Plato, Politics and a Practical Utopia: Social Constructivism and Civic Planning in the Laws 9781472540850

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This book is dedicated to my Aunt LaDonna and my brother Russ with special thanks for all of their kind help and encouragement.

Preface

So, if you are to manage the city’s business properly and well, then you must impart virtue to its citizens. — Plato, Alcibiades 134b–c

This book developed, initially, out of research that I undertook some years ago for my first book Sex and the Second- Best City. In examining Plato’s final opus, the Laws, along the lines of gender studies I began to wonder how Magnesia, the utopian polis described there, would function in reality. How big would it be? What would be its population? And was it at all practical in comparison to actual citystates in antiquity? On the latter point, Plato seems to have taken particular pains that it should be practical, if hardly typical, and much more so than the hypothetical society outlined in his Republic. But how to demonstrate this? And could these other questions actually be addressed with any degree of accuracy? Fortunately, the Laws provides a considerable amount of detail from which much of the more mundane, though interesting, aspects of Magnesia could be deduced. Other information could be gleaned with recourse to data on known poleis from antiquity, some of which has only recently come to light. I am especially indebted to Hansen and Nielsen for their excellent work on the demographics of ancient city- states. It would not have been possible to develop so clear a picture of Magnesia without it. I am particularly grateful for the researches of Glenn Marrow, over a generation ago, in his seminal text, Plato’s Cretan City, which has also provided considerable information to underpin this project. Were it the case that the data available today should have been known in his time, my work here would have amounted to less than a footnote to his. As it is, I am most definitively standing on the shoulders of giants.

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After sorting through many figures, I was able to come to a remarkable conclusion: the fictional, utopian polis of Magnesia is in fact practical. The numbers do add up. Its size and population are in keeping with known poleis of Plato’s era, albeit distinct in peculiar ways that are elaborated in the following chapters. Magnesia would have been a fairly large city— a fact recognized by Plato’s contemporaries who commented upon it and, in the case of Aristotle, were quite critical of its size. The second-best polis would also have had certain physical and institutional features that could be found in no other city, alongside many that were, as well as deliberately lacking certain features that no other polis would willingly choose to be without. It would have possessed a unique form of government, reminiscent of a number of actual polities of the era, in particular, Spartan, Cretan and Athenian, but different from all of them and unique in its own right. In Magnesia, Plato has created a society that is at once utopian and, at the same time, strangely practical. Being “second-best” to that polity outlined in the Republic, Magnesia can still retain many of the utopian aspects found in that idealized city, such as the aim for individual and civic excellence, while also having at least one foot, as it were, planted firmly in reality. The fact that so many facets of it are practicable reveals that Plato must have given considerable thought to exactly what makes a polis function in the physical and metaphorical sense as well as a society at large. One major reason for desiring to undertake this work, and one of the great joys in doing it, has been to expose the sheer number of cultural, social and governmental innovations that Plato originated in his final opus. Sexual equality, or near sexual equality, is one of the main ones and Plato’s narrator goes to great lengths in order to write this aspect into his second-best polis. This includes equal education for women and permitting them to be in the armed services. There is every indication that they will be involved in many aspects of the public sphere in ways that they would not have been permitted to do so in virtually all ancient city- states apart from Sparta, and he even goes beyond their infamous sexual near- equality. Another notable innovation is the advent of a form of national service that in all likelihood predates any such practice in Athens and may have actually

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influenced the system that they eventually adopted. The judicial system of Plato’s second-best polis is another marvel that does away with retributive justice, except in some special cases, and introduces the concept of a reformatory nearly two and a half centuries before anyone ever attempted such a thing in the real world or, so it seems, even considered it appropriate. Apart from pointing out interesting civic innovations, what is the relevance of undertaking such a study as this? Throughout the last century alone, there were repeated attempts at founding practical utopias, meeting with varied success but usually ending badly. These include such notables as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China. They also include less spectacular, though no less important, phenomena such as the Welfare State and the NHS in the UK, Roosevelt’s New Deal in the USA, Social Security, gated communities, constitutionalism, urban development, constructed civic identity, social engineering, planned economies, company towns, the Branch Dividian Cult and Walt Disney’s constructed municipality of Celebration, Florida, to name some of the major ones. Our recent history is replete with examples of utopianism that has just managed to be practical enough to take root in the real world. And we live daily with the consequences. How can we not have something to gain from the study of the very foundations of the concept? Plato’s influence on modern political and social thinking has not always been fully appreciated. This text will dissect and analyse his civic experiment in an attempt to apprehend some of this significance and, as it were, to put flesh on the bones of an imagined city, to people its streets and domiciles, to lay open its institutions and structures and to breathe life into a fictional metropolis that has hitherto subsisted chiefly in the sterile pages of dusty tomes and the imaginations of ivory-towered academes, present company excepted. It is with great delight that I welcome the intrepid reader into Plato’s fabled city of Magnesia.

Chapter 1

The Development of the Polis and its Re-Development Under Plato

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom. — John Locke 1 So, out of those primitive conditions all the features of our present-day life developed: states, political systems, technical skills, laws, rampant vice and sometimes even virtue. —Plato, Laws 678a The Kallipolis of the Republic represented the ideal form that a citystate might take whereas Magnesia signifies a condition that is more realistic yet somewhat less than the ideal. “The state that Plato describes in the Laws is therefore not a Utopia”, as Morrow famously wrote, “it has a definite location in Greek space and time”.2 It is no less ‘utopian’, however, in its design, albeit with potential for practical realization. The Republic (probably written in the 380s and/or 370s) is about an imaginary polis and represents a quest for the definition of Justice in the psychē more so than a realistic guide to ideal government. The Laws, also describing an imaginary city, is not centrally concerned with finding a morally absolute definition – although it presumes the existence of just such a thing. Since this book is on Plato’s fictional polis, Magnesia, as outlined in his Laws, it is appropriate to begin by asking several questions in the Socratic manner. What is a polis? How did it develop? And what is the place of Plato’s Magnesia in the history of its development?

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Although it is the product of speculative philosophy, Plato’s narrators in the Laws describe their hypothetical polis in considerable detail. Unlike the Kallipolis of the Republic, there is every indication that Magnesia could in fact come to exist in reality. It is therefore helpful to think about its description as if it were a real city, to compare it with existing ones and to consider the above questions with regard to it as if it were going to exist. While clearly utopian, Magnesia no less falls firmly into the history of ideas concerned with urban planning and the development of the modern city from its origins in farthest human history – not the least of which being Plato’s borrowings from existing legal texts such as the Code of Gortyn on Crete and the Great Rhetra of the Spartans as well as the potential influence, albeit indirect, of others like the Code of Hammurabi. There have been 37 identified city- state building cultures. More than half of them either occurred after antiquity and/or belong to other cultures that had no contact with ancient Greece. For many of those that do form part of the historical continuum of the Mediterranean and, by extension of Europe itself, it is not always clear that there has been an unbroken line of development, implying direct or indirect cultural contact, or, at any rate, none that can be unambiguously demonstrated. Even so, the ancient Greeks or their forebears did have contact with most of these civilizations and there must have been some impact upon them in consequence. The most ancient, known city- state culture was that of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (ca. 3100–ca. 2350 BCE). A line of historical development can be observed between these and other ancient Near Eastern city- state building cultures such as those in Syria (ca. 2000–ca. 1700 BCE), Palestine (ca. 2900–ca. 2300 BCE), Assyria (ca. 1970–ca. 1700 BCE), the Hittite Empire (which broke up ca. 1200 BCE) and the dynastic Egyptian civilization, which runs parallel to many of the others while influencing all of them.3 In each case, the given citystates became part of larger empires and so not usually independent (not truly “states”) in the way that Greek city- states tended to be, though they may have developed initially in that way. Closer to the vicinity of Hellas, a more familiar trend is obtained. During the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1650 BCE), there were several hundred city- states in Anatolia. These formed networks or

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leagues, each with its own hegemon, along with a number of dependent and semi-independent, minor city- states and villages.4 The culture of ancient Greek city- states spanned the Eastern Mediterranean world. There were around 1,500 poleis which were situated in Greece and Asia Minor. In the Archaic period alone (ca. 750–550 BCE), hundreds were founded along the Mediterranean coast and the Black Sea. Later, in the Hellenistic Age (ca. 330–200 BCE), several hundred new Greek poleis were founded in the Near East in no small part thanks to the efforts of Alexander of Macedon. The Minoan civilization on Crete (ca. 2200–1450 BCE), appreciably influenced by Egypt, and the Minoans’ heirs the Mycenaeans (ca. 1450–1200) dominated the Mediterranean and clearly had an effect on the Greeks of later eras. The Mycenaeans were a palace-building culture, based on divine or semi- divine monarchies. One has only to look in Homer to see the fictional accounts of their rulers such as Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus etc., all reportedly descended from the gods themselves and each with super-human attributes, or the founding myths of many Greek poleis with divine or semi- divine rulers such as Cecrops, Erechtheus and Cadmus. The Mycenaean citadels often provided the urban core around which Archaic and Classical poleis emerged and connections with these mythical persons and events attributed to the Minoans and Mycenaeans form the foundation myths of the Greeks from whom their aristocracies in later times often claimed descent. The Minoan and Mycenaean cultures were also societies whose rise and decline chiefly centred on the martial designs of their rulers. The Greek polis, or city- state, itself was the product of a peculiar line of civic development. It came into being in consequence of particular cultural and historical forces and has since proven to be something of an evolutionary dead end, though integral to the development of modern cities as well as states.5 Most of the poleis in ancient Greece, apart from those founded as colonies (apoikismos), arose out of the Archaic Age (ca. 750–500 BCE). The process of their development was gradual and largely lacking in our extant sources, apart from certain foundation myths mentioned above, that served more to promote civic unity than to provide accurate insights into actual development.6 Ancient Greek city- states that were not colonies sometimes

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coalesced around the pre- existing nuclei of Mycenaean or Dark Age fortresses. Frequently, several villages in a given area unified by degrees to become a larger community and political entity (synoikismos). This process implied “emigration from a group of closely set neighbouring settlements to a place in the vicinity or an unoccupied place where a new polis was founded or to an already existing polis whose population was powerfully increased by the immigration”.7 Other poleis developed naturally over time as populations increased usually in concert with prospering economies. Most Classical Greek poleis differ from other city- state cultures in that they did not lie together in a single large region with ready communication by land, as in the case of the Persian Empire, Egypt, India or China. The Greeks’ main form of communication was by sea and so they follow more closely the seafaring traditions of the Semitic Phoenicians (ca. 1550–300 BCE) who were a significant cultural and genetic influence. It is crucial to bear in mind that, for both the ancient Greeks generally and for Plato particularly, the city- state is also a state and not just a city within a larger polity. As shall be discussed later on, a polis consists of an urban centre and a hinterland composed of the surrounding territory that could sometimes be quite a sizeable area and include, in many cases even by modern standards, a large population of citizens and subjects. The development of the polis in ancient Greece made some notable departures from traditional city- states in the Near East. Having largely rid themselves from autocrats claiming divine heritage and with outrageous fantasies of unqualified power, “their cities were cut closer to the human measure”.8 Not being subject to the whims of absolute monarchs with all their attendant compulsions for regimentations of militarism and bureaucracy that they usually entail, a more participatory political culture emerged. This was based in no small part on the norms of village life where all able-bodied citizens were expected to pull their own weight. Whereas government under aristocracies was a specialized role, Greek city- states mostly had a constant rotation of human functions and civic duties. This encouraged the full participation of citizens in virtually every aspect of common life. Thus democracy breeds progress, or so it has been maintained.

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It is worthwhile, however, to reflect briefly on this Hellenocentric view of the advancement of civilizations based on democracy and liberty. First, the essence of many of the scientific and mathematical ideas that flourished in Classical Greece already existed in the Egyptian, Babylonian and other Near Eastern cultures and in cultures farther afield. They were clearly brought together and applied in unique ways particularly by the Greeks, in many cases surpassing their forebears, contemporaries and other civilizational influences. However, the ‘elephant in the room’ for Hellenocentrism is China. This was a city- state building culture that developed most, if not precisely the same, arts and sciences as Classical Greece, evidently in parallel. And it was a civilization that was ruled by god-kings that represented a kind of logical, aristocratic evolution from those of the Bronze Age which the Greeks had rejected. An authoritarian society, in other words, produced a comparable level of advancement to that produced under a more participatory political culture. Whether this is an instance of purely parallel development, or whether there was some actual influence from one culture to the other, will be left for others to decide. But it is a worthy question: if most of the same arts and sciences that we associate with Classical Greece emerged in spite of democracy, as opposed to on account of it, then is it not the case that the ‘big picture’, so to speak, is much more complex? Even so, it is beyond the remit of this text to address such issues, though they should be borne in mind. Most poleis by the Classical era had some self-ruled element, by varying degrees, with democratic Athens at one end of the spectrum and aristocratic Sparta at the other. But even the Spartan monarchy was in effect constitutional and there was an assembly of the citizens, the apella , which wielded some political power, albeit much less democratic than elsewhere. A sparse material culture too, not solely devoted to the appeasement of the nobility, perhaps fostered a new kind of economy of abundance that permitted a flourishing of the arts and sciences. We have the Greek polis to thank in no small part for significant innovations in architecture, political science, drama, poetry, sculpture, painting, logic, mathematics and philosophy, to name a few of the major ones. These advances were in no small part the direct consequence of the peculiar formation of civic culture in

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the Classical polis. It is these upon which Plato ultimately depends for his conceptualization of the polis in the Laws, even maintaining many of its democratic elements as essential features of his proposed polity. The Laws , being a discourse on the very essence of law and government, had and still has considerable political ramifications. It was written in an era when “colonies were springing up all over the place” and “discussion about what a ‘perfect’ society would be like was quite a practical concern and not just an academic exercise”.9 The Athenian Stranger, an elderly gentleman, meets up with two other characters (Megillus the Spartan and Kleinias the Cretan, also elderly) on the road out of Knossos. They are on a pilgrimage to an unspecified “chapel of Zeus” near or on Mt. Ida when the three of them fall to discussing good and bad laws.10 The other two interlocutors request that the Athenian Stranger, who has displayed a superior understanding of wise legislation, outline such laws as would make a good constitution for a hypothetical colony. Thus the discussion follows, mapping out a political system, developing both its material infrastructure and its ideational underpinnings. A likely inspiration for such a dialogue was in part the hostility felt by the author against the Athenian democracy and its imperialistic ambitions. Perhaps the Laws was “proposing a reactionary adaptation of the Athenian legislation of Plato’s time”.11 This enmity was no doubt exacerbated by the judicial murder of Plato’s famous mentor Socrates by the Athenian legal system in 399. Toynbee declared that the Laws reads “almost like a deliberate rejoinder, point for point, to the eulogy of Athens in Pericles’ Funeral Speech”.12 This conclusion is somewhat reductive and no longer taken seriously in modern academia; however, it approaches a basic truth. Plato’s Socrates scathingly criticizes Pericles’ scheme of paying jurors in the Gorgias. There he indicates, as Ostwald paraphrases, that the “commons are like animals that Pericles corrupted instead of tamed”.13 The Laws does in fact address many of the fundamental issues of the role of government and citizens. Whether it is specifically a “reaction” to the faults of democratic Athens and Periclean demagoguery is another matter that will probably never be fully resolved.

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Plato’s criticisms of Athenian democracy are well known and can be seen in the Republic and elsewhere.14 Since these are delivered in the medium of the dramatic dialogue (and not in outspoken comedic performances or public speeches), Ober describes Plato as fitting “the role of the rejectionist external critic”.15 This means that he was more detached in his criticism than, for example, Aristophanes, who may be characterized as an internal “immanent” critic of democracy. Among its other negative qualities, Plato perhaps felt that the Athenian democracy represented “a force imposing a tendency to conform to an establishment mentality dictated by the ignorant mob and stifling rather than nurturing the intelligence of the educated citizen”.16 It is, as always, dangerous to speculate too much about an author’s motivations. One should hesitate to attribute the inspiration of Plato’s final work to any specific cause or event. Indeed, as shall be later discussed in detail, Plato pointedly admitted democratic elements into his second-best polis. They are tightly regulated, though, and perpetually under the scrutiny of the supreme, unelected and aristocratic council who may, at any time, interfere with the democratic process if they deem it appropriate within reason (and Reason). Plato’s dialogues variously avow that he was always interested in the philosophical underpinnings of law and morality. His complaints against democracy make up a significant part of the Laws’ context, as they must, but remain only one facet of the whole. The whole, therefore, being the city of Magnesia itself in all its philosophic glory. The designation of the hypothetical colony and its placement are not insignificant. The name ‘Magnesia’ does not itself appear until Book VIII, at 848d and thereafter is brought up again only four times.17 The site for Magnesia is described as being on a plain in Crete about 80 stadia (about 9 or 10 miles) from the coast, along the river Lethaeus (today, the Hieropotamos), with ample trees and, significantly, with limited access to a good harbour.18 The harbour is essential for commerce and supplies; however, Plato’s narrator is insistent that Magnesia avoid the evils associated with seafaring and especially the potential development of an empire, such as that had by Athens, based on sea power. Kept at a controlled distance, there is some sense in which the sea itself and its pernicious influence is moderated by Magnesian sovereignty.

