Note 21 — Chapter XXXIX · LEGES AND EPINOMIS.

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.