I’m not reading Plato’s Laws with much interest or comprehension unfortunately, but at times it enters some strange territory which makes me wish my reading were more thorough. Here he seems to compare the creation of the laws to the creation of a tragedy, and law givers to poets:
“‘Best of strangers,’ we should say, ‘we ourselves are poets, who have to the best of our ability created a tragedy that is the most beautiful and the best; at any rate, our whole political regime is constructed as the imitation of the most beautiful and best way of life, which we at least assert to be really the truest tragedy; we are your rivals as artists and performers of the most beautiful drama, which true law alone can by nature bring to perfection.’”
I suppose this squares with his representation of Socrates in The Phaedo as a tragic hero, a noble figure in an ironic situation, albeit one who is not to be pitied.
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