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σοφὰν δ’ ἄπεχε πραπίδα φρένα τε περισσῶν παρὰ φωτῶν· τὸ πλῆθος ὅ, τι τὸ φαυλότερον ἐνόμισε χρῆταί τε, τόδε τοι λεγοίμαν. [λέγοιμ’ ἄν, Matthiæ] (427). |
Compare vv. 200-203 of the same drama.
[12] Aristophan. Nubes, 116-875, &c.
Scene of the Leges, not in Athens, but in Krete. Persons Kretan and Spartan, comparatively illiterate.
The submergence and discredit of letters and philosophy, which pervades the Dialogue De Legibus, is farther indicated by the personages introduced as conversing. In all the other Platonic dialogues, the scene is laid at Athens, and the speakers are educated citizens of Athens; sometimes visitors, equally or better educated, from other Grecian cities. Generally, they are either adults who have already acquired some intellectual eminence, or youths anxious to acquire it. Nikias and Laches, Melesias and Lysimachus (in the Lachês), are among the leaders (past or present) of the Athenian public assembly. Anytus (in the Menon) is a man not so much ignorant of letters as despising letters.[13] Moreover Sokrates himself formally disclaims positive knowledge, professing to be only a searcher for truth along with the rest.[14] But the scene of the Laws is laid in Krete, not at Athens: the three speakers are not merely all old men, but frequently allude to their old age. One of them only is an Athenian, to whom the positive and expository duty is assigned: the other two are Megillus, a Spartan, and Kleinias, a Kretan of Knossus. Now both Sparta, and the communities of Krete, were among the most unlettered portions of the Hellenic name. They were not only strangers to that impulse of rhetoric, dialectic, and philosophical speculation which, having its chief domicile at Athens, had become diffused more or less over a large portion of Greece since the Persian war — but they were sparingly conversant even with that old poetical culture, epic and lyric, which belonged to the age of Solon and the Seven Wise Men. The public training of youth at Sparta, equal for all the citizens, included nothing of letters and music, which in other cities were considered to be the characteristics of an educated Greek:[15] though probably individual Spartans, more or fewer, acquired these accomplishments for themselves. Gymnastics, with a slight admixture of simple chronic music and a still slighter admixture of poetry and letters, formed the characteristic culture of Sparta and Krete.[16] In the Leges, Plato not only notes the fact, but treats it as indicating a better social condition, compared with Athens and other Greeks — that both Spartans and Kretans were alike unacquainted with the old epic or theological poems (Hesiod, Orpheus, &c.), and with the modern philosophical speculations.[17]
[13] Tacitus, Dialog. de Orator. c. 2. “Aper, communi eruditione imbutus, contemnebat potius literas quam nesciebat.”
Nikias is said to have made his son Nikêratus learn by heart the entire Iliad and Odyssey of Homer; at least this is the statement of Nikêratus himself in the Symposion of Xenophon (iii. 5).
[14] This profession appears even in the Gorgias (p. 506 A) and in the Republic (v. p. 450 D).
[15] See Xenophon, Republ. Laced. c. 2.
Compare the description given by Xenophon in the Cyropædia (i. 2, 6), of the public training of Persian youth, which passage bears striking analogy to his description of the Spartan training. The public διδάσκαλοι are not mentioned as teaching γράμματα, which belong to Athens and other cities, but as teaching justice, temperance, self-command, obedience, bodily endurance, the use of the bow and the javelin, &c.