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Plato, seeing the disorder into which half the human race had fallen at Athens and Sparta, is minded to frame for them a new rule of life. He renounces his fanciful theory of communism, but still desires to place women as far as possible on an equality with men. They were to be trained in the use of arms, they are to live in public. Their time was partly taken up with gymnastic exercises; there could have been little family or private life among them. Their lot was to be neither like that of Spartan women, who were made hard and common by excessive practice of gymnastic and the want of all other education,—nor yet like that of Athenian women, who, at least among the upper classes, retired into a sort of oriental seclusion,—but something better than either. They were to be the perfect mothers of perfect children, yet not wholly taken up with the duties of motherhood, which were to be made easy to them as far as possible (compare Republic), but able to share in the perils of war and to be the companions of their husbands. Here, more than anywhere else, the spirit of the Laws reverts to the Republic. In speaking of them as the companions of their husbands we must remember that it is an Athenian and not a Spartan way of life which they are invited to share, a life of gaiety and brightness, not of austerity and abstinence, which often by a reaction degenerated into licence and grossness.

In Plato's age the subject of slavery greatly interested the minds of thoughtful men; and how best to manage this 'troublesome piece of goods' exercised his own mind a good deal. He admits that they have often been found better than brethren or sons in the hour of danger, and are capable of rendering important public services by informing against offenders—for this they are to be rewarded; and the master who puts a slave to death for the sake of concealing some crime which he has committed, is held guilty of murder. But they are not always treated with equal consideration. The punishments inflicted on them bear no proportion to their crimes. They are to be addressed only in the language of command. Their masters are not to jest with them, lest they should increase the hardship of their lot. Some privileges were granted to them by Athenian law of which there is no mention in Plato; they were allowed to purchase their freedom from their master, and if they despaired of being liberated by him they could demand to be sold, on the chance of falling into better hands. But there is no suggestion in the Laws that a slave who tried to escape should be branded with the words—kateche me, pheugo, or that evidence should be extracted from him by torture, that the whole household was to be executed if the master was murdered and the perpetrator remained undetected: all these were provisions of Athenian law. Plato is more consistent than either the Athenians or the Spartans; for at Sparta too the Helots were treated in a manner almost unintelligible to us. On the one hand, they had arms put into their hands, and served in the army, not only, as at Plataea, in attendance on their masters, but, after they had been manumitted, as a separate body of troops called Neodamodes: on the other hand, they were the victims of one of the greatest crimes recorded in Greek history (Thucyd.). The two great philosophers of Hellas sought to extricate themselves from this cruel condition of human life, but acquiesced in the necessity of it. A noble and pathetic sentiment of Plato, suggested by the thought of their misery, may be quoted in this place:—'The right treatment of slaves is to behave properly to them, and to do to them, if possible, even more justice than to those who are our equals; for he who naturally and genuinely reverences justice, and hates injustice, is discovered in his dealings with any class of men to whom he can easily be unjust. And he who in regard to the natures and actions of his slaves is undefiled by impiety and injustice, will best sow the seeds of virtue in them; and this may be truly said of every master, and tyrant, and of every other having authority in relation to his inferiors.'

All the citizens of the Magnesian state were free and equal; there was no distinction of rank among them, such as is believed to have prevailed at Sparta. Their number was a fixed one, corresponding to the 5040 lots. One of the results of this is the requirement that younger sons or those who have been disinherited shall go out to a colony. At Athens, where there was not the same religious feeling against increasing the size of the city, the number of citizens must have been liable to considerable fluctuations. Several classes of persons, who were not citizens by birth, were admitted to the privilege. Perpetual exiles from other countries, people who settled there to practise a trade (Telfy), any one who had shown distinguished valour in the cause of Athens, the Plataeans who escaped from the siege, metics and strangers who offered to serve in the army, the slaves who fought at Arginusae,—all these could or did become citizens. Even those who were only on one side of Athenian parentage were at more than one period accounted citizens. But at times there seems to have arisen a feeling against this promiscuous extension of the citizen body, an expression of which is to be found in the law of Pericles—monous Athenaious einai tous ek duoin Athenaion gegonotas (Plutarch, Pericles); and at no time did the adopted citizen enjoy the full rights of citizenship—e.g. he might not be elected archon or to the office of priest (Telfy), although this prohibition did not extend to his children, if born of a citizen wife. Plato never thinks of making the metic, much less the slave, a citizen. His treatment of the former class is at once more gentle and more severe than that which prevailed at Athens. He imposes upon them no tax but good behaviour, whereas at Athens they were required to pay twelve drachmae per annum, and to have a patron: on the other hand, he only allows them to reside in the Magnesian state on condition of following a trade; they were required to depart when their property exceeded that of the third class, and in any case after a residence of twenty years, unless they could show that they had conferred some great benefit on the state. This privileged position reflects that of the isoteleis at Athens, who were excused from the metoikion. It is Plato's greatest concession to the metic, as the bestowal of freedom is his greatest concession to the slave.

Lastly, there is a more general point of view under which the Laws of Plato may be considered,—the principles of Jurisprudence which are contained in them. These are not formally announced, but are scattered up and down, to be observed by the reflective reader for himself. Some of them are only the common principles which all courts of justice have gathered from experience; others are peculiar and characteristic. That judges should sit at fixed times and hear causes in a regular order, that evidence should be laid before them, that false witnesses should be disallowed, and corruption punished, that defendants should be heard before they are convicted,—these are the rules, not only of the Hellenic courts, but of courts of law in all ages and countries. But there are also points which are peculiar, and in which ancient jurisprudence differs considerably from modern; some of them are of great importance...It could not be said at Athens, nor was it ever contemplated by Plato, that all men, including metics and slaves, should be equal 'in the eye of the law.' There was some law for the slave, but not much; no adequate protection was given him against the cruelty of his master...It was a singular privilege granted, both by the Athenian and Magnesian law, to a murdered man, that he might, before he died, pardon his murderer, in which case no legal steps were afterwards to be taken against him. This law is the remnant of an age in which the punishment of offences against the person was the concern rather of the individual and his kinsmen than of the state...Plato's division of crimes into voluntary and involuntary and those done from passion, only partially agrees with the distinction which modern law has drawn between murder and manslaughter; his attempt to analyze them is confused by the Socratic paradox, that 'All vice is involuntary'...It is singular that both in the Laws and at Athens theft is commonly punished by a twofold restitution of the article stolen. The distinction between civil and criminal courts or suits was not yet recognized...Possession gives a right of property after a certain time...The religious aspect under which certain offences were regarded greatly interfered with a just and natural estimate of their guilt...As among ourselves, the intent to murder was distinguished by Plato from actual murder...We note that both in Plato and the laws of Athens, libel in the market-place and personality in the theatre were forbidden...Both in Plato and Athenian law, as in modern times, the accomplice of a crime is to be punished as well as the principal...Plato does not allow a witness in a cause to act as a judge of it...Oaths are not to be taken by the parties to a suit...Both at Athens and in Plato's Laws capital punishment for murder was not to be inflicted, if the offender was willing to go into exile...Respect for the dead, duty towards parents, are to be enforced by the law as well as by public opinion...Plato proclaims the noble sentiment that the object of all punishment is the improvement of the offender... Finally, he repeats twice over, as with the voice of a prophet, that the crimes of the fathers are not to be visited upon the children. In this respect he is nobly distinguished from the Oriental, and indeed from the spirit of Athenian law (compare Telfy,—dei kai autous kai tous ek touton atimous einai), as the Hebrew in the age of Ezekial is from the Jewish people of former ages.