1. Authenticity and Chronology In the philologically less conservative days of the nineteenth century, the Laws ’ authenticity was rejected by various important scholars. Even the great Platonist, Georg Ast, held that One who knows the true Plato needs only to read a single page of the Laws in order to convince himself that it is a fraudulent Plato that he has before him. (Ast 1816: 391; cited and translated by Harward 1928: 34; quoted in Guthrie 1978: 322) Others held that the text was substantially revised by Philip of Opus. But Aristotle recognizes it as Plato’s ( Politics 2.3 1264b26–7) and refers to it in a number of places. Today almost no serious scholar doubts its authenticity. Although some, such as W. K. C.…