48-518: The Laws ( Greek : Νόμοι, Nómoi ; Latin : De Legibus ) is Plato 's last and longest dialogue . The conversation depicted in the work's twelve books begins with the question of who is given the credit for establishing a civilization's laws . Its musings on the ethics of government and law have established it as a classic of political philosophy alongside Plato's more widely read Republic . Scholars generally agree that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older man, having failed in his effort to guide
96-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
144-701: A choice of laws, which the speakers imagine as a more or less coherent set for the new city they are talking about. The tenth book of the Laws most famously discusses the priority of soul: both explanatory priority and ontological priority. Plato here refutes the views of his predecessors who argued that soul (and what soul is related to, such as intelligence, knowledge, skill, etc.) is posterior to corporeal things such as earth and fire. The natural philosophers had explained soul, intelligence, and so on, in terms of corporeal things: corporeal things exist first and give rise to psychic phenomena. In contrast, Plato argues that soul
192-525: A fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as
240-513: A phrase used in Laws . Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and
288-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
336-542: A strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either
384-473: A virtuous soul. Gabriela Carone, for instance, maintains that Plato "does not dismiss the existence of a kind of evil soul as such." But more-recent scholarship has argued otherwise. In general, recent scholars have understood Plato's psychology to be such that souls are by their very nature intelligent (for it is by means of their intelligence that they move things), and that Plato's view of intelligence requires that intelligent things not be vicious; this rules out
432-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
480-496: Is a discussion among three old men contriving a device for reproductive law, with a view of hiding from virile youth their rhetorical strategy of piety, rituals and virtue. [838e] "I stated that in reference to this law I know of a device for making a natural use of reproductive intercourse,—on the one hand, by abstaining from the male and not slaying of set purpose the human stock, [839a] nor sowing seed on rocks and stones where it can never take root and have fruitful increase; and, on
528-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
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#1732772557144576-480: Is also said to be the longest day of the year, allowing for the densely packed twelve chapters. By the end of the third book Cleinias announces that he has in fact been given the responsibility of creating the laws for a new Cretan colony, and that he would like the Athenian stranger's assistance. The rest of the dialogue proceeds with the three old men, walking towards the cave and making laws for this new city which
624-575: Is called the city of the Magnetes (or Magnesia ). The question asked at the beginning is not "What is law?" as one would expect. That is the question of the Platonic dialogue Minos . The dialogue rather proceeds from the question, "who it is that receives credit for creating laws." The questions of the Laws are quite numerous, including: The dialogue uses primarily the Athenian and Spartan (Lacedaemonian) law systems as background for pinpointing
672-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
720-409: Is first, both as that in terms of which corporeal things ought to be explained and as that which gives rise to the corporeal world. Plato concludes this by relying on his view that the soul is intelligent and a self-mover and that soul is that which supervises the cosmos. There is an important scholarly discussion of whether Plato means to allow for there to be an evil soul governing the cosmos, alongside
768-507: Is held to be due to nature, but contrary to nature when male mates with male or female with female, and that those first guilty of such enormities were impelled by their slavery to pleasure. And we all accuse the Cretans of concocting the story about Ganymede to justify their "unnatural pleasures". Also, whereas the Republic is a dialogue between Socrates and several young men, the Laws
816-420: Is thought to have corrupted the pleasures of love which are natural not to men only but also natural to beasts. For this your States are held primarily responsible, and along with them all others that especially encourage the use of gymnasia. And whether one makes the observation in earnest or in jest, one certainly should not fail to observe that when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced
864-647: The Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of
912-410: The Laws closely in line with Plato's Republic and considered both works largely in agreement with one other. He viewed the Athenian's proposed number of 5,000 citizens fit to bear arms as too high. According to Aristotle, the resulting unproductivity of the citizens would necessitate a large number of women and servants, which would, in turn, require a large territory. Aristotle sees another problem in
960-487: The Laws dialogue. The impact of the Laws in antiquity was substantial. It is possible that Plato's contemporary Isocrates already took an interest in the work. Aristotle, who was critical of the dialogue, created a collection of excerpts from the extensive work. Aristotle incorrectly included the Laws as one of Plato's dialogues featuring Socrates; perhaps he knew another version in which Socrates appears, but most likely did not express himself clearly. Aristotle brought
