 In the more exuberantly speculative days of the 19th century, the authenticity of the Laws was rejected by various figures: even the great Platonist, Ast, held that “One who knows the true Plato needs only to read a single page of the Laws in order to convince himself that it is a fraudulent Plato that he has before  him.”[1]  Such skepticism is hard to understand, especially since Aristotle refers to the Laws as a dialogue of Plato’s in numerous passages and today no serious scholar doubts its authenticity.