The bulk of this bookwaswritten between 2009 and the early months of 2013. The important volume by A.-E. Peponi (ed.), Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws, Cambridge and New York 2013 came out too late (June 2013) forme to engagewith it with the thoroughness and detail that it deserves. I have nevertheless tried to incorporate it in my discussion, highlighting both convergences and divergences. I am particularly grateful to B. Kowalzig, L. Kurke, K. Morgan and A.-E. Peponi for allowing me to read the proofs of their contributions ahead of publication. Chapters 3 and 4 include (but are not limited to) a substantially revised and expanded form of some of the material previously published as ‘Patterns of chorality in Plato’s Laws’ in D. Yatromanolakis (ed.) Music and Cultural Politics in Greek and Chinese Societies, vol. I: Greek Antiquity (Cambridge,MA 2011 [but 2012]: 168–93) and as ‘Choral persuasions in Plato’s Laws’ inR. Gagn´e and M. Govers Hopman (eds.), Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 2013: 257–77). Chapter 5 is a slightly revised and amplified version of ‘Comedy and comic discourse in Plato’s Laws’ in E. Bakola, L. Prauscello and M. Tel `o (eds.), Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres (Cambridge 2013: 317–42). This book is dedicated to my father, in his last