of Athens, because a good deal more is known to
us of Athens than of Sparta.

The information which we possess about Athenian law, though
comparatively fuller, is still fragmentary. The sources from which our
knowledge is derived are chiefly the following:--

(1) The Orators,--Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Demosthenes,
Aeschines, Lycurgus, and others.

(2) Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, as well as later
writers, such as Cicero de Legibus, Plutarch, Aelian, Pausanias.

(3) Lexicographers, such as Harpocration, Pollux, Hesychius, Suidas, and
the compiler of the Etymologicum Magnum, many of whom are of uncertain
date, and to a great extent based upon one another. Their writings
extend altogether over more than eight hundred years, from the second to
the tenth century.

(4) The Scholia on Aristophanes, Plato, Demosthenes.

(5) A few inscriptions.

Our knowledge of a subject derived from such various sources and for the
most part of uncertain date and origin, is necessarily precarious. No
critic can separate the actual laws of Solon from those which passed
under his name in later ages. Nor do the Scholiasts and Lexicographers
attempt to distinguish how many of these laws were still in force at the
time when they wrote, or when they fell into disuse and were to be found
in books only. Nor can we hastily assume that enactments which occur
in the Laws of Plato were also a part of Athenian law, however probable
this may appear.

There are two classes of similarities between Plato's Laws and those of
Athens: (i) of institutions (ii) of minor enactments.

(i) The constitution of the Laws in its general character resembles much
more nearly the Athenian constitution of Solon's time than that which
succeeded it, or the extreme democracy which prevailed in Plato's own
day. It was a mean state which he hoped to create, equally unlike a
Syracusan tyranny or the mob-government of the Athenian assembly. There
are various expedients by which he sought to impart to it the quality of
moderation. (1) The whole people were to be educated: they could not be
all trained in philosophy, but they were to acquire the simple elements
of music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy; they were also to be subject
to military discipline, archontes kai archomenoi. (2) The majority of
them were, or had been at some time in their lives, magistrates, and had
the experience which is given by office. (3) The persons who held t