In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 Ἔρως and the Laws in Historical Context Mark Munn ἀ e Laws holds a special interest for historians, though not without the interpretive challenges that face anyone approaching a Platonic text with historical interests in mind. As opposed to Plato’s early dialogues, which represent themselves as, and in some cases may well reflect actual gatherings from the life of Socrates, the Laws does not generate historical interest by virtue of its narrative setting or of the personalities presented in the dialogue. Rather, historical interest arises from the Laws because it is the most socially descriptive, detailed, and, in a broad, cultural and historical sense, the most highly contextualized of Plato’s works. Although Plato envisions the formation of an ideal society in this work, historians of fourth-century Athens detect in it reflections of actual institutional developments, showing this work, theoretical as it is, to be remarkably specific to its historical context, the mid-fourth century.1 My observations here will begin by focusing on aspects of the Laws that I find particularly salient to students of Athenian institutions of the mid-fourth century . I will follow these historical observations with an appreciation of a more broadly cultural aspect of the Laws that leads to the same conclusion, namely, that the Laws reflects mores and attitudes that have shifted appreciably from those associated, in Plato’s earlier dialogues, with the lifetime of Socrates in the late fifth century. ἀ e aspect in question is the perspective on ἔρως that is presented in the Laws. Plato’s works as a whole naturally have a significant place in the study of ἔρως in classical Greek thought. Given the complex layering of voices and viewpoints presented to us in the works of Plato, we cannot simply take what we find in Plato’s writings to be the expressions of his own attitudes . But assuming, as I do, that in his Socratic dialogues Plato presents voices that are representative of salient attitudes and viewpoints current in his life and times, I find it instructive to compare the circumscribed role that ἔρως plays in 32 Mark Munn the Laws to its comparative prominence in earlier dialogues. It is no accident that the Laws is seldom mentioned in books like Waller Newell’s Ruling Passion : The Erotics of Statecraft in Platonic Political Philosophy and Laurence Cooper ’s Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche.2 Ἔρως, and the erotics of politics as depicted especially in the Symposium (or in the Symposia of both Plato and Xenophon), and as a theme reflected in the comedies of Aristophanes among other literary works, is a distinctive phenomenon of the later fifth century. ἀ e restricted play given to ἔρως in the Laws is symptomatic, I would argue, of a shift in attitudes since the lifetime of Socrates. A crude measure of this shift can be found in the fact that references to ἔρως and its cognates are about half as numerous in the Laws as they are in the Republic, leaving aside the dialogues, Symposium and Phaedrus, where ἔρως is announced as the topic of discussion.3 ἀ e Laws stands at the far end of Plato’s biographical relationship with fifthcentury discourse. It is probably significant that references to the Laws figure more prominently in Kathy Gaca’s book, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics , and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity, than do references to any other selections from the Platonic corpus. Gaca examines the subject of desire and its sublimation primarily from the perspective of Hellenistic philosophy and its aftermath, and the Laws is a major element in her point of departure (Gaca 2003, 23–58). As opposed to Plato’s other works, populated as they are with personalities from the lifetime of Socrates, in the Laws Plato has almost turned his back on the fifth century. ἀe Laws in historical context We may begin by considering the Laws as a work that reflects its historical place late in Plato’s lifetime, not far from his death in 347. At first glance, the setting of this conversation among three men is virtually timeless. ἀ e speakers themselves, Kleinias of Knossos, Megillus of Sparta, and an unnamed Athenian , are unknowns, and give us no historical anchor. ἀ e theme of lawgiving at the foundation of a new state aims at eternal truths and enduring institutions, and the scene is invested with an aura of venerable tradition. ἀ e cave of Zeus, which is the professed destination of this ambulating trio, is the place of origin of the most ancient...

Share