethic of commodious living. Without rever-

ence, though, the yearning for such transcendence finds an outlet where
it can—often in farcical impulsiveness,12 but in more menacing ways too.
Modern politics has always been prone to a moralistic theatricality in
which heroic deeds can at least be acted out in fantasy.13 Those without
the political occasions or inner resources for real heroism can at least
pretend to it in cosplay. Such fantasies are hardly innocent, however.
Recent experience throughout the liberal democracies should have made
as much clear. The attraction of heroic playacting can and is coopted
by mendacious demagogues who seduce their followers with promises of
world-historical deeds that participants furtively know (or believe) to be
theater. Like the actors and fans of professional wrestling, they collude
in a shared fiction that gives the frisson of gravity.14 Such fantasies waste
a noble longing on a cheap substitute—perhaps that is well and good,
considering the destructive purposes in which these longings might other-
wise find satisfaction. But performative moralism affects real politics too;
the demagogic leader can turn his cosplaying fans on the rivals and insti-
tutions that stand in his way. The genuine fury felt by his devotees for the
wrongs he claims to right is the easier acted on because of the unspoken
belief that the deed to which they are called is disingenuous. The danger
is that the demagogue’s lies don’t begin and end with the evils of which
he complains. The truly menacing lie is the impression he gives of being
in on the act, of keeping his fans within a mere performance of righteous
anger. For it is by sustaining that fiction that he can lead the theater he
conjures into actions that truly are of world-historical significance—the
kind that would overturn the liberal order itself. Without reverence and
the moral seriousness it sustains, the longing for such seriousness must
be met in fantasies that are culpable, defenseless as they are against the
machinations of rampaging ambition.
The foregoing is one of the many dark possibilities that suggests
modernity continues to have need of the virtue it especially discour-
ages. Yet where among us can reverence survive? It might seem to be
among those archaisms on which the moderns unwittingly depend but
whose roots we persistently destroy. Perhaps what is needed, then, is
the rise of a truly post-modern, post-liberal order in which the depen-
dence of liberty on tradition, community, custom, and virtue is more
openly acknowledged and in which these buttresses of freedom are better
protected. One now hears variations of this argument from many quar-
ters. Patrick J. Deneen, to take an especially thoughtful case, argues that
204 R. A. BALLINGALL

liberalism has always been living on borrowed time, surviving as it does

off the mores it attacks. Liberalism is on his view an “anticulture.”15 It
relentlessly pushes us to isolate ourselves from “the three cornerstones of
human experience—nature, time and place.” Its success is premised on
“uprooting” these bases of culture and replacing them “with facsimiles
that bear the same names.”16 It proceeds by discarding “widely observed
informal norms” that it reframes as oppressive or inefficient. In their place,
liberalism establishes “a regime of standardized law” whose justification
is premised on freeing us of the informal norms it supersedes.17 At the
same time, it creates and supports “a universal and homogenous market”
whose ruthless “monoculture…destroys actual cultures rooted in experi-
ence, history, and place.” The result is the strange condition in which we
find ourselves: yearning for the freedom that liberalism promises but in
fact destroys. The liberty we should want and truly need, Deneen insists,
presupposes excellence of character, something achieved only under the
tutelage of the very customs that liberalism tends to raze.18
As bracing as such arguments are, the origins of liberalism can be inter-
preted rather differently, in ways that suggest a still more complicated
picture. Scholars such as Julie E. Cooper, who have inquired into the
persistence of traditional moral discourses within early modern thought,
have found that many such discourses are not merely window dressing or
stalking horses, though they may be those things too. Cooper does not
take Hobbes’s avowed theism seriously, for example. But she does argue
that the quintessentially Christian virtue of humility has a vital place in
Hobbes’s political philosophy. Hobbes of course is famous for his critique
of pride and vainglory. Cooper shows how this critique is in the service
of repurposing a vein of traditional moral virtue, without which the liber-
alism that grew out of Hobbes’s ideas really would be self-defeating. “The
critique of pride,” she writes,

is not an atavism, a relic of traditional piety at odds with the ostensibly

promethean aspirations of secular thought. Rather, puncturing delusions
of grandeur is an integral part of secular projects to authorize, and
encourage, human self-government…[F]antasies of omnipotence deplete
human power. Precisely because secularity’s architects ask us not to rely on
God, they must remind us that we are not Gods.19

Modern political philosophy might declare independence from God and

the need of His grace. It is in this sense “secular.” It might similarly aspire
 6 EPILOGUE 205

to expand human power over our own destinies in ways long thought the
preserve of immortal beings. It is to this extent “irreverent.” But Cooper
finds in Hobbes and his liberal successors a recognition that modernity
depends on a virtue of self-limitation.20 Indeed, she contends that they
saw how enhanced human agency stands in even greater need of such a
virtue than traditional fatalism. It is those who would become like god
who must especially remember that they are merely human.
Cooper’s provocative genealogy of power and humility in modern
political thought suggests that Deneen’s call for a post-liberal future may
be premature. Liberalism may not be as hostile to its own charactero-
logical foundations as his arguments would have us believe. To be sure,
we witness all around us in late modernity the crumbling of those foun-
dations, and the tottering of the edifice they once supported. But these
trends may owe less to the short-sightedness of liberalism’s progenitors
than to a failure to make themselves sufficiently understood. Appeals to
humility in their works are understandably overshadowed by the audacity
of their ideas. The promise of powers not unlike those of beings revered
as gods seems on its face to betray the “prometheanism” that scholars
like Cooper insist these thinkers disavow. Yet godlikeness is not neces-
sarily an irreverent aspiration, as our study of Plato’s Laws attests. The
imitation of god can instead bring home to us the gravity of undertakings
that we might be otherwise tempted to condescend. If liberal modernity
originated in thinkers who shared this insight, even if the apotheosis that
they conceived was rather different, then that should give us pause in
our malaise at the world they helped usher into being. Perhaps we have
yet fully to understand and explore the potentials of the political order
that we have inherited. Until we have, it seems reckless to throw up our
hands and call for its replacement.21 At any rate, the prudent caution
long associated with “conservatism” would seem to counsel against such
a response.

