Plato, Laws

Clinias
It is certainly probable that such was the course of events.

Athenian
Well, is not this also probable?

Clinias
What?

Athenian
That, while these larger settlements were growing out of the original small ones, each of the small settlements continued to retain, clan by clan, both the rule of the eldest [681b] and also some customs derived from its isolated condition and peculiar to itself. As those who begot and reared them were different, so these customs of theirs, relating to the gods and to themselves, differed, being more orderly where their forefathers had been orderly, and more brave where they had been brave; and as thus the fathers of each clan in due course stamped upon their children and children's children their own cast of mind, these people came (as we say) into the larger community furnished each with their own peculiar laws.

Clinias
Of course. [681c]

Athenian
And no doubt each clan was well pleased with its own laws, and less well with those of its neighbors.

Clinias
True.

Athenian
Unwittingly, as it seems, we have now set foot, as it were, on the starting-point of legislation.

Clinias
We have indeed.

Athenian
The next step necessary is that these people should come together and choose out some members of each clan who, after a survey of the legal usages of all the clans, shall notify publicly to the tribal leaders and chiefs (who may be termed their “kings”) which of those usages please them best, [681d] and shall recommend their adoption. These men will themselves be named “legislators,” and when they have established the chiefs as “magistrates,” and have framed an aristocracy, or possibly even a monarchy, from the existing plurality of “headships,” they will live under the constitution thus transformed.

Clinias
The next steps would certainly be such as you describe.

Athenian
Let us go on to describe the rise of a third form of constitution, in which are blended all kinds and varieties of constitutions, and of States as well.¹ [681e]

Clinias
What form is that?

Athenian
The same that Homer himself mentioned next to the second, when he said that the third form arose in this way. His verses run thus— “Dardania he founded when as yet
The Holy keep of Ilium was not built
Upon the plain, a town for mortal folk,
But still they dwelt upon the highland slopes
Of many-fountained Ida.
”Hom. Il. 20.216 ff.