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Why might Plato have wanted his Magnesian colony to be situated in such a place? Potential answers may be deduced from both within and without the text of the Laws. At the beginning of Book I, the Athenian Stranger mentions that the Cretans followed Homer in ascribing the origin of their laws to Minos, the son of Zeus. The father of gods and men would reportedly hold court with his son every nine years to give him legal advice on his government.19 The Athenian Stranger later indicates that “the laws of Crete are held in exceedingly high repute amongst all the Hellenes”.20 And this appears to be mostly a statement of fact.21 According to Herodotos, the Spartans of his era maintained that their Lykourgan legislation was derived, in no small part, from that of Crete.22 Aristotle discusses a particular historical account that makes not only Lykourgos but also Zaleukos and Charondas dependent on one Thaletas who was a legislator at Gortyn.23 He rejects this tradition for chronological reasons but agrees with the tribute to Crete that such a tradition implies, saying that “the true statesman wishes to make his citizens good and obedient to the laws; we have a good example of this in the Cretan and Lakedaimonian legislators”.24 These nationalities appropriately correspond with the Athenian Stranger’s interlocutors in this dialogue. The famous democratic reformer, Solon of Athens (c. 640–c. 560 BCE), was reputed by some to have been helped in his lawmaking by the Cretan legalist Epimenides.25 This perhaps reflects more of what was believed rather than what was necessarily true. The respect that it reveals for Cretan legal traditions appears justified, no less, by the inscriptions that have come to light in the past century. The Code of Gortyn itself, considered one of the first sophisticated and formalized codes of law, indicates that the Cretans were not only superb legislators but had developed their skills over a long period of time.26 An inscription from Dreros, probably not later than 600 BCE, was discovered in the 1940s that represents, as Morrow says, “an early source of the polis type of constitution which became a common feature of the Greek states in the classical period”.27 Saunders has likewise pointed out that a number of the statutes in the Laws of Plato have much in common with Cretan legal traditions and, in this way, “it is not only geographically that Magnesia is close to Gortyn”.28

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Plato’s interest in Crete is not a late development exclusive to the Laws. In the Protagoras, for instance, Socrates claims to believe that the love of knowledge was more ancient and more truly cultivated in Crete and Sparta than any other part of Greece (342a–343b). This passage is not without its elements of humour but appears to reflect genuine esteem for the Cretan and Spartan traditions. Plutarch later tells us that, under Plato’s influence, Dion of Syracuse sought to establish a constitution “of the Spartan or Cretan type, a mixture of democracy and royalty, with an aristocracy overseeing the administration of important affairs”.29 There is more of a Spartan influence to be seen in the Republic, but both of these cultures had an effect on Plato’s utopia-building.30 And the mixed model outlined in the Laws has much in common with Cretan tradition. Both Crete and Sparta had experienced deliberate attempts at social transformation through the advent of legal codes.31 Sparta, in particular, had undergone a number of constitutional reforms with results that were readily observable to the other Greeks.32 This was likely a major reason for it to have been deemed worthy of study by so many philosophers including the Pythagoreans, Platonists and Stoics. Plato’s Socrates praises Crete and Sparta on various occasions and, in the Republic, he cites “the Cretan and Spartan constitutions” as examples of the best of the imperfect forms of government.33 One of the main faults which Plato’s dialogues identify with these constitutions is their warlike inclination.34 More importantly, they aimed at only a part of virtue – courage – and not the whole.35 As with the Republic, the polis in the Laws also seeks to attain the greatest possible happiness (eudaimonia) for all citizens; but, this is inextricably linked with their attainment of virtue (aret ē).36 “In particular”, as Bobonich indicates, “the [Magnesian] lawgiver must aim at fostering all the virtues – courage, justice, moderation and wisdom – in the citizens as a whole”.37 Their defects notwithstanding, Plato’s interests in Cretan and Spartan constitutionalism had a noticeable effect on other members of his Academy. The second book of Aristotle’s Politics contains a lengthy account of Crete with a careful comparison of Cretan and Spartan institutions alongside a discussion of their historical relationships.38 Jaeger postulated that the materials used by Aristotle in

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this section of the Politics were assembled during the period of his residence in the Academy, as he says, “when Plato was working on the Laws and Kretan and Spartan institutions were a favourite subject of discussion”.39 It may have been the case that Plato and the Academy were attempting to retro- engineer an ideal government based on existing models of past experiments in political reform. It is certainly the case that the Pythagorean philosophers, a major influence on Plato, of a generation and more prior to his time were keenly interested in the governance of Sparta and Crete.40 They provide a blueprint for how a polity may be reformed as well as, potentially, for how a population may be effectively controlled. And social control is a central theme of the Laws. From the onset, mythology and propaganda go hand in hand to shore up the ideational fundamentals of Plato’s city. The founding muthoi of Magnesia are to be reinforced through institutionalized, cultic activities. Much as was the case with the Spartans, the oracle at Delphi will be consulted on the appropriate locations for temples and the gods to be worshipped at key points throughout the city. To each section of Magnesia, the lawgiver will assign “a god or daemon, or at least a hero” who is to be regularly honoured (Laws 738). There will be yearly ceremonies in honour of notable Magnesians who will be officially celebrated with heroic status. The Athenian Stranger also enjoins his hypothetical colonists to honour any local divinities worshipped by the earlier inhabitants of this same site. There will be 12 districts out with the urban centre, each with its own deity or hero, “and”, says the Athenian Stranger, “if there exist any local deities of the original inhabitants of the territory or any shrines of other ancient deities whose memory is still preserved, we shall pay to them the same worship as did the men of old” (848d–e). This may indicate, as Morrow says, “that Plato remembers – or imagines – an ancient Kretan city named Magnesia”.41 No evidence of such a city has been found in the region that Plato’s narrator has delineated but much archaeological work remains to be done on Crete which has been heavily occupied for at least 6,000 years.42 The significance of foundation myths and their place in the popular culture were well understood in antiquity. According to Strabo, “the narratives of the first men are collected not by poets, but by the

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legislators and civic communities for whom they would work; thus the first muthoi are produced in the name of utility”.43 The criterion of civic utility at once established, for Plato as well as for the philosopher Xenophanes (c. 560–c. 478 BCE) a generation prior, the selection of muthoi adapted to the given polis. It is seen as a matter of responding to the need for knowledge inherent in the nature of the human being, the “reasoning animal”.44 These foundation myths provide exemplars of virtue for citizens to imitate in their public and private lives and also provide a conspicuous link with the honoured past, a sense of historical continuity as well as civic unity. Plato here has highlighted the fact that each significant grouping within an ancient polis was articulated and imbued with identity through cultic practices. Virtually all personal relationships and interpersonal connections, especially social and political ones, were expressed and defined through cult. This is why the creation of new polis subdivisions, or demes, in Athens under Cleisthenes (508/7 BCE) entailed cultic revision and, in many cases, invention. His reforms did not merely involve the subordination of cult to politics, but the creation of a normative group identity. This sort of cultic innovation was accepted without protest by the Athenians. Cleisthenes’ reforms were “clearly not perceived to have involved the abandonment of long- established practices for which there was a much greater reluctance; they seem similar to the course recommended by Plato (Laws 738b–c).”45 The foundation of a new colony requires some cultic ‘engineering’, so to speak, and this appears to have been perfectly acceptable to the ancient mindset probably in the interests of stability and civic identity. Plato certainly understood the power of ideas to shape institutions and thereby deployed the wealth of his arcana in shaping the conceptualization of Magnesia as well as its more mundane fabric. The development of the polis in ancient Greece may be observed to follow a unique and peculiar line of evolution and from it Plato’s re-formulation of both polis and polity obtains. The hypothetical city- state of Magnesia culminates centuries of natural development in civic architecture intermingled with philosophical ideas and ideals that proceed along their own lines. Issues such as constitutionalism, social identity and moral philosophy figure prominently into

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the composition of Magnesia endowing it with considerable worthiness of contemplation by scholarship today. In proposing something as radical as the total revision of that which was, in its time and place, the paramount civic entity, Plato has provided a blueprint for a novel form of political system whose ramifications have yet to be fully grasped but may be seen as far-reaching in its significance.

Chapter 2

Platonic Economics: Fleshing the Bones of Magnesia

One can say that three pre- eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. —Max Weber 1 So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world. —Immanuel Kant 2 In the Laws, Plato’s narrator proposes to establish a colony on Crete, to be called Magnesia. It is second-best to the ideal polis and, as such, it represents a greater degree of practicality. Plato was writing when the prospect of founding a colony was not purely hypothetical; it was a reality of his time. Through his narrators, he has undertaken the planning of his second-best polis to a considerable extent. In doing so, Plato has borrowed heavily from Spartan, Athenian and Cretan traditions, among others; however, his finished product surpasses them all. Virtually every aspect of life is to be in some way planned or regulated in Magnesia. This includes, but is not limited to, monetary policy, land distribution, inheritance, education and population control. One of his narrator’s express goals is that the city should maintain a stable population of 5,040 citizen families. Aristotle, in the Politics, criticizes Plato for suggesting so large a number of citizens, saying that “we cannot overlook the fact that such a number would require the territory of Babylon” or some other comparably vast country.3 As Nixon and Price suggest, perhaps he felt that a population centre of this magnitude could “hardly be counted as a real polis”.4 Is Aristotle’s criticism correct? If there were 5,040 citizen families, how

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many slaves and resident aliens would that entail and how much territory would they actually require? Would the project be practical in any real sense or would it amount to a kind of megalopolis, too enormous to be confined within the conceptual constraints that ought to define a city- state? We can look to real-world examples for comparison and, fortunately, new research has brought a great deal more detail to light than has been previously known about ancient poleis. A good place to begin is Athens, which would be considered by many today as the paradigmatic example of an ancient city- state. However, Classical Athens was a fairly atypical polis in terms of its size. Hansen argues that most were tiny and Aristotle, in the Politics, clearly also regards the optimal polis as a good deal smaller. We shall see how Magnesia compares and contrasts with Athens based on the demographics and economics discussed below. However, the polis outlined in the Laws is radically divergent from Classical Athens, although clearly influenced by it. Perhaps the Laws may be seen as “proposing a reactionary adaptation of the Athenian legislation of Plato’s time”.5 It certainly represents a major revision of existing polities. Plato’s planning is extensive but his narrator, the Athenian Stranger, has left much with which future Magnesian legislators will have to contend. Even so, we can consider known factors from ancient poleis and approach a kind of geographical analysis of Magnesia. The socio- economic factors outlined in the text will be examined, along with their relevant cultural influences and contexts. Taking these into account, as this book progresses, we will be able to test the validity of the proposed society in the Laws. I have every confidence that Plato’s understanding of the way that poleis functioned was adequate to his cause. He writes of a second-best city that could be founded as a real colony at a time when the notion was more than speculative fiction. Let us now consider his project from a practical point of view and see what obtains. The economic plan for Magnesia is more than a little reminiscent of that outlined in the Republic – although the differences are profound. The interlocutors generally agree that any polis governed by laws (as opposed to righteous philosopher kings/queens under the guidance of transcendentally ineffable ‘Goodness’) can never be an

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ideal state. It will always be second-best (deuteros).6 Where law governs, injustices invariably transpire. The presence of one implies the other. The ideal state should be ruled by just men and women who share their property communally (as in the Kallipolis) without recourse to mundane laws to dictate their conduct since their behaviour is necessarily virtuous. The proper application and execution of the Athenian Stranger’s plan of constitution is meant to engender an increasing desire to seek the realization of that ideal, although it does not presume its existence ex nihilo, or even that it may be achieved rather than merely approached. Through their subjects’ growing understanding, the laws of Magnesia may be improved along with the people they govern. Magnesia may thereby become more like Kallipolis over time, but it will from the onset be firmly rooted in the mundane sphere governed by written law. Magnesia will have a command economy. There are to be four property classes of citizens in addition to a fi fth class – the slaves – who undertake most of the ‘banausic’ labour while their masters go about the pursuit of aretē.7 Resident aliens will comprise a sixth property class, though one expects them to be somewhat better off than the slaves in terms of their revenues. Resident aliens will not be permitted to own property in Magnesia but will be compelled to rent from their citizen landlords. The citizen classes are based on income and the stewardship of property as well as the quantity of wealth that they bring with them when originally coming to Magnesia at its foundation. There also exists the possibility for advancement and nonlateral mixing between classes. Members of the highest of the four property classes, we are told, should ideally be matched together for marriage with members of lower classes in order to achieve a kind of socio- economic mean within the state.8 This ‘enlightened’ policy of eugenics is a noteworthy change from that found in the Republic where the different ‘metals’ of the three classes were expressly compelled to avoid intermingling. The ‘best’ could only breed with the ‘best’ etc., according to a calculated scheme, in temporary relationships designed to produce superior offspring.9 In Magnesia, the system of human relationships that is secondbest to total sexual communism (albeit tightly regulated) is that of the semi-private household unit – at once seemingly detached from

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the state, yet paramount to the continued functioning of it: the Magnesian oikos will form an almost Aristotelian image of the polis in microcosm, but only to an extent. It is markedly weaker than in real poleis – even that of Sparta – while the state is much stronger. Balance is to be maintained in Magnesia through marriages with an economic basis in land- division.10 Each of the prescribed 5,040 land units is divided into two parts and no citizen may have more land than any other. Any population surplus exceeding that which can be reasonably contained within the 5,040 family units will be shipped off to a colony.11 Here too is another difference in terms of Magnesia’s semi-private landholdings based on the family unit as opposed to the communal property of the Republic.12 One may refer to them as ‘semi-private’ since these lots can never be purchased or sold, only inherited within the same family. Land division is only one of many areas of life directly regulated by the Magnesian state, though a major one. The patriarchal family is integral to achieving Magnesia’s officially sanctioned civic goals. It is a fundamental component of the overall structure of the city- state. This fact ultimately dictates that a significant portion of the Laws be devoted to coping with the sexual politics that such a model entails. There will be no communal breeding facilities as in the Kallipolis. Neither will Magnesian property be shared communally by all of its citizens; although, it is technically ‘owned’ by the community at large. Offspring will be reared both by their parents and by the polis, but not solely by state-appointed officials as in the more idealistic Republic.13 In their stead is the semi-private institution of the oikos. It is semi -private in the sense that, while in the stewardship of an individual family, much of its affairs are regulated directly or indirectly by agencies of the Magnesian government and it is ultimately the property of the greater polis. This is a radical proposition. It is some way removed from the actual colonies of the Archaic and Classical Greeks with their fundamentally alienable kleroi . Perhaps not quite as radical as totally communal property, even so, this emended version will suffice for the second-best state to rear and induct new citizens into the community. It does require a host of unique legal arrangements spanning the whole range of familial affairs along with considerable state- sponsored oversight.

