Laws

Where the Republic imagines an ideal city, the Laws describes what an almost-ideal one would look like in practice. Over twelve books an anonymous Athenian, a Spartan, and a Cretan walk from Knossos to a cave sacred to Zeus, drafting the constitution of a new colony as they go: marriage, education, property, religion, music, courts, punishments. The last great political work of Greek antiquity, and the one that most directly influenced later law-givers.