Authority Under Modern Democracy

To return, then, to the question of where among us can something like
reverence survive, part of the answer may be that it endures silently and
invisibly—crippled, yes, but there all the same. Woodruff at any rate takes
just this view. “I believe reverence gives meaning to much that we do,”
he writes,
206 R. A. BALLINGALL

yet the word has almost passed from our vocabulary. Because we do not
understand reverence, we don’t really know what we are doing in much of
our lives, and therefore we are in no position to think about how to do
it better….It is as if we have forgotten one of the cylinders that has been
chugging along in the vehicle of human society since its beginning. And
now, because we do not know the cylinder is there, we have no idea how to
tune it up, or even how we might gum it up completely by inattention.22

Certainly, we now pay reverence precious little attention. But Woodruff

goes on to argue that it is so important a virtue that no society could
long endure were it ever really to disappear. We may ignore and neglect
it, but when we know what to look for, we do find it persisting in many
corners of modern life. He points to poets like Tennyson, whose In
Memoriam he calls “the finest expression of reverence that we have in
the English language.”23 Tennyson, in fact, is one of the few moderns to
self-consciously use the word in something like its classical sense, as an
excellence of character. But Woodruff ranges further afield, finding rever-
ence in the verses of Kipling and Philip Larkin too, between the lines. He
similarly suggests we use a revived familiarity with the virtue to reflect on
the moments of inarticulate awe and wonder that we continue to experi-
ence, and on the occasions when these moments are put in the service of
some valued task. He dwells on what is silently going on among a string
quartet whose players perform a piece of Mozart with exquisite, goose
bumps-raising virtuosity. He contrasts the alienating, sectarian ritual that
is a young man’s funeral with the informal but deeply moving ceremony
his friends later share among themselves, during which is brought home
to them all—regardless of faith—the evanescence of human things. He
considers what it is that inspires the mutual respect that passes between
good leaders and their followers, the respect that allows the leader to
take his followers where they sometimes don’t want to go, or the other-
wise obedient followers to disobey an order that they know is wrong.
Woodruff insists that we simply can’t make sense of such phenomena
without appreciating the role that reverence is playing within them. And
once we know what reverence is for, we can start to rediscover it in the
many circumstances during which we continue to practice it, however
unwittingly.24
Still, as the last of these examples reminds, reverence may endure in
our midst, but there really is something about modern life—and about
modern politics in particular—that militates against it. The symbiosis that
 6 EPILOGUE 207

exists between good leaders and followers may be recognizable in sub-

political contexts like a classroom or a company of soldiers, to use two
more of Woodruff’s examples.25 Among statesmen and citizens, though,
mutual respect is much harder to find. What we see instead is a perva-
sive, menacing cynicism. Political leaders are wary of the “bases” from
which they ostensibly draw support and for whom they harbor a contempt
that they struggle to conceal. Democratic publics, for their part, look
on public service with undisguised scorn. Few offices or institutions at
all connected with public life escape the taint of corruption for broad
segments of the electorate.26 This crisis of authority may have grown
more visible in recent years, but it too has deep roots in modern poli-
tics. Tocqueville made it a—even the—leitmotif of Democracy in America.
It represents the “savage instinct” to which he fears the egalitarian social
state is all too prone. Seeing in most others mere reflections of themselves,
democrats have trouble recognizing in specific others compelling claims
to rule. Not only do all appear fundamentally alike, but the equality to
which we assimilate ourselves reflects the vapid materialism that defines so
much of modern life. No one can command authority where none has or
seems to have a vocation of great seriousness. Moreover, as Tocqueville
stresses, without authority there can be no consent. Rule there must be,
but without consent it must be imposed coercively, if at all—an experience
that is at once humiliating and infuriating. On this account, the spasms
of indignant populism that afflict modern democracy are the natural
outcome of an inability to accept limits to one’s freedom. By reducing
human beings to a level and human purposes to trivialities, egalitarianism
makes it hard to visibly lead and voluntarily obey. Where order persists,
it owes much to the invisibility with which power circulates in modern
society, thanks in no small part to the device of representation and the
“moral force” of public opinion.27 Where rule is recognized, though, it
is met with a fury that prefers to exhaust itself in performance, seeing
as it is accompanied by the humiliating sentiments inspired by compelled
obedience. It is more attractive to vent one’s anger in playacting if one
doubts the efficacy of one’s own powers to truly remedy the wrong.
Can reverence coexist with such dynamics? I cannot claim to answer
that question conclusively, certainly not here. But I do think our study of
the Laws suggests the beginnings of an answer. The Athenian Stranger’s
great insight about reverence is to see how closed-mindedness is not the
virtue’s only possible source. Reverence does not need the thorough-
going traditionalism of a Sparta or a Crete to do its work.28 In fact,
208 R. A. BALLINGALL

