Dialogues

the Republic (IV 421, 422), there was to be neither poverty nor riches. Every citizen under all circumstances retained his lot, and as much money as was necessary for the cultivation of it (IX 855 B), and no one was allowed to accumulate property to the amount of more than five times the value of the lot, inclusive of it (V 744 D, E). The equal division of land was a Spartan institution, not known to have existed elsewhere in Hellas. The mention of it in the Laws of Plato affords considerable presumption that it was of ancient origin, and not first introduced, as Mr. Grote and others have imagined, in the reformation of Cleomenes III. But at Sparta, if we may judge from the frequent complaints of the accumulation of property in the hands of a few persons (Aristotle Politics II 9, § 14), no provision could have been made for the maintenance of the lot. Plutarch indeed speaks of a law introduced by the Ephor Epitadeus soon after the Peloponnesian War, which first allowed the Spartans to sell their land (Agis, c. 5): but from the manner in which Aristotle refers to the subject, we should imagine this evil in the state to be of a much older standing. Like some other countries in which small proprietors have been numerous, the original equality passed into inequality, and, instead of a large middle class, there was probably at Sparta greater disproportion in the property of the citizens than in any other state of Hellas. Plato was aware of the danger, and has improved on the Spartan custom. The land, as at Sparta, must have been tilled by slaves, since other occupations were found for the citizens (VII 806 E; VIII 835 E). Bodies of young men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty were engaged in making biennial peregrinations of the country. They and their officers are to be the magistrates, police, engineers, aediles, of the twelve districts into which the colony was divided (VI 760 and following). Their way of life may be compared with that of the Spartan secret police or Crypteia, a name which Plato freely applies to them (VI 763 B) without apparently any consciousness of the odium which has attached to the word in history.

Another great institution which Plato borrowed from Sparta (or Crete) is the Syssitia or common meals. These were established in both states, and in some respects were considered by Aristotle to be better managed in Crete than at Lacedaemon (Politics II 10, §§ 7⁠–⁠10). In the Laws (VIII 842 B) the Cretan custom appears to be adopted:363 that is to say, if we may interpret Plato by Aristotle, the cost of them was defrayed by the state and not by the individuals (Aristotle Politics II 9, §§ 31, 32); so that the members of the mess, who could not pay their quota, still retained their rights of citizenship. But this explanation is hardly consistent with the Laws XII 955 D, E, where contributions to the Syssitia from private estates are expressly mentioned. Plato goes further than the legislators of Sparta and Crete, and would extend the common meals to women as well as men: he desires to curb the disorders, which existed among the female sex in both states (VI 781), by the application to women of the same military discipline to which the men were already subject. It was an extension of the custom of Syssitia from which the ancient legislators shrank, and which Plato himself believed to be very difficult of enforcement.

Like Sparta, the new colony was not to be surrounded by walls⁠—a state should learn to depend upon the bravery of its citizens only (VI 778 D, E)⁠—a fallacy or paradox, if it is not to be regarded as a poetical fancy, which is fairly enough ridiculed by Aristotle (Politics VII 11, § 8). Women, too, must be ready to assist in the defence of their country: they are not to rush to the temples and altars, but to arm themselves with shield and spear (VII 794 D). In the regulation of the Syssitia, in at least one of his enactments respecting property, and in the attempt to correct the licence of women, Plato shows, that while he borrowed from the institutions of Sparta and favoured the Spartan mode of life, he also sought to improve upon them.

The enmity to the sea is another Spartan feature which is transferred by Plato to the Magnesian state (IV 704 following). He did not reflect that a non-maritime power would always be at the mercy of one which had a command of the great highway. Their many island homes, the vast extent of coast which had to be protected by them, their struggles first of all with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and secondly with the Persian fleets, forced the Greeks, mostly against their will, to devote themselves to the sea. The islanders before the inhabitants of the continent, the maritime cities before the inland, the Corinthians and Athenians before the Spartans, were compelled to fit out ships: last of all the Spartans, by the pressure of the Peloponnesian War, were driven to establish a naval force, which, after the battle of Aegospotami, for more than a generation commanded the Aegean. Plato, like the Spartans, had a prejudice against a navy, because he regarded it as the nursery of democracy (IV 704⁠–⁠707). But he either never considered, or did not care to explain, how a city, set upon an island and “distant not more than ten miles from the sea, having a seaboard provided with excellent harbours” (IV 704), could have safely subsisted without one.

Neither the Spartans nor the Magnesian colonists (