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Private and public are further collapsed and conflated with regard to property and the family. As indicated, the patriarchal household is the basic unit of the Magnesian state but its arrangement leaves “the family far short of its position in Athens”.14 The Magnesian klēros, cannot be sold or given away but the state will not directly manage it.15 The citizen-holder (kyrios) of the klēros has the power, under the constraints of law and subject to the recommendations of officials, to designate its heir. A public list of klēros -holders is to be kept so that everyone knows who is tending which property at any given time (741c). The polis maintains close contact with families and observes the manner in which they conduct their domestic affairs. This is to be accomplished in part through the offices of the Marriage Supervisors who will observe a married couple for the first ten years of their lives together in order to ensure that they produce the appropriate number of offspring and rear them in a suitable way (783b–784b). Other magistrates and wardens oversee most aspects of daily life and business. The Magnesian oikos necessitates a division of labour along sexual lines. If a woman has just wedded the heir of one of the 5,040 kleroi , then she and her husband will move into the other of the two parts of the estate, where the heir’s father and mother do not normally live, and begin producing offspring (776a–b). One reason given for this is that close proximity to their parents/in-laws might provoke undue conflict (776a).16 The paternal estate consists of both lots of land with houses and will be located in separate parts of the city. The second house will be situated in the countryside and will constitute a working farm. It will be used as a sort of nursery for the rearing of children along with serving as a venue for testing the newlywed couple’s parenting skills. Other children may continue to live at home but may eventually be subjected to forced emigration. Women play a much more significant role in the domestic tasks of childcare than do men; although, their (female) slaves and servants will undertake much of the actual work of the oikos.17 In time, the legitimate heirs will ascend to the status of kyrioi of the double estate. They will take up residency in the townhouse and manage its affairs. This process will replicate itself when their heirs marry. Nothing is said about where surviving parents/in-laws might

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live during this time though presumably but not necessarily, they will continue to reside primarily in the main house as before. The notion of a double property may seem novel but there is some indication that this may not have been uncommon among upper- class Athenians and it was also a practice among the Spartans.18 As Snodgrass indicates, we should not “exclude the possibility of second homes, expressly recommended by Plato in the Laws (745e4–5) and later disparaged by Aristotle in the Politics (1265b25–6) on the grounds that they made life awkward”.19 Both passages date from the same general period and each, in different ways, suggests that its author was familiar with the idea of keeping a double residence. If so, then this represents a level of democratization through ‘aristocratification’ in the Laws whereby even the lowest citizen classes in Magnesia enjoy privileges only held by the upper classes in Athens and elsewhere. Also in keeping with ostensibly Lykourgan sentiments, the Athenian Stranger indicates that “to be exceedingly wealthy and at the same time to be good is impossible” (742e6–7). To this end, the Magnesian constitution is geared towards encouraging a state of socialized moderation among the populace. There is a prohibition against dowries, expounded in more detail at 774c–e. In theory, members of the poorest property class have an equal opportunity to make a good marriage since no dowry will necessarily limit either their choice of potential partners or their future economic or social prospects. The Athenian Stranger adds that this problem will be eliminated since “the necessities of life are to be available to all of the citizens within the polis” (774c5–6). So, with Magnesia is also introduced a highly sophisticated welfare state to which all contribute and from which all benefit. Another reason given for the exclusion of dowries in Magnesia is that it will make women less hybristic and help their husbands to avoid humiliating servility (douleia) on account of money (774c7).20 As Saunders writes, “a wife with a large dowry enjoyed a certain edge in domestic arguments”.21 There is some indication that this may have presented a point of concern for certain ancient Greek husbands. “When talking about the correctness of the decision not to have dowries”, as Fisher indicates, “he seems to speak the traditional language of Greek males”.22 There was the possibility that a wife

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might ‘lord’ their dowry over her husband as leverage for a position of power.23 One way that a woman could possess and control wealth (and therefore freedom), to an extent, in a largely patriarchal society was through her dowry. Only a limited amount of money may be committed to a Magnesian bride’s apparel without incurring a fine equal in value to the sum illegally spent. The legal amounts are up to 50 drachmae (½ minae) for the lowest property class, up to 100 (1 mina) for the third, up to 150 (1 and ½ minae) for the second and up to 200 (2 minae) for the first propertied class (774d1–5). These figures are modest and can be better understood when compared to actual dowries of which we have some knowledge. Isaios says that twenty minae would be insufficient if offered by a man of property and he asks if 10 minae are suitable for the dowry of a freeborn girl given in marriage to a bridegroom worth three talents.24 Demosthenes mentions a dowry of 2 talents and 80 minae put forth by a wealthy citizen when his daughter wed.25 Plato himself reported a planned expenditure of 30 minae for his niece’s marriage to Speusippos.26 Ancient Cretan dowries seem to have been limited to about 100 staters, but this was not clearly delineated in their laws and there were probably exceptions.27 Moreover, both in Classical Athens and on Crete, the dowry remained the property of the bride for her upkeep but under a kind of administration by her husband. It had to be returned to her in the event of separation.28 It follows, therefore, that a wife with a large dowry could potentially have used it to influence her husband. She could employ a threat of divorce that, if undertaken, might then result in his having to render up the appointed sum almost immediately. No text explicitly states that the dowry had to be returned on divorce; however, the consistency of principles in Athenian marriage law strongly suggests that it did in that event.29 If a divorcee had a very large dowry, it could be rather costly for her ex-husband.30 There is some indication that there was a type of inheritance similar to dowries whereby a Spartan daughter might receive part or all of her household estate when she married.31 Although their constitution supposedly forbade the buying and selling of estates (as with Magnesia), it permitted anyone who wished to transfer land through gifts and bequests (unlike Magnesia). As a result, according to

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Aristotle, nearly two-fifths of Spartan land seems to have come into the possession of citizen-women by the time of the Battle of Leuktra.32 This may be a typically misogynistic exaggeration. Aristotle criticized this policy suggesting that a firmer regulation of dowries would have been preferable and he also alleges that such states where women dominate financially tend to be warlike and aggressive towards their neighbours.33 In keeping with this theme, the Magnesian prohibition against dowries is consistent with the spirit of Laconian ideals if not actual practice – and inimical to Athenian norms. The third- century claim that this monetary policy was also an ancient Spartan tradition is probably a later “invention of revolutionary propaganda”.34 The Spartans liked to think of themselves as so austere, though the reality was often at variance with the ideal. The reasons given by Plutarch for the alleged removal of dowries from Sparta were, in characteristically egalitarian tones, “so that none may be left unmarried because of poverty or sought eagerly because of affluence”.35 The similarity to Magnesian ideology and law seems more than coincidental and one is inclined to wonder, as with the ephēbeia , if Plato’s writings did not exert some influence on the later tradition.36 A transfer of material goods seems to have accompanied Spartan brides from the sixth and fifth centuries onwards and Aristotle’s reference to this as a proix may be a loose way of describing the practice as analogous to the Athenian one.37 He says that Spartan women had “large dowries”, loaned money at interest and were also able to own and inherit property.38 These particular Laconian elements, if true, have been carefully excised from Plato’s second-best polis. The Athenian Stranger seems to be seeking to prevent any instability among his 5,040 land allotments and evidently was aware of some of the flaws in constitutions of his era regarding such matters. By prohibiting dowries and strictly limiting a bride’s trousseaux , he has excluded from Magnesian women a measure of power that many other ancient Greek women apparently enjoyed; however, the effective ban on (excessive) private wealth means large dowries will be neither possible nor necessary. This is done with the intent of preserving concord, encouraging economic stability and limiting expenditures on frivolous purchases not conducive to the pursuit of virtue.

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Even so, Magnesian women are considerably more “liberated” than their Hellenic peers and the loss of the dowry might amount to a fair exchange.39 Magnesia is still very patriarchal albeit notably less so than Athens. The Athenian Stranger’s law places the marriage pledge (engyēses)40 “under the authority of the father first, in the second instance of the [paternal] grandfather, in the third instance of the brothers by the same father, and after this it is under the authority of those on the mother’s side in like manner” (774e4–6).41 There is a comparable legal emphasis on the female side of the family for purposes of inheritance present in Athenian law, with regard to the anchisteia .42 At Athens, the hierarchy of those who may inherit reflects the hierarchy of familial relationships, with priority accorded to males within the same degree of relationship and to collaterals on the father’s side (agnates), starting first with brothers.43 There are at least two significant points in which Magnesian law differs from that given by pseudo-Demosthenes: first, that it characteristically admits relatives on the female side and, secondly, that it designates the grandfather, in keeping with Magnesia’s gerontocratic character, as having precedence over brothers.44 Inheritance in general is a tightly regulated matter for Magnesia’s legal system. Ideally, the title to the klēros goes to the first-born son of a given family or, if there are no sons, to the husband of the firstborn daughter. In the first instance, a male child will be designated as heir (klēronomos). The chosen heir is recorded in a written will and he then inherits the title to the estate on the death of the testator (774e4–6). The Athenian Stranger makes a provision that allows a testator to leave any quantity of movable property deemed fit (excepting the actual, immovable Magnesian estate and its associated equipment) to children other than the klēronomos unless they already have a household of their own (923d6–7). He indicates that daughters should be treated in like manner as sons, in terms of inheritance, inasmuch as they too may inherit movable property – providing they are not already married or engaged to be married (923d8–e1). It follows, therefore, that the only children to inherit any movable property or money would be either any who remain in Magnesia but never gain their own household or those who have been dispatched to a

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colony (assuming they are eligible). The law here allows for unmarried individuals to inherit movable property but the system that the Athenian Stranger envisages does not strongly favour anyone being unmarried for very long. A Magnesian man who has no sons will ‘adopt’, so to speak, an heir to marry a chosen daughter. The adopted heir thereby becomes his legitimate ‘son’ in the eyes of the law. In the event that “the testator should leave no male offspring, but only daughters”, says the Athenian Stranger, “let him bequeath for whichever of his daughters he may wish a husband, a son for himself, recorded as his legal heir”.45 The posthumously appointed heir would then marry the designated heiress, when she comes of age, and become legal master of the estate and will be responsible for providing it with an heir and the city with future citizens. The fact that a brotherless heiress must be wedded to an heir for the estate to pass on to the next generation, although indicative of patriarchal control, emphasizes a woman’s social and legal importance in Magnesia.46 This economic policy, of which these strictures are a part, influences many other aspects of Magnesian life. The Athenian Stranger has forbidden such things as the loaning of money and charging of interest (742c ff.). These are deemed harmful to the city’s concord. Magnesians are prohibited from possessing gold or silver (except on foreign expeditions) and, for their day-to- day purposes, they are meant to use a currency that is “honoured amongst themselves but valueless to other people” (742a6). He favours what he perceives to be a Spartan custom on the matter.47 This appears to be akin to the policy outlined in Xenophon’s account of Spartan currency after Lykourgos’ reforms “such that even ten minae could not be brought into the house without the master and servants knowing as it would take up considerable space and require a wagon to move it; there were also searches for gold and silver, and if any was found, the possessor was punished”.48 However, as Hodkinson says, “contrary to the programmatic statements in literary sources, a range of evidence indicates official possession and use of precious metal currency before 404”.49 It does appear that some kind of iron-ingot currency may have actually been in circulation in ancient Sparta even if it was not the only kind available.50 I shall

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presently return to this issue or currency as it is a fundamental feature of the polis. Magnesian fiscal policy naturally extends to matters of death as well. The family of the deceased is admonished only “to spend a measured amount as is appropriate for a soul- less altar of the ones beneath the earth”. 51 The Athenian Stranger says that it would not be unseemly for the legislator to defi ne the “measured” expenditure as five minae for the funeral of one of the highest property class, three for the second class, two for the third and one mina for an individual of the lowest property class. 52 There are to be no elaborate funerary devices (none of the archaic kouroi or korai , nor any of the familial sculpture – even plain, democratic ornamentation – associated with Athenian tombstones from c.500 BCE onwards) so as to de- emphasize the importance of personal expression in terms of wealth and class. 53 The Athenian Stranger’s restrictions on funeral expenditures appear to reflect a similar desire for a kind of equality (or near- equality) in death as those allegedly introduced by the democratic reforms of Solon at Athens. 54 Unlike Athens, however, Magnesia will ensure that its funerary practices are scrutinized by one of the Guardians of the Laws to ensure that the rule of moderation is strictly upheld. 55 Superficially, this looks a bit like the kind of sumptuary laws attested in a number of archaic states – for example the XII tables in Rome. Yet in those states it seems the intention was to limit aristocratic competition (perhaps as much for the benefit of lesser aristocratic families as for anyone else) while here it seems to be the kind of limit on un- egalitarian displays of wealth such as are more commonly associated with democracy in Athens. 56 Education too falls in the public domain. The aims of Magnesia’s system of education, as Beck says, lie “in the production of civic efficiency and political leadership, qualities which demanded the power to judge wisely and to make right decisions”.57 Like Sparta, the Magnesian education is provided at the expense of the polis and is compulsory for all citizens (804d). This will be accomplished, in a characteristically un- Spartan manner, with recourse to the Athenian practice of written law and publically hired foreign tutors.58 The Athenian Stranger unequivocally states that “every man and child

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according to their ability must of necessity be educated since they belong more to the state than to those who begat them”. 59 Here he seems to reverse Socrates’ pronouncements in the Republic to the effect that compulsory education leads to a type of “slavishness” in character and that only those who are willing should therefore be taught (536d–537a). There are, necessarily, some inherent restrictions upon one’s liberty entailed by living in the second-best polis. Magnesian boys and girls from the age of 3 up to the age of 6 are to congregate at their respective tribe’s temples and engage in some kind of playful but structured interaction intensely supervised by their nurses.60 Women and men alike are to be trained from an early age in all manner of weapons and arts of fighting. The type of orderliness of body favoured by Plato’s narrators is that which is to be found in the toned muscles of an athlete or a warrior. Athletics may be considered as a type of preparation for war – even if war never comes. Being physically fit is perceived as healthy both for one’s self and for the polis.61 The Laws proposes a society that places severe limitations on the sort of things that today we would consider essential freedoms. Magnesia’s citizens, in addition to exemplifying the ideals of “selfharmony” and “intelligence”, must also epitomize the altogether pan-Hellenic virtue of “freedom” as well.62 The concept of freedom, for the Ancient Greeks as for Plato, should be regarded contextually in contrast to the state of slavery.63 Such values have been represented in ancient art, literature, history and philosophy. The ethic of manliness/courage has a high degree of consistency among surviving texts. Such socially accepted ideals among the Ancient Greeks appear to have resulted in no small part from the constraints necessitated by the political circumstances of the era. “The continued existence of a Greek city- state”, as Dover says, “depended ultimately on the military qualities of its adult male citizens”.64 A military defeat could (and often did) result in the physical destruction of the fabric of the city itself and sometimes, in consequence, the mass slaughter of all adult male citizens and the enslavement of the women and children. Occasionally such a defeat entailed the extermination of all male children as in the mythical account of the fall of Troy or, more to the point, the defeat of Mitylene and Melos.65

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The wretchedness associated with this fate, and especially that of being enslaved, is highlighted numerous times by Hekuba in Euripides’ play of the same name.66 In his Andromache, considerable grief accompanies the heroines’ imposed state of servitude.67 Since these plays were performed for fifth- century audiences, we can assume that the prospect of a citizen-woman becoming a slave through conquest was regarded as one of the more horrible possibilities that could ensue from warfare – for the survivors. While women could be regarded as a type of commodity among the ‘spoils of war’, men and male children were seen as potential threats to the victors. These notions were deeply rooted in the ancient mindset and find their way into Plato’s philosophy. Unmanly, effeminate “softness” that evidently arises in an individual from the yielding to excessive pleasure must be avoided. Being “soft” is an unacceptable state for Magnesians. The Athenian Stranger regards the submission to the desire for pleasures to be most unmanly. Perceived as inimical to aretē, this sort of behaviour is thought to assimilate one into a slavish role unsuitable for the citizens of Magnesia to emulate. The Athenian Stranger indicates that no one will credit the act of giving in to excess as a means of achieving excellence: On the contrary, shall all men not blame the softness (tēn malakian) of the man who yields to pleasure and is unable to endure, and shall they not find fault with him who imitates a woman when he turns out to be most like his model?68 This highlights the association between luxurious living, “softness” and effeminacy. This sort of relationship was propagandistically aimed at the perceived barbarian enemies of Greece such as the Persians. The Athenian Stranger seems to have employed a fairly commonplace connection to build towards his greater discussion on pleasure in the Laws. An ideal individual in Magnesia should be the opposite of “soft” and effeminate. The ideal citizen should in no ways be a slave – except, perhaps paradoxically, willingly subservient to Reason and the rule of law.69 The slaves of Magnesia will be exempt from the standards expected of citizens. Slaves and metics will perform the menial tasks forbidden

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to citizens for whom leisure and the pursuit of aret ē are compulsory.70 Like both the Spartan and Athenian upper- class citizenry, the Magnesians undertake their specialized pursuits and training while others perform the necessary labour. Their upbringing cannot aim at “money-making or physical prowess, or even some mental accomplishment devoid of reason and justice”, since it is “vulgar and illiberal, and utterly undeserving of the name ‘education.’” 71 As Nightingale indicates, one who is “servile and illiberal is, by definition, not free”.72 The Magnesians will not be allowed to engage in retail trading of any kind or to use the oikos as a means for acquiring profit. The Athenian Stranger, perhaps speaking from experience, discusses some of the iniquities of the retail trade and the manner in which innkeepers treat their guests as prisoners to be ransomed at a high price.73 He also says that such a situation need not be the case if the “best possible” people were in charge of these exchanges.74 In his digression on the subject, he indicates that the “best possible” women who might engage in it would be like “mothers and nurses”. The banausic retail trade is exclusively limited in Magnesia to a separate sphere of the polis encapsulating resident- aliens and foreign visitors (920a3–4). Citizens must not engage in mercantile ventures apart from trading the produce of their landholdings along specially defined guidelines which are discussed below, and this through hired agents or slaves rather than by themselves.75 Those who defy this rule stand to suffer public shame, fines and potential imprisonment. It is also forbidden for any Magnesian to carry on any kind of trade in woven goods or other items produced in the home. It would seem that this restriction also applies to goods produced by their slaves or servants but this remains unclear. These and other economic regulations are designed to prevent any harsh necessity that might compel citizens of any class to engage in trading to maintain themselves. Perhaps Plato recalled the time in his youth when hardship affected Athenian citizen-women in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War. Many became nurses, wool-workers and grape-pickers as a consequence of the economic downturn. This is attested to in a speech of Demosthenes where the citizen- speaker remarks that, under such

