Note 113 — Chapter XXXIX · LEGES AND EPINOMIS.

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.

Now Plato wrote his Treatise De Legibus after the foundation of this city of Messênê and the re-establishment of an independent Messenian community in Peloponnesus. The new city was peopled partly by returning Messenian exiles, partly by enfranchised Helots. It is probable enough that both these classes might be disposed to disguise (as far as they could) the past period of servitude — and to represent the Messenian name and community as never having been wholly effaced in the neighbourhood of Ithômê, though always struggling against an oppressive neighbour. Traditions of this tenor would become current, and Plato has adopted one of them in his historical sketch.

If we look back to what Plato says about the Kretan prophet Epimenides, we shall see that here too he must have followed erroneous traditions. He makes Epimenides contemporary with the invasion of Greece by Darius, instead of contemporary with the Kylonian sacrilege (B.C. 612). When a prophet had got reputation, a great many new prophecies were fathered upon him (as upon Bakis and Musæus) with very little care about chronological consistency. Plato may well have been misled by one of these fictions (Legg. i. p. 642, iii. p. 677).