11  No Country for Young Men: Eros as Outlaw in Plato’s Laws

Francisco J. Gonzalez

The topic of this essay is a part of Book 8 consisting of little more than six pages of the Greek text (835b5–842a10) often treated by interpreters as a digression (“una digresión” [Lisi 2001, 38]) and therefore passed over without much comment.1 Sandwiched between legislation concerning sacred festivals and a discussion of the economic organization of the state, this treatment of how the law is to impose proper measure on erotic desires is indeed technically a digression. Yet even if we did not already know that digressions in Plato are often much more important than what they digress from, an attentive reading reveals that the content of this particular digression so threatens, and in such fundamental ways, the overall project of legislation carried out in the dialogue as a whole that it resembles more a derailment than a digression. Indeed that the discussion should need to digress in order to address the problem of erotic desire is no accident. By the time we reach the end of this short discussion of how to master erotic desire in the citizens, the preferred law is abandoned in favor of a fatally flawed “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, persuasion gives way to force, and the founder of the new colony of Magnesia withholds his assent. Indeed throughout this text things seem just not right, out of joint, even rather absurd. My aim in this essay is simply to survey the landscape of this text and draw attention to its many odd features with the ultimate aim of showing how it leaves image outside of the law and thus leaves the law itself looking rather ineffectual. The project of legislation will of course need to continue, but now with a disturbing awareness of its limits.

The Athenian makes clear from the very start of the digression that they are about to confront a problem greater than any encountered so far and that the means they have so far relied on will fall short. Specifically, he indicates the greater difficulty the task of legislating concerning sexual relations will pose in comparison to what has come before: persuasion in these matters is indeed so difficult (image, 835c1), we are told, that the task properly belongs to a god. The Athenian is aware, of course, that the laws cannot come directly from a god and that the legislation carried out in this dialogue is a human enterprise. Absent a god, then, we require here a bold man (image, c3) who especially values frankness (image, 835c4) and who will act alone guided by reason alone (image, 835c8). This final double-qualification is striking. The insistence that the legislator must here act alone suggests than any consultation with others will weaken his action. The insistence on being guided by reason alone suggests that the legislation needed requires freedom from the influence of any and all desire. This man acting alone and by reason alone is evidently, if not a god in fact, as god-like as possible.

But why should legislation concerning sexual relations require, more than other legislation considered so far, such a god-like legislator? When the Athenian finally reveals the kind of law that will prove so difficult he specifies the reasons for the difficulties:

1) Indulgence in sexual desires will be especially tempting precisely in the state they have been constructing, since its citizens will be exempt from hard and menial labor and will be concerned chiefly with sacrifices, feasts, and dances (835d6–e2).

2) While the majority of desires can be mastered by the laws already established and by the watchful eye of the magistrates, while, in other words, these means can preserve the measure (image) in these other desires (image, 836α5–6), in the case of erotic desires (image, 836α7) it is not at all easy (image image, 836b4) to find the image (836b3) that could save us from danger.

3) While the examples of Crete and Lacedaemon have helped us in the case of laws on many other matters, they are of no help here, in fact contradicting what we need to establish.

One cannot overemphasize the seriousness of these difficulties. According to the first, the legislation carried out so far in constructing the colony of Magnesia does not make the task of mastering erotic desires easier but, on the contrary, much harder. There will be more of a problem with indulgence in sexual desire in our ideally constituted and ruled city than in any contemporary city. The second stated difficulty, i.e., that erotic desires are not to be kept in check by the means suggested earlier for imposing measure on other desires, represents a significant departure from Books 1 and 2 where the institution of the symposium was defended as a means of helping us master pleasures by partly indulging them in a controlled environment (see, e.g., 645d, 649d, 673e). There image is included among other desires and pleasures (such as anger, cowardice, etc.), given no special status, and not claimed to be especially problematic. If Book 8 is completely silent with regard to the institution of the symposium,2 this is presumably because erotic desires are now recognized to pose a special problem that this institution will be incapable of solving. Indeed the first difficulty, with its reference to the danger posed by all of the sacrifices, feasts, and dances, suggests that the symposiums will be part of the problem rather than the solution. Finally, the third difficulty notes that in legislating about sexual relations we will have no currently existing models to follow: here even the constitutions of Crete and Lacedaemon are not part of the solution but part of the problem (see 636a–b).3

What kind of law, then, is needed here and what kind of case can be made for it by our god-like legislator? We learn that sexual relations between men and boys will need to be outlawed. We are then given two arguments in support of such legislation. The first is that even in the case of wild beasts male does not touch male for the purpose of sexual intercourse.4 The second argument appeals to the principle that the laws should promote virtue and asserts that homosexual relations engender in the characters of seducer and seduced not temperance and courage but their opposites (836d–e). What, then, are we to make of these arguments?

