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 5040.  Plato is deeply impressed by the antiquity of Egypt, and the unchangeableness of her ancient forms of song and dance.  And he is also struck by the progress which the Egyptians had made in the mathematical sciences—­in comparison of them the Greeks appeared to him to be little better than swine.  Yet he censures the Egyptian meanness and inhospitality to strangers.  He has traced the growth of states from their rude beginnings in a philosophical spirit; but of any life or growth of the Hellenic world in future ages he is silent.  He has made the reflection that past time is the maker of states (Book iii.); but he does not argue from