The Laws

By Plato

Categories: Politics & Social Sciences

Plato's longest dialogue and probably his last, the Laws follows three elderly men, an unnamed Athenian, the Cretan Clinias and the Spartan Megillus, on a walk across Crete. Clinias reveals that he is helping to found a new colony, and the three set out to design its constitution and laws. Their discussion covers education, marriage, property, religion, crime and punishment in detail, and the city they design is to be ruled by a detailed written code of law.

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• Steve Jobs: “I started to listen to music a whole lot, and I started to read more outside of just science and technology — Shakespeare, Plato. I loved King Lear.”