The first argument has been seen by a number of commentators as more of a rhetorical ploy.5 Strong evidence for this view is to be found in a passage from Book 1 in which this so-called argument is first mentioned: when the Athenian there says that one must consider that the pleasure of male mating with female for procreation is natural while that of male mating with male or female with female is contrary to nature, he prefaces his remark with the qualification: “whether it is in jesting or in seriousness that it is necessary to consider this” (636c1–2). Here the possibility is explicitly acknowledged that the “against-nature” argument is a jest rather than something having a serious claim to truth. Even if the remark does not positively deny seriousness to the argument, and even if it fits within the general playful tone of the dialogue, it at least falls short of a ringing endorsement, and understandably so, given the argument’s apparent weakness.6 Is it perhaps then simply that “drug” the Athenian suggests is necessary to counter the danger of erotic desire? But that drug was described as not at all easy to find, whereas the “against-nature” argument has been around since Book 1 and, far from being sophisticated or hard to argue, appears only to reproduce a common trope, not to say prejudice. The argument that homosexual love makes the partners cowardly and intemperate is not much more sophisticated or compelling: not only is this claim questionable, but it is directly contradicted both by what is argued in the Symposium and the Phaedrus and by a well-documented tradition of associating homosexual image with courage and military prowess (see Dover 1989, 191–192). In short, neither argument seems worthy of a god-like legislator following reason alone. Indeed we already begin to see one of the striking features of the text under consideration: the wide gap between what is said to be required for adequate legislation in the area of erotic desires and what we are actually offered. We need a god-like individual guided by reason alone, but all we get is some rather weak rhetoric that is hard to take seriously as a rationally compelling argument.

One of the problems with both so-called arguments, of course, is that they appear to treat all homosexual love as the same, without distinguishing between different forms. This is presumably why the Athenian next recognizes the need to define the terms at issue in this legislation. Strikingly, he begins by distinguishing two types not of image but of image: one in which what is like is image to what is like according to virtue, or even what is equal to what is equal (image, 837a7);7 and another in which what is needy is image to the rich as to its contrary (image, 8). The first thing to note is that these two kinds of image simply reproduce two traditional conceptions of image that are therefore in the Lysis attributed to the poets and natural philosophers (213d6–216b9). If we further note that both conceptions are in the Lysis shown to be inadequate and refuted, we must conclude that the Athenian is here content with simply following common opinion and established tradition. In other words, while the Lysis seeks to arrive at the truth about image through philosophical argumentation, the present discussion appeals to popular views with no greater aim than persuasion. This is confirmed by what the Athenian proceeds to tell us about the nature of image. If in the Symposium and the Phaedrus image is given extraordinary metaphysical import, here it becomes nothing more than great “intensity” (image, 837a9)8 in the relations of image already described. In other words, if image means liking each other, whether because we are alike or unlike, image means really, really, really liking each other. Such an analysis of image is clearly not intended for the philosophically enlightened, but can only serve the purpose of persuading the ignorant to accept a law that suppresses image as much as possible.

But what in fact do the Athenian’s definitions tell us about the meaning and import of the law he is defending? Since he proceeds to say that the law will prohibit the image between unequals but will encourage the image between equals (837d), is erotic desire countenanced when it is between equal men and does such erotic desire include physical relations or sexual intercourse? From what the Athenian says, it is clear that erotic desire in the narrower sense of physical, sexual desire is confined to the friendship between unequals and has no place in the friendship between equals.9 Thus when he recognizes the possibility of a third kind of love that is really nothing more than a mixture of the first two (image, 837b4), he characterizes it as one in which the lover is torn between two different desires: one that craves the bloom of the beloved as if it were a ripening peach and the other that desires the soul and puts beholding in the place of image (837b8–d1). The law, therefore, in allowing for a pure friendship between equals who only behold each other’s souls, still bans all erotic, sexual desire between men under the assumption that such desire can exist only among unequals. Furthermore, the emphasis on equality appears to rule out even chaste pederasty. If such a relationship is described in the text, it is as that confused, mixed form of love in which the lover is torn between sexual desire and a friendship of virtue.