1008-501: The Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
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#17327725571441056-693: The Spartan laws. Notably, the Constitution of the Spartans by Xenophon , the Constitution of the Athenians , wrongly attributed to Xenophon, and the Constitution of the Athenians , possibly by Aristotle or one of his students, have also survived. Some centuries later Plutarch would also devote attention to the topic of Ancient Greek law systems, e.g. in his Life of Lycurgus . Lycurgus
1104-603: The epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between
1152-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
1200-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
1248-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
1296-545: The Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for
1344-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
1392-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
1440-566: The city of the Republic is the best, but because it is the city of gods and their children. Traditionally, the Minos is thought to be the preface, and the Epinomis the epilogue, to the Laws , but these are generally considered by scholars to be spurious. Plato was not the only Ancient Greek author writing about the law systems of his day, and making comparisons between the Athenian and
1488-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
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1536-530: The dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under
1584-522: The dialogue Epinomis – generally considered to be Philippus of Opus – developed his work as a continuation of the Laws . As such, he let the same three persons appear in the dialogue as Plato: the Athenian, Cleinias, and Megillus. Just like Plato, he gave the Athenian the central role. In some instances, the views of the Athenian in Epinomis deviate from those of the Athenian in the Laws . The 2024 book The Greatest of All Plagues took its title from
1632-567: The divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at
1680-520: The language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek
1728-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
1776-486: The ordinary Spartan citizen Megillus and Cleinias of Crete , from Knossos . The Athenian Stranger joins the other two on their religious pilgrimage from Knossos to the cave of Zeus . The entire dialogue takes place during this journey, which mimics the action of Minos : said by the Cretans to have made their ancient laws, Minos walked this path every nine years in order to receive instruction from Zeus on lawgiving. It
1824-425: The other hand, by abstaining from every female field in which you would not desire the seed to spring up..." (and continuing) [839b] "... Possibly, however, some young bystander, rash and of superabundant virility, on hearing of the passing of this law, would denounce us for making foolish and impossible rules, and fill all the place with his outcries ..." The city of the Laws is described as "second best" not because
1872-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
1920-500: The rule of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse , instead having been thrown in prison. These events are alluded to in the Seventh Letter . The text is noteworthy as Plato's only undisputed dialogue not to feature Socrates . Unlike most of Plato's dialogues, Socrates does not appear in the Laws . The conversation is instead led by an Athenian Stranger ( Greek : ξένος , romanized : xenos ) and two other old men,
1968-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
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2016-467: The time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with
2064-431: The unchanging number of households amidst an increasing number of children. Aristotle notes that Plato does require a mixed constitution. However, he points out that Plato does not represent any element of a monarchy. In Aristotle's view, Plato's democratic portion is not profitable, while the oligarchical dominates. Aristotle's examination of the Laws shaped large portions of Books 7 and 8 of his Politics . The author of
2112-541: The very existence of written laws, from the city of the Republic, with its property-system and community of wives for the guardians, and absence of written law. [636b] So these common meals , for example, and these gymnasia , while they are at present beneficial to the States in many other respects, yet in the event of civil strife they prove dangerous (as is shown by the case of the youth of Miletus, Bocotia and Thurii);1 and, moreover, this institution, when of old standing,
2160-530: The very possibility of an evil soul. The Laws , like the earlier Republic , concerns the making of a city in speech. Yet it is in opposition to the earlier dialogue, and the constitution of the hypothetical Magnesia described in the Laws differs from that of Kallipolis described in the Republic, on several key points. The city of the Laws differs in its allowance of private property and private families, and in
2208-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
2256-452: Was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in
2304-655: Was the legendary law-giver of the Lacedaemonians. Plutarch compares Lycurgus and his Spartan laws to the law system Numa Pompilius supposedly introduced in Rome around 700 BC. Both pseudo-Xenophon and Plutarch are stark admirers of the Spartan system, showing less reserve than Plato in expressing that admiration. Georgios Gemistos , who called himself Plethon in his later life, wrote and named his Nómōn syngraphḗ (Νόμων συγγραφή) or Nómoi (Νόμοι, "Book of Laws") after
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