n in an ordinary Greek state, proceeding
more by regular methods, and being more restricted to distinct duties.

The executive of Plato's Laws, like the Athenian, was different from
that of a modern civilized state. The difference chiefly consists in
this, that whereas among ourselves there are certain persons or classes
of persons set apart for the execution of the duties of government, in
ancient Greece, as in all other communities in the earlier stages of
their development, they were not equally distinguished from the rest of
the citizens. The machinery of government was never so well organized as
in the best modern states. The judicial department was not so completely
separated from the legislative, nor the executive from the judicial, nor
the people at large from the professional soldier, lawyer, or priest. To
Aristotle (Pol.) it was a question requiring serious consideration--Who
should execute a sentence? There was probably no body of police to whom
were entrusted the lives and properties of the citizens in any Hellenic
state. Hence it might be reasonably expected that every man should be
the watchman of every other, and in turn be watched by him. The ancients
do not seem to have remembered the homely adage that, 'What is every
man's business is no man's business,' or always to have thought of
applying the principle of a division of labour to the administration
of law and to government. Every Athenian was at some time or on some
occasion in his life a magistrate, judge, advocate, soldier, sailor,
policeman. He had not necessarily any private business; a good deal
of his time was taken up with the duties of office and other public
occupations. So, too, in Plato's Laws. A citizen was to interfere in a
quarrel, if older than the combatants, or to defend the outraged party,
if his junior. He was especially bound to come to the rescue of a parent
who was ill-treated by his children. He was also required to prosecute
the murderer of a kinsman. In certain cases he was allowed to arrest an
offender. He might even use violence to an abusive person. Any
citizen who was not less than thirty years of age at times exercised
a magisterial authority, to be enforced even by blows. Both in the
Magnesian state and at Athens many thousand persons must have shared
in the highest duties of government, if a section only of the Council,
consisting of thirty or of fifty persons, as in the Laws, or at
Athens after the days of Cleisthenes,