the Athenian argues that reverence is more helpful when its surprising
congruence with open-mindedness is fully leveraged. And therein lies an
intriguing possibility for modern society. Despite enormous differences of
political culture and institutions, liberal democracy and classical repub-
licanism share a need of ethically mature citizens and of the authority
indispensable to cultivating such maturity. If as adults we cannot accept
our ongoing want of “rule,” of looking outside ourselves for the guidance
and discipline without which life loses much of its depth and meaning,
then we will be incapable of using well the tempered freedom that is our
patrimony. Believing we can determine for ourselves what it is that we
are here to do, we will be tempted to make light of the matter29 and to
grow vulgarly impatient with those who disagree with us, ultimately losing
the wherewithal to consent to political power. What is wanted, then, is a
means of bringing home to ourselves the true enormity of our vocation as
free persons and hence of our enduring need of authority and law. At the
same time, though, we remain rightly committed to individual liberty—
to preserve the right to repudiate authority and to withdraw our consent
from power. We require a way of at once enhancing and transcending
authority, precisely the procedure to which Plato most calls attention in
the Laws.
To be sure, the Laws selectively preserves and even ratchets up the
closedness of the Dorian regimes on which it builds. Its city in speech is
a theocracy that defends orthodox opinion with the full force of penal
law, ordains a sweeping regimen of mutual surveillance, and carefully
regulates intercourse with the outside world, which it takes great pains
to minimize. In these regards, Magnesia could not seem more alien to
liberal democracy. But we have found that the authority in whose service
these institutions are proposed is also intentionally self-effacing. The study
of Magnesia’s orthodoxy, for example, involves examining the arguments
for atheism, the very practice that dissolves the ignorance-based rever-
ence associated with Egypt and the Dorian cities. Similarly, the Magnesian
regime is self-consciously second best; it does not present itself as perfect;
it riddles the writings of its lawgiver with insinuations that his laws exag-
gerate even the second-best status to which they lay claim. Likewise, the
punishment of the naturally just atheists whom the Athenian singles out
is the learning of “moderation” by participating in the deliberations of
the Nocturnal Council. In the name of protecting the pious dogmas of
the city, the law in this regard facilitates the questioning of dogmatism.
These aspects of Magnesia suggest an understanding of the relationship
 6 EPILOGUE 209

between reverence and authority that is more consistent with intellectual

liberty. The Athenian does not pretend as though the political art can
overcome or erase the tension between these political goods. But he sees
how reverence can be sustained in the face of critical thinking, without
which the authority that reverence supports loses much of its value.
Under liberal democracy, of course, the balance between authority
and freedom must be struck very differently. Our regime repudiates
the principled closed-mindedness to which the Athenian continues to
turn, even as he avails himself of reverence’s broader possibilities. Liber-
alism is less ambitious when it comes to civic virtue. But liberal societies
are also less reliant on civic virtue for their basic security and stability.
They have less need of authority and the virtues that it supports; they
are in a different position than Magnesia. Perhaps, then, liberalism can
bring reverence back to life without the Dorian foundations on which
Plato’s Athenian feels obliged to build. If in Plato, reverence blunts the
antagonism between authority and philosophy, perhaps with us it might
reconcile authority and individual liberty. There may be a possible moder-
nity suffused with something like the Rousseauean view of democracy, in
which citizens look on the end of their regime as so perfect a form of
government as to be more fit for gods than men.30 If men would be free
without becoming depraved, then they must (among many other things)
feel awe for the task at hand, lest they condescend what is truly involved
in self-government. But, as the Athenian’s example attests, such awe need
not be rooted in a rustic oblivion of truth. Indeed, one can imagine along
these lines an alternate form of “enlightenment” in which the populariza-
tion of philosophy involves the proliferation, not so much of moral and
religious skepticism, but of the humility that is by the Athenian’s lights
the source of both moral virtue and Socratic wisdom.
To this sanguine hope must immediately be added notes of caution.
For the Deneens of our time may be right to detect in liberalism itself
a dynamic that is insuperably hostile to reverence (along with the basic
preconditions of “culture”), even if reverence can by nature or in prin-
ciple coexist with critical thinking and ethical difference. Liberalism, after
all, was built on the fundamentally debunking enterprise of Hobbesian
political philosophy. Its driving force has often been an easygoing, who’s-
to-say attitude against which it is difficult to maintain a sense of life’s
mysteriousness and gravity. Hobbes himself may have supposed that this
attitude could coexist with the humility that he otherwise teaches. But it
is not hard to detect between two such sentiments a deep and abiding
210 R. A. BALLINGALL

tension, and the drift of liberalism would seem to have long favored
the one sentiment over the other. In the final analysis, then, a reverent
modernity may prove a missed opportunity, a road not taken. Perhaps
liberal democracy finds itself beyond a point at which reverence could be
meaningfully revived. The collapse of personal freedom into contempt for
propriety and abhorrence of “elites” may have passed a threshold beyond
which there is no return. As sobering as that possibility is, I conclude
simply by repeating what I wrote above. Until we have understood and
experimented fully with the theoretical and practical possibilities of the
regime under which we live, it seems imprudent to call for revolutionary
political change, or even to give up on the intellectual traditions out of
which that regime emerged. If our study of Plato’s Laws has helped us see
anew a virtue that our world neglects, we should be wary of compounding
that neglect in the critiques we make of our world.

Notes
1. In uttering these words, the compliment that Megillus pays the Athenian
is truer than he knows. The Stranger agrees that the only Athenians who
practice justice do so “without compulsion,” despite the regime’s permis-
siveness. But his argument in the dialogue implies that the “artificial”
virtue that Megillus esteems in himself and in his countrymen is possible
only in the regime that reveres laws fashioned by a philosopher and admin-
istered by those who heed the counsels of a philosopher. In all other cases,
compelling men to practice “virtue” might achieve certain basic if essen-
tial political goods, such as security and order. But it would do so rather
blindly and belligerently, often at the expense of the ruled (832a–d with
Strauss, Argument and Action, 118). The worthiness of political virtue,
then, is determined by the wisdom or folly to which it looks up.
2. In fact, this implication follows only if one assumes, as the Athenian
apparently does, that scarcity inheres in the human situation—that the
supply of material goods is fixed and limited. The phenomenon of modern
economic growth might suggest that this assumption is unwarranted, or
at least in need of deep qualification. For if, under the right institutions,
material acquisitiveness expands overall abundance, then the moral signifi-
cance of greed is profoundly transformed, as Locke seems the first to have
fully appreciated. On the other hand, of course, there may be ecolog-
ical limits beyond which economic growth cannot go, a prospect that
now seems to be coming into focus. Likewise, some argue that economic
growth has always been implicated in imperialism and bourgeois domina-
tion, so much so that Locke’s moral apologia never had much salience. For
 6 EPILOGUE 211

