 Much literature on Plato’s political philosophy has debated whether the turn in the Laws to the “second-best” reflects a new form of realism on Plato’s part about politics more generally, invoking other remarks by the Visitor from Athens, one of the three interlocutors, along with Cleinias and the Spartan Megillus, which suggest that no one could ever be uniformly and reliably virtuous and immune to corruption, though this is not unequivocally stated (e.g. 874e–875d). Has Plato in the Laws given up on his earlier idealism which rested on the possibility of the philosopher-king, or on the idea of the perfectly knowledgeable statesman? If so, should that be interpreted as disillusionment or pessimism on his part, or as a more democratic or liberal turn? Or are there more fundamental continuities that connect and underlie even these seeming shifts? These questions structure the broad debate about the meaning and trajectory of Platonic political philosophy (for an overview, compare Klosko 2006 to Schofield 2006).