The Visitor is still really bad at dialogues, but this is a lot more interesting than Sophist. One, the backwards spinning myth about the inevitable golden age was an interesting interpretation. Two, there was a nice discussion of government forms, which actually reminded me a lot of Cicero's On the Republic (I suppose it should really be the other way around). And three, the categorization, boring though it may be, and the more interesting discussion of ethics and moderation were sort of Aristotelian - since this is a later dialogue, maybe Plato and and his students were starting to lean that way (or at least Plato was experimenting with it) and Aristotle ran with it later on.

Even though we are losing my beloved Theaetetus, Statesman might be the most pleasant one from Eleatic dialogues to me. I am not sure, how to rate accessibility of this dialogue, because to me, it felt that Statesman was more comprehensible than his predecessors (meaning [b:Theaetetus|145212|Theaetetus|Plato|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387178103l/145212._SY75_.jpg|1195353] and [b:Sofist|23463789|Sofist|Plato|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414505153l/23463789._SY75_.jpg|27656]), my thoughts kept slipping away to all the things I have to do yet. (I can’t really blame that on Plato, though…) Still I would say, that the beginning is a little slower, Visitor (I found the English namings of this actor highly interesting, I chose to use “Visitor” in my review simply because is the one closer to the Czech word “Host” – meaning “guest” – that is used in Czech translation I read of the dialogue. Also, “Stranger” is really giving me more existentialist vibes then I would like in Plato…) is starting once again with the diairhetic method and while this passages aren’t hard to read (if you are not analysing them of course), reading them doesn’t bring me much pleasure. But there are some light moments… The commentary (at least in my edition by František Novotný) brings us a gossip from Diogenes Laertios, how he plucked a rooster and them he proclaimed it to be Plato’s human… (Am I the only one who thinks it funny? Well… alright…)
But then it suddenly gets so much better and I am once more reminded, what genius Plato is (passage 294 a-d really is the top for me…). My enthusiasm ended in me transcribing almost the whole page, but that would be quite redundant in this review. Instead just one quote that concludes the whole passage of the critique of the laws:

So that which is persistently simple is inapplicable to things which are never simple?

For the ones who didn’t read it, I would like to add that Plato is no anarchist, he knows that in our situation the laws are necessary, but he also sees their weak spots which is something I don’t really see much today. (But I am not going to delve into this bitterness of mine, or I would get side-tracked…)
My interest cooled down a little bit after that, but this time, I wouldn’t say it wasn’t for not being interesting enough, but simply because I attended a lectures on Statesman and so there weren’t really a lot of new things – that doesn’t make those passages less beautiful. The analogy of weaving is very poetic, even if surprisingly harsh in places. But there is one more passage I would like to mention for the emotional impact it had on me. And that is the moment when the Visitor starts to describe Athenian establishment in very parodical way and criticize it openly with Younger Socrates. Criticizing Athens and democracy isn’t really something new in Plato’s work, but there was something different about it this time. It was so bitter, that it really convinced me of the theory, that Plato wrote this “trilogy” in a deep personal crisis. The usually emotionally separated and at the most lightly ironical Visitor disappeared and the one who spoke was Plato himself. Younger Socrates really cap it all with his last commentary:

Surely anyone who consents voluntarily to hold office under such conditions would richly deserve any penalty or fine that might be imposed.

I had to say, that this part was without a doubt the funniest part of the otherwise quite dry Eleatic dialogues – even if it is a quite niche type of humour. On the other hand, it also left quite bitter aftertaste.
After writing this and thinking it through in the process, I have to say that I like this dialogue more than I originally thought, it might be one of my favourites of Plato and I would like to return to it someday in the future. But that is partly a consequence of me liking the themes it discuses. I have a soft spot for political philosophy, but it also re-evaluates dichotomic dividing and contradictory opposites, which is a concept our society is still struggling with. But that also is a theme for some other time…