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circumstances, “we confess that we sell ribbons and do not live in the way we would like”.76 Athenian citizens working, especially women, was regarded pejoratively by the upper classes who ideologically eschewed such activities. It was not, strictly speaking, forbidden for citizen-women to engage in a trade but it seems to have been preferred that they should not do so. As far as banausic work was generally considered, Herodotus writing in the 420s mentions no official prohibition against anyone doing it. He does however indicate that a bias against those who practise a manual craft existed throughout the whole of Greece, especially among the Spartans and least among the Corinthians (II.167). Aristotle, much more in keeping with Plato, considers banausic labour inappropriate for those who possess reason and, therefore, more appropriate for slaves (who lack it).77 In a significant shift from the policy on arts outlined in the Republic, Magnesia will actively encourage the craft of drama to be practised, but only under its own rather stringent terms. There will be plays and actors in Magnesia. As with other types of employment, Magnesian citizens will not be allowed to become actors since this is deemed to be harmful to their pursuit of aretē. Slaves and foreigners will be hired to perform in this capacity. Anyone who writes a comedy for Magnesia (and he appears to be referring to citizens here) must be over the age of 50 and gain the approval of the archōn for Education (829c–d, 936a–b). Acting in all Magnesian dramas is limited exclusively to “slaves and strangers who do work for hire” (816e5–6). Free citizens may learn about the imitative arts, but they are strictly forbidden from engaging in their practice (816e). Perhaps it is in respect to their diversity that dramatic performances and emotional poetry are at odds with an ideal of “masculine unity”. The quality of poikilia , multiplicity or multifacetedness, which makes women’s experience and behaviour an interesting subject for drama, is deemed a potentially hazardous moral example.78 I shall return to this issue in a later chapter. None of Magnesia’s citizens (male or female) will have to engage in base commerce of any kind. The nurses who look after citizenchildren must come from somewhere other than Magnesia. They are meant to be slaves or foreign women, hired in this capacity, under the strictest supervision and are required to be physically fit to

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promote healthy activities for citizen-youths (789e–a). It is typical of Magnesian policy that children’s nurses are to be supervised by specially appointed citizen-women whenever they undertake their duties outside the oikos (794b). Supervision is evidently not considered a type of work that is beneath their dignity. While citizens are subject to considerable scrutiny in public and private life, non- citizens are highly suspect and thus bear even more intense supervision by the polis. It is unclear if Magnesia will pay the resident aliens who act as teachers and nurses in its own currency. Morrow believes that they would need to also use ‘Hellenic’ currency to accommodate them.79 The Athenian Stranger has indicated that the polis will have to maintain a supply of real currency for various purposes including military expenditures, ambassadors and embassies, heralds, delegations to the games and other officially sanctioned visitations abroad (742a–b, 950e, 951a). How will they obtain this money? Moneylending, a major source of income in Athens and elsewhere, will be strictly forbidden.80 The usual routes of income for the state through import/export duties and alien taxes are not present in Magnesia (see below), but there are other options available. When citizens’ property increases beyond the maximum permitted by law, the excess must go to the state (754e, 850a). These along with fines taken in material goods and other forms of revenue raised through local taxation might be enough. Wealth, of course, is not measured only in coinage. If Magnesia were not situated on Crete, a potential source of income could come from mines operated by slaves, or by metics and slaves. The practice at Athens was for mineral resources underground to belong to the polis and individuals would then lease the mining rights from the government, for a fixed number of years, for an annual fee along with some taxation on the mined resources when sold.81 The Athenian Stranger has not discussed mining as a ready means of wealth for the second-best city, and likely for good reason. Crete is largely lacking in mineral resources.82 Metals would have to be imported and state revenues drawn mostly from trade in agriculture. Crete is relatively prosperous in this respect with wine produced for export in antiquity and, from the Bronze Age onwards,

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large herds of sheep were maintained and used in textile production. The Magnesians would probably need to bring their iron ingots with them for money, assuming they took that monetary route, and acquire more from abroad as required. They would certainly have to import metal for armour. As we have seen, Magnesia will have a money-based economy, but it will be shielded from the corrupting influences of foreign commerce and the whims of international capital. Citizens are forbidden to possess gold or silver and must hand over to the state any foreign currency that they should obtain (742a–b). The discussion of dowries and funerary expenses above in terms of minai , along with fines and other expenses in drachma elsewhere, might seem to contradict this position given that a mina is typically a unit of silver.83 But it is also a unit of value. If they follow the (idealized) Spartan plan whereby “ten minae could not be brought into the house without the master and servants knowing as it would take up considerable space and require a wagon to move it”, then it would still amount to ten minai in value, whatever the constitution of the currency. Iron would also have value outside of Magnesia, albeit less portable than smaller amounts of gold or silver. The iron ingots would not be totally “valueless” to others either. On an island such as Crete that is poor in mineral resources, they might be regarded as more precious locally than they would in Athens or Sparta. The Athenian Stranger has not specified exactly what type of currency he intends for the Magnesians to use except that it be “valueless” to others. Cumbersome iron ingots might not be necessary. He perhaps intends something like the silver-plated copper pieces that Athens issued during the Peloponnesian Wars when it became necessary to devalue their traditionally robust currency. This ‘symbolic’ money would be “useable locally but of less value elsewhere”.84 So, there could be a Magnesian mina , drachma , obol etc. alongside the more traditional Hellenic currencies used for foreign trade, travel and paying metics. An economy based on a two-tiered currency is a possibility even if it seems overly convoluted. The difficulties generated by such a system may be deemed less significant than the moral gains that it is intended to induce as well as any locally accrued economic gains resulting.

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Having a valueless, or nearly valueless, coinage backed by state reserves of gold and silver is a strikingly modern concept. Although the Magnesian Stranger has not stated that the valueless currency will be ‘backed’ by state reserves of precious metals, this would seem to be the case de facto. That is, to a point. They will always have a ready supply of Hellenic currency but it may or may not be numerically equal to the amount of local currency in circulation – just enough to cover payments to foreigners and other official expenses. Even so, there remains some question as to who will spend Magnesia’s currency and for what. Citizens do not need to buy food or pay mortgages. They will likely produce most of their own clothing and household utensils by means of their slaves. Citizens may need to pay fines in local currency. There is also the outfitting of brides and the acquisition of armour and weapons. These services will have to be supplied by resident alien workers in exchange for money. The Magnesians will have to pay for funerary expenses and the carving of grave markers. There may also be shops in Magnesia for basic necessities not produced in the household along with such luxury items as are permitted.85 I differ with Morrow’s view, indicated above, that metics would need to be paid in ‘real’ currency. I suggest that the metics living locally would be required to trade, and be paid, only in Magnesian currency while in Magnesia. Upon arrival, they would need to utilize a local bureaux de change in order to trade their Hellenic money for Magnesian. When and if they leave, they could then exchange their ‘valueless’ money back for Hellenic. The polis might even make money in this way or, at least, break even on the deal. Given that no metic may own more than the third property class, their departure would not incur too great a loss as new arrivals would also be surrendering their Hellenic money while others leave. It might even balance out if planned correctly. It seems logical for any good or service purchased within Magnesia to utilize local currency. In which case, its value in Magnesia would be comparable to Hellenic money outside the second-best polis. Hoarding among metics seems to be unlikely with the intense degree of state scrutiny but the prospect should not be excluded. The Athenian Stranger has clearly not thought through every nuance of his fiscal policy, nor explained precisely how the two-tiered economy will function, and there are many questions that

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remain unanswered which will have to be left to future Magnesian legislators. In order to grasp the fabric of Magnesia and its dimensions, let us return to Aristotle’s quip which surely refers to the fabled accounts of the Babylon of Semiramis. Herodotus (I.178–193) reported that the walls of Babylon were about 102 metres high and 26 wide. He said that they surrounded an approximately square city with a total circumference of about 90 kilometres. According to his figures, one could theoretically drive two full- sized, modern SUVs side-byside atop the wall. Since Aristotle probably never visited Babylon (and neither did Herodotus in all likelihood) Herodotus’ account is the probable source on which he is drawing for his comparison with Magnesia. The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar (c. 605–562 BCE) is now considered to have been a walled city roughly the size of contemporary New York86 with a population of 250,000 or more.87 Modern archaeologists report that the walls were actually about five storeys tall (about 15.25 metres)88 and about 24.5 metres thick at the base,89 while the inner city covered an area of about 850 hectares or 8.5 square kilometres.90 There was also the area around Babylon’s vast urban centre, sometimes referred to as the Kish, and roughly corresponding to the Greek chōra or hinterland.91 This consisted of many small villages ranging an area of many hundreds of square kilometres. We needn’t take Aristotle too seriously here. He is clearly exaggerating for the sake of emphasis. However, his jibe represents an interesting point of departure for considering the demographics of the second-best polis as we understand them. First of all, we need to come up with an approximate number of citizens and the area that they would occupy. Then, we can consider how many slaves and resident aliens would be necessary to feed, clothe and take care of them all as well as themselves. The Athenian Stranger has prepared a speech for his hypothetical colonists that is calculated to drive home the notion that every genēsis fashions an instrument for helping to secure the happiness of the universe as a whole (903c). They are encouraged, in a manner of speaking, to “be fruitful and multiply”, though their population must not exceed 5,040 household units.92 The state will take measures to ensure a stable population according to the

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Athenian Stranger’s prescriptions. These include, but are not limited to methods of contraception and abortion, along with such “fertility treatments” as were available.93 Excess offspring will be dispatched to a colony.94 Here the Athenian Stranger aims at promoting a fixed population with zero growth, contrary to other economic regimes of his or any time. Plato seems to have realized that with greater population comes greater crime and societal decay, for which he has prescribed an innovative, if unusual, solution. As indicated, there will be 5,040 citizen families divided into 4 property classes and each of these families will have a home in the city and one in the surrounding countryside. Each family will, at some time if not at all times, entail two parents, at least two grandparents and at least two children – six or more people, which may have been the ideal norm in antiquity.95 The reality would be more likely to entail greater numbers of younger children and fewer grandparents living at any given time. Six people per household seems relatively reasonable. This results in a total estimated population of approximately 30,240 citizens. And it presents the city’s rulers with no small administrative task from the inception. There is every reason to believe that Magnesia will be laid out according to the so- called Hippodamian plan, as was virtually every newly founded city at that time and quite a few well- established ones as well, “where two sets of parallel streets crossed each other at right angles, and each block of houses had between six and twelve individual plots”.96 This allows for greater ease of planning and provides a rational structure for the city. The land on Crete identified for the location of Magnesia, as with many poleis, will be varied and will include mountains, forests and plains (745c–d). This will result in an inequality of productivity, which the Athenian Stranger has taken into account. The family home outside the urban centre will be used for farming and other purposes appropriate to its share of natural resources.97 I shall presently return to this. Plato’s narrator has provided us with some details on the arrangement of the city and its location. As mentioned in the Introduction, the site for Magnesia’s urban centre and much of its hinterland is described as being on a plain in Crete about 80 stadia (about 15 or 16 kilometres) from the coast, along the river Lethaeus (Hieropotamos),

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with plenty of trees and limited access to a good harbour.98 He seems to think that there may have been some habitation on the site in the past but no evidence any previous settlement has been found in the region that Plato’s narrator has delineated, though much archaeological work remains to be done on Crete.99 The city itself will be centred around an acropolis and an agora with temples adjoining it (745b, 778c). The houses of the magistrates and the lawcourts will be placed around the agora and beside the temples (778c–d). There will be a public prison (908a) and offices for the city guardians (astunomoi ) and the market guardians (agoranomoi ) near the agora (917e, 918a). The city’s 12 districts, corresponding to each of its 12 artificial tribes, will radiate out from the agora . The Athenian Stranger also mentions gymnasia, schools, theatres (779d, 804c) and other temples and official structures in the countryside surrounding the city (761c, 833b). He prefers that Magnesia should have no defensive walls, such as those of Athens or other contemporary poleis, relying on its citizen elites for defence, very much in keeping with the Spartan theme (778d–779b). However, if there must be walls, then he indicated that the citizens’ houses will form the boundary of the polis, being built around its centre in contiguous fashion. Outside the city, there will be additional markets and public buildings for the accommodation of foreigners and their wares and harbour access at a distance (952e), echoing the Piraeus at Athens but keeping this banausic realm well away from the mass of citizens. How large will the urban centre be if it, as with the hinterland, must at any time house 5,040 families? If we take the example of Plataia as a typical polis of its time containing not less than 2,000 residents within an urban space (astu) of 10 hectares,100 then Magnesia, with its approximately 30,240 residents should occupy an area of roughly 131 hectares. However, if we take the example of Priene in Asia Minor, which was built on the side of a hill, with an average of 150–200 persons per hectare, then Magnesia’s urban centre could be in the range of 150 hectares and probably larger.101 In terms of size, this would place it at the upper end of the spectrum of known poleis in antiquity based solely on the area of space contained within the city walls.102 In terms of the size of its astu , Magnesia is therefore extraordinary but not implausible.

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These figures do not, however, take into account the chōra , or hinterland and neither do they take into account the impact of the population of metics and slaves. I shall return to the former point but will now consider the latter. If there are some 30,240 citizens, how many slaves will there be in the city proper? The Athenian Stranger has not said; but, one can draw an estimation based on property class. Let us assume that those of the first property class will have at least four domestic slaves, those of the second, three, those of the third, two, and those of the fourth, one. These figures might be incorrect and the variability may be wider, but they are probably close enough on the whole. Unfortunately, the Athenian Stranger has not specified the exact population of each of these classes so it remains impossible to determine exactly how many slaves they might have in total based on these figures. If we take Greaves approximation of 50%, and there is every reason to imagine this as applicable to Magnesia if not a higher one, then we may assume a total population of citizens and their slaves living in the urban centre at around 60,480.103 This does not, of course, take into account the resident aliens nor state- owned, “municipal” slaves quartered in the city.104 In fact, I am tempted to add another 5,040 slaves to the total given that each hoplite is likely to have a slave to bear his or (perhaps in this case) her arms; however, I will allow the possibility of other slaves, already accounted for, performing a double duty.105 It is more difficult to determine the metic and state- owned slave populations based on the information that Plato has given us. Residence in Magnesia is permitted to any foreigner who wishes to live there and who practises a valuable craft. They may remain for up to 20 years after registration and this ‘leave to remain’ may be extended further, even for life, if they continue to obey the laws and provide a significant service (850a–b). Unlike Athens and elsewhere in the ancient Greek world, no “alien tax” (metoikion) will be levied on them, nor any other special taxation, apart from “virtuous conduct” on a par with that expected of citizens. They will not be required, or indeed allowed, to undertake military service.106 They are not permitted to acquire more property than that of the third class of citizens (915b–c). And this method of regulation certainly gives Magnesia greater control over its metics than other poleis.

