A short Socratic dialogue asking 'what is law?' and defending King Minos as a divinely educated, unfairly maligned lawgiver.
The Minos is a brief dialogue, often bundled with the minor works attributed to Plato, in which Socrates presses an unnamed companion to define law. The companion first suggests law is simply 'the things that are customarily held,' but Socrates dismantles this by distinguishing an activity (sight, hearing) from its object (things seen, things heard): law itself must be something other than the customs it establishes. Through a series of craft analogies -- medicine, farming, gardening, cooking -- Socrates argues that true laws are like the correct writings of those who actually know a subject; a city's decrees only count as law when they are correct, i.e., when they discover 'what is.' Bad decrees, however official, are not really law at all.
The dialogue's second half pivots from abstract definition to a concrete case study: the reputation of Minos, the legendary Cretan king. The companion repeats the common Athenian tragedians' portrait of Minos as a savage tyrant, but Socrates counters by appealing to Homer and Hesiod, whom he calls more trustworthy than 'the whole pack of tragedians.' Homer's line about Minos reigning 'as the confidant of great Zeus' every ninth year is read as praise: Minos was personally instructed by Zeus in the craft of kingship, the same way a doctor is instructed in medicine, and he legislated for Crete out of that genuine knowledge -- including Crete's famous law against drinking to excess. Rhadamanthus, by contrast, was trained only in judging, a subordinate skill, while the bronze-tablet-carrying Talos enforced the laws throughout the island.
Socrates explains Minos's bad Athenian reputation as payback: Minos warred against Athens and exacted tribute, and Athenian tragedy -- the city's own home-grown art form -- took its revenge by slandering him. The proof that Minos was in fact a good 'shepherd of men' is that Cretan law endured unchanged for centuries, evidence, in the dialogue's own terms, that it had truly discovered what is. The dialogue ends unresolved, with Socrates and the companion agreeing they cannot say what a lawgiver distributes to the soul to improve it, as they could readily say for the body (food and exercise).
“What else could law be, Socrates, than the things that are customarily held?”
— Minos · read this chapter →
“So justice and law are the finest things? COMPANION: So it seems. SOCRATES: And injustice and lawlessness the most shameful?”
— Minos · read this chapter →
“there is Knossos, a great city, where Minos, in his ninth year, reigned as the confidant of great Zeus.”
— Minos · read this chapter →
“in Crete this is one of the laws Minos laid down—not to drink together to the point of drunkenness.”
— Minos · read this chapter →
“his laws have remained unmoved, because he had truly discovered the truth about how a city should be run.”
— Minos · read this chapter →
It is a short dialogue in which Socrates and a companion try to define law, concluding that true law must be a correct 'discovery of what is,' not merely whatever a city happens to decree. The second half applies this to defend King Minos of Crete against his reputation as a cruel tyrant.
Its authenticity has long been disputed by scholars, and it is usually classed among the 'minor' or spurious Platonic dialogues, but it circulated in the ancient Plato corpus and is included in this translated volume alongside works like the Republic and Laws.
Socrates argues that Homer and Hesiod, whom he trusts over the Athenian tragedians, praise Minos as personally educated by Zeus in the craft of kingship. He claims Minos's bad reputation in Athens comes from tragedy taking revenge for tribute Minos once exacted from the city.
Law is not simply customary practice or a city's decree, since decrees can be bad; genuine law is a discovery of what truly is, comparable to the correct writings of a doctor or farmer who actually knows their craft.
Rhadamanthus is Minos's brother, also a son of Zeus and Europa, described as a good and just man who was trained by Minos specifically in judging cases in the city, a subordinate skill to Minos's full kingship.
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