Athenian
Ath. The part which we called the despotic prescription— comparing it to the prescriptions of the slave-doctors we mentioned—is unblended law; but the part which precedes this, and which is uttered as persuasive thereof, while it actually is persuasion, yet serves also the same purpose as the prelude to an oration.Cp. Plat. Laws 718c. To ensure that the person to whom the lawgiver addresses the law should accept the prescription quietly—and, because quietly, in a docile spirit,—that, as I supposed, was the evident object with which the speaker uttered all his persuasive discourse.Cp. Plat. Laws 715e. Hence, according to my argument, the right term for it would be, not legal statement, but prelude, and no other word. Having said this, what is the next statement I would desire to make? It is this: that the lawgiver must never omit to furnish preludes, as prefaces both to the laws as a whole and to each individual statute, whereby they shall surpass their original form by as much as the double examples recently given surpassed the single.
Clinias
Clin. I, for my part, would charge the expert in these matters to legislate thus, and not otherwise.