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Magnesian metics would not be able to attain the degree of wealth and status that was potentially available to them in other poleis of Attica. However, in Magnesia they would not be under the same burden of taxation as elsewhere. There were, as Morrow says, “numerous other taxes and special levies to which the Athenian metic was liable”.107 Having to undertake military service too could be quite expensive. Tod estimates that the subsistence level cost of living for a married couple in Athens at the end of the fifth century to be around 180 drachma per year.108 An annual alien tax of 12 drachma plus other special taxes would have severely hampered the lifestyles of poorer resident aliens. Magnesia’s more liberal system might prove attractive to immigrants who sought to practise a trade there while, at the same time, ensuring that they should not come to dominate the polis to any significant political or financial extent. It preserves the integrity of the citizen body while addressing the dangers of having a city with a large class of disenfranchised permanent aliens possessing wealth. Plato may have designed his metic- oriented social controls with civic concord in mind so as to avoid the sort of “alien purges” (xenēlasiai) that occurred in Sparta.109 How many metics would there be in Magnesia at any given time? We know that there will be foreign merchants present supplying the city with items that it cannot produce for itself (704c). If they are required to do so using local currency, then they could not hope to make the same kind of profit as they might with Athenian currency which was universally accepted. But this is not unusual given that, as Xenophon reports, merchants tended to take on new cargoes in exchange to sell elsewhere.110 Also, with no special taxation on their wares, it could be to their advantage to trade with Magnesia. This does not give us a good indication of their numbers but we can estimate several hundred foreign merchants present at any given time. There will also be foreign teachers for Magnesia’s schools paid for by the state (804c–d). If there are around 10,080 students at any given time (based on the figures above), and we assume a ratio of ten students maximum to every teacher, then that would mean about 1,008 or more of these resident alien teachers present, assuming that a different pupil/teacher ratio is not employed. There will be a small

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number of physicians as well who, presumably, will also have to be metics paid from the state coffers (916b). The figure of people living in Magnesia’s urban centre, then, if we take into account resident aliens and an unspecified number of civic slaves stands roughly at 62,500. This is only an estimate and may, in actuality, be a quite bit higher. Also, if the Magnesian planners choose to be more generous with their civic space, then the size of the city itself could be amended from 150 hectares to between 250 and 300. This brings Magnesia not quite up to the level of Athens with its approximately 200,000 or more residents but places it well into the first magnitude in terms of size of the urban centre.111 It will be necessary to feed the 62,500 plus residents of the polis as well as those living in the chōra . The Athenian Stranger has not specified all of the facts and figures relating to how this might be accomplished; although, he has gone into some detail in terms of its legal regulation. There is an injunction that citizens who receive a portion of land in the country must see to it that it is farmed, not by themselves, of course, but by their slaves, in a productive manner for the common good (740a–b). This must refer to the 5,040 rural land allotments which, in addition to functioning as a country home and a house for newlyweds and their children, will also be a working farm.112 At 842ff., the Athenian Stranger discusses agricultural law and how all boundaries will be fixed and made sacrosanct by offerings to Zeus. They will be effectively unalterable once established. A number of these agricultural regulations, especially those concerning the dispensation of water and penalties for violating boundaries, greatly reflect their Athenian counterparts.113 However, if Athens is the model for the urban centre and its basic administration, the Spartan and Cretan paradigms are more applicable to the countryside. The Athenian Stranger says: Concerning food supply and the distribution of agricultural produce, a system akin to that practised in Crete would probably prove satisfactory. The whole produce of the soil shall be divided by all into twelve parts, according to the manner of its consumption. And each twelfth part . . . must be divided proportionally into three shares, of which the first shall be for freeborn citizens

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and the second for their slaves, and the third share shall be for craftsmen and foreigners generally, including resident aliens . . . (847e–848a) He does not specify the exact size of each third-part share but it would seem reasonable that the portion intended for slaves would necessarily be larger due to their preponderance of numbers. It will be illegal to sell any of the produce from the first two shares whereas the third is intended specifically for sale and will result in a significant portion of the state’s revenue: non- citizens and their slaves must pay for their own food while in Magnesia and will not be allowed to receive any for free from the public stores. There is a reference to resident aliens being allowed to undertake some farming of their own (845a) but it is clear that the majority of the work will be performed by slave labour and most metics will have to purchase their food. It is not impossible that there may be state-run farms not associated with any particular Magnesian country estate. The Athenian Stranger has not said this but the possibility exists if the citizens’ rural holdings are not able to produce enough food to meet all their needs. Though, the 5,040 country estates seem to be intended to provide the bulk of the farming. This would entail a great deal of space and Plato’s narrator realizes this. When referring to the distribution of craftsmen about the greater polis, he refers to “villages” in the surrounding chōra (848e). It follows that the Magnesians’ estates might then be situated in village-type localities, with accompanying slaves and craftsmen – each with their own families and domiciles, thus making up the given “village” – according to the natural distribution of resources, potable water, arable land and arboriculture. When present, the citizens would be like Spartan landlords overseeing the activities on their estates, albeit with the injunction to treat their underlings as humanely and virtuously as possible in keeping with the tenets of Magnesia.114 In addition to being philosophically sound, this policy may also be aimed at preventing the sort of social unrest in Magnesia that Sparta suffered on account of her frequent slave revolts.115 How many slaves will be occupied with farm labour? Again, the Athenian Stranger has again not told us but we can draw an

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estimation based on Spartan practices which are in many ways parallel. As with Magnesia, the primary aims of a given Spartiate’s holdings were to feed his family, provide for his slaves and to supply his required contributions to the common meals.116 The exact figures in terms of land and manpower remain contested. A contemporary assessment indicates that there were 8,000 plus such holdings, taking up a space of 41,000 or more hectares in Laconia and Messene and farmed by around 140,000 subject peoples, with their numbers likely not remaining static over time.117 It must be stressed that these figures are conservative estimations and others have come up with even higher ones both for land and population.118 These are based on a subsistence farming ratio of nearly seven persons per hectare.119 If we apply the same proportions to Magnesia, then we come up with a figure of approximately 25,830 hectares farmed, at the minimum, by 88,200 slaves. This gives a total population for Magnesia, including the 3 square kilometres of the urban centre and 258 for the hinterland, at around 150,700 persons occupying about 261 square kilometres. Not quite Babylon, then – or even Athens, or Sparta either, but closer to them than the former. Magnesia would have be a large city- state, in fact, undoubtedly one of the largest in ancient Greece. Perhaps the population figure aimed at was deliberately less than Sparta or Athens and was achieved by effectively eliminating an element or elements of the populace deemed unnecessary in those poleis. Clearly Aristotle’s statement is an instance of hyperbole although it seems that there is something no less hyperbolic about the proposed enterprise. The initial cost for founding the city would be enormous and it would require some wealthy backers. Plato was well- connected with a number of aristocrats of his era and he might have been able to raise the required capital. Of course, the colonists themselves would bring a major portion of the investment in money and material when they arrive which would confirm their property status and socio- economic class in Magnesia. The size and demographics of Magnesia notwithstanding, we have seen that Plato’s narrator intends for the polis to go to great lengths in order to maintain a stable population. Even so, as we have also seen, he anticipates that there will be some excess offspring and

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plans for their forced emigration to colonies. Which colonies? Will they be founded by Magnesia and replicate her constitution? If so, then Crete would be the logical location to establish them, at least in the beginning. If the land proves suitable, these initial colonies could be set up in the neighbouring vicinity at the periphery of Magnesia’s chōra . It would make sense to keep allied city- states close by for purposes of trade and common defence. As these colonies attain their population stability point, and we are certainly talking about a span of centuries rather than decades, and further colonies are founded and grow from the population spill- over from the more established poleis, a whole second-best Commonwealth could be formed. They would be united by common currency and customs. Of course, the Athenian Stranger’s plan is deliberately non- expansionistic but, by sheer weight of numbers, the whole world might one day come to be dominated by the children of Magnesia, spreading their virtuous philosophical enlightenment far and wide. Is it practical? This is a more difficult question to answer since the Athenian Stranger has not provided us with greater detail. We can look at other comparably sized cities in antiquity, like the reformed polis of Messene and Megalopolis which were large synoecisms in roughly the same era, and consider how they fared.120 A longer history of synoecisms in Sicily created very large cities, and of course there are somewhat later projects such as Cassandreia.121 However, the only ones that really kept up their population levels and thrived were those supported by an imperial power such as Antioch- on-theOrontes and Alexandria in Egypt. Even Athens, after the decline of her own empire, was propped up, so to speak, by other empires that subsequently saw her as a worthwhile association and/or possession. All of these successfully large cities were opposed to the isolationism and rugged self- sufficiency of Magnesia, embracing rather a cosmopolitanism in terms of both commerce and political affiliations. Their survival in a changing world appears to indicate that the balance of trade and the influence of international relations turned out to have been considerably more important than perhaps Plato realized. Certainly the figures that we have been able to deduce from the Laws and elsewhere suggest that Magnesia has potential, much more so than the Kallipolis of the Republic or even the idealized version of

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Sparta found in Xenophon and Plutarch. But it is one thing to plan out a society on paper, in however much detail, and quite another to see it up and running in reality. Although Magnesia is geared towards stability in terms of society, economy and demographics, one can easily imagine the system outgrowing its planned limitations. The laws of Magnesia are not immutable and can be changed, albeit with difficulty. What if the citizens decide that 5,040 is not the best number of households and raise it to, say, 10,080? What if some citizens or resident aliens find loopholes in the law that permit them to amass greater amounts of wealth than initially prescribed? There seems to be some leeway that might be exploited with regard to dowries and inheritance. Many things could go wrong with such a system. How would it react, for instance, to some kind of disaster that decimated the population or greatly impoverished the land? Even so, in purely practical terms, the city outlined in the Laws appears to be able to exist in reality. Whatever changes might come with time, it is a wellplanned polis and has as much potential for being a success as any other colony founded in Plato’s era.

Chapter 3

The Magnesian Military, National Service and Mythical Amazons

To secure peace is to prepare for war. —Karl von Clausewitz, On War1 Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‘War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.’ —Immanuel Kant 2 Plato’s utopian society outlined in his Laws and called Magnesia is probably the most extraordinary example of civic and social planning to arise out of antiquity, albeit a fictional one. When compared with virtually all other actual poleis of its day, it is even more so on account of its inclusion of women in the public sphere. There are many revolutionary propositions in the Laws which include, but are not limited to, the likes of socialized education and healthcare, females in the military and potentially the government, a deliberately non- expansionistic and non-aggressive political doctrine along with a pronounced affinity for the vigilant supervision of all its citizens, property and their interactions within its sovereign demesne. Each of these topics merits its own monograph. This chapter is concerned primarily with a significant innovation of Plato’s Magnesia regarding his employment of a kind of ‘national service’ as part of the pedagogical experience of the young, known as the ephēbeia and its atypical inclusion of women. The second-best state will have a military to secure its sovereignty. Indeed, such appears to be the responsibility of almost every citizen making the citizen body itself an elite fighting force with which to contend. The state’s monopoly on legitimate violence in Magnesia will be guaranteed.

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One can estimate the size of the Magnesian military, based on the 5,040 family units, to be in the range of at least 10,080 strong, counting fathers and sons only. It could be significantly more than that when we take into account women, perhaps up to 15,120 or more, but not counting trained slaves or potential mercenaries which could also swell their ranks if need be. This figure is relatively small compared to known military numbers from the Classical era. For example, Athens easily levied 30,000 hoplite troops from their democratic populace in the initial phase of the Greek wars against the Persians and the Athenian navy was significantly larger than that, especially after the formation of the Delian League. During the phase of the Peloponnesian Wars from 431, the so- called Archidamian War, Sparta marshalled between 30,000 and 60,000 troops against Athens which was successfully defended by around 20,000 hoplites, who were mostly non-professional citizen- soldiers.3 In the winter of 370, the Theban Hegemony, led by their general Epaminondas, undertook a crusade against Laconia with 40,000 of their own men plus allied reinforcements.4 And there were even larger numbers involved in the later campaigns of Alexander the Great. Of course, Plato’s Magnesia expressly will not use its military in an aggressive capacity. The Athenian Stranger states this several times, summing up his philosophy on the matter by saying: The highest good, however, is neither war nor civil strife – which things rather we should pray to be saved from – but peace one with another and friendly concord . . . that man will never make a genuine statesman who pays attention primarily to foreign warfare, nor will he make a finished lawgiver unless he designs his war legislation for peace rather than his peace legislation for war (628c–e). And the Athenian Stranger has done just that. Though its soldiery are fewer than those of Classical Athens or Sparta, with no navy mentioned whatsoever, 5 the citizen- soldiers of the second-best polis will be an elite fighting force trained to a high level of skill. They should be more than ready to defend their homeland, its laws and customs and to this end Plato has made extensive preparations. Again though, it must be stressed that these martial preparations are primarily

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for the moral and physical improvement of the citizens without an expansionistic agenda. Few civilizations have been so engaged in warfare as the Classical Greek city- states without, at least up till the time of Alexander, becoming more regimentally militarized. Sparta was the exception and provides a template for Magnesia. Plato’s ephēbeia , or national service, fits into the cultural context of Classical Greece at large as well as having had a potential influence on that context. Plato’s reasons for this development are clearly founded in his philosophical precepts which are intended to produce the maximum net degree of justice and happiness in the populace and to instil a particular morality in them from an early age. The Magnesian ephēbeia , largely based on Spartan traditions, appears to have also had an impact on Athenian practices and represents a stage in the development of the state-run military as employed later by the Thebans, Macedonians, the Romans and, eventually, post-Hobbesian, post Westphalian nation- states. Plato’s narrator, the Athenian Stranger, borrowing a theme in part from Classical mythology, also incorporates women into the equation of the ephēbeia and the military at large thus making an exceptional leap that would not be replicated until modernity. Plato was writing about an ephēbeia in the middle of the fourthcentury BCE in the Laws. His theoretical propositions appear to connect with actual cultural traditions. It is however difficult to pinpoint the inception of this institution in reality. Athenian youths in the later half of the fourth century certainly undertook a period of military training known as the ephēbeia .6 Hesk is critical of Vidal-Naquet’s assertion that the ephēbeia existed in the sixth and seventh centuries; however, in the fifth century, as he says, “this idea of an ‘in-between period’ involving institutionalised practices and associated stories that were anti-hoplitic gain credence when we think of the deceptive behaviour of young male characters in Attic Tragedy”.7 There is, nonetheless, slim support for a fifth- century ephēbeia . There is also some evidence for the existence of the ephēbeia from about 371/0 BCE,8 but, according to Marrou, “it did not receive its full form until much later, immediately after the defeat of Chaeronea (338), after a law for which Epikrates seems to have been responsible and which

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was passed between 337 and 335” during the reforms of Lycurgus of Athens.9 Did Epikrates’ law instantiate the ephēbeia or merely modify a pre- existing institution? Reinmuth agrees with the 371/0 date for its existence but whether this represents the earliest incarnation of this institution remains uncertain.10 He proposes, in the light of the extant inscriptions, that the archontes to whom Aeschines appealed as witnesses to his service (II, 167) as a frontier guard along with his fellow sunephēboi can be no other than the kosmetes and sophronistes, who were in charge of the boys in the ephēbeia , and that the existence of the same organization which is attested in 361/0 must be extrapolated to at least ca. 371/0, some ten years earlier. Reinmuth also indicates that “one might with some justification propose the period after the Persian War” as the time of the ephēbeia’s inception – albeit in a less- developed form.11 Necessity appears to have been the mother of invention. But how formalized was the ephēbeia at this time? Aeschines the orator spoke of a system of training in which he partook as a youth saying that he served for two years after his childhood as a “peripolos of this land”.12 He uses the word sunephēboi , describing his participation in this institution, in reference to himself and his age-mates. Perhaps, in this respect, Aeschines was something of a pioneer.13 This term, however, may or may not refer to the later ephēbeia .14 The sunephēboi may have been a voluntary body of youthful ‘territorial guards’, at a time when Athens could not afford to pay foreign soldiers, that later grew into a more formal institution of the polis. “The ephebeia was a programme of military training”, according to De Marcellus, “but authors of the early to mid-fourth century state, both directly and implicitly, that such training does not exist”.15 Isocrates, from whom we might expect some insight into this pedagogical matter, makes no mention of it. He says that his students acquired virtue, “having just emerged from boyhood”, while most other youths waste time at drinking parties and in soft living.16 Plato’s narrator in the Laws seems unaware of any such existing institution in Athens at that time. In Megillus’ discussion of the Cretan agelai and the Spartan agōgē, which would seem to be the opportune moment to bring it up, there is no reference to any Athenian

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ephēbeia .17 This supports a later date for its official inception, but the issue remains equivocal. At some point, then, in the fourth century (at least after 371/0 and maybe even as late as 338/7), when a male youth attained the age of meirakion , he would lead a life apart for a period of time before gaining full admission into society. He might not be allowed the status of a full citizen until he had served his ephēbeia . As Vidal-Naquet indicates, “Il faut dire maintenant un mot d’une autre institution, qui, à l’époque d’Aristote, joue un role essential dans l’admission tant à la vie civique qu’à la vie militaire”.18 Each year the Athenian demes drew up a list of eligible youths about to reach their civic majority (or ‘manhood’, ephēbos – generally 15 to 21), and then submitted it to the Boulē for approval. Aristotle tells us that an ephēbe “cannot go to law either as a defendant or as a plaintiff, unless it is a matter of upholding an inheritance, arranging the affairs of an heiress, or a priesthood related to the clan”.19 The period of ephēbeia ended when one of several eventualities occurred. It could conclude with entry into the hoplite phalanx, the Athenian navy and/or marriage.20 Until the ephēbeia was over, a young man’s relationship with the polis was ambiguous. As a pedagogical institution, it certainly played a significant role: it appears to have been one of the few truly organized aspects of ancient Greek education outside of Sparta and it certainly reflected Lakonian traditions.21 The ephēbeia also incurred other, more unsavoury comparisons with Spartan practices.22 The policy of mandatory military service in Plato’s Laws, except for the potential inclusion of women, readily corresponds to the later advent of the Athenian ephēbeia .23 The fact that a text of Plato’s, composed in the 350s and early 340s, contains an outline for something like the ephēbeia is historically interesting. Although, as we have seen, there is evidence for ephēbe - style training in Athens as early as 371/0 (and possibly even earlier), it does not seem to exist as an official institution until Epikrates’ law dated between 337 and 335, corresponding with the reforms of Lycurgus of Athens. The coincidence of Plato’s writing and the inception of the ephēbeia suggests that these ideas were ‘in the air’ at this time. Lycurgus of Athens was a powerful politician and reformer who was probably a student of both Plato and Isocrates.24 He was effectively the

