[16] Plato, Legg. ii. p. 673 B.
[17] Plato, Legg. x. p. 886 B-C. εἰσὶν ἡμῖν ἐν γράμμασι λόγοι κείμενοι, οἵ παρ’ ὑμῖν οὐκ εἰσὶ δι’ ἀρετὴν πολιτείας, ὡς ἐγὼ μανθάνω, οἱ μὲν ἔν τισι μέτροις, οἱ δὲ καὶ ἄνευ μέτρων λέγοντες περὶ θεῶν, οἱ μὲν παλαιόταταοι, ὡς γέγονεν ἡ πρώτη φύσις οὐράνου τῶν τε ἄλλων, προϊόντες δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς οὐ πολὺ θεογονίαν διεξέρχονται, γενόμενοί τε ὡς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὡμίλησαν. Ἃ τοῖς ἀκούουσιν εἰ μὲν εἰς ἄλλο τι καλῶς ἢ μὴ καλῶς ἔχει, οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἐπιτιμᾷν παλαιοῖς οὖσι, &c.
Gymnastic training, military drill, and public mess, in Krete and Sparta.
Not simply on this negative ground, but on another positive ground also, Sparta and Krête were well suited to furnish listeners for the Laws.[18] Their gymnastic discipline and military drill, especially the Spartan, were stricter and more continuous than anywhere else in Greece: including toilsome fatigue, endurance of pain, heat, and cold, and frequent conflicts with and without arms between different factions of citizens. The individual and the family were more thoroughly merged in the community: the citizens were trained for war, interdicted from industry, and forbidden to go abroad without permission: attendance on the public mess-table was compulsory on all citizens: the training of youth was uniform, under official authority: the two systems were instituted, both of them, by divine authority — the Spartan by Apollo, the Kretan by Zeus — Lykurgus and Minos, semi-divine persons, being the respective instruments and mediators. In neither of them was any public criticism tolerated upon the laws and institutions (this is a point capital in Plato’s view[19]). No voice was allowed among the young men except that of constant eulogy, extolling the system as not merely excellent but of divine origin, and resenting all contradiction: none but an old man was permitted to suggest doubts, and he only in private whisper to the Archon, when no young man was near. Both in Sparta and Krete the public authorities stood forward as the conspicuous, positive, constant, agents; enforcing upon each individual a known type of character and habits. There was thus an intelligible purpose, political and social, as contrasted with other neighbouring societies, in which no special purpose revealed itself.[20] Both Sparta and Krete, moreover, had continued in the main unchanged from a time immemorial. In this, as in numerous other points, the two systems were cognate and similar.[21]
[18] Ephorus, ap. Strabo, x. 480; Xenophon, Repub. Lac. c. 4-6; Isokrates, Busiris, Orat. xi. s. 19; Aristot. Politic. ii. capp. 9 and 10, pp. 1270-1271, and viii. 9, p. 1338, b. 15; also chap. vi. of the second part of my ‘History of Greece,’ with the references there given.
[19] Plato, Legg. i. p. 634 D-E. ὑμῖν μὲν γάρ, εἴπερ καὶ μετρίως κατεσκεύασται τὰ τῶν νόμων, εἷς τῶν καλλίστων ἂν εἴη νόμων μὴ ζητεῖν τῶν νέων μηδένα ἐᾷν ποῖα καλῶς αὐτῶν ἢ μὴ καλῶς ἔχει, μιᾷ δὲ φωνῇ καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς στόματος πάντας συμφωνεῖν ὡς πάντα καλῶς κείται θέντων θεῶν, καὶ ἐάν ἄλλως λέγῃ, μὴ ἀνέχεσθαι τὸ παράπαν ἀκούοντας, &c.
Compare Demosthen. adv. Leptin. p. 489, where a similar affirmation is made respecting Sparta.
[20] These other cities are what Plato calls αἱ τῶν εἰκῇ πολιτευομένων πολιτεῖαι (Legg. i. p. 635 E), and what Aristotle calls νόμιμα χύδην κείμενα, Polit. vii. 1324, b. 5.
[21] Plato, Legg. i. p. 624, iii. pp. 691 E, 696 A, iii. p. 683. Krete and Sparta, ἀδελφοὶ νόμοι.
K. F. Hermann (in his instructive Dissertation, De Vestigiis Institutorum veterum imprimis Atticorum, per Platonis de Legibus libros indagandis) represents Sparta and Krete as types of customs and institutions which had once been general in Greece, but had been discontinued in the other Grecian cities. “Hoc imprimis in Lacedæmoniorum et Cretensium res publicas cadit, quæ quum et antiquissimam Græciæ indolem fidelissimé servasse viderentur, et moribus ac disciplinâ publicâ optimé fundatæ essent, non mirum est eas Græco philosopho adeò placuisse ut earum formam et libris de Civitate et Legibus quasi pro fundamento subjiceret” (p. 19, compare pp. 13-15-23) … “unde (sc. a legitimis Græcarum civitatum principiis) licet plurimi temporum decursu descivissent atque in aliâ omnia abiissent, nihil tamen Plato proposuit, nisi quod optimus quisque in Græciâ semper expetierat ac persecutus erat” (p. 15). I think this view is not correct, though it is adopted more or less by various critics. Sparta and Krete are not specimens (in my judgment) of what all or most Grecian cities once had been — nor of pure Dorism, as K. O. Müller affirms. On the contrary I believe them to have been very peculiar, Sparta especially. So far they resembled all early Greeks, that neither literature nor luxury had grown up among them. But neither the Syssitia nor the disciplina publica had ever subsisted among other Greeks: and these were the two characteristic features of Krete and Sparta, more especially of the latter. They were the two features which arrested Plato’s attention, and upon which he brought his constructive imagination to bear; constructing upon one principle in his Republic, and upon a different principle in his Dialogue de Legibus. While he copies these two main features from Sparta, he borrows many or most of his special laws from Athens; but the ends, with reference to which he puts these elements together, are his own. K. F. Hermann, in his anxiety to rescue Plato from the charge of rashness (“temerario ingenii lusu,” p. 18), understates Plato’s originality.