Yet these superficial definitions of the terms hardly make the law more compelling or persuasive. This is made clear by what happens in the discussion at this point: while the Athenian gains the agreement of Megillus, he does not even try to gain the assent of Cleinias, for whose colony they are supposedly legislating. Instead he confesses that he must postpone the attempt to persuade Cleinias to a later time. But that is not all: even when he finally gets to persuading Cleinias, he will do so not through rationally compelling arguments, but through charms (image, 837e6). If the Athenian cannot persuade Cleinias now and must instead resort to some unspecified charm at some later date, what chance is there that the ordinary citizens of Magnesia will be persuaded to accept this law?

Perhaps anticipating this objection, the Athenian now assures us that he knows of a special device (image, 837e9) for enacting this law. Yet if we eagerly await a clear explanation of this marvelous device, we will be disappointed. Indeed a bizarre feature of the pages that follow is the way in which the Athenian repeatedly claims to possess this image while at the same time leaving as obscure as possible what exactly it consists of. He first points out that to keep men from having sexual intercourse with beautiful people who are their brothers and sisters or sons and daughters, it has sufficed simply to say that these acts are hated by the gods (838a–c). So is the vaunted image simply a matter of asserting that homosexual love is hated by the gods and shameful? But as even the otherwise agreeable Megillus objects, what is required is an explanation of how the lawgiver will make all of the citizens willing to say that the prohibited loves are impious and shameful (838e2–3). The Athenian in response once again claims to possess a image (e5). Yet this second claim leads to no clarification of the exact nature of this device.

Instead we get a new description of the law that assigns it an aim not yet indicated: that of making a natural use of sexual intercourse for the sake of reproduction (image, 838e6). It consequently turns out that the law is to prohibit not only intercourse between men, but also intercourse between men and women not for the purpose of child-bearing. The justification is that intercourse in both cases would be a waste of sperm (838e8) and thus against nature, making the law that prohibits such intercourse itself image (839a6). That this is indeed a new description of the law is clear if we consider that sexual intercourse between men and women did not even figure in the classification of the different types of image: given the insistence on the inferiority of women throughout the dialogue (see 781b; 917a; 944d) and the fact that we are speaking here of sexual intercourse, the relationship between men and women can clearly not be classified under that image between equals approved of earlier; it also cannot be classified under that image between unequals that was earlier completely prohibited. Here we have another of the many incoherencies in this text.

Yet do we not now have a new justification for the law, namely, that it accords with nature in prohibiting the waste of sperm? But now comes perhaps the strangest moment in this very strange stretch of dialogue. The Athenian imagines hearing the outcries of an aggressive young man described as “full of much sperm” (image, 839b4). This description, glossed over by prudish translations, is significant in the context: a young man full of much sperm is not going to worry about wasting sperm and therefore will find the present justification of the law completely uncompelling. But do not worry: the Athenian informs us that it was precisely in anticipation of such outcries that he claimed earlier to be armed with a image. What, then, finally, is this image? The Athenian helpfully informs us that it is both very easy and very difficult (b6–c1). It is easy to enact the law and have it obeyed if the citizens are inspired with sufficient religious dread. The difficulty is the strength of unbelief (image, d4) that makes people refuse to recognize the possibility of such a law. Throughout these comments it still remains frustratingly unclear just what the vaunted image amounts to. It would presumably need to be a way of defeating the strength of unbelief and showing that public opinion can be made to feel dread before the law. But what is this way? What device can help us against our young man on sperm-overload?