the classic argument that Locke’s political philosophy hinges on a defense

of capitalist accumulation, see C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of
Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962),
197–238.
3. It is also important to bear in mind how the Athenian’s account of the
rule of law mitigates the paradox towards on which Socrates dwells in
the Republic—that precisely because of their indifference to rule, and to
the material goods that ruling is the best means of getting, philosophers
would need to be compelled to rule by the very men inclined towards
political power. As we saw in Chapter 5, the promise of the symposium
model on which Magnesia’s Nocturnal Council is based is in part the
squaring of this circle. The philosophers on the Council can advise their
office-holding peers in the administration of the law without having to
assume the ruling offices themselves.
4. We also saw that this strategy is of a piece with the use of reverence to
“tame” the subphilosophic lawgiver and to reduce future rulers of his city
to “servants” of his laws.
5. As Pangle emphasizes, e.g., in Virtue is Knowledge (239–40).
6. The passage at the beginning of Book Seven in which the Athenian
discusses this primal fear also needs to be read in light of the dramatic
context that we emphasized in Chapter 4. In claiming that becoming
accustomed to feeling fear is practice in cowardice (791b), the Athenian
contradicts what he had said earlier, that customarily feeling fear can be
a means of teaching courage (648d, 694d–96a). It also proves to set up
Kleinias for an embarrassing mistake (791b), the shame of which the Athe-
nian boldly announces (792c), very much on the model of the symposium
that teaches reverence.
7. In fact, Pangle (“Interpretive Essay,” 456–57, 485) not only recognizes
the problem but even the Laws ’ recourse to “reverence” for a solution.
Nonetheless, he characterizes the citizen’s virtue in terms of a correctly
trained thumotic manliness.
8. Woodruff, Reverence, 222–28.
9. It is in this light that we should read the surveillance techniques coun-
tenanced by the Athenian, as well as the ethos of “truthfulness” or
transparency that he extols in the prelude to the lawcode as a whole
(730c). These cases reflect a need to “scrutinize” office holders, whose
virtue remains tenuous. So much is observed by all interpreters. But these
cases also speak to how reverence for the goal of politics releases rulers
from having to present themselves as infallible. Such invasive scrutiny
could be tolerated only if the exposure of imperfection didn’t threaten
one’s authority and public standing as a matter of course.
10. For the argument that the historical Athenians adhered to a “democratic
ideology” that succeeded in “synthesizing” freedom with virtue, see Ryan
212 R. A. BALLINGALL

K. Balot, “The Virtue Politics of Democratic Athens,” in The Cambridge

Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought, ed. Stephen G. Salkever
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 271–300.
11. Ronald Beiner, Political Philosophy: What It Is and Why It Matters
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 47–49, argues that
philosophers qua philosophers should welcome the permissiveness of
modern society because it releases philosophy from the need for esoteric
communication. Beiner marshals reasons for thinking this need histori-
cally contingent, but does not discuss Strauss’s related worry that the
Enlightenment has added to the “abstract” character of modern thought,
threatening to trap the moderns within a “cave beneath the cave.”.
12. Tocqueville, Democracy in America II, 2.12.
13. Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, trans. Roger D. Masters &
Judith R. Masters (St. Martin’s), 37–38.
14. David S. Moon, “Kayfabe, Smartdom, and Marking Out: Can Pro-
Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?” Political Studies Review
20, no. 1 (2020): 47–61; Shannon Bow O’Brien, Donald Trump and
the Kayfabe Presidency: Professional Wrestling Rhetoric in the White House
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
15. Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2017), 66.
16. Deneen’s language evokes Simone Weil’s famous essay L’Enracinement,
in which she argues that modern society with its focus on “rights” and
neglect of “obligations” tends to “uproot” humanity from the cultural
conditions in which the needs of our souls can be realistically satisfied. For
an English translation, see The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of
Duties towards Mankind (Routledge, 2002). Curiously, Daneen does not
acknowledge the evocation.
17. In this capacity, Deneen cites the Hobbesian definition of law as “a hedge”
on which Locke builds the liberal conception, wherein “the end of law is
not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom” Second
Treatise of Civil Government, Sec. 57. For Daneen, the point here is to
draw a contrast with the classical idea of law as a continuum of cultural
habituations and disciplines intended to prepare the citizen to master
his base impulses, that he might participate in public life virtuously and
prudently. The liberal idea of law reduces such disciplinary cultures to
objects of choice and thus effectively dispenses with them, for they can
hardly ever be objects of choice.
18. In this vein, Deneen argues that “many of the institutional forms of
government that we today associate with liberalism were at least initially
conceived and developed over long centuries preceding the modern age”
(Why Liberalism Failed, 22–23). The implication seems to be that liberty
does not have to be inconsistent with “the comprehensive formation and
 6 EPILOGUE 213

education of individuals and citizens” that formed the basis of self-ruling,

pre-modern communities (Why Liberalism Failed, 37).
19. Julie E. Cooper, Secular Powers: Humility in Modern Political Thought
(University of Chicago Press, 2013), 4. Compare David McPherson,
The Virtues of Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), which
identifies “the Promethean ideal” with imitating God.
20. Cooper identifies Spinoza and Rousseau as the other major figures
in early modern political thought who grasped the dependence of
enhanced human agency on the endurance of humility, or its psychological
analogues. Spinoza favored “modesty” over humility. “Rousseau cannot
abandon the fantasy of complete autonomy, even while he concedes its
impossibility for finite beings” (18).
21. Daneen himself prefers the so-called “Benedict Option” proposed by Rod
Dreher in which Christians convinced that modern political culture is
irremediably hostile to their moral and spiritual aspirations would retreat
into more-or-less isolated, autonomous, small-scale communities in which
those aspirations could be more realistically pursued without having to
overthrow and refound the prevailing liberal-democratic order. See Why
Liberalism Failed, 191–98.
22. Woodruff, Reverence, 7–8, 11–12.
23. Woodruff, Reverence, 118.
24. McPherson suggests that reverence remains accessible to us insofar as we
give “proper recognition to self-transcending sources of value that place
constraints on our will and thereby help to define our proper place in
the scheme of things.” Virtues of Limits, 30. In this account, reverence is
closely related to humility (Pace Woodruff, Reverence, 61).
25. Woodruff, Reverence, 177–82, ch. 11.
26. Although distrust in government may have become more prevalent among
“right-wing” voters, it is widespread on the political left as well. One
thinks of “systemic” racism or misogyny, e.g., as wrongs in which all
political institutions are implicated for certain quarters of the left.
27. For an account of representative government that emphasizes its function
of rendering rule invisible, see Harvey C. Mansfield, “Hobbes and the
Science of Indirect Government,” The American Political Science Review
65, no. 1 (1971): 97–110.
28. Compare Saxonhouse, Free Speech and Democracy, which argues that
reverence necessarily stands athwart deliberative democracy.
29. “Each becomes accustomed to having only confused and changing notions
about matters that most interest those like him and himself; one defends
one’s opinions badly or abandons them, and as one despairs of being
able to resolve by oneself the greatest problems that human destiny
presents, one is reduced, like a coward, to not thinking about them at
all” (Democracy in America II, 1.5, trans. Mansfield and Winthrop).
30. On the Social Contract, 3.4. Cf. 2.6.
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 Index

