Plato has a similar remark, Legg. vi. pp. 780-781.
[137] Stallbaum (in his note on Plato, Legg. i. p. 637 C, τὴν τῶν γυναικῶν παρ’ ὑμῖν ἄνεσιν) observes — “Lacænarum licentiam, quum ex aliis institutis patriis, tum ex gymnicarum exercitationum usu repetendam, Plato carpit etiam infrà,” &c. This is a mistake. Plato does not blame the gymnastic exercises of the Spartan maidens: the four passages to which Stallbaum refers do not prove his assertion. They even countenance the reverse of that assertion. Plato approves of gymnastic and military exercises for maidens in the Laws, and for all the female Guardians in the Republic.
Stallbaum also refers to Aristotle as disapproving the gymnastic exercises of the Spartan maidens. I cannot think that this is correct. Aristotle does indeed blame the arrangements for women at Sparta, but not, as I understand him, because the women were subjected to gymnastic exercise; his blame is founded on the circumstance that the women were not regulated, but left to do as they pleased, while the men were under the strictest drill. This I conceive to be the meaning of γυναικῶν ἄνεσις. Euripides indeed has a very bitter passage condemning the exercises of the Spartan maidens; but neither Plato nor Aristotle shared this view.
Respecting the Spartan maidens and their exercises, see Xenophon, Republ. Laced. i. 4; Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 14.
[138] Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, b. 8. Πεπονημένην μὲν οὖν ἔχειν δεῖ τὴν ἕξιν, πεπονημένην δὲ πόνοις μὴ βιαίοις, μηδὲ πρὸς ἕνα μόνον, ὥσπερ ἡ τῶν ἀθλητῶν ἕξις, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς τῶν ἐλευθερίων πράξεις. Ὁμοίως δὲ δεῖ ταῦτα ὑπάρχειν ἀνδράσι καὶ γυναιξί. Compare also i. 8, near the end of the first book.
[139] Aristotel. Politic. vii. 16, p. 1335, a. 20, b. 15.
In principle, therefore, Aristotle agrees with Plato,[140] as to the propriety of comprehending women as well as men under public training and discipline: but he does not follow out the principle with the same consistency. He maintains the Platonic Commonwealth to be impossible.[141]
[140] If we take the sentence from Aristotle’s Politics, cited in a note immediately preceding, to the effect that all the citizens belonged to the city, and that each was a part of the city (viii. 1, p. 1337, a. 28) in conjunction with another passage in the Politics (i. 3, p. 1254, a. 10) — Τό τε γὰρ μόριον, οὐ μόνον ἄλλου ἐστὶ μόριον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅλως ἄλλου — it is difficult to see how he can, consistently with these principles, assign to his citizens any individual self-regarding agency. Plato denies all such to his Guardians, and in so doing he makes deductions consistent with the principles of Aristotle, who lays down his principles too absolutely for the use which he afterwards makes of them.
[141] Aristotel. Politic. ii. 5, p. 1263, b. 29. φαίνεται δ’ εἶναι πάμπαν ἀδύνατος ὁ βίος.
Aristotle declares the Platonic Commonwealth impossible — In what sense this is true.