We might finally get the answer when the Athenian next claims to have a logos to demonstrate that enactment of the law is not beyond human beings but possible (839d7–9): a logos he describes as partaking of some persuasiveness (image, 839d8–9). Here it is: if athletes can abstain from sex while they are in training, then why can our citizens not do the same while in training for what they will be charmed from childhood (image, 840c2) into believing is the greatest of all victories: the victory over pleasure (840c5)? Just how persuasive, then, is this logos? The opening comments of this section already made clear that erotic desires are going to be much harder to charm away through some drug than other desires. Our young man full of sperm might be able to control himself for a while in training for the next chariot race, but is he going to be willing to refrain always from any extra-marital sexual relations because of some charm we have said over him since childhood? In any case, the Athenian insists that this logos is enough: the law must go forward and with no more justification than the appeal to nature made earlier: our citizens should be no worse (perhaps also no better) than animals who pair off into heterosexual pairs when they come to the age for breeding (840d–e). Are we to hear our pacified young man now yelling, “Yea team!”?

Even if we are convinced that our virile young man could be charmed into containing his sperm, we immediately are faced with the most significant defeat (for it is hard to know what else to call it) in this discussion. Even if we could charm our own citizens from childhood, what will happen when they come into contact with the citizens of other cities and hear of the power and pleasure of lawless erotic desires? Even if everything possible has been done to isolate our city and close it off to the foreign, the Athenian must grant that the citizens could still indeed be corrupted by other Greeks and barbarians and thus, hearing of and seeing the great power of the “lawless Aphrodite” among them (image, 840e4–5), be turned against the law. What, then, is the solution to this significant problem? The response should surprise and even shock: despite having defended the possibility of this law and attempted to justify it, the Athenian now tells us that in the mentioned case of corruption through contact between our city and other cities (a situation presumably unavoidable) the law will simply have to be given up for another that is only second best (image, 841b6). This retreat from a law whose importance has been repeatedly stressed is no minor defeat. Erotic desires have indeed proven a special case since their victory over a law that has been defended as the best is unprecedented in the dialogue. Furthermore, just how much has been conceded here to erotic desires becomes evident when we consider the second-best law that is now introduced. If it has proven impossible to outlaw the practice of the sexual acts in question, then all that remains is to outlaw their appearance. The second-best law will therefore demand only that the previously prohibited sexual acts be kept concealed (image image, 841b2–3). Putting aside the lack of psychological insight shown by the Athenian when he suggests that the requirement of concealment will make these erotic desires lose their force and become rare, the idea of a law that demands and legalizes deception is in itself deeply troubling. The virile young man must be rejoicing at the trouble he is causing his elders.

If possible, however, matters get even stranger. Apparently fearing that those with corrupted natures (image, 841b7) will fail to obey even the second-best law, the Athenian asserts that they will be forced (image, 841c1–2) to obey by three things: fear of god, love of honor, and desire for the beautiful forms of the soul rather than of the body (c4–6). The unavoidable question here is why the Athenian has switched from talk of “charming” to talk of “forcing.” The answer presumably is to be found in the very incoherence of what the Athenian is suggesting here: those with corrupted natures are clearly not going to be naturally motivated by a fear of god or a love of honor or a desire for beautiful psychic forms.10 Some sort of force will necessarily need to intervene. But if even the second-best law commanding universal hypocrisy can be upheld only through some sort of force, the Athenian’s proposal appears increasingly implausible. This is presumably why he suddenly grants at this point that the things he has said are perhaps like the wishful thinking (image) one finds in a story (image, c6–7). It is indeed the case that as this section of the dialogue progresses the Athenian sounds more and more like an idle dreamer.

Undeterred nevertheless, the Athenian once again appeals to force in asserting that we will force (image, 841d1) one of two things regarding erotic matters: either that no one will touch anyone but his spouse or that any man who has extramarital affairs will keep this hidden from everyone (image image, 841e1–2) on pain of being disqualified from any kind of civic honor. But now we are suddenly and abruptly informed of a qualification: the laxity of the second-best law will not apply to love between men; that will not be tolerated even if kept hidden! (841d5). So the law we are apparently left with is as follows: do not engage in extramarital sex unless you have to, in which case restrict it to the opposite sex and keep it hidden from everyone else. Our virile young man might now be scratching his head and wondering why he would obey the law regarding the sex of his partner when he is at the same time commanded to keep the whole relationship under cover; behind the veil of deception and false reputation, why would he not deposit his excess sperm wherever he pleases?

