Laws

by Plato

The ideal of Athens has been pictured for all time in the speech which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles, called the Funeral Oration. He contrasts the activity and freedom and pleasantness of Athenian life with the immobility and severe looks and incessant drill of the Spartans. The citizens of no city were more versatile, or more readily changed from land to sea or more quickly moved about from place to place. They 'took their pleasures' merrily, and yet, when the time for fighting arrived, were not a whit behind the Spartans, who were like men living in a camp, and, though always keeping guard, were often too late for the fray. Any foreigner might visit Athens; her ships found a way to the most distant shores; the riches of the whole earth poured in upon her. Her citizens had their theatres and festivals; they 'provided their souls with many relaxations'; yet they were not less manly than the Spartans or less willing to sacrifice this enjoyable existence for their country's good. The Athenian was a nobler form of life than that of their rivals, a life of music as well as of gymnastic, the life of a citizen as well as of a soldier. Such is the picture which Thucydides has drawn of the Athenians in their glory. It is the spirit of this life which Plato would infuse into the Magnesian state and which he seeks to combine with the common meals and gymnastic discipline of Sparta.

The two great types of Athens and Sparta had deeply entered into his mind. He had heard of Sparta at a distance and from common Hellenic fame: he was a citizen of Athens and an Athenian of noble birth. He must often have sat in the law-courts, and may have had personal experience of the duties of offices such as he is establishing. There is no need to ask the question, whence he derived his knowledge of the Laws of Athens: they were a part of his daily life. Many of his enactments are recognized to be Athenian laws from the fragments preserved in the Orators and elsewhere: many more would be found to be so if we had better information. Probably also still more of them would have been incorporated in the Magnesian code, if the work had ever been finally completed. But it seems to have come down to us in a form which is partly finished and partly unfinished, having a beginning and end, but wanting arrangement in the middle. The Laws answer to Plato's own description of them, in the comparison which he makes of himself and his two friends to gatherers of stones or the beginners of some composite work, 'who are providing materials and partly putting them together:—having some of their laws, like stones, already fixed in their places, while others lie about.'

Plato's own life coincided with the period at which Athens rose to her greatest heights and sank to her lowest depths. It was impossible that he should regard the blessings of democracy in the same light as the men of a former generation, whose view was not intercepted by the evil shadow of the taking of Athens, and who had only the glories of Marathon and Salamis and the administration of Pericles to look back upon. On the other hand the fame and prestige of Sparta, which had outlived so many crimes and blunders, was not altogether lost at the end of the life of Plato. Hers was the only great Hellenic government which preserved something of its ancient form; and although the Spartan citizens were reduced to almost one-tenth of their original number (Arist. Pol.), she still retained, until the rise of Thebes and Macedon, a certain authority and predominance due to her final success in the struggle with Athens and to the victories which Agesilaus won in Asia Minor.

Plato, like Aristotle, had in his mind some form of a mean state which should escape the evils and secure the advantages of both aristocracy and democracy. It may however be doubted whether the creation of such a state is not beyond the legislator's art, although there have been examples in history of forms of government, which through some community of interest or of origin, through a balance of parties in the state itself, or through the fear of a common enemy, have for a while preserved such a character of moderation. But in general there arises a time in the history of a state when the struggle between the few and the many has to be fought out. No system of checks and balances, such as Plato has devised in the Laws, could have given equipoise and stability to an ancient state, any more than the skill of the legislator could have withstood the tide of democracy in England or France during the last hundred years, or have given life to China or India.

The basis of the Magnesian constitution is the equal division of land. In the new state, as in the Republic, 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, and no one was allowed to accumulate property to the amount of more than five times the value of the lot, inclusive of it. 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 (Arist. Pol.), 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): 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. 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. Their way of life may be compared with that of the Spartan secret police or Crypteia, a name which Plato freely applies to them 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 (Pol.). In the Laws the Cretan custom appears to be adopted (This is not proved, as Hermann supposes ('De Vestigiis,' etc.)): 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 (Arist. Pol); 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, 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, 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—a fallacy or paradox, if it is not to be regarded as a poetical fancy, which is fairly enough ridiculed by Aristotle (Pol.). 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. 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. 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. 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,' could have safely subsisted without one.

Neither the Spartans nor the Magnesian colonists were permitted to engage in trade or commerce. In order to limit their dealings as far as possible to their own country, they had a separate coinage; the Magnesians were only allowed to use the common currency of Hellas when they travelled abroad, which they were forbidden to do unless they received permission from the government. Like the Spartans, Plato was afraid of the evils which might be introduced into his state by intercourse with foreigners; but he also shrinks from the utter exclusiveness of Sparta, and is not unwilling to allow visitors of a suitable age and rank to come from other states to his own, as he also allows citizens of his own state to go to foreign countries and bring back a report of them. Such international communication seemed to him both honourable and useful.

We may now notice some points in which the commonwealth of the Laws approximates to the Athenian model. These are much more numerous than the previous class of resemblances; we are better able to compare the laws of Plato with those of Athens, because a good deal more is known to us of Athens than of Sparta.