^{page 4 note 1} On p. 08 will be found a fuller translation which is derived from the argument of this article.

^{page 4 note 2} Peipers, D., Quaestiones Criticae de Plationis Legibus (1863), 8 and 17.Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 3} Ed. Wachsmuth-Hense, , Florilegium 44.Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 4} Peipers, , op. cit. 82: ‘Sunt enim plerumque breviora quidem nee tamen minus aperta additamenta quorum pars grammatici hominis ingenium redolet Platonein illustrantis et interpretantis, pars hominis criticiesse videntur qui varias lectiones in margine libri adnotavit.’Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 5} Platon, ii (1919), 331.Google Scholar

^{page 4 note 6} Peipers, loc. cit. ‘nee divinabantur profecto boni illi homines commentarios mox a librariis inter verba scriptoris receptum iriper saecula duratura, ut posterioribus interpretibus multas aliquando curas molestiasque pararent’.

^{page 5 note 1} The substance of this paper was delivered to the Cambridge Phiological Society on 9 March 1950. I express my gratitude to Professor Adcock, Professor Wade-Gery, and Dr. F. Jacoby who have of their criticism and advice.

^{page 5 note 2} Platos Gesetze, Kommentar (1896) 162.Google Scholar

^{page 5 note 3} The passive is so used in 755 a 5, 755 a 7, and 765 c 5.

^{page 5 note 4} 753 d I and 4; 755 a 5 and 7; 756 c 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8; 756 d 3, 4, 6, and 7; 756 e 4; 759 d 5; 946 a 4 and b I. The passage 756 c 2 is discussed below, p. 7.

^{page 5 note 5} In 756 e 2 the persons nominated are referred to as in 753 c 8 as and in 946 a 3 as ο

^{page 6 note 1} Where the subject is not a collective noun but a plural such as the meaning is again the individual members of the plurality; cf. 756 c 3 and d 5, and 945 e 8 946 a I which is discussed in n. 3 below.

^{page 6 note 2} For the use of the reflexive pronoun cf. 945 e 8

^{page 6 note 3} 945 e-946 c. The meaning of the following sentence is disputed: England, Ritter, and Taylor maintain that the State Presents three men to the god and that each citizen names only one man. According to this view the words refer to the result of the whole procedure whereby three Euthuni are in fact appointed; and there are of course analogies in the Laws for the result being stated before the procedure in described. But we are then left with no construction for Therefore England, Ritter, and Taylor postulate a lacuna after The other view, advocated by Stallbaum and adopted by Burnet in his punctuation of the Oxford text, is that each citizen presents to the god the three men whom he considers to These nominees are then resumed in the next sentence The advantage of this view is that it does not postulate any lacuna in the text. The difficulty lies in the singular resuming Stallbaum's comment seems to me to dispose fairly of this difficulty: ‘ne multitudinis notio, ita quidem ut simul singuli significentur’ (Stallbaum's edition (1859), xiii 358). The passage is discussed by England ad loc. (ed. 1921).

^{page 7 note 1} Stallbaum, ii 141, ‘quaternae tribus iubentur creare quaternos religionum interpretes’; Taylor, , The Laws of Plato (1934), ‘to elect four persons’Google Scholar; Wade-Gery, , C.Q. xxv (1931), 86, ‘shall elect four’Google Scholar; Jacoby, , Atthis (1949), 249, ‘are to elect four’.Google Scholar

^{page 7 note 2} ‘Elect’ in the technical sense in which a constituency ‘elects’ one man from among other candidates. An individual constituent does not ‘elect’ X to be the M.P.; he simply ‘gives his vote for X’ or ‘presents X's name’ on a paper form.

^{page 7 note 3} Cf. Isacus, xi. 18Google Scholar and Dem, . De Corona 134 In Laws 766 b 4 the antecedent to should be supplied in the dative case. Cf. Plutarch, Alcibiades 13. England, commenting on 753 d 1, and Taylor, translating 946 a 4, take governing an accusative as ‘vote for’ which is not a correct translation.Google Scholar

^{page 7 note 4} Yet Liddell and Scott ⁹ (iv. 7) translate ‘appoint or nominate to an office’.