Perhaps this problem prepares us for the very strange conclusion of this utterly strange discussion: while Megillus claims to be happy with what has been said and enthusiastically accepts the law,11 Cleinias, when asked for his opinion, postpones giving it until the right occasion (image, 842a8). As we have seen, up to now the Athenian has not even sought Cleinias’s agreement, clearly fearing that he would not receive it. Now Cleinias explicitly refuses his assent and offers to give his opinion only later when the occasion is right. We are given no indication of what would count as the right occasion, and we can assume that there is no way of specifying or defining in advance what would constitute the right occasion; certainly no law could determine it. There is therefore not even any guarantee that the right occasion will ever come. Furthermore, since Cleinias is the one whose job it is to found the colony of Magnesia, his deferral of opinion leaves the Athenian’s proposal for dealing with erotic desires in suspense, not only here in Book 8, but for the remainder of the dialogue. Not only has the law judged best given way to a second-best law, but even the latter is left hanging.

This analysis of the “digression” in Book 8 has highlighted the tensions, incoherencies, failures, abrupt shifts, and just plain oddities that characterize it. What I wish to do in conclusion is to argue, on the basis of this analysis, that erotic desires have compromised, if not even derailed, the project of legislation as described in other books of the Laws. Most of the following problems threatening this project have been present just below the surface throughout the dialogue, but the problem of regulating image brings them fully to the fore and in an unprecedented way:

1) For the first and only time in the Laws, a law judged to be correct must be abandoned in favor of a law that is less correct.12 This is not to deny that there are other examples of compromise in the Laws. The use of the lot is a concession to the inability to realize perfectly the more divine equality of giving due measure to things unequal (757d–e). The laws regulating who gets married to whom are acknowledged to occasion anger and resentment, so that they require the support of persuasion (773c–d). Regulations concerning the upbringing of children must be left unwritten out of fear that written laws would incur ridicule (790a), though this does not prevent the Athenian from proceeding to regulate children’s games. The laws concerning inheritance, given that they require kin to marry kin with no consideration given to the qualities of the two parties, are acknowledged to be burdensome and likely to be resisted in some cases (925d–e). Therefore, provision is made for one of the parties to make the case, before either the law-wardens or the judges, that the lawgiver, if he were present, would not have enforced the law in this particular case (926c). However, all of these instances of recognizing resistance to the laws and making concessions are quite different from the case in Book 8 for the simple reason that they do not go so far as to revoke a law in favor of some inferior law. The closest parallel13 is the recommendation of common meals for women: while the Athenian considers this arrangement something good and practically indispensable (780c), he does allow for the possibility of its being rejected after closer examination (783b). However, this arrangement does not encounter the kind of problems we have seen the law regarding image face, and the Athenian therefore does not go so far as to propose an alternative, second-best arrangement.

The Athenian does indeed express uncertainty at 841e45 about whether we should speak here of two laws or of one, and this might tempt one to conclude that what is proposed in Book 8 is not so radical after all, i.e., simply a revision or qualification rather than an abandonment of one law for another. However, the reason for the Athenian’s uncertainty is presumably that what the second law commands is simply the appearance of what the first law commands in fact. The second-best arrangement is therefore not so much a second law or a different conception of what is just, but rather a license to obey the first law in appearance while violating it in deed. This substitution of a law for its fraudulent appearance only makes Book 8 all the more anomalous. Even if the Athenian is willing to compromise on common meals for women, he never suggests as a solution putting up a sign outside the dining halls that reads “Women Admitted” while in fact barring them from entering.

2) For the first and only time in the Laws, not only is a significant part of the moral lives of the citizens left outside the purview of the laws, but the law must explicitly demand that the citizens keep their behavior hidden from all. Though even the size of their utensils is determined by law (746d–747b), the citizens are to keep their sexual behavior to themselves! Earlier at 785a1, the Athenian does indeed say that sexual conduct shall be passed over in silence by the law unless it becomes a problem, but presumably the words in Book 8 cited above represent a recognition that sexual conduct will become a problem and unavoidably so. That the laws should not only pass over in silence a major and clearly problematic aspect of the private lives of the citizens but should actually command secrecy and deception with regard to it is an idea truly unique to Book 8. Pradeau does not appear to recognize this exception when he claims the following to be true of the project in the Laws as a whole: “What Plato thereby rules out from the outset is that an activity could be authorized in silence or out of the reach of the law.”14 What makes the proposal in Book 8 so shocking is precisely that Pradeau is absolutely right with regard to the rest of the dialogue.

