the language of Plato in the Laws, and to combine into something like a
whole his various and at first sight inconsistent utterances.

VI. The Republic may be described as the Spartan constitution appended
to a government of philosophers. But in the Laws an Athenian element is
also introduced. Many enactments are taken from the Athenian; the four
classes are borrowed from the constitution of Cleisthenes, which Plato
regards as the best form of Athenian government, and the guardians of
the law bear a certain resemblance to the archons. In the constitution
of the Laws nearly all officers are elected by a vote more or less
popular and by lot. But the assembly only exists for the purposes of
election, and has no legislative or executive powers. The Nocturnal
Council, which is the highest body in the state, has several of the
functions of the ancient Athenian Areopagus, after which it appears to
be modelled. Life is to wear, as at Athens, a joyous and festive look;
there are to be Bacchic choruses, and men of mature age are encouraged
in moderate potations. On the other hand, the common meals, the public
education, the crypteia are borrowed from Sparta and not from Athens,
and the superintendence of private life, which was to be practised by
the governors, has also its prototype in Sparta. The extravagant dislike
which Plato shows both to a naval power and to extreme democracy is the
reverse of Athenian.

The best-governed Hellenic states traced the origin of their laws to
individual lawgivers. These were real persons, though we are uncertain
how far they originated or only modified the institutions which are
ascribed to them. But the lawgiver, though not a myth, was a fixed idea
in the mind of the Greek,--as fixed as the Trojan war or the earth-born
Cadmus. 'This was what Solon meant or said'--was the form in which the
Athenian expressed his own conception of right and justice, or argued a
disputed point of law. And the constant reference in the Laws of Plato
to the lawgiver is altogether in accordance with Greek modes of thinking
and speaking.

There is also, as in the Republic, a Pythagorean element. The highest
branch of education is arithmetic; to know the order of the heavenly
bodies, and to reconcile the apparent contradiction of their movements,
is an important part of religion; the lives of the citizens are to have
a common measure, as also their vessels and coins; the great blessing of
the state is the number 504