^{page 7 note 5} This marginal comment might be added to clarify and later be inserted in the text by a scribe (cf. Peipers, , loc. cit., cited on p. 4, n. 6 above). Once this has happened, the becomes nonsensical because the following sentences provide for a larger number of nominations, and might then be changed toGoogle Scholar

^{page 8 note 1} In the only other Passage where Aristotle uses with an accusative of the person (1305 ^a he seems to be referring to the nomination by tribes and not to election (for which he uses ). If, however, he is referring to actual election, he is using a term technical for nomination to express the whole process. But in Laws 756 c 2 can hardly be used to express the whole process when the word is used immediately afterwards in the technical sense of nominating. In Laws 755 a 5 and 7 I take and to refer to the nomination mentioned at 753 c i.

^{page 8 note 2} Rightly rejected by Wade-Gery, loc. cit., ‘the whole four tribes vote in each case… If you are going to compare the number of votes, the comparison must be among votes cast by the same constituency, viz. the whole four tribes.”

^{page 8 note 3} Phil. suppl. I (1860), 158.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 4} De Iuris sacri interpretibus Atticis (1908), 365.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 5} Die Exegeten und Delphi (1918), 10.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 6} The Dialogues of Plato (1871), iv. 276.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 7} Op. cit. i. 568.Google Scholar

^{page 8 note 8} Loc. cit. 87.

^{page 9 note 1} 753 d-e, 754 d, 755 d, 760 a, 763 c, 765 c-d, 766 b, 767 d. The contrast between scrutiny and appointment is explicit in 754 d, 763 c, 765 c, 766 b, 767 d.

^{page 9 note 2} The procedure conforms with the general principle mentioned at 759 b

^{page 9 note 3} Hiller von Gaertringen, Inschr. v. Priene, where the meaning seems to be that, after the people had previously elected envoys, Moschion also was appointed.

^{page 9 note 4} Moreover, at 828 b and 873 d the exegetai are mentioned in juxtaposition to the twelvefold division of the State.

^{page 10 note 1} Cf. 758 b 7 and Thuc. i. 10 The definite article is sometimes omitted in one case, if no ambiguity results, e.g. 934 d ‘fourfifths of a mina”

^{page 10 note 2} Jacoby does not translate this passage, but he refers to it as supporting his contention that means ‘one from each of the four tribes’. On his interpretation the four tribes constitute the State. Therefore cannot be the antecedent to for it is not sense to say ‘the State within which the vacancy occurs’. An antecedent must therefore be supplied. It would seem to be in accord with Jacoby's interpretation if some such phrase as is supplied, so that the translation will run ‘ in the event of a vacancy the four tribes shall elect a man from the tribe in which the vacancy occurs’. This means in effect that the tribes represented in the initial appointment of three exegetai will be represented in perpetuity. The tribes so represented will be three or less than three (for there is no regulation to ensure that in choosing his three exegetai the God of Delphi will chose one per tribe). The remaining tribe or tribes will therefore be unrepresented in perpetuity. Such lack of representation constitutes a weak point in Jacoby's theory.

^{page 10 note 3} Marsilius Ficinus in 1482 translated ‘interpretes autem ter quattuor ferant tribus ipsae quattuor, ex earum ordine unaquaequetres: et tribus probatis reliquos novem Delphos mittant, ut ex quaque trinitate unus oraculo deligatur’. He probably adopted the of the marginalia. Ast in 1814, reading and deleting translated ‘religionum interpretes creanto ter quattuor tribus etc.’. Ritter, C., Platos Gesetze, Kommentar (1896), 163, made such suggestions as reading and deleting or reading withGoogle Scholar

^{page 10 note 4} Loc. cit. 86–87.

^{page 10 note 5} Op. cit. 248–9.

^{page 11 note 1} If the view of England and others is accepted for 945 e (cf. p. 6, n. 3 above), the passage provides another example.

^{page 11 note 2} Also 755 e 1, 765 b 4, 768 a 6, 771 d 5, and 946 b 9. One may also note the order of words in the scholiast at 916 c where he may even be referring back to the words in our passage.

^{page 12 note 1} Peipers, op. cit. (quoted above on p. 01, n. 6). In the same way the variant reading in one manuscript of Stobaeus may be due to a marginal comment slipping into the text, as we might say ‘the (resulting) nine’.

^{page 12 note 2} The passage is also discussed in Oliver, J. H., Athenian Expounders of the Sacred and Ancestral Law (1950), 55 f., which was accessible to me after this article was written.Google Scholar