Timaeus — Plato

spartan features of the Republic. clxxi Many traditions were preserved at Sparta of the severity with Introducwhich the magistrates had maintained the primitive rule of music ^'°^' and poetry; as in the Repubhc of Plato, the new-fangled poet was to be expelled. Hymns to the Gods, which are the only kind of music admitted into the ideal State, were the only kind which was permitted at Sparta.

The Spartans, though an unpoetical race, were nevertheless lovers of poetry ; they had been stirred by the Elegiac strains of Tyrtaeus, they had crowded around Hippias to hear his recitals of Homer ; but in this they resembled the citizens of the timocratic rather than of the ideal State (548 E).

The council of elder men also corresponds to the Spartan gerusia ; and the freedom with which they . are permitted to judge about matters of detail agrees with what we are told of that institution.

Once more, the military rule of not spoiling the dead or offering arms at the temples ; the moderation in the pursuit of enemies ; the importance attached to the physical well-being of the citizens; the use of warfare for the sake of defence rather than of aggression — are features probably suggested by the spirit and practice of Sparta, To the Spartan type the ideal State reverts in the first decline ; and the character of the individual timocrat is borrowed from the Spartan citizen.

The love of Lacedaemon not only affected Plato and Xcnophon, but was shared by many undistinguished Athenians ; there they seemed to find a principle which was wanting in their own democracy. The ry/cocr/zia of the Spartans attracted them, that is to say, not the goodness of their laws, but the spirit of order and loyalty which prevailed.

Fascinated by the idea, citizens of Athens would imitate the Lacedaemonians in their dress and manners ; they were known to the contemporaries of Plato as ' the persons who had their ears bruised,' like the Roundheads of the Commonwealth.

The love of another church or country when seen at a distance only, the longing for an imaginary simplicity in civilized times, the fond desire of a past which never has been, or of a future which never will be, — these are aspirations of the human mind which are often felt among ourselves. Such feelings meet with a response in the Republic of Plato.

But there are other features of the Platonic Republic, as, for example, the literary and philosophical education, and the grace 2clxxii Hellenic feeling in Plato. Intkouuc- and beauty of life, which are the reverse of Spartan. Plato wishes to give his citizens a taste of Athenian freedom as well as of Lacedaemonian discipline. His individual genius is purely Athenian, although in theory he is a lover of Sparta; and he is something more than either — he has also a true Hellenic feeling.

He is desirous of humanizing the wars of Hellenes against one another; he acknowledges that the Delphian God is the grand hereditary interpreter of all Hellas. The spirit of harmony and the Dorian mode are to prevail, and the whole State is to have an external beauty which is the reflex of the harmony within. But he has not yet found out the truth which he afterwards enunciated in the Laws (i.

628 D) — that he was a I better legislator who made men to be of one mind, than he who / trained them for war. The citizens, as in other Hellenic States, democratic as well as aristocratic, are really an upper class ; for, although no mention is made of slaves, the lower classes are allowed to fade away into the distance, and are represented in the individual by the passions.

Plato has no idea either of a social State in which all classes are harmonized, or of a federation of Hellas or the world in which different nations or States have a place. His city is equipped for war rather than for peace, and this would seem to be justified by the ordinary condition of Hellenic States.

The myth of the earth-born men is an embodiment of the orthodox tradition of Hellas, and the allusion to the four ages of the world is also sanctioned by the authority of Hesiod and the poets. Thus we see that the Republic is partly founded on the ideal of the old Greek polls, partly on the actual circumstances of Hellas in that age.

Plato, like the old painters, retains a traditional form, and like them he has also a vision of a city in the clouds. There is yet another thread which is interwoven in the texture of the work ; for the Republic is not only a Dorian State, but a Pythagorean league.

The ' way of life ' which was connected with the name of Pythagoras, like the Catholic monastic orders, showed the power which the mind of an individual might exercise over his contemporaries, and may have naturally suggested to Plato the possibility of reviving such * mediaeval institutions. The Pythagoreans, like Plato, enforced a rule of life and a moral and intellectual training. The influence ascribed to music, which to 3us seems exaggerated, is also a Pythagorean feature ; it is not to Introducbe regarded as representing the real influence of music in the ^'°'^" Greek world. More nearly than any other government of Hellas, the Pythagorean league of three hundred was an aristocracy of virtue.

For once in the history of mankind the philosophy of order or Koajuog, expressing and consequently enlisting on its side the combined endeavours of the better part of the people, obtained the management of public affairs and held possession of it for a considerable time (until about B. c. 500). Probably only in States prepared by Dorian institutions would such a league have been possible.

The rulers, like Plato's <p'v7uiKeq, were required to submit to a severe training in order to prepare the way for the education of the other members of the community. Long after the dissolution of the Order, eminent Pythagoreans, such as Archytas of Tarentum, retained their political influence over the cities of Magna Graecia.

There was much here that was suggestive to the kindred spirit of Plato, who had doubtless meditated deeply on the ' way of life of Pythagoras ' (Rep. X. 600 B) and his followers.

Slight traces of Pythagoreanism are to be found in the mystical number of the State, in the • number which expresses the interval between the king and the tyrant, in the doctrine of transmigration, in the music of the spheres, as well as in the great though secondary importance ascribed to mathematics in education. But as in his philosophy, so also in the form of his State, he goes far beyond the old Pythagoreans.

He attempts a task really impossible, which is to unite the past of Greek history with the future of philosophy, analogous to that other impossibility, which has often been the dream of Christendom, the attempt to unite the past history of Europe with the kingdom of Christ. Nothing actually existing in the world at all resembles Plato's ideal State; nor does he himself imagine that such a State is possible.

This he repeats again and again ; e. g. in the Republic (ix. subfn.), or in the Laws (Book v. 739), where, casting a glance back on the | Republic, he admits that the perfect state of communism and philosophy was impossible in his own age, though still to be retained as a pattern. The same doubt is implied in the earnestness with which he argues in the Republic (v. 472 D) that ideals are none the worse because they cannot be realized in fact, and