[355a]
and men of sound sense have Law for their God,1 but men without sense Pleasure.Since these things are naturally ordained thus, I exhort Dion's friends to declare what I am advising to all the Syracusans, as being the joint advice both of Dion and myself; and I will be the interpreter of what he would have said to you now, were he alive and able to speak.2 “Pray then,” someone might say, “what message does the advice of Dion declare to us concerning the present situation?” It is this: “Above all else, 0 ye Syracusans, accept such laws
1 Law is divine as “the dispensation of Reason” (νόμοςbeing derived fromνοῦς), cf. Plat. Laws 762e. For evils of excessive freedom cf. Plat. Rep. 564a.
2 For this artifice of putting words into the mouth of an absent speaker cf. Plat. Menex. 246c ff., Plat. L. 7.328d.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 7 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1966.
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