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 the victories which Agesilaus won in Asia Minor.

Plato, like Aristotle, had in his mind some form of a mean state which should escape the evils and secure the advantages of both aristocracy and democracy.  It may however be doubted whether the creation of such a state is not beyond the legislator’s art, although there have been examples in history of forms of government, which through some community of interest or of origin, through a balance of parties in the state itself, or through the fear of a common enemy, have for a while preserved such a character of moderation.  But in general there arises a time in the history of a state when the struggle between the few and the many has to be fought out.  No system of checks and balances, such as Plato has devised in the Laws, could have given equipoise and stability to an ancient state, any more than the skill of the legislator could have withstood the tide of democracy in England or France during the last hundred years, or have given life to China or India.

The basis of the Magnesian constitution is the equal division of land.  In the new state, as in the Republic, there was to be neither poverty nor riches.  Every citizen under all circumstances retained his lot, and as much money as was necessary for the cultivation of it, and no one was allowed to accumulate property to the amount of more than five times the value of the lot, inclusive of it.  The equal division of land was a Spartan institution, not known to have existed elsewhere in Hellas.  The mention of it in the Laws of Plato affords considerable presumption that it was of ancient origin, and not first introduced, as Mr. Grote and others have imagined, in the reformation of Cleomenes iii.  But at Sparta, if we may judge from the frequent complaints of the accumulation of property in the hands of a few persons (Arist.  Pol.), no provision could have been made for the maintenance of the lot.  Plutarch indeed speaks of a law introduced by the Ephor Epitadeus soon after the Peloponnesian War, which first allowed the Spartans to sell their