In Book 7 (788a–c) we are told that while it might seem improper and undignified to legislate about small and trivial things, allowing the citizens to get into the habit of going against the law (image) even in these small and trivial matters will destroy (image) the laws (788b6-c1). Book 5 (738e) speaks of the need for everyone in the city to know everyone else so that no one’s character can remain in the dark. At one point in Book 8 itself (838c8–d2) public opinion (image) is praised for its power of preventing people from even breathing (image) against the law. Against this background, a law that legislates the concealment of an important part of the lives of the citizens and thereby undermines its own power to shape their characters represents a shocking aberration.15

J.-M. Bertrand, who has seen well the magnitude of what is proposed and conceded here, writes of the second-best law that it “institutes dissimulation as a formal obligation”16 and then expresses as follows the evident contradiction: “In this way is formed within the city, where nothing should nevertheless remain hidden, a world in which no one is required to confess his perversity.”17 The problem of image, in short, has not only defeated a particular law, but has undermined the very foundation of the project of legislation carried out in the Laws. In doing so, it perhaps only exposes an inescapable hypocrisy built into the city as proposed. In an extraordinary passage later in the dialogue, the Athenian proposes the abolition of oaths sworn in court on the grounds that “almost half” of the citizens would otherwise certainly perjure themselves (948d–e).18 This argument appears to acknowledge significant de facto dissimulation and dishonesty within the city. And since the adulterers are expected and even required to lie, they least of all, presumably, should be made to swear an oath!

3) The ideal of combining persuasion with force that constitutes one of the other central pillars to the project of the Laws (see the end of Book 4) must here be abandoned. When persuasion becomes nothing but wishful thinking and telling stories, one must have recourse to force and force alone. Stories or mythoi of course play a part in the prelude to other laws: at 870d and 872d–e, for example, a prelude is supplemented by a image according to which the avenger of kindred blood ordains that the doer must in time suffer what he has done (see also 713a). But here in Book 8 we do not have such a specific mythos with a serious point, but only general wishful thinking. There is a parallel to such wishful thinking in Book 5 when the objection is raised that the legislator is simply assuming the citizens will comply, as if he were dreaming or making a city and citizens out of wax (746a7–8). The response made there is that the legislator must make the pattern as perfect as possible and then be willing to modify details in its realization (746b–c). But what makes the parallel far from exact is that in Book 8, as we have seen, the problems with both the preferred law and the second-best law amount to much more than a mere modification of details. A better parallel is perhaps the recourse in Book 10 to an argument against the atheists that not only is too long for a prelude (887a3) but that also oversteps the bounds of legislation (image, 891d7–8). The Athenian is even indignant at having to provide an argument when songs and stories should suffice (887c–888a) and admits that his arguments are spoken somewhat excessively (image, 907b10) in the desire for victory over wicked men (907b–c).19 Another similarity is that the argument in Book 10 is directed against a young man (900c) and in general people corrupted in mind (image, 888a5) and suffering from a sickness (image) (888b8). The argument is furthermore described as rather too much for old men like Megillus and Cleinias, so that the Athenian must present it by himself (892d–893a). But these parallels only emphasize the difference: that in Book 8 there is in the end no adequate argument and therefore no recourse but force.20 The argument about doing what is natural in imitating animals, if we do not take it as a jest, has at least been shown to have little power of persuasion, and the special image repeatedly claimed by the Athenian has been seen to be so vague and so ill-defined as to prove rather its absence.

