Plato, Laws

[752a] to lend you aid in the course of our present imaginative sketch. And indeed I should be loth to leave our sketch headless;¹ for it would look entirely shapeless if it wandered about in that guise.

Clinias
I heartily approve of what you say, Stranger.

Athenian
And what is more, I shall act as I say to the best of my power.

Clinias
By all means let us do as we say.

Athenian
It shall be done, if God will and if we can thus far master our old age. [752b]

Clinias
Probably God will be willing.

Athenian
Probably he will; and with him as leader let us observe this also—

Clinias
What?

Athenian
How bold and adventurous is the fashion in which we shall now have founded this State of ours.

Clinias
What is now specially in your mind, and what makes you say so?

Athenian
The fact that we are legislating lightheartedly and boldly for inexperienced men, in the hope that they will accept the laws we have now enacted. Thus much at least is plain, Clinias, to almost everyone—even to the meanest intelligence— [752c] that they will not readily accept any of those laws at the start; but if those laws could remain unchanged until those who have imbibed them in infancy, and have been reared up in them and grown fully used to them, have taken part in elections to office in every department of State,—then, when this has been effected (if any means or method can be found to effect it rightly) , we have, as I think, a strong security that, after this transitional period of disciplined adolescence, the State will remain firm. [752d]

Clinias
It is certainly reasonable to suppose so.

Athenian
Let us then consider whether we might succeed in providing an adequate means to this end on the following lines. For I declare, Clinias, that you Cnosians, above all other Cretans, not only ought to deal in no perfunctory manner with the soil which you are now settling, but ought also to take the utmost care that the first officials are appointed in the best and most secure way possible. The selection of the rest of them will be a less serious task; but it is imperatively necessary [752e] for you to choose your Law-wardens first with the utmost care.

Clinias
What means can we find for this, or what rule?

Athenian
This: I assert, O ye sons of Crete, that, since the Cnosians take precedence over most of the Cretan cities, they should combine with those who have come into this community to select thirty-seven persons in all from their own number and the community—nineteen from the latter body, and the rest from Cnosus itself;