A audacity/boldness, 22, 32, 59, 130,

Aeschylus, 3, 6, 31 158, 160, 184, 201, 205
Ahrensdorf, Peter J., 143 authority
ancestors, 14, 86, 89, 136, 137, 140, definition of, 207
157 divine law and, 135, 155, 163
anger/indignation, 2, 90, 91, 147, law/custom (nomos ) and, 12, 19,
198, 203, 207 83, 128
Annas, Julia, 33, 34, 50, 63, 66, 71, pride and, 112
72, 75, 104, 105 reverence and, 15, 23, 209
Apollo, 3, 27, 128, 132 awe/awesome, 3–6, 14, 21, 27, 28,
Aquinas, Thomas, 33, 35 32, 33, 49, 52, 58, 59, 61, 67,
Arendt, Hannah, 30 102, 112–114, 128, 130, 131,
Aristophanes, 147, 149, 192 136, 137, 140–142, 148, 152,
Aristotle, 4–7, 10, 13, 28, 30, 33, 36, 153, 156, 160–163, 165–167,
66, 71, 72, 92, 103, 104, 106, 175, 177, 181, 182, 195–199,
145–147, 181, 187 201, 202, 206, 209
artifice, 180, 190, 194
art (technē), 14, 18, 33, 73, 83, 84,
105, 108, 111, 112, 117, 119, B
120, 122, 126, 130, 135, 159, Balot, Ryan K., 31, 35–37, 69, 71,
160, 162, 166, 176, 177, 190, 103, 143, 145, 147, 187, 212
209 Bartlett, Robert C., 28, 76, 187, 188
Athens, 19, 31, 53, 66, 68, 138–141, beautiful. See nobility/noble
149 Beiner, Ronald, 147, 190, 212

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 229
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
R. A. Ballingall, Plato’s Reverent City, Recovering Political Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31303-5
230 INDEX

belief/conviction, 2, 4, 9–12, 14, 17, 139–141, 144, 152–154,

19, 21, 22, 25, 32, 34, 72, 116, 158–161, 164, 167, 172, 174,
134, 165, 167, 177–179, 181, 177, 180–182, 184, 185, 187,
183, 191–193, 197, 203 191–193, 195, 196, 199–201,
Benardete, Seth, 190 208
best regime, 20, 25, 50, 60–62, 65, Clark, Randall Baldwin, 36, 84, 104
74, 77–79, 81–85, 91, 93–96, Cohen, David, 32, 34, 71, 104
98–101, 103, 112–115, 127, comedy, 1, 2, 26, 133
128, 185, 200 compulsion, 80, 82, 106, 137, 194
Bloom, Allan, 30, 37, 144, 145 convention. See law
Bobonich, Christopher, 34, 50, 56, Cooper, Julie E., 204, 213
67, 70–73, 103–105, 142, 146, corruption, 2, 5, 67, 121, 122, 135,
192 165, 171, 186, 207
Brill, Sara, 28, 37 de Coulanges, Numa Denis Fustel, 30
Burns, Timothy W., 185 courage, 6, 21, 22, 31, 49, 53, 70,
Burnyeat, Myles F., 28, 37 75, 107, 121, 146, 152, 154,
Bury, R.G., 15, 33, 75, 104 156, 158, 171, 173, 186–188,
197, 211
Crete, 41, 53, 68, 81, 207
C Cusher, Brent Edwin, 147, 189, 190
Cairns, Douglas, 28, 29 custom. See law
cave, 41, 191. See also shadows
Idean (of Zeus), 191
image of, 191 D
children, 8, 25, 53–56, 88, 89, 93, Daneen, Patrick, 212, 213
96, 120, 121, 133, 135, 152, death, 12, 27, 33, 87–90, 100, 106,
157, 183, 199 145, 154, 185
chorus, 4, 29, 39, 40, 111, 132, Demaratus, 36, 74, 75
157–160, 188 Demosthenes, 11, 12, 31
citizen, 10, 13, 14, 18–22, 24, 40, desire, 5, 6, 13, 21, 28, 46, 53, 54,
52–59, 62–65, 77, 78, 80–82, 57, 68, 86, 89, 108, 123, 128,
85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 93, 97, 101, 130, 148, 152, 170, 172, 174,
102, 112–114, 120, 123, 125, 175, 178, 194–196, 201
126, 129, 132, 140, 141, 152, Devereux, Daniel, 186, 187
153, 156, 157, 163, 165, 167, Diogenes Laertius, 33
171, 175, 179, 181, 183, 184, Dionysus, 39, 53, 132, 157, 159,
195, 197, 199, 207–209 160, 162. See also drunkenness;
city, the, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, 20, 25, symposium/drinking party
26, 32, 35, 36, 43, 45, 47, 49, divine, 4, 7, 9, 20, 25, 35, 39–42,
51, 55, 56, 58, 60, 62, 69, 78, 47–53, 56, 59–61, 65, 70, 71,
79, 81, 82, 91, 93, 96, 99–103, 75, 77, 83, 85, 86, 94, 101, 102,
106, 108, 113, 115, 117–119, 107, 112, 113, 115, 118, 122,
122, 124, 125, 128, 132, 125, 127, 128, 137, 138, 142,
 INDEX 231

