(4) The Scholia on Aristophanes, Plato, Demosthenes.

(5) A few inscriptions.

Our knowledge of a subject derived from such various sources and for the most part of uncertain date and origin, is necessarily precarious.  No critic can separate the actual laws of Solon from those which passed under his name in later ages.  Nor do the Scholiasts and Lexicographers attempt to distinguish how many of these laws were still in force at the time when they wrote, or when they fell into disuse and were to be found in books only.  Nor can we hastily assume that enactments which occur in the Laws of Plato were also a part of Athenian law, however probable this may appear.

There are two classes of similarities between Plato’s Laws and those of
Athens:  (i) of institutions (ii) of minor enactments.

(i) The constitution of the Laws in its general character resembles much more nearly the Athenian constitution of Solon’s time than that which succeeded it, or the extreme democracy which prevailed in Plato’s own day.  It was a mean state which he hoped to create, equally unlike a Syracusan tyranny or the mob-government of the Athenian assembly.  There are various expedients by which he sought to impart to it the quality of moderation. (1) The whole people were to be educated:  they could not be all trained in philosophy, but they were to acquire the simple elements of music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy; they were also to be subject to military discipline, archontes kai archomenoi. (2) The majority of them were, or had been at some time in their lives, magistrates, and had the experience which is given by office. (3) The persons who held the highest offices were to have a further education, not much inferior to that provided for the guardians in the Republic, though the range of their studies is narrowed to the nature and divisions of virtue:  here their philosophy comes to an end. (4) The entire number of the citizens (5040) rarely, if ever, assembled, except for purposes of elections.  The whole people were divided into four classes, each having the right to be represented by the same number of members in the Council.  The result of such an arrangement would be, as in the constitution of Servius Tullius, to give a disproportionate share of power to the wealthier classes, who may be supposed to be always much fewer in number than the poorer.  This tendency was qualified by the complicated system of selection by vote, previous to the final election by lot, of which the object seems to be to hand over to the wealthy few the power of selecting from the many poor, and vice versa. (5) The most important body in the state was the Nocturnal Council, which is borrowed from the Areopagus at Athens, as it existed, or was supposed to have existed, in the days before Ephialtes and the Eumenides of Aeschylus, when its power was undiminished.  In some particulars Plato appears to have copied exactly the customs and procedure