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chief minister of finance for Athens after Plato’s death and he allocated considerable funds to the military and took a special interest in the formalization of the ephēbeia . Renehan argues that Lycurgus “put his Platonism into practice in the field of Realpolitik” with results that would have pleased his teacher, in particular with a regard for ideas expressed in the Laws.25 Lycurgus’ intentions for the ephēbeia also appear to have been philosophically motivated. While the institution did serve both military and educative ends, “the names of the instructors, cosmetes (teacher of order) and sophronistes (teacher of self- control), show that Lycurgus’ aim was rather the foundation of moral character”.26 As Jaeger has pointed out, “the same spirit that permeates the Laws was dominating Athens ten years after its publication, at the time of the Lycurgian reforms”.27 The association with Lycurgus implies that, even if Epikrates’ law only modified a pre- existing institution, Plato’s propositions in the Laws, based on Cretan and Spartan customs, might have been highly influential. It is a tantalizing suggestion but, for the present, there is a sufficient lack of direct evidence to say so with certainty. The activities undertaken by youths during their ephēbeia amounted to a type of military education that also served as a process of socialization and moral indoctrination. It was not dissimilar to the practice of mandatory military service in some nation- states of the modern era. Troops known as peripoloi existed in Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars but, as indicated above, it is unclear whether or not the ephēbes were among them at that time.28 In the fourth century, the ephēbic peripoloi would have undertaken their service in the forts surrounding Athens including the Panakton, Dekeleia and Rhamnous.29 Their role at these forts appears to have been mainly for the purposes of training or, potentially, as emergency backup in the event of a surprise attack. Young men in their ephēbeia rarely entered into actual combat and then only under exceptional circumstances.30 After about two to three years of his ephēbeia , an Athenian youth stepped into his mature, civic role both as heir and citizen. This is in effect the same intention behind the ephēbeia described in Plato’s Laws. The ephēbe system became “practically universal” throughout Hellenistic Greek cities.31 However, Athens eventually abandoned compulsory service in her own ephēbeia and other poleis maintained

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theirs only on a voluntary basis such that they became elitist institutions (akin to the English public school system of the past), contrary to the plan outlined in Plato’s Laws. The deliberate inclusion of women in the public sphere of Magnesia stands in radical contrast to their accepted place in Athenian culture. The Laws, as Brisson says, was “proposing a reactionary adaptation of the Athenian legislation of Plato’s time”.32 It is a heavily Laconized adaptation but goes beyond the practices of the Spartans. There is nonetheless an unambiguous division of the sexes observable in the Magnesian armed forces. Elements of choice and compulsion apply in different ways to both men and women. Certain educational activities are to be compulsory for males but, to some degree, optional for females. It is a point of inequality that underlines Magnesia’s basic ideology. Citizen males are to be sent to “the teachers of horsemanship, archery, javelin throwing and slinging” whether they particularly want to or not – and they will be encouraged from an early age that it is virtuous and manly to strive for success in these areas. Magnesian females are to learn all of the arts and sciences, just as their male counterparts, in schools. However they have a limited kind of choice in terms of their military training.33 It remains unclear as to whether or not Magnesian women will be allowed to take up higher offices within the polis. There is no reason, prima facie, to assume that they would not; however, as Santas rightly points out, “Platon demeure silencieux sur l’éligibilité au Conseil des Gardiens des lois ou au Conseil Nocturne”.34 Although, they are no less “très estimables de la cite idéale”, in no small part due to their maternal role, and apparently treated on a more equal footing even than women in the Republic.35 The plan for Magensian women’s martial education is essentially a revised version of the same outlined in the Republic.36 However, the reformation of the family as the central unit of the second-best polis necessitates some critical adjustments. The line appears to have been drawn roughly around the age of the ephēbeia when young Magnesian men must perform their military service and women must begin considering the prospects of teknopoiia , offspring production (760b). As Ernoult puts it, “. . . pour elles, la preparation militaire s’interrompt au moment de leur mariage”.37 However,

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female citizens are to have the right to undertake a similar ephēbeia “if they are at all agreeable to it”, but they are required to spend at least a whole decade of their lives in the act of bearing and rearing children before embarking on any potential career in the armed forces. That option is open to them after having birthed the requisite number of offspring. Plato’s narrator, addressing his Cretan and Spartan interlocutors, says that: . . . the species of our human race naturally more secretive and cunning, the female sex, because it is weak, has been wrongly left behind in a state of disorder due to the misguided concessions of the legislator.38 But because of this neglect, many things are thoroughly absent from your institutions that could be considerably better than they are now, if women were thus administered under law. For not only is the disorganised supervision of women half the problem, as one might presume, indeed this female nature, as far as we’re concerned, is inferior toward the pursuit of virtue to that of the male sex, in this much it differs twofold.39 Such points as women’s perceived ‘weakness’, along with his clichéd statements of their ‘natural’ inferiority, seem contradictory to his plans for reforming them through training and education. This may be an indication of the persistence of traditional conceptions about gender manifesting in Plato. Perhaps he is being politic in an awareness of his audience’s likely prejudices. The Athenian Stranger’s solution to the problem that he has identified is innovative. He continues in the same passage, saying: And so, to take this matter up and amend it, the organisation of all practices in common for both women and men is better for the happiness of the state; but just now the race of humankind has, as it happens, not yet arrived at that point (780d9–781b6). The Athenian Stranger goes into great detail here (and also at 806e2–807a3 ff.) in developing a clearer picture of this major feature of Magnesian life.40 The situation of women’s neglect cannot be permitted to continue and the answer lies in education, physical

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training and proper socialization. The latter, in a gendered revision of Cretan and Spartan traditions, will also entail common meals for women much along the same lines as for men.41 The disparity between the compulsory military service of male Magnesians and the optional one for females is due to the fact that women are the ones who necessarily bear children. Since “the age limit of marriage for a girl is to be from sixteen to twenty years of age” and for men thirty to thirty-five (752b2–9), it stands to reason that a Magnesian female might be getting married and starting a family at the same time as her male age-mates would be out learning the javelin and horsemanship. Despite the many degrees of equality extended to Magnesian women, the “products” of their labour, as Rosaldo says, “tend to be directed to the family and the home”.42 Since they will be prepared for their maternal role from an early age, one expects that the significance of teknopoiia will comprise a major portion of their socialization. It defines many of the limits of their femininity and imposes implicit and explicit assumptions upon their sex.43 That is, their role in society will almost always be contingent on their maternal function. A major portion of a man’s idealized sex-role, in turn, stands in relation to this as the paternal counterpart. Even so, slaves will rear their children and, while their mothers will doubtlessly love them, Magnesian women will walk a different path than their Athenian counterparts, though, they will no less form an essential “corps civique” within this imagined community.44 It is also possible to imagine that some female offspring may not be required to produce children in order to maintain the status quo of the population. These, then, could theoretically take up a military career, if they so chose, free from the constraints of marriage and childbirth. At least that career path would seem to be open to them. Ancient Greek women’s participation in the public sphere could be described as limited at best.45 Plato’s utopian vision, however ‘second- best’, demands a greater degree of equality and this entails some socio- sexual re- programming. For this, he draws on mythic exemplars both as propagandistic encouragement as well as a basis of philosophical reasoning.46 While these are “mythical” to contemporary thought, in Plato’s time they would have been regarded as

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perhaps exotic or, in some sense, fabulous (in keeping with the concept of mythos as a story) but not necessarily fictitious. Plato’s reformation of women appears to have required some recourse to the fabulous. Their masculinization, or so it may be called, in Magnesia is perhaps most evident in terms of their involvement in the military. It may also be observed in their somewhat limited, though significantly present, role in city politics. If Magnesian women lived in a manner such as Lakonian women or, that is to say, the way that the Athenian Stranger seems to think that Spartan women lived, then they could learn both gymnastics and wool-working but, as he says: They would not partake of warlike things, so they would not be able, if at some point fate should compel them, to fight for the sake of their city and their children; nor would they be able to shoot arrows, like certain Amazons, nor could they be acquainted with the skill of any other missile, or to take up spear and shield in imitation of the goddess, so as to nobly oppose the ravaging of their fatherland47 – nor indeed could they produce fear in the enemy, if nothing more, by being seen arrayed in martial order. Living in such a way, they would not dare to imitate the Sauromatians, whose women would seem like men compared to these.48 This recourse to mythos, like many others employed throughout the Laws, serves to induce citizens, as Brisson says, “to obey the rules that govern the moral conduct of each human being, as well as . . . life within the city- state.” 49 Plato’s recourse to negative examples here is clearly an instance of litotes that is designed to emphasize the shamefulness associated with the lack of these qualities. Magnesian women, as we have seen, will have the opportunity to become well versed in the arts of war and fighting. The Athenian Stranger has decided not to precisely replicate any of the customs, mentioned in the passage above, in formulating a role for female Magnesians. Rather, he borrows something from each of them in order to achieve a synthesis of sexual characteristics that he deems desirable for women of the second-best polis. Repeated references are made here and elsewhere to the models of the Amazons, Spartans and Sauromatians. His

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choice of exotic imagery reveals a complex network of relationships being synthesized in the final product. The concept of Sauromatian women, a key example cited by Plato’s narrator in support of military training for female Magnesians, would have evoked in his audience at the time an immediate association with the other, less ‘civilized’ peoples of the world and their apparently ‘topsy-turvy’ modes of existence. Sauromatia, the Athenian Stranger says, is a culture in which women are instructed to handle horses, the bow and other weapons on equal terms with men.50 This was a tale that many of his contemporaries would instantly recognize. According to Herodotus, the Sauromatians lived east of the Scythians.51 They were allegedly descended from an intermingling of Scythian men with a band of marauding Amazons who were raiding villages and generally running amok in that region. According to the story, a group of Greeks had defeated these women in Themiskyra and, while captives aboard ship, they successfully overtook and slew their male captors. They knew nothing of the art of sailing, being women, and roamed aimlessly until they reached Lake Mareotis (the Sea of Azov) where they encountered the Scythians. Herodotus’ audience had long been fascinated with these warrior women. Characteristic of the relationship between the Greeks and Asians, real or imagined, there was an intense fascination with the Sauromatians and, more especially, the Amazons. This sense of awe was mingled with the usual degree of scorn reserved for foreigners and their barbarous ways.52 Herodotus’ account of the Amazons perhaps reveals, as Gould says, “his open- eyed acknowledgement that human experience is multiform and that the role of women is culturally determined”.53 This would seem to be true inasmuch as Herodotus can imagine that foreign cultures differed in remarkable and shocking ways.54 Amazons were barbarians by Athenian standards but they were still considered Europeans, although situated at the periphery.55 As Romm says, they “dressed, according to the usual Greek depictions of them, in leather clothing that gave them a distinctly Asian appearance”.56 These women, imaginary or otherwise, who took up arms like men, stand in stark contrast to the vast majority of their Greek counterparts.57 All versions of the myth contain significant distortions of normal Greek customs. In response to the Amazonian invasion, Herodotus

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tells us that the Scythians decided to send their youngest men, of ephēbic age, among the Amazons to live like them and, ideally, to seduce them into marriage. The Amazons eventually agreed to take the young men as husbands – but only on condition that they go and fetch whatever movable property they would inherit from their fathers. This represents one level of an inversion of the ‘normal’ that tends to be present in the mythos at large. “So here”, as Hartog indicates, “it is the husband – not, as is customary, the bride – who brings the dowry”.58 In this way, according to Herodotus, was the wild Sauromatian race born. There is a clear connection here between youths of ephēbic age and such legalistic phenomena as marriage and inheritance. Amazons were also a popular topos for Athenian art and literature from the sixth- century BCE onwards. The earliest known Athenian literary reference is probably that at Euripides’ Herakles (408–19). They appear on vase paintings from 575 onwards which frequently portray the Amazons in Herakles’ ninth labour as well as Theseus’ famous rape of Hippolyte.59 In these cases, they are seen as being tamed, ‘normalized’ into accepted modes of behaviour appropriate, in Greek eyes, to their gender. This is a recurring theme in the mythos surrounding them. Representations of Amazons had been present in Ancient Greek culture at least since the time of Homer and Hesiod and probably earlier. Portrayed from the outset as barbarians, they are abstractly localized in a realm that belies the societal norms of Greek society.60 Amazonian images on the Parthenon, “like the other mythical opponents on the metopes, can be seen on one level as an example of the ‘defeated barbarian’ type”.61 Their ‘barbarous’ reversal of norms also made them attractive objects of erotic curiosity.62 They reverse a polarity whose paragon is the adult male hoplite- cum-father and kyrios. The psychological implications that their reception appears to have signified with regard to Greek men are complex. It is possible that, as counter- examples, they represent subversive elements present in the Classical mindset towards women. Perhaps, as Harrison says, “we identify a handful of heroines [in Herodotos and elsewhere], Medea, Artemisia, Antigone, and see them as evidence that Greek women envisaged the possibility of their own emancipation;

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male stereotypes of women show their fear of the opposite sex, their (unconscious) acknowledgement that the oppression of women was wrong, that it could not ultimately be sustained”.63 One suspects that such a vision of sexual egalitarianism was hardly universal, albeit perhaps present in some individuals. Even so, the conceptual Amazons provide revealing insights into the modes of thought on sex at the time. They upset the boundaries that were clearly defined for the public and private spheres in many Greek poleis and especially Athens.64 Amazons attained a peculiar status through the negation of traditional norms.65 “Imagining an inversion of roles”, as Hartog writes, “meant transferring women from the sphere of marriage into that of war and excluding men from the latter”.66 This point perhaps underscores an intrinsically masculine fear. Strabo (63/64 BCE–ca. CE 24) indicates that the Amazons would engage in physical relations with men from a neighbouring people, the Gargarians, once a year in order to ‘top up’ their female population.67 So, in this version, sex serves the female interests rather than the male. In contrast, Diodorus’ version (first- century BCE) says that they did marry but that their menfolk meekly performed that which would have traditionally been ‘women’s work’, thus overturning the traditional sex-roles in ‘civilized’ society.68 Both of these later sources may have been influenced by Plato and were certainly influenced by other, older, Greek traditions on the Amazons of which they partook. Another inversion of Athenian norms may be seen in Diodorus’ account of the Amazons. He says that they remained virgins while pursuing their military activities but ceased to fight when married. Thereafter they would become magistrates and undertook Amazonian civic affairs.69 War then, according to this particular representation, is the business of virgin- Amazons, perhaps paralleling the mythical image of the virgin goddess Athena. These constitute an age- group that experienced a period of ephēbeia , comparable to the male equivalent and likewise brought to its terminus by marriage.70 Thus we return to Plato and his hypothetical ephēbeia in the Laws. Diodorus’ description bears more than a passing resemblance to the Athenian Stranger’s plan for Magnesia’s female citizens. It is not a complete reversal of norms, as in the case of fictionalized

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Amazonian culture at large – male Magnesians also undergo this training and do not undertake ‘women’s work’ – but the inclusion of women in traditionally male roles is quite remarkable. Female Magnesians must adopt a ‘masculine’, decidedly Amazonian attitude towards their own sexuality in terms of sophrōsyne and mastery of their desires. This sort of reversal is not considered ‘unnatural’ but more like an upgrade from excessively emotional femininity to a more rational masculinity. They are less ‘liberated’ than the average Amazon or Sauromatian and they are still limited by their role as mothers but much less so than their Athenian equivalents. It is no accident that the second-best city will be placed on Crete and nowhere near Athens. Although it clearly draws upon a number of Greek traditions, and particularly Athenian ones, Magnesia is ultimately an alien polis with definitively foreign customs – some of which border on the mythical. Plato’s Magnesian ephēbeia would have been revolutionary per se if it had only included men. The fact that women may also choose to partake of it is even more extraordinary. In proposing such a radical revision of normative Greek society, Plato has drawn together a number of cultural influences spanning actual societies, such as Sparta and Athens, along with extraordinarily exotic ones such as that of the Amazons. The synthesis of these is ultimately alien to the Greeks of Plato’s era, though derived in no small part out of their own mythical traditions. Plato’s recourse to mythology, in particular, resonates with Athenian views on women and ‘barbarians’ as the other ; yet it also reveals a desire to embrace that otherness, perhaps subconsciously, in ways that would have been publically anathema to the average Athenian of his time, whatever their more secret, private views. Perhaps Plato is merely expressing at a conscious level the repressed desires of his fellow Hellenes, desires that manifest in the numerous mythoi concerning warrior women along with their physical immortalization in such monumental architecture as the Parthenon, itself a temple dedicated to the virgin, warrior goddess Athene. The Athenian Stranger’s plans are in many respects the purely utilitarian result of both the necessity to encourage arête in all the subjects of Magnesia as well as a consequence of Plato’s philosophical position to the effect that female souls are in some sense equal to their male counterparts. The

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Amazons provide a ready model for the transition towards a more sexually inclusive social order and the Magnesian ephēbeia evidently has had a profound historical impact that deserves greater study and reflection. What is certain, though, is that Magnesia will have a welltrained and well-armed citizen populace to defend is borders and its laws. The fact that women may be included in the military swells its numbers and gives the second-best polis an added advantage in terms of national security not enjoyed by any other ancient Greek societies of the time.

