Cleinias. He is the relative of Epimenides, whom, by an anachronism of a
century,--perhaps arising as Zeller suggests (Plat. Stud.) out of a
confusion of the visit of Epimenides and Diotima (Symp.),--he describes as
coming to Athens, not after the attempt of Cylon, but ten years before the
Persian war. The Cretan and Lacedaemonian hardly contribute at all to the
argument of which the Athenian is the expounder; they only supply
information when asked about the institutions of their respective
countries. A kind of simplicity or stupidity is ascribed to them. At
first, they are dissatisfied with the free criticisms which the Athenian
passes upon the laws of Minos and Lycurgus, but they acquiesce in his
greater experience and knowledge of the world. They admit that there can
be no objection to the enquiry; for in the spirit of the legislator
himself, they are discussing his laws when there are no young men present
to listen. They are unwilling to allow that the Spartan and Cretan
lawgivers can have been mistaken in honouring courage as the first part of
virtue, and are puzzled at hearing for the first time that 'Goods are only
evil to the evil.' Several times they are on the point of quarrelling, and
by an effort learn to restrain their natural feeling (compare Shakespeare,
Henry V, act iii. sc. 2). In Book vii., the Lacedaemonian expresses a
momentary irritation at the accusation which the Athenian brings against
the Spartan institutions, of encouraging licentiousness in their women,
but he is reminded by the Cretan that the permission to criticize them
freely has been given, and cannot be retracted. His only criterion of
truth is the authority of the Spartan lawgiver; he is 'interested,' in the
novel speculations of the Athenian, but inclines to prefer the ordinances
of Lycurgus.

The three interlocutors all of them speak in the character of old men,
which forms a pleasant bond of union between them. They have the feelings
of old age about youth, about the state, about human things in general.