4) For the first and only time in the Laws, a major law fails to win the consent of Cleinias who is the one in charge of founding the new colony of Magnesia (702b–d).21 Even if his consent were eventually to be won, the difficulty of procuring it does not bode well for the effectiveness of the law in question. Indeed not even the compromise or second-best law wins Cleinias’s consent. In contrast, when the Athenian encounters the young atheists in Book 10, he has Cleinias immediately and completely on his side.22

5) Persuading Cleinias, and presumably therefore also the citizens, is made to depend on the “opportune moment.” But this image is the one thing the law cannot control. When and if the opportune moment should arise for its acceptance is not in the law’s power. Thus the project of legislation is here made dependent on something beyond the scope of law and thereby rendered uncertain and precarious. This dependence of the law on the image along with chance (image) is indeed a theme present throughout the dialogue. At 709b7 the Athenian tells us that all human matters are steered by God “along with the opportune moment and chance [image image].”23 If the Athenian proceeds to allow image a place here, it is only in the name of being “less harsh” (image). Significantly, one event in which both image and image are said to play an essential role is Cleinias’s encounter with the Athenian and Megillus at the very time that he has been assigned the task of producing a legal code for a new colony (702b5, b7). Thus one can conclude that if image and image are at the origin of the present conversation and thus the present project of legislation, the problem of image shows the ability of both to derail and indefinitely postpone this project. This conversation found the opportune moment to begin, but now it must await the opportune moment for dealing with image.

It is incredible, to say the least, that such a short stretch of text should so profoundly undermine in these five related ways the project of legislation carried out in the dialogue as a whole. It is as if everything that has been kept under covers in the rest of the dialogue rears its head here in the guise of image. It is as if our hot-headed “seminal” youth embodied everything opposed to the legislative “play” of our sober old men (685a7–8; see also 712b1–2 and 769a1). And when erotic desires are thus granted their brief say, the result is a perversion of the law, a division among our legislators in the dialogue, an abandonment of persuasion for force, and a deferral of the universality of law to the opportune moment. The project of legislation will of course continue. The old men will pursue their sober play. But we are left wondering where their city will be founded and become a reality if it is no city for young men.

Notes

1. Thomas Pangle’s interpretative essay, for example, skips it entirely, concluding his discussion of Laws 8 at 835b (Pangle 1980, 495–496).

2. Holger Thesleff and Debra Nails have seen here a sign of the dialogue’s composition by different hands (2003, 26). But it seems to me that the silence could be intentional.

3. For general discussion of the scanty and conflicting evidence for the acceptance of homosexuality in Sparta and Crete, see Dover 1989, 185–196. Dover also considers, with a healthy dose of skepticism, the view that homosexuality originated with the Dorians. In a postscript, however, he grants that the earliest extant depiction of homosexual courting comes from Crete, 650–625 bce (205).

4. According to the manuscripts, this argument would perhaps be persuasive (image image), but Bury’s translation follows Badham’s emendation of image, which does not seem to make sense in the context. The argument based on nature is certainly presented as a persuasive one elsewhere in the dialogue. Pangle, however, can adopt Badham’s reading and make sense of it by offering a translation that limits the “unpersuasiveness” to the cities of Crete and Sparta: “his argument would probably be unpersuasive, and not at all in consonance with your cities.”

5. Sandra Boehringer characterizes this argument from nature as only a rhetorical strategy (and therefore the Athenian’s reference to a image) and one that relies on anthropomorphic depictions of animals that makes them like ideal humans (2007, 63–64). The argument, she claims, is not rational, but rests on a falsification (63). And such paralogisms are justified by the end of producing future offspring for the city.

6. Dover characterizes it as “weak, if only because Plato knew virtually nothing about animals …” (1989, 167)!

7. See 693c and 701d for the claim that friendship and wisdom are the same goal. Friendship with the gods is also based on similarity (716d). But how is the above compatible with the claim at 776a that longing and distance are essential to the bond of image?

8. The same word is used to characterize excessive love of self (731e) and is there said to result in blindness with regard to the object of one’s love (731e–732a).

9. See Follon 2003. Though granting that the distinction initially made between image and image appears to be only one of intensity (188), Follon argues that the suggestion of violence and vehemence in this intensity “seems to suggest” that “in a strict sense” image should be confined to the second and third forms of image (i.e., not applied to the ideal form between equals) (188). Yet he must acknowledge that immediately at 837d the Athenian speaks of the three types of image. Follon concludes that what we have here is a stricter sense and a looser one. This suggestion appears to be supported by the rest of the dialogue where we find talk of image for virtue (e.g., 643d2, 688b2–4, 711d6–7, 734a1–2), and even for hunting and angling (823d–e)! On the other hand, we are told at 783a3–4 that the image of sexual intercourse is the sharpest or most intense (image), which presumably allows it in certain contexts to be identified with image in the strictest sense.