Chapter 4

The Legal System

Truly a state could not be said to be an actual state without law- courts properly established. — Plato, Laws 766d–e

In formulating the legal system for Magnesia, Plato’s narrator has, on the one hand, proposed a radical revision of existing organizations, and particularly that of Athens, which should come as no surprise by this stage. On the other hand, he has retained many key aspects of Attic law, with which Plato would have been most familiar. The Magnesian legal system is worth examining in some detail here in order to grasp the specific penology of this hypothetical city- state and its debt to Plato’s own philosophical reasoning. Of particular interest to many modern readers may be the fact that the chief aim of the legal penalties advanced in the Laws is to induce the criminal to change his/her way of life, to reform him/her and generally not to seek retribution except in certain specific and highly regulated instances. The valence of retributive justice, when it is actually invoked, resides considerably less with the individual citizen and more with the polis. Plato’s legal thesis may be summarized here to the effect that virtue is knowledge-based and vice is involuntary. However, there is tacit acknowledgement that there may arise some need for retributive punishment, for example in certain cases of homicide or damages to the state as whole, but excessive emotionality attached to penology is reduced by rational legality and the overarching philosophical aims of Wisdom and Moderation. As Bobonich says “Law still has a penalty or sanction attached to it and Plato is willing to

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use force and the threat of force on those who are not rationally persuaded to obey”.1 However, subtler methods are preferable for the second-best city and mild, effective persuasion is preferable to coercion. The Athenian Stranger “insists on relying on persuasion rather than repression because to use the latter is to admit defeat, which is implied by a lack of respect for the law”.2 This view is not new to the Laws. In the Protagoras (352c), Socrates had expressed the notion that virtue is knowledge of what is good. Vice, then, is rooted in ignorance and criminals should be educated, insofar as this is possible, rather than being merely punished for its own sake (Apology 25d–26a). The Athenian Stranger in the Laws makes a similar claim at 728a–b, saying: Regarding such things that the lawgiver enumerates and sets down as shameful and wicked, and their opposites, that which is good and noble, whoever is unwilling to employ every means to avoid the former and to utilise all of their capacity in the practice of the latter – every such individual – is ignorant of the fact that in all these instances he is treating his psychē, which is a most divine thing, in a most dishonourable and inappropriate manner. It is the state of the psychē that comes fi rst and foremost. If the laws are just and the people are properly brought up, then no one will willingly break them. Virtue is equated with happiness, its lack leads to unhappiness as has been laid out in great detail in the Republic concerning the “aristocratic” and “tyrannical” souls. Those who break the law are seen to be suffering from a kind of psychical disease which, in most instances, is viewed as treatable. The whole of the legal system outlined for Magnesia could be regarded as a rather civil, but no less pressing, critique of the sort of retributive justice found in Athens and elsewhere in the ancient world. 3 The purpose of a Magnesian legal penalty, in all cases apart from those “incurables” who face death, permanent exile or life imprisonment, is to reform the guilty. Merely punishing the guilty “as a way to deal with crime is useless”, as Saunders writes, “for although

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in some cases it may deter the criminal, it never cures the soul”.4 The Athenian Stranger makes this unambiguously clear, saying: Thus, whenever anyone should commit any unjust act, great or small, the law shall instruct him and absolutely compel him for the future either never willingly to dare to undertake such a deed, or else to do it ever so much less often, in addition to paying for the injury. In order to accomplish this, whether by action or speech, by means of pleasures and pains, honours and dishonours, moneyfines and money- gifts, and generally by whatsoever means one can employ to make men hate injustice and love, or at any rate not hate, justice: this is precisely the task of the most noble laws (862d). The inclusion of “money- gifts” is interesting and he never elaborates on this, no doubt leaving it up to later legislators to decide, but it would seem to amount to paying people who have perhaps erred in the past as a kind of inducement to keep on the straight and narrow. Those who are “bad” are regarded as involuntarily so in all respects (860d). They may be sometimes beyond help, but they should never be beyond pity, and if their treatment is to be truly just, it must be noble and good in all respects. Pangle argues here that even “those [Platonic] commentators who make the most of the irrationality of retribution . . . do not observe how problematic punishment for the sake of deterrence is according to this Socratic analysis”.5 But the Athenian Stranger does, in fact, advocate an albeit moderated form of retributive punishment particularly for murder and crimes against the state. Certain individuals are deemed to be incurable, such as those wholly tyrannical souls who never escape damnation in the Republic’s Myth of Er, and others are considered to require negative examples, manifesting in the form of state- sponsored retributive justice, as deterrence.6 This is not ideal but Magnesia is, after all, a second-best polity. The legal system outlined in the Laws is specifically designed to fulfil such educative and reformative ends and only to undertake punishment for retribution and/or deterrence in extreme cases. It is grounded in rational discourse and at every level phronēsis is preferable to emotionality as a basis for decision making. “The disputed

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matter on either side must be made clear,” says the Athenian Stranger, “and for elucidating the point at issue, space of time, deliberation and frequent questioning are of advantage” (766e–767a). Therefore those who challenge each other must go to their neighbours and friends who know most about actions being disputed, in the first instance, and they form a kind of local “court” that is more like an informal hearing or mediation. If they fail to obtain a satisfactory decision from these, the litigants may then avail a higher court at the tribal level. If these two courts are unable to settle the matter, then a third court, a Court of Appeal, shall dispose of the case. The Vigilance Committee can of course intervene in all legal matters and they may be regarded as a kind of Supreme Court, though it seems unlikely that they would interfere on most occasions with the normal legal proceedings in Magnesia. This system that the Athenian Stranger has outlined is unusual and bears further consideration. Plato’s exercise in civic constructivism proves to be a significant revision of the Athenian legal system or any others about which we know. Magnesian citizens are to be actively encouraged to participate in the legal process at every level, much as in Athens. “The perfect citizen”, according to Whitaker, “is the one who eagerly assists the magistrates in punishing wrongdoers”.7 But unlike Athens with its juries sometimes numbering in the thousands with little or no formal restraint on their decision making the Magnesians’ involvement in court cases is necessarily more limited by the inbuilt constraints of the system. As indicated, there will be an unspecified number of local courts of mediation. It seems unlikely that there would be a fixed number of them given their informal character. Such a court could be assembled quickly from a list of volunteers in a given community and then dissolved just as quickly. There will be 12 tribal courts that exist on a more formal basis, presumably with judges sitting year-round. This would mean that roughly 2,520 citizens would be served by each tribal court or about 5,200 citizens plus resident aliens and slaves who may also need to litigate from time to time. It is unlikely that all of the population of a given tribal sector would need to go to court within the same year so the proportions of population served by the first and second tiers of Magnesia’s legal system are probably appropriate.

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The Athenian Stranger only specifies one Court of Appeal for the whole city- state. He may have meant to imply that multiple such courts might sit at any given time, but he has not said so. It is therefore reasonable to assume just one. The level of social planning, education, indoctrination and the whole intended philosophical underpinnings of Magnesia as a polis in which all citizens pursue virtue and in which even the slaves and resident aliens are held to a very high moral standard all strongly suggest that legal actions of the sort which would fall into the remit of the Court of Appeal would be relatively few and far between. If that should prove to be the case, then Magnesia will contrast dramatically with Classical Athens in this respect and its overly (dare one say American?) litigious character. The legal process in Magnesia could then proceed along the following lines.8 The first tier of court action is arranged by the parties concerned, choosing judges by mutual consent from among their neighbours. If that fails, then two forms of trial may follow: (1.) if one person accuses another of injury and desires a verdict by bringing the other to trial and (2.) when a person believes that the polis itself is being injured by one of the citizens, foreigners or slaves and wishes to set right the wrong for the common good. The thirdtier court exists for those who cannot resolve their disputes through either of the first two courts of mediation. Judges are to be officials who also serve in other offices (767a). All state officials will meet at a temple and name one from each of their membership to be a judge on the Court of Appeal for the ensuing year. These are subject to scrutiny by the assembled officials. Their fellow councillors who elected them must also attend their trials to observe that they properly undertake their duties as judges. Judges accused of misconduct will be tried before the Law Wardens and, if found guilty, are subject to a severe fine (double the amount deemed to have been inflicted on the injured party plus any additional penalties considered appropriate to the case – 767d–e). In rare cases of crimes against the state, the entire populace will be involved though the questioning will take place before the three highest officials and the judgement will be moderated by the Vigilance Committee. Later (853a ff.), the Athenian Stranger goes into greater detail concerning penalties for crimes. He says that this is an unwholesome

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business given the lofty goals of Magnesia and the virtue that is meant to be instilled in its citizens but he acknowledges that, since the citizens are mortal men and not gods or the sons of gods, this is necessary for any that are “hard-hearted” in disposition (kerasbólos). He says “that a rightly nurtured citizen should be infected with this disease (nosēsai . . . nóson) is something we should neither expect nor desire” but their servants, slaves or foreigners and their servants or slaves, might be more likely to engage in nefarious activities (853d). It is primarily on their account that he is making these rules but also “as a precaution against the general infirmity of human nature (tēn tēs anthrōpinēs phuseōs astheneian)” which suggests that even a citizen might fall prey to vice. Here he uses the language of sickness (nóson, astheneian) in order to describe a criminal’s motivations for committing a heinous and impious crime such as temple-robbery. The Athenian Stranger also goes on to indicate that this sort of crime and others like it are “difficult, if not impossible, to cure” (dusiata kai aniata), implying that other criminal behaviour more generally is a sort of sickness that, in many cases at least, can be treated with the appropriate pharmaka . The difficulty, or near impossibility, of implementing a system of justice bound by the rule of wisdom, as outlined in the Laws, is worthy of note. “No society”, as Pangle indicates, “is willing to devote the time and resources to rehabilitating criminals that Plato’s standard requires”.9 Virtually all systems of justice must first accomplish what the Athenian Areopagus did, according to the aetiological myth described in the Aeschylus’ Oresteia , when it supplanted the vengeful wrath of the Furies. They have to provide legal penalties that are sufficiently harsh as to satisfy the outraged anger of citizens in order to prevent them from undertaking private vengeance and thereby accept the rule of law. The legal system of Magnesia goes beyond even this. It will tailor punishments appropriate to each individual and their crimes in order to educate them into virtue. This would require an intensely intimate knowledge of each individual and what we would in the modern era call their psychological profile. As Pangle argues, Plato’s system in the Laws resembles “the rule of a good parent over a young child more than the rule of law”.10 But this is the stated intent. And the Magnesian polity is considered to

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act like a good parent, nurturing its children and correcting them when they go astray. It is not impossible for such a system to work, but it would require fundamental changes to society as we understand it today at every level. Persuasion is preferable to brute force and, as with all the laws of Magnesia, the law against temple-robbery has a preamble – a persuasive story designed to exhort the people to obedience. Elsewhere he has referred to the preambles (paramythia) as a kind of drug-inspeech (pharmakon) that is designed to induce good behaviour.11 The preamble to the law against temple-robbery begins with a mythical reference to an unnamed “evil force”, neither human nor divine, that is bred into some people through “ancient wrongs un- expiated”. Citizens are urged to guard against this with all their strength and he goes on to describe how it might be accomplished, saying: When any such intention comes upon you, repair yourself to the rites of guilt-averting, go as a suppliant to the shrines of curse-lifting deities, attend the company of men who are reputed to be virtuous; thus learn partly from others and partly by self-instruction that everyone is bound to honour what is noble and just; shun wholly the company of evil men and never turn back to them. And if it be that by doing thusly your disease (nosēma) lessens, then it is well; but if not, then consider death the more noble way and end your own life (854b–c). This legal preamble is designed to have a profound effect on Magnesians who will be taught from an early age to regard it in effect as dogma. The serious tone of the preamble is perhaps justifiable given the consequences that committing such a crime will entail. Its significance is highlighted in terms of its application to given divisions of the populace. The penalty for non- citizens found guilty of temple-robbery, or other comparable outrages against the gods, parents or polis, is different from that of citizens guilty of the same crime. Non- citizens are to be branded on the forehead and hands, scourged with as many stripes as the judges deem appropriate and then cast out naked beyond the borders of the country.12 The evildoer’s life is spared because “after paying this penalty, they

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might perchance be disciplined into a better life”. He continues saying that this is because “no penalty that is legally imposed aims at evil, but as a rule it effects one or the other of two results: it makes the person who suffers it either better or less bad” (854d–e). He is much more lenient with non- citizens here, taking into account their upbringing which is considered to have been inferior to that of the Magnesians. The punishment for a citizen who commits such a crime will be a swift and unceremonious death, with their body being buried in an unmarked tomb outside the borders of Magnesia. The same applies to enemies of the state and parricides, and the same legal procedure is employed as in the case of temple-robbers (856b ff.).13 Such a one is regarded as incurable given the training and nurture that they have had from infancy. The punishment is designed both to remove the evildoer from society as well as to provide an example against others committing the same crime. Though, no culpability falls on the guilty party’s family if they renounce his/her crime. And the death penalty is never inflicted lightly in Magnesia but requires considerable deliberation. The third-tier court, as indicated above, deals with such matters. All citizens who are able will be encouraged to attend and all voting for verdicts (by the judges only) in such cases will be transparent and public. Speeches will be made by the plaintiff first and then the defendant, presumably giving them every opportunity to recant. The senior judge will then give his survey of the case, reviewing all statements made in detail. The judges then discuss the minutiae of the case. Statements are taken down, signed by the judges and then laid on the altar of Hestia until the following morning when the trial recommences. The judges discuss the case some more, question witnesses etc., sign all statements produced and place them again on the altar of Hestia. The process repeats on the third day with a renewed examination of documents and evidence. The judges then cast a “sacred vote”, swearing by Hestia to render a just and true judgement. The trial ends when the final votes are counted and a verdict has been reached (856a–b). It is not insignificant that they swear their oaths by Hestia, goddess of hearth and home. Symbolically she represents the “family” unity of Magnesia and re- enforces the pre- eminence of universal concord

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within the polis. Athens too had a civic hearth which symbolized the city- state as a whole community, or family in the larger sense. And virtually every household among the Ancient Greeks would have had a private shrine to Hestia on or about the hearths of their homes as well as a common one in the city. Of course, in Magnesia private shrines are not permitted. Therefore the shrine of Hestia must hold special significance for all the Magnesians in a polis where public and private are more collapsed and conflated in contrast with established norms elsewhere. The judges’ swearing of their oaths by Hestia yokes them in thought and deed, at least at the level of symbolism, to the aims and identity of the greater “family” of the civic community and its official virtues. The city- state is one big family and these judges act in loco parentis with the backing of the family, in its name and for its well-being. In some sense then, all law that is applicable to citizens is family law. The polis is thus the paternalistic household writ large. When a “family” member seems to have erred beyond the pale to the extent that it threatens civic concord, then they must be dealt with, but with care. They are, after all, still kith and kin. This degree of caution in trials for crimes that demand the death penalty, as well as the exclusion of a popular vote, represents a significant reformulation of the sort of Athenian trial in which Plato’s famous mentor Socrates was condemned to death by a jury of 501 citizens. Also, the incorporation of magistrates and judges to oversee trials, along with smaller jury numbers in most cases or none altogether in the case of the Court of Appeals, applies a level of governance to legal proceedings not found in Athens. In many ways it hearkens back to the preSolonian era of aristocratic, magisterial courts but perhaps obtains a middle- ground, a sort of golden mean, between democracy and aristocracy. This may not be regarded purely as a rolling back of excessive democracy present in the Athenian legal system but as a much needed reform to that system, as Plato may have perceived it, in order to apply the rule of Reason and Moderation to litigation and thereby obtain greater justice rather than the sort of emotive decision making, perhaps unduly influenced by demagogues such as Cleon, that Aristophanes ridicules in Wasps.14 Sobriety, reflection and respect are bywords for the entire Magnesian legal system. In particular, respect for one’s elders, and