152–154, 156, 158–160, 165, friendship, 56, 57, 69, 88, 106, 107,
168, 170, 172, 179–181, 183, 139, 189
188, 190, 192, 194–196,
198–201
G
dogma/dogmatic, 17, 18, 35, 85,
god/gods, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 24,
147, 151, 174, 179, 180, 184,
25, 28, 31–33, 39–44, 47–49,
193, 196, 208
52, 56, 60–68, 70, 74–76, 78,
doubt, 12, 22, 73, 128, 163,
82–84, 86, 101–104, 117,
165–167, 175, 194, 202, 207
125–127, 137, 142–144, 152,
drug/medicine, 81, 82, 84, 104, 121,
158, 168, 180, 187, 188, 190,
130, 134, 159, 161, 172, 183
196, 199, 200, 204, 205, 213
drunkenness, 53, 161, 165, 183, 201.
imitation of. See godlikeness
See also Dionysus; symposium/
godlikeness, 24, 25, 40, 63, 64, 102,
drinking party
152, 205
Greece, 10
E greed, 69, 210
education, 52–54, 56–59, 65, 72, 73, Grote, George, 15, 33
96, 108, 117–120, 122, 126, Guthrie, W.K.C., 32, 34, 192
129–134, 136, 139–141, 148, Gymnastics, 42, 58, 121, 130
152, 153, 157, 158, 161, 163,
179, 183, 184, 192, 213 H
civic, 53, 54, 56, 57, 111, 117, Halliwell, Stephen, 143
119, 131, 161, 180, 183, 192 happiness, 43, 49, 50, 71, 74, 114,
philosophic, 54 116, 117, 128, 129, 139, 145,
Egypt, 135, 162, 195, 208 153, 154, 194
endurance (eupsuchia), 71, 137, 154, harmony, 53, 67, 69, 73, 95, 128,
157, 187, 188, 197, 213 132, 134, 159, 172, 178
Euripides, 39, 136, 148, 149 Herodotus, 32, 36, 149, 190
Hesiod, 27, 61, 72, 74, 138, 149
Hobbes, Thomas, 10, 51, 73, 204,
F
205, 209
fame, 116
Homer, 41, 143
family, 25, 46, 68, 69, 78, 89, 90,
honor, 10–14, 21, 22, 28, 63, 85–87,
93, 96, 100
89, 105, 140, 158, 173, 175
fear, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12–14, 22, 32, 33,
hubris, 8, 29, 64, 67, 200
36, 53, 58, 69, 87–91, 121, 128,
humility, 2, 19, 20, 22, 63, 75, 85,
130, 136, 139, 145, 152, 154,
197, 198, 202, 204, 205, 209,
157, 160–163, 167, 175, 178,
213
184, 194–198, 201, 207, 211
festivals, 53, 59, 188
forgetfulness/oblivion, 7, 88, 112, I
124, 158, 164, 169, 198, 209 ideas, the, 146, 185
232 INDEX

ignorance, 3, 22, 55, 90, 91, 124, 163, 165, 177, 178, 184, 192,
137, 138, 156, 161, 163, 165, 199, 202, 211
166, 169, 171, 172, 175, 176, Klosko, George, 33, 36, 37, 66, 72,
187, 188, 193, 198 151, 185, 186, 189, 191, 192,
image, 13, 23, 24, 32, 57, 58, 72, 220
73, 82, 84, 95, 111, 115, 122, Kraut, Richard, 34, 73, 188, 190
123, 128, 134, 144, 146, 149, Kronos, 61, 62, 64, 74, 149
159, 171, 174, 183, 191, 201 Kuhn, Helmut, 145
imitation, 25, 44, 51, 61, 62, 64–66,
75, 78, 79, 84, 91, 94–97,
100–103, 107, 112, 113, 117, L
119, 127, 128, 133, 134, 142, Lacedaemon, 53, 168, 170, 173
146, 151–153, 159, 185, 196, Laks, André, 34, 73, 102–104, 107,
199–201, 205. See also 142, 143, 145, 185
godlikeness; shadows law, 11, 15–18, 21, 24, 32, 33, 35,
impiety, 176, 177, 179, 183 40, 42–44, 47–50, 52, 54, 55,
injustice, 2, 5, 61, 68, 69, 90, 101, 58, 61, 62, 65, 67, 68, 70, 75,
134, 152, 153, 169, 189, 190, 80–85, 100, 101, 103–105, 111,
197, 198 115, 120, 122, 123, 125–129,
intelligence, 9, 17, 48–50, 55, 58, 60, 135, 137, 139, 142, 152, 153,
61, 64, 65, 70, 83, 107, 122, 155–157, 161–163, 165, 171,
123, 132, 137, 146, 152–157, 173, 175–177, 180–182, 184,
160–162, 168, 171, 173–175, 186, 190–193, 195, 196, 199,
180, 183, 184, 188, 189, 191, 208, 211, 212
196, 200 as custom/convention, 11, 13, 106,
141, 163
divine, 48–50, 52, 56, 58, 63, 65,
J 66, 68–70, 73, 128, 129, 134,
justice, 6, 7, 12, 17–19, 43, 45, 49, 136, 142, 153, 155, 161, 162,
61, 67, 69, 70, 81, 90, 106, 117, 168, 189, 199
133, 144, 154, 160, 169, 178, human, 43, 48, 54, 94, 125, 199
187, 188, 194, 195, 197, 210 rule of, 44, 62, 75, 83, 84, 94,
happiness and, 114, 117, 194 101, 103, 181, 184, 211
painful appearance of, 81. See also lawfulness, 54, 103, 156
shadows lawgiver, 6, 14, 18, 40–44, 47–49,
53, 55, 59, 60, 65, 69, 73,
79–82, 84, 89, 92, 94–101,
K 104–108, 111, 113, 117, 120,
Kleinias, 41–47, 49, 52, 53, 56–58, 121, 124, 130, 137–139, 142,
60, 62, 63, 65, 67–69, 71, 147, 148, 153, 154, 163, 166,
73–75, 77, 78, 92, 101–105, 167, 169, 171, 176, 177, 182,
107, 120–125, 129, 133–135, 183, 202, 208, 211
137–139, 144, 153, 156–158, Lewis, V. Bradley, 181, 186, 191
 INDEX 233

