ldier. 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