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6 It is Difficult for a City with Good Laws to Come into Existence: On Book 4 Michael P. Zuckert I. Prologue ἀ e subtle action of Book 4 can be appreciated only when it is seen in relation to Book 3. Only at the end of Book 3 does Cleinias divulge to the Athenian that he and nine others have been charged to form a new colony. ἀ is is perhaps the most decisive and surprising moment of the dialogue. He seeks the Athenian ’s aid in his enterprise. It is an amazing coincidence that one of these three idle talkers about laws actually has the opportunity to legislate. But more amazing is the observation we cannot help but make that Cleinias has been walking with this apparently knowledgeable Athenian since dawn and it is only now, three-quarters of the way to noon, that he divulges to the Stranger his task and only now attempts to enlist the Athenian in the enterprise. ἀ at new task sets the tone for the rest of the Laws, but most immediately for Book 4. But why does Cleinias only now divulge his task and enlist the Athenian in it? ἀ ere seem to be two possible answers. He might not have thought that the Athenian had much to contribute—he might not possess any particular wisdom about legislation. Alternatively (or in addition) he might not have trusted the Athenian—he might have respected the Athenian’s wisdom but not have trusted him to use it for the good of the Cretans. On the trust front (and perhaps on the wisdom front as well) the Athenian gets off to a shaky start: he praises the drinking parties of Athens, a practice Cleinias was prejudiced against and one that is emphatically Athenian and not Dorian. For the Athenian to praise an Athenian institution seems to be an act of loyalty and attachment to his native city, a sign that he favors his own culture and cannot be entrusted with the task of legislating for Cretan Dorians. Cleinias’s hesitations about the Athenian are no doubt further fed by the latter’s It Is Diἀ cult for a City with Good Laws 87 critique of Dorian laws in Book 1 as aiming only at a part of virtue and not the whole of it. What then happens during the course of Book 3 to lead Cleinias to disclose his mission as a lawgiver? Most immediately preceding Cleinias’s divulgence is an exchange between Megillus and the Athenian concerning the growth of liberty in Athens. ἀ at exchange is persistently punctuated by the Athenian’s raising the question, why are we having this conversation about laws? At 699e the Athenian says, “But consider now . . . if what we’re speaking of is pertinent to lawgiving. . . . ἀ at’s why I’m going through all this, I’m not doing it for the sake of the myths.” At 701c he asks, “why, again, have all those things been said by us?” and adds immediately: “I must once more repeat my question and ask— ’for the sake of what have all these things been said?’ “ (701d). And finally, just before Cleinias speaks up, the Athenian once again emphasizes that “all these things have been discussed for the sake of understanding how a city might best be established sometime and how in private someone might best lead his own life. But what sort of a test in conversation might we ever set for ourselves in speech, Megillus and Cleinias, to reveal whether we have been making ‘something useful’?” (702b). As if by divine coincidence Cleinias just happens to furnish the perfect “test”—his new colony. Unless we have here a particularly artless kind of writing by Plato, it is difficult not to see the Athenian’s persistent raising of the question of “what is our point here” and his constant hammering away at the practical aims of their conversation (in real contrast with Socrates in the Republic) as fishing. ἀ e Athenian seems to know or somehow divine that Cleinias has just such a charge and is not so subtly urging him to bring it forward. If that is so, and it certainly seems much more likely than the alternative, then we might think of Book 3 (or perhaps the whole of Books 1–3) as an effort by the Athenian to win Cleinias’s confidence so that he can become a partner, or at least a trusted advisor, in the founding of the new city...

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