10. We are indeed told later that even in the wicked there is something divine that enables them to distinguish right from wrong (950b), but what the Athenian appears to need here is something stronger.

11. Is this because Sparta practiced secrecy with regard to sexual relations, as suggested by Plutarch (Lyc. 15.8)? Dover’s own conclusion is that “an alliance between ignorance and partisanship [vis-à-vis Sparta] is a poor foundation” for the hypothesis of Spartan hypocrisy (194). In any case, what is unique about the proposal in the Laws is that secrecy and hypocrisy are legislated and thus made a matter of public policy. If Megillus thinks he is agreeing to something familiar, he has at the very least failed to grasp the full import of what the Athenian is proposing.

12. Thus Jean-François Pradeau, speaking of the Athenian’s introduction of a second law, comments: “Cette capitulation de la loi, qui cède devant des moeurs pourtant défaillantes et invite en quelque sorte à sa propre transgression, est un cas d’espèce parfaitement exceptionnel dans les Lois” (Pradeau 2008, 14).

13. Noted by Schöpsdau 2003, 256.

14. “Ce qu’écarte ainsi d’emblée Platon, c’est qu’une activité puisse imagetre autorisée dans le silence ou à l’écart de la loi” (Pradeau 2008, 107).

15. Later in Laws 8 itself we are told that there is no shame in taking in stealth pears, apples, and pomegranates (845b–c). But this parallel only emphasizes how much more serious it is to enjoy in stealth illicit sexual pleasures.

16. “institue la dissimulation comme une obligation formelle”

17. “Se construit de cette façon dans une cité, où rien pourtant ne doit demeurer caché, un monde dont nul n’est censé avouer la perversité” (Bertrand 1998, 429). And Bertrand sees this as leading to a fundamental hypocrisy in the city: “La dissimulation devient une règle de droit dans une societé qui se content ainsi d’apparaître vertueuse mais se soucie peu de l’imagetre véritablement” (429). And in the end Bertand sees here an irreconcilable tension between the demands of theory and the demands of power: “On a l’impression donc que la construction politique, quelque parfaite que soit prétendue la constitution d’une cité, induit nécessairement l’obscurité et la distorsion des image que le théoricien croit devoir récuser, mais que le pouvoir utilise à son profit” (430).

18. I thank Mitchell Miller for drawing my attention to this passage.

19. Pradeau writes of the preludes: “Il ne s’agit pas pour le législateur d’exposer rationellement l’opportunité de telle ou telle conduite, et encore moins d’enseigner à ses concitoyens un savoir de type scientifique sur les différents objets dont la loi est susceptible de traiter, mais bien de les persuader que telle conduite est louable quand telle autre ne l’est pas, en leur délivrant pour ce faire une forme d’admonestation parentale” (Pradeau 2008, 118–119). But if this is true in general, does not Laws 10 stand out all the more as an exception?

20. On the debate concerning whether or not the preludes in general constitute attempts at rational persuasion, see Bobonich 2002, 109–119. Bobonich recognizes a diversity of types of preludes varying significantly in sophistication. In this case, the wishful thinking of Laws 8 not only must be placed rather low in the scale, but also stands out through its explicit appeal to force.

21. The reason for Cleinias’s reluctance is perhaps the tradition of an institutionalized form of pederasty in ancient Crete, given mythical expression in the story of Zeus and Ganymede. See Aristotle, Politics 1272a23–26. But if a certain type of pederasty was accepted even in Sparta, as the Athenian appears to suggest earlier in mentioning that he is here departing from the customs of both Crete and Sparta, why is Megillus so much more persuadable than Cleinias? See note 11 above for one possible but not fully convincing reason.

22. Even if Cleinias has “grave ethical shortcomings,” as Bobonich insists (122), he is still one of the best products of one of the best current constitutions and repeatedly shows himself capable of altering his views in response to argument and persuasion; so if he cannot be persuaded of the goodness of the proposed legislation concerning image, it is highly unlikely that a significant number of citizens, much less the majority, could be.

23. Saunders translates “by the secondary influences of ‘chance’ and ‘opportunity’,” a translation that appears to take the image to mean “after.”