land (Agis):  but from the manner in which Aristotle refers to the subject, we should imagine this evil in the state to be of a much older standing.  Like some other countries in which small proprietors have been numerous, the original equality passed into inequality, and, instead of a large middle class, there was probably at Sparta greater disproportion in the property of the citizens than in any other state of Hellas.  Plato was aware of the danger, and has improved on the Spartan custom.  The land, as at Sparta, must have been tilled by slaves, since other occupations were found for the citizens.  Bodies of young men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty were engaged in making biennial peregrinations of the country.  They and their officers are to be the magistrates, police, engineers, aediles, of the twelve districts into which the colony was divided.  Their way of life may be compared with that of the Spartan secret police or Crypteia, a name which Plato freely applies to them without apparently any consciousness of the odium which has attached to the word in history.

Another great institution which Plato borrowed from Sparta (or Crete) is the Syssitia or common meals.  These were established in both states, and in some respects were considered by Aristotle to be better managed in Crete than at Lacedaemon (Pol.).  In the Laws the Cretan custom appears to be adopted (This is not proved, as Hermann supposes (’De Vestigiis,’ etc.)):  that is to say, if we may interpret Plato by Aristotle, the cost of them was defrayed by the state and not by the individuals (Arist.  Pol); so that the members of the mess, who could not pay their quota, still retained their rights of citizenship.  But this explanation is hardly consistent with the Laws, where contributions to the Syssitia from private estates are expressly mentioned.  Plato goes further than the legislators of Sparta and Crete, and would extend the common meals to women as well as men:  he desires to curb the disorders, which existed among the female sex in both states, by the application to women of the same military discipline to which the men were already subject.  It was an extension of the custom of Syssitia from which the ancient legislators shrank, and which Plato himself believed to be very difficult of enforcement.

Like Sparta, the new colony was not to be surrounded by walls,—­a state should learn to depend upon the bravery of its citizens only—­a fallacy or paradox, if it is not to be regarded as a poetical fancy, which is fairly enough ridiculed by Aristotle (Pol.).  Women, too, must be ready to assist in the defence of their country:  they are not to rush to the temples and altars, but to arm themselves with shield and spear.  In the regulation of the Syssitia, in at least one of his enactments respecting property, and in the attempt to correct the licence of women, Plato shows, that while he borrowed from the institutions of Sparta and favoured the Spartan mode of life, he also sought to improve upon them.