ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Plato's text as an artefact in context aJong with the holistic project of Magnesia as its subject. The Laws (NOMOI) was probably composed during the last twenty years of its author's life (his death is given as c. 348 B.C.E.) and, as such, it is generaJly regarded as his final philosophical treatise.3 It is thought to have been written in the 350s and early 340s, aJthough, as Saunders indicates, 'some passages may conceivably be earlier'.4 This was a time in which the formal codification of laws and the production of printed text were in vogue. As Nightingale says, 'the Athenians had grown more "document-minded" and were beginning to place more trust in written texts'. 5 Plato, in a sense, was on the 'cutting edge' of this literary phenomenon.6 However, despite the greater cultural emphasis on the written word, the transmission of his text presents us with several uncertainties from the start.
