Author Description

In this poetic-structural translation of Plato's Laws, Books V and VI mark the turning point from internal soul-training to outward institutional design. Book V begins with a metaphysical hierarchy: Soul is divine and must be honored above body and property. With this foundation, Plato's Athenian Stranger lays down preambles for the laws that will guide the citizen from childhood to death-not through coercion, but through rhythm, memory, and self-restraint. Book V unfolds a layered doctrine of virtue: temperance over beauty, self-control over excess, and reverence over inheritance. The translation preserves and elevates key metaphors such as Golden-Cord, Soul-Rank, and Excessive Self-Love, using poetic form to mirror the rhythms of Platonic governance. Political soulcraft emerges not only in what laws say, but how they sound, how they repeat, and how they guide the desires of the next generation. Book VI transitions to institutional implementation. Magistrates are selected. Councils are formed. Rituals of lawgiving are introduced through festivals, prayers, sacred numbers, and the division of land and offices. The sacred number 5040 becomes a geometrical metaphor for balance across all public domains-education, marriage, property, geography, and war. This translation is not a paraphrase, nor a modernization of outdated terms. It is a reconstruction of Plato's internal logic through metaphor and rhythm. Structured in poetic lines with capitalized conceptual anchors, this edition is ideal for readers of philosophy, literature, politics, education theory, and classical thought. Part of the Poetic Philosophy Presents series, this volume presents Plato's Laws as a living document-part hymn, part legal prototype, part soul-training manual. Readers will encounter a Plato who speaks in rhythm, structures cities through virtue, and guides citizens not toward obedience, but toward the harmonization of law and freedom.