liberalism, 56, 204, 205, 209, 210, music, 118, 120, 128, 129, 132–135,
212 137, 138, 140, 141, 157, 159,
lie, 40, 57, 78, 90, 113, 117, 137, 176, 201
153, 166, 172, 173, 188, 194, myth, 22, 41, 45, 47, 60–62, 64,
199, 203, 208 122, 164
Locke, John, 10, 31, 210–212
Lutz, Mark J., 32, 33, 35, 36, 66, 67,
69, 72, 146, 186, 188 N
Lycurgus, 128, 138, 139, 149, 168 nature, 3, 5, 8–14, 19, 21, 34, 40,
42, 43, 48–50, 52, 59, 61, 62,
68, 73, 74, 79, 81–84, 105, 109,
M
111, 112, 114, 116, 119, 122,
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 68, 73, 74, 189
123, 126, 128, 130, 131, 134,
Mansfield, Harvey C., 35, 68, 74, 213
138, 143, 149, 155, 156, 163,
Master/despot, 4, 61, 74, 79, 81, 84,
172, 176–179, 183, 184, 191,
115, 125
192, 194, 196, 200–202, 204,
Megillus, 42, 44, 53, 55, 68, 69, 71,
209
103, 120, 129, 133, 138, 139,
147, 157, 165, 168–171, 173, necessity, 4, 6, 8, 20, 24, 43, 44, 48,
174, 178, 184, 199, 210 62, 78, 79, 81, 96, 127, 169,
Melzer, Arthur M., 22, 31, 32, 36 176, 188, 194, 196
memory, 4, 161, 164, 166, 179, 190 Newell, Waller R., 74, 106
Meyer, Susan Sauvé, 51, 70, 71, 73, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 30, 33, 143
145, 146, 189 nobility/noble, 2, 5, 6, 11, 13, 14,
Mill, J.S., 30, 33 22, 31, 34, 45, 51, 56, 57, 87,
Minos, 32, 41–44, 47, 48, 68, 83, 90, 98, 124, 152, 153, 157, 160,
113, 128, 191 164–167, 169, 172, 182, 187,
moderation, 5, 7, 9, 24, 28, 32, 36, 189, 190, 196, 202, 203
39, 40, 49, 53, 54, 63–66, 70, Nocturnal Council, 115, 144,
91, 104, 108, 152, 154, 156, 179–183, 186, 190–192, 208,
162, 172–174, 183, 187–189, 211
192, 197, 198, 201, 202, 208 Nussbaum, Martha C., 27, 145
modernity, 7, 148, 202, 203, 205,
209, 210
money, 88, 89, 106 O
Morrow, Glenn R., 34, 36, 71, 108, obedience, 8–10, 21, 24, 30, 42,
146, 181, 186, 190–192 54–56, 83, 100, 123, 125, 144,
mortal/mortality, 3, 4, 6, 7, 13, 14, 155, 173, 174, 178, 182, 185,
19–22, 32, 35, 39, 40, 44, 48, 189, 207
61–63, 76, 79, 83, 85, 87, 93, Odysseus, 67
94, 100, 114, 123–125, 127, Oedipus, 3
128, 142, 143, 171, 173, 177, opinion. See belief/conviction
179, 195, 201, 202 Orwin, Clifford, 75, 190
234 INDEX

P play, 18, 53, 55, 71, 120, 123, 128,

pain, 6, 13, 14, 53–55, 65, 72, 73, 129, 133
93, 119, 121–123, 128–130, pleasure, 12–14, 53–57, 69, 72, 73,
132, 134, 140, 141, 153, 157, 90, 108, 117, 121–123, 129,
161, 172, 174, 178, 179, 188, 132–135, 140, 148, 153, 159,
195, 196, 208 172, 178, 182, 187, 188, 195,
Pangle, Lorraine S., 29, 36, 188 202
Pangle, Thomas L., 29, 32, 36, 102, Plutarch, 35, 149, 188
106, 146, 188 poetry, 29, 104, 113, 117, 118, 143,
patriotism, 177 148, 152, 176
Pausanias, 149 poets, 7, 18, 28, 30, 95, 111–113,
peace, 42, 47, 61, 91 117–119, 133–135, 140, 141,
Persia, 138, 139 145, 159, 176, 185, 206
preludes, 17, 18, 80–86, 94, 101,
persuasion, 9, 30, 55, 72, 80, 82–84,
104–106, 176, 178
101, 178
Procrustes, 18, 35, 80
philosophy, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22,
prosthetic, 5, 156, 197
29, 66, 74, 93, 114–116,
providence, 112, 179
143–145, 151, 153, 164, 171,
prudence, 49, 54, 55, 58, 64, 79, 90,
174, 179, 183, 189, 191, 193,
101, 105, 122, 123, 152, 153,
197, 200, 201, 204, 209, 211,
156–158, 167, 171
212
punishment, 56, 80, 91, 106, 154,
piety, 3, 7, 31, 39, 51, 52, 67, 68,
156, 161, 178, 179, 181, 195,
86, 108, 156, 167, 184, 204
208
Plato puppet, 32, 57, 58, 72, 122, 123,
Apology, 116, 143 128, 132, 133, 146, 167, 171,
Crito, 4, 74 195
Epinomis , 145, 151
Euthyphro, 68
Gorgias , 27, 105, 113, 187 R
Laches , 187 reason, 2–4, 7, 9, 11, 13, 18–20, 27,
28, 30, 35, 42, 47–49, 54, 55,
Minos , 32, 113
59, 64, 72, 74, 80, 82–86,
Parmenides , 105
89–91, 95, 97, 100, 101, 104,
Phaedo, 34, 71
107, 113, 114, 116, 119, 126,
Phaedrus , 7, 37 129, 132, 136, 140, 142, 144,
Protagoras , 187, 188 152, 158, 166, 169, 172, 175,
Republic, 30, 72, 78, 104, 144 178, 187, 189, 194, 195, 197,
Sophist , 71 200, 202, 212
Statesman, 35, 105 regime, 3, 15, 19, 20, 25, 35, 36, 41,
Symposium, 66, 147 57, 60, 62, 63, 78, 81, 85,
Theaetetus , 7, 71, 115 91–93, 97–99, 101, 106, 107,
Timaeus , 66, 190 111, 112, 115, 118, 125, 127,
 INDEX 235

