Plato’s survey in Laws book 3 of the development of human society from its earliest stages to the complex institutions of democratic Athens and monarchical Persia operates both as a conjectural history of human life and as a critical engagement with Greek political thought. The examples Plato uses to illustrate the stages of his stadial account, such as the society of the Cyclops and the myths of Spartan prehistory, are those used by other political theorists and philosophers, in some cases also drawing on the presence of the same stories in classical Greek epic and tragedy. By incorporating his critique into a timeline Plato is able to suggest that some approaches are limited in scope to specific social conditions, whereas his Athenian Stranger presents his analysis from an external and superior viewpoint, looking down on human society from above.

柏拉图的法律调查从人类社会的早期发展到复杂的民主雅典和君主制波斯的第三本书既是人类生活的推测性历史，又是对希腊政治思想的批判性参与。柏拉图用来说明他的历史叙述的各个阶段的例子，例如独眼巨人的社会和斯巴达史前神话，是其他政治理论家和哲学家所使用的例子，在某些情况下还利用了相同故事的存在。希腊古典史诗和悲剧。通过将他的评论纳入时间轴，柏拉图能够暗示某些方法在范围上仅限于特定的社会条件，而他的《雅典怪人》则从外部和优越的视角提出了他的分析，并从上方俯视了人类社会。