appearance on the scene: in the Laws Plato appears to have forgotten them,
or at any rate makes only a slight allusion to them in a single passage
(Laws).

VI. The Statesman is naturally connected with the Sophist. At first sight
we are surprised to find that the Eleatic Stranger discourses to us, not
only concerning the nature of Being and Not-being, but concerning the king
and statesman. We perceive, however, that there is no inappropriateness in
his maintaining the character of chief speaker, when we remember the close
connexion which is assumed by Plato to exist between politics and
dialectic. In both dialogues the Proteus Sophist is exhibited, first, in
the disguise of an Eristic, secondly, of a false statesman. There are
several lesser features which the two dialogues have in common. The styles
and the situations of the speakers are very similar; there is the same love
of division, and in both of them the mind of the writer is greatly occupied
about method, to which he had probably intended to return in the projected
'Philosopher.'

The Statesman stands midway between the Republic and the Laws, and is also
related to the Timaeus. The mythical or cosmical element reminds us of the
Timaeus, the ideal of the Republic. A previous chaos in which the elements
as yet were not, is hinted at both in the Timaeus and Statesman. The same
ingenious arts of giving verisimilitude to a fiction are practised in both
dialogues, and in both, as well as in the myth at the end of the Republic,
Plato touches on the subject of necessity and free-will. The words in
which he describes the miseries of states seem to be an amplification of
the 'Cities will never cease from ill' of the Republic. The point of view
in both is the same; and the differences not really important, e.g. in the
myth, or in the account of the different kinds of states. But the
treatment of the subject in the Statesman is fragmentary, and the shorter