137–140, 156, 158, 163–165, shame/shameful, 3–6, 8, 14, 27–29,

168, 169, 173, 177, 179, 181, 32, 45, 47, 58–60, 67, 88, 89,
185, 189, 195, 200, 201, 209, 114, 128, 130, 131, 140–143,
210 152, 153, 157, 158, 160, 162,
reputation. See honor 165, 166, 169, 171, 175, 183,
respect, 4, 8, 10, 13, 27, 29, 52, 57, 195, 197, 202, 211
62, 75, 85, 86, 94, 114, 116, simplicity (euētheia). See ignorance
117, 132, 136, 140, 154–156, Socrates, 16, 17, 23, 32, 34, 35, 37,
161, 165, 177, 185, 187, 196, 40, 66, 69, 72, 75, 76, 79, 92,
199, 200, 206, 207 93, 103, 105, 111, 113–116,
paradox of, 27, 199, 200 143, 144, 148, 151, 152, 172,
reverence, 1, 4–9, 14, 16, 20, 22, 23, 174, 181, 187, 188, 196, 211
25, 27–30, 33, 36, 39, 40, 44, Solon, 66, 139
47, 49, 52, 61, 64, 66–68, 79, Sophocles, 143
88, 93, 102, 113–115, 128, 129, Sparta. See Lacedaemon
136, 137, 139–142, 145, 148, Stalley, Richard F., 33, 71, 72, 104,
149, 155, 156, 160, 162, 165, 189, 190, 192
167, 168, 175, 176, 179, 180, Strauss, Leo, 20–24, 27, 29, 34, 36,
183, 184, 188, 195–199, 202, 37, 50, 66–68, 71, 73, 75, 106,
203, 206, 207, 209–211, 213 144, 145, 147, 185, 196, 197,
object of, 148, 199 212
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 166, 212, symposium/drinking party, 53, 58,
213 59, 108, 111, 130–132, 141,
Rowe, Christopher, 73, 75 148, 161–163, 165, 168, 175,
183, 184, 189, 191, 201, 211.
See also Dionysus; drunkenness
S
safeguard, 10, 59, 129, 140, 152,
171, 179, 183, 184 T
Sakunanandan, Shalini, 29, 105 Taylor, Gabriele, 27
Saunders, Trevor J., 34, 72, 93, 94, testing, 66, 67, 82, 130, 162
107–109, 190 theology, 143, 177, 184
Saxonhouse, Arlene W., 29, 33, 143, De Tocqueville, Alexis, 30, 207, 212
213 Thucydides, 32, 36, 190
Schofield, Malcolm, 34, 37, 66, 73, tradition/traditional, 5, 7, 10–12, 16,
75, 93, 94, 103, 104, 107, 189 22, 30, 31, 33, 39, 44, 49, 52,
second best, 78, 79, 82, 96, 127, 61, 62, 66, 78, 93, 111, 113,
199, 202, 208 117, 141, 143, 148, 160,
self-control, 6, 32, 42, 153 164–166, 187, 190, 191, 204,
self-love, 88, 94, 106, 116, 145, 192 210
self-rule, 46, 72, 123 tragedy/tragic, 3, 6–8, 28, 31, 108,
shadows, 17, 22, 65, 136, 167, 180, 111–114, 116–119, 127, 128,
191, 198 133, 142–146, 148, 149, 178
236 INDEX

transgression, 149, 198, 200 wealth, 12, 49, 50, 96, 97, 116, 135,
tyrant/tyranny, 8, 20, 60–62, 65, 68, 166
74, 81, 82, 95, 96, 101, 104, Whitaker, Albert Keith, 45, 67, 68
113, 115, 116, 149 Williams, Bernard, 29, 33, 145
wine. See symposium/drinking party
wisdom, 7, 18, 20, 23, 48, 52, 64,
V 74, 75, 79, 82, 89, 90, 107, 115,
vice. See corruption 123, 137, 144, 155, 156, 166,
virtue 170–174, 183, 188, 197, 209,
civic/political, 6, 21, 22, 36, 210
56–58, 73, 89, 91, 105, 115, Woodruff, Paul, 3, 6, 7, 27–30, 37,
117, 128, 146, 154–156, 167, 72, 113–115, 142, 143, 148,
173, 174, 188, 195, 197, 198, 149, 198, 199, 205–207, 213
202, 209
philosophic/genuine, 20, 27, 70,
155–157, 175 X
unity of, 152, 154, 186 Xenophon, 36, 149, 190
Vlastos, Gregory, 33, 187
voluntary, 11, 15, 35, 90, 140, 152,
174 Z
Zeus, 41, 42, 44, 48, 61, 67, 68,
128, 134, 191
W Zuckert, Catherine, 37, 66–68, 72,
war, 42, 43, 45–47, 71, 171 146, 147