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[177d] and to maintain especially in regard to justice that whatever laws a state makes, because they seem to it just, are just to the state that made them, as long as they remain in force; but as regards the good, that nobody has the courage to go on and contend that whatever laws a state passes thinking them advantageous to it are really advantageous as long as they remain in force, unless what he means is merely the name “advantageous”1; and that would be making a joke of our argument. Am I right?

Theodorus
Certainly.


1 The legislator may call his laws advantageous, and that name, if it is given them when they are enacted, will belong to them, whatever their character may be.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

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    • E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 7, 7.19
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