(Compare Introduction to the Republic.) The science of dialectic is nowhere mentioned by name in the Laws, nor is anything said of the education of after-life.

The child is to begin to learn at ten years of age: he is to be taught reading and writing for three years, from ten to thirteen, and no longer; and for three years more, from thirteen to sixteen, he is to be instructed in music.

The great fault which Plato finds in the contemporary education is the almost total ignorance of arithmetic and astronomy, in which the Greeks would do well to take a lesson from the Egyptians (compare Republic).
Dancing and wrestling are to have a military character, and women as well as men are to be taught the use of arms.

The military spirit which Plato has vainly endeavoured to expel in the first two books returns again in the seventh and eighth.

He has evidently a sympathy with the soldier, as well as with the poet, and he is no mean master of the art, or at least of the theory, of war (compare Laws; Republic), though inclining rather to the Spartan than to the Athenian practice of it (Laws).