Note 160 — Chapter XXXIX · LEGES AND EPINOMIS. (continued 2)

Plato, Legg. v. p. 739 E. ἣν δὲ νῦν ἡμεῖς ἐπικεχειρήκαμεν, εἴη τε ἂν γενομένη πως ἀθανασίας ἐγγύτατα καὶ ἡ μία δευτέρως· τρίτην δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα, ἐὰν θεὸς ἐθέλῃ, διαπερανούμεθα. Upon this passage K. F. Hermann observes: “Hæc enim est quam ordine tertiam appellat Plato, quæ Aristoteli [Politic. iv. 1, 2] ἐξ ὑποθέσεως πολιτεία dicitur: quod tamen nolim ita accipi, ut à nonnullis factum est, ut hanc quoque olim singulari scripto persecuturum fuisse philosophum credamus, quasi tribus exemplis absolvi rerum publicarum formas censuisset; innumeræ enim pro singularum nationum et urbium fortuna esse possunt,” &c. (De Vestigiis Instit. Vet. imprimis Attic. per Plat. de Legg. libros indag., p. 16).

That Plato did intend to compose a third work upon an analogous subject appears to me clear from the words, — but it does not at all follow that he thought that three varieties would exhaust all possibility. Upon this point I dissent from Hermann, and also upon his interpretation of Aristotle’s phrase ἡ ἐξ ὑποθέσεως πολιτεία. Aristotle distinguishes three distinct varieties of end which the political constructor may propose to himself:— 1. τὴν πολιτείαν τὴν ἁπλῶς ἀρίστην, τὴν μάλιστα κατ’ εὐχήν. 2. Τὴν ἐκ τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἀρίστην. 3. Τὴν ἐξ ὑποθέσεως ἀρίστην. Now K. F. Hermann here maintains, and Boeckh had already maintained before him (ad Platonis Minoem et de Legibus, pp. 66-67), that the city sketched in Plato’s treatise De Legibus coincides with No. 2 in Aristotle’s enumeration, and that the projected τρίτη in Plato coincides with No. 3 — τὴν ἐξ ὑποθέσεως. I differ from them here. There is no ground for presuming that what Plato puts third must also be put by Aristotle third. I think that the Platonic city De Legibus corresponds to No. 3 in Aristotle and not to No. 2. It is a city ἐξ ὑποθέσεως, not ἐκ τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἀρίστην. Plato borrows little or nothing from τὰ ὑποκείμενα, and almost everything from his own ὑπόθεσις or assumed principle, which in this case is the fixed number of the citizens as well as of the lots of land, the imposition of a limit on each man’s proprietary acquisitions, and the recognition of separate family establishments subject to these limits. This is the ὑπόθεσις of Plato’s second city, to which all his regulations of detail are accommodated: it is substituted by him (unwillingly, because of the repugnance of others) in place of the ὑπόθεσις of his first city or the Republic, which ὑπόθεσις is perfect communism among the φύλακες, without either separate property or separate family. This last is Plato’s ἁπλως ἀρίστη.