n 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 lic