The conversation depicted in the work's twelve books begins with the question of who is given the credit for establishing a civilization's laws.
Its musings on the ethics of government and law have established it as a classic of political philosophy[citation needed] alongside Plato's more widely read Republic.
Scholars generally agree that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older man, having failed in his effort to guide the rule of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, instead having been thrown in prison.
The conversation is instead led by an Athenian Stranger (Greek: ξένος, romanized: xenos) and two other old men, the ordinary Spartan citizen Megillus and Cleinias of Crete, from Knossos.
By the end of the third book Cleinias announces that he has in fact been given the responsibility of creating the laws for a new Cretan colony, and that he would like the Athenian stranger's assistance.
Yet it is in opposition to the earlier dialogue, and the constitution of the hypothetical Magnesia described in the Laws differs from that of Kallipolis described in the Republic, on several key points.
[636b] So these common meals, for example, and these gymnasia, while they are at present beneficial to the States in many other respects, yet in the event of civil strife they prove dangerous (as is shown by the case of the youth of Miletus, Bocotia and Thurii);1 and, moreover, this institution, when of old standing, is thought to have corrupted the pleasures of love which are natural not to men only but also natural to beasts.
And we all accuse the Cretans of concocting the story about Ganymede to justify their "unnatural pleasures".Also, whereas the Republic is a dialogue between Socrates and several young men, the Laws is a discussion among three old men contriving a device for reproductive law, with a view of hiding from virile youth their rhetorical strategy of piety, rituals and virtue.
[838e] "I stated that in reference to this law I know of a device for making a natural use of reproductive intercourse,—on the one hand, by abstaining from the male and not slaying of set purpose the human stock, [839a] nor sowing seed on rocks and stones where it can never take root and have fruitful increase; and, on the other hand, by abstaining from every female field in which you would not desire the seed to spring up..." (and continuing) [839b] "...
Some centuries later Plutarch would also devote attention to the topic of Ancient Greek law systems, e.g. in his Life of Lycurgus.
Aristotle brought the Laws closely in line with Plato's Republic and considered both works largely in agreement with one other.
[13] The author of the dialogue Epinomis – generally considered to be Philippus of Opus – developed his work as a continuation of the Laws.