The force of εὐτυχία, as a title to command, is illustrated in the speech addressed by Alkibiades to the Athenian assembly. Thucyd. vi. 16-17: he allows it even in his competitor Nikias — ἀλλ’ ἕως τε ἔτι ἀκμάζω μετ’ αὐτῆς καὶ ὁ Νικίας εὐτυχὴς δοκεῖ εἶναι, ἀποχρήσασθε τῇ ἑκατέρου ἡμῶν ὠφελία. Compare also the language of Nikias himself in his own last speech under the extreme distress of the Athenian army in Sicily, Thucyd. vii. 77.
In the Politikus (p. 293 and elsewhere) Plato admits no ἀξίωμα τοῦ ἄρχειν as genuine or justifiable, except Science, Art, superior wisdom, in one or a few Artists of governing; the same in Republic, v. p. 474 C, respecting what he there calls φιλοσοφία.
Imprudence of founding government upon any one of these titles separately — Governments of Argos and Messênê ruined by the single principle — Sparta avoided it.
Plato thinks it imprudent to found the government of society upon any one of these seven titles singly and separately. He requires that each one of them shall be checked and modified by the conjoint operation of others. Messênê and Argos were depraved and ruined by the single principle: while Sparta was preserved and exalted by a mixture of different elements. The kings of Argos and Messênê, irrational youths with nothing to restrain them (except oaths, which they despised), employed their power to abuse and mischief. Such was the consequence of trusting to the exclusive title of high breed, embodied in one individual person. But Apollo and Lykurgus provided better for Sparta. They softened regal insolence by establishing the double line of co-ordinate kings: they introduced the title of old age, along with that of high breed, by founding the Senate of twenty-eight elders: they farther introduced the title of sortition, or something near it, by nominating the annual Ephors. The mixed government of Sparta was thus made to work for good, while the unmixed systems of Argos and Messênê both went wrong.[111] Both the two latter states were in perpetual war with Sparta, so as to frustrate that purpose — union against Asiatics — with a view to which the triple Herakleid kingdom was originally erected in Peloponnesus. Had each of these three kingdoms been temperately and moderately governed, like Sparta, so as to maintain unimpaired the projected triple union — the Persian invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes would never have taken place.[112]
[111] Plato, Legg. iii. pp. 691-692.
[112] Plato, Legg. iii. p. 692 C-D.
Plato casts Hellenic legend into accordance with his own political theories.
Such is the way in which Plato casts the legendary event, called the Return of the Herakleids, into accordance with a political theory of his own. That event, in his view, afforded the means of uniting Hellas internally, and of presenting such a defensive combination as would have deterred all invasions from Asia, if only the proper principles of legislation and government had been understood and applied. The lesson to be derived from this failure is, that we ought not to concentrate great authority in one hand; and that we ought to blend together several principles of authority, instead of resorting to the exclusive action of one alone.[113] This lesson deserves attention, as a portion of political theory; but I feel convinced that neither Herodotus nor Thucydides would have concurred in Plato’s historical views. Neither of them would have admitted the disunion between Sparta, Argos, and Messênê as a main cause of the Persian invasion of Greece.
[113] Plato, Legg. iii. p. 693 A. ὡς ἄρα οὐ δεῖ μεγάλας ἀρχὰς οὐδ’ αὖ ἀμίκτους νομοθετεῖν. Compare pp. 685-686.
Plato here affirms not only that Messênê and Argos were and had been constantly at war with Sparta, but that they were so at the time of the Persian invasion of Greece — and that Messênê thus hindered the Spartans from assisting the Athenians at Marathon, pp. 692 E, 698 E. His statement that Argos was at least neutral, if not treacherous and philo-Persian, during the invasion of Xerxes, is coincident with Herodotus; but not so his statement that the Lacedæmonians were kept back by the war against Messênê. Indeed at that time the Messenians had no separate domicile or independent station in Peloponnesus. They had been conquered by Sparta long before, and their descendants in the same territory were Helots (Thucyd. i. 101). It is true that there always existed struggling remnants of expatriated Messenians, who maintained the name, and whom Athens protected and favoured during the Peloponnesian war; but there was no independent Messenian government in Peloponnesus until the foundation of the city of Messênê by Epaminondas in 369 B.C., two years after the battle of Leuktra: there had never been any city of that name in the Peloponnesus before.