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especially parents, is strongly reinforced throughout. This may reflect Plato’s own advanced years at the time of writing the Laws and, at times, seems rather extreme. Under most circumstances, a Magnesian youth will have no choice but to submit to virtually any type of treatment by an elder, though, one assumes that the cardinal virtue of Moderation will preclude any elder taking undue advantage of his/her position. “When a young man is beaten by an old man”, says the Athenian Stranger, “it is appropriate that, in every case, he should quietly endure his anger, and thus store up honour for his own old age” (when he may then seemingly beat younger men who are behaving badly – 879c3–5). Alternatively, if a young person should abuse their own parents, and apparently this would include all metaphorical ‘parents’ as well, that is, any Magnesians older than themselves, and the assailant is not afflicted with madness, then they will be exiled on pain of death should they attempt to return.15 Perhaps out of a concern for fairness, those Magnesian magistrates who judge children that have committed such crimes against their parents must themselves have children of their own who are not adopted (878e). Only under extreme circumstances might a Magnesian child ever prevail over the will of his or her parent and virtually never by force.16 In order to assure a peaceful concord, the Athenian Stranger has established legal protocols to cope with potential problems that might arise between parents and their offspring. These rules are not comprehensive in their coverage but the Vigilance Committee and the Magnesian magistrates are expected to provide more detailed guidelines later. The Athenian Stranger’s outlines will be paradigmatic for dealing with a broad range of familial problems. He indicates that the sort of difficulties that his laws encompass should be quite uncommon in a virtuous city like Magnesia. They are more likely, he says, “to occur amongst men who are wholly evil” (928e3–4). Even so, as if anticipating that there might be exceptions to the norm, he provides statutes to regulate disinheritance of sons by fathers and indictments of senility against fathers by sons. If a Magnesian father wishes to disinherit a son, he may not do so without due process. We are not told whether a mother can do this as well. Potentially this law may apply to daughters too but the Athenian

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Stranger has not said so and his language here suggests that sons might be the primary ones to suffer disinherision. The word used (huion) literally means “son”, but, in later Greek examples, can also convey the more general sense of “child” much as anthropos (man) can be used to indicate all of humanity.17 Here it probably does mean ‘son’. Even so, there is no reason to assume that daughters might not also be subject to the same law. The crucial point appears to be whether or not the offspring in question is due to inherit the indivisible klēros. The state of being legally ‘fatherless’ is regarded as a weighty matter in Magnesia. It is a condition that carries with it an implicit sentence of eventual exile (928e7–929a1). In order to disinherit, an estranged father must call together an assembly “of his own kinfolk as far as cousins and likewise his son’s kinsfolk on the mother’s side”.18 The parent and child are both given equal opportunity to present their respective cases before the family gathering. If the assembled members vote (excluding the father, mother and child in question) in favour of the father by more than half, then the child is officially disinherited (929b7–c3). He is not without recourse, however, since any citizen of Magnesia may adopt the outcast within a ten-year grace period specified by law (929c3–d3). And this would seem to include the prospect of the disinherited son marrying a viable Magnesian heiress and thus being ‘adopted’ by her family as heir. Otherwise, after that span of time the disinherited child will be compelled to emigrate. Certain legal procedures apply if a Magnesian child should wish to have a parent indicted for senility. The situation discussed by the Athenian Stranger is one in which a kyrios has become seriously demented and is no longer capable of his managerial role over the klēros. This legislation may not apply in the same manner to a senile mother unless she happens also to be the head of the household. Such a situation seems likely to be rare given both the Magnesian “hierarchy of betters”, which places greater emphasis on fathers, and the strong social convention that all Magnesian citizens of the appropriate ages should be married with the man in the dominant role; but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that a woman could be a single parent and effectively kyrios of the household as was not

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infrequently the case in Classical Sparta. In the Magnesian hierarchy of betters, “the better are superior to the worse, parents are superior to their offspring, men to women and children, rulers to the ruled”.19 According to this hierarchy the patriarchal leadership of the family is significantly placed just below the position occupied by the authority of the state. A son who seeks to have his father declared senile “must first go before the eldest of the Guardians of the Laws and report to them his father’s condition and they, following a full enquiry, will advise whether or not he should bring an indictment” (929d9–e4). If after their investigations they advise in favour of an indictment for senility, then these same Guardians will act as advocates and witnesses for the son’s case before a magistrate (929e4–6). If the father in question is deemed senile by the court, then the son (if he is next in line) will assume the role of kyrios and the senile father “thereafter will have no power to administer even the smallest title of his property and he will be considered as a child in the household for the remainder of his life” (929e6–9). These procedures for dealing with disinheritance and indictments of senility have their analogues in Athens. However, it is fair to say that the Athenian Stranger’s system represents a significant revision of any ideas borrowed from there. We are told that an Athenian father could legally disown his son, even after paternity had been acknowledged, by a formal rejection (apokeryxis) if evidence was brought to light proving the child was not his own.20 “Some scholars”, according to MacDowell, “have taken apokeryxis to mean ‘disinherision’; but the Athenian evidence is against the view that it was legally permitted for a father to disinherit one who was actually his son, except by having him adopted by someone else”.21 The Code of Gortyn (11.10–15) reveals that a Cretan procedure existed for disinheriting an adopted son but says nothing about disinheriting a natural one. If a Cretan father should wish to disinherit an adopted son, then he had to bring his case before an assembly of the people and would be liable to pay ten staters to the disowned son in the event that he was successful in his case. The general assembly in Crete would have consisted of many adopted ‘relatives’ of the would-be orphan whose testimony might be taken as primary evidence. There is no indication in the Code of Gortyn that a disowned son would be

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required to emigrate – but this might have been necessary without a citizen-father as his protector. Plato’s decision to augment and adapt this law to Magnesia, giving fathers the option to disown their own offspring, albeit under specific circumstances, is clearly a strengthening of patriarchal authority. More is known about indictments of senility brought against fathers by Athenian sons. There were a significant number of such cases. Golden suggests that this might have been due to mounting tensions between fathers and sons over inheritance along with having recourse to a ready means of addressing the problem through established legal tradition.22 An Athenian son might indict his father with a graphē paranoias, “a lawsuit asserting that his father was no longer competent to manage his affairs”.23 Note that Magnesia’s version of this legality entails an inbuilt safeguard requiring official consultation with the Guardians of the Laws before the case can be brought before a magistrate. Attesting perhaps to the unfairness of some of these actual proceedings that took place at Athens, there is the famous (but possibly apocryphal) case of the playwright Sophocles who, we are told, successfully defended himself against an indictment of senility by reputedly reciting lengthy passages from his Oedipus at Kolonos.24 The Athenian Stranger clearly expects fewer such conflicts to occur between Magnesian fathers and sons. His legal proceedings on the issue appear fairer and more sophisticated than those at Athens and designed mainly with utilitarian ends in mind. Magnesian parents are not given total supremacy over their own affairs or those of their children. They are all subject to a higher authority that is intent on its own goals and its self-preservation. The state casts parents and children in specific roles within a hierarchy designed to promote respect and obedience. The connection between respect for parents/elders and the sanctity of the state is made clear in book III. There, the Athenian Stranger indicates that a lack of the proper reverence for parents is akin to the condition of anarchy. He and Megillus, the Spartan interlocutor, have been discussing how “excesses” and “liberties”, which can manifest in such media as poetry, music, drama and democracy more broadly, lead to the deterioration of a state. Music and the theatre, improperly managed, are seen to have the potential to make men “without fear”

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such that their “audacity begets effrontery” (701a9.). After this condition has festered for a while, the audacious subjects then refuse to obey their rightful rulers. The next phase of deterioration, closest to pure anarchy, is arrived at when children “flee submission to their parents and elders and their admonitions”.25 The final phase of decadence comes when people lose all respect for the gods and thereby revert to a pitiful state of pure anarchy accompanied by civic and moral decay.26 Correct respect for authority is reinforced throughout all of Magnesia’s family law and is aimed at preventing this civic degradation. Appropriately, one of the worst crimes that a Magnesian citizen might conceivably commit is that of parricide. This sort of outrage is considered to be on a par with temple robbery, rape and murder, but worse inasmuch as it is against one’s parent, who is meant to be locus of so much respect. It is seen to deserve the heaviest of penalties. There might be some small consideration for the perpetrator if they “should dare to slay a parent in the madness of rage” and if the dying parent should happen, perhaps as their final act, to acquit the offender.27 They would then be permitted to undergo rites of purification like those who commit involuntary homicide. However, if there are no such mitigating circumstances, then the law will be most severe. The Athenian Stranger says that if it were possible for the unforgiven parricide “to die many deaths”, then this would be an appropriate punishment to fit the magnitude of such a crime (869b5–8). The penalties for a parent who slays a child in anger (868c7 ff.), along with husbands and wives who kill each other in rage (868d7 ff.) and siblings who kill each other under the same circumstances are considerably less severe and usually involve ritual purifications and sometimes temporary suspension of certain privileges (869c8 ff.). Underscoring the gravity of the crime, even in the “madness of rage”, if unforgiven, killing a parent in Magnesia can incur the ultimate penalty of death by execution (869c5–7). Most breaches of Magnesia’s laws, by citizens or otherwise, do not merit the death penalty. Instead there is an elaborate system of fines, much as in Classical Athens. For citizens refusing to vote, the fine is 50 drachma (764a). Refusing to attend the Assembly without just cause, in the case of the first and second property classes only, it is a

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10 drachma fine. The lower classes are not required to attend but the penalty for those who are is somewhat more severe than receiving red-paint stripes from the Scythian archers in the Athenian equivalent (764a–b). For vandalizing temples or fountains or other public buildings, if a slave or foreigner, then they will be bound and given a public beating, if a citizen, then they are fined up to 300 drachma, followed by a considerable deal of public shame and some intense counselling from state officials at the re- education centre, to be presently discussed. The city and market wardens can levy fines up to 3 minae (764b–c), by mutual agreement only in the case of the heaviest fines. The failure to attend public musical performances by those citizens specifically concerned with such activities, and without just cause, will make them liable to a nominal fine to be decided by the Law Wardens (765a). In the event that a citizen is given an especially heavy fine which they cannot pay or which they cannot get their friends to pay, “then we must punish them by long imprisonment, of a very public kind, and by measures of degradation” (855b–c). The Athenian Stranger does not envision anyone being outlawed for a finable offence even if they should end up being temporarily banished from the country as a consequence. Plato’s narrator typically follows the conventions of Attic law where murder is concerned. In cases of deliberate homicide (871b), murder in anger (868a–c) and involuntary homicide committed by a citizen (866a–b), prosecutions will be specifically undertaken by relatives of the deceased, but not by “anyone who wishes”. This makes such cases dikai , and this is in keeping with Athenian practices.28 Involuntary murders committed by foreigners against other foreigners by contrast, whether permanent or temporary residents of Magnesia, are graphai , and may be brought to court by “anyone who wishes”.29 It has been suggested that this is because a murdered foreigner might lack relatives in the polis who could prosecute the case.30 Morrow agrees with this view since the passage immediately follows a provision to the effect that, in the case of a citizen murderer, if the appropriate relative fails to prosecute, then the pollution (miasma) associated with the murder passes on to him/her for the act of failing to prosecute, and “anyone who wishes” may then bring a suit against them for negligence in their civic duties.31 If found guilty, they then have

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to go into exile for five years. A foreign visitor to the city or a merchant might not have relatives to prosecute the case on their behalf. However, a resident alien who was murdered would likely have relatives in the city so that fact alone does not account for why charges of involuntary murder against foreigners would be graphai and therefore open to anyone to prosecute. Saunders argues that this is a case of different strands of Plato’s thought becoming entangled in the legal context.32 These passages are very detailed and convoluted and it is possible that this was the case. The policing of non- citizens’ morality is somewhat less intense than that of citizens; although, they are held to a high standard and it may be that Plato felt that their misdeeds should be a particular concern for the polis as a whole. For citizens found guilty of involuntary homicide, the penalty entails ritual purification and exile for one year (865d–866a5). If the deceased is both a foreigner and a free person, the killer has to keep away from the victim’s homeland as well. When the regulations are observed, it is then expected that the next- of-kin will pardon the killer and tolerate their presence in the city. Of course, the Athenian Stranger cannot know whether the family of one who has been involuntarily killed will forgive the killer and agree to live in peace with them. However, the statement to this effect in this passage implies that they will not be encouraged to seek retribution and will be encouraged, in the spirit of civic concord, to ‘live and let live’, so to speak. In the case of wilful homicide, the penalty is execution with the provision that the convicted murderer should not be allowed burial in the homeland of the deceased (871c). In the event that they should flee the country, then they are made permanent exiles that may be slain with impunity by any citizen or resident of Magnesia should they return. The Athenian Stranger makes it clear that these rules apply to citizens, foreigners and even slaves (except that the latter are to be imprisoned before trial without bail, as if expecting them to try and flee). A slave who kills a free person is to be scourged within sight of the deceased’s tomb and, if they survive that, then they are to be executed. Interestingly, if a free person kills a slave who is doing no wrong, they will also be liable to the charge of murder just as if they had killed a citizen and will receive the same penalty, if found guilty,

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as would a slave who kills a free person. Murdering a member of one’s own family is considered a most heinous offence and the guilty party will be executed, their corpse carried out of the city naked to a crossroads where the magistrates each cast stones on its head to expiate the miasma from the state. The body is then buried beyond the borders of the land (873b–c). The point of the prescribed penalties for homicide is to emphasize the wrongness of such a crime and to make it clear by examples that no one in the second-best polis should contemplate willingly killing anyone else without legal sanction. This is a case of retributive punishment but of a sort deemed in the greater interest of the city- state. The legality around self- slaughter in Magnesia should pique the interest of the modern reader. The Athenian Stranger draws a fairly clear and straightforward delineation between euthanasia and “cowardly” suicide. The latter is defined as when someone “slays himself – violently robbing himself of his Fate-appointed share of life, when not justly ordered to do so by the polis”, doing so through sloth or cowardice (873c). Exceptions are allowed in the event of compulsion by “some intolerable and inevitable misfortune” or when “falling into some disgrace that is beyond remedy or endurance”. In the case of “cowardly” suicide, the penalty is for the deceased to be buried apart from anyone else in deserted territory on the borders of the 12 districts of the state, which are described as “barren and nameless”, without headstones or names to indicate the occupier of the tomb (873d). The “penalty” inflicted on cowardly suicides, particularly with their isolated and nameless tombs, is clearly meant to serve as a kind of warning to anyone else that they should avoid such a shameful act. In this sense it is a kind of posthumous retributive justice on the part of the state, a caveat for the living, inasmuch as individuals believed that the legacy of their kleos, or lack thereof, after death would be relevant.33 There are situations however in which the commission of homicide against another is deemed appropriate and legal. Killing a thief who has entered one’s house in the middle of the night is allowed. Slaying a highwayman in self- defence is permitted. Killing someone in defence of a family member is allowed. If a man forcibly violates a free woman or boy, he may be killed with impunity by the

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violated individual’s father, brother or sons. Though, presumably a Magnesian woman could, with her martial training, also kill a sexual violator with the same impunity. So, we should perhaps understand that “mothers, sisters and daughters” would also be allowed to exact death from a sexual violator of their free men, women or children of either sex. A man who finds his wedded wife being sexually violated (whether willingly or by force) may kill the violator with impunity (874b–c).34 It is interesting that Plato has chosen to adopt this particular exemption for lawful homicide from Athenian legal practices. It was an older law that, while still upheld in Classical Athens, does not appear to have been widely practised, the preference being either maltreatment (rhaphanadosis, publically shoving vegetables up the assailant’s anus and removing his pubic hair) or the payment of a negotiated fine.35 One can appreciate that Plato would prefer to avoid such base acts of public humiliation as potentially dangerous to the concord of Magnesia and we can assume that a fine would be an acceptable penalty if agreeable to the litigants. However, he has not specified this to be the case and his preference for the older, more Draconian, penalty of death for the violator underscores the seriousness of the crime. It is, however, clearly a case of retributive justice being permitted in Magnesia with regard to sexual licence, revealing a hard line on the matter. Drawing an analogy from the behaviour of animals, the Athenian Stranger specifies an ideal mode of conduct for his hypothetical populace in terms of marital fidelity. He asserts that the citizens’ standards should not be lower than those of the beasts and birds that are apparently regarded as monogamous, saying: . . . when they arrive at the appropriate age, a husband is wedded to a wife, as a matter of personal preference, and a wife to a husband, and for their remaining time they live piously and justly, being staunchly true to their first love- contracts.36 Whether this analogy reflects true conditions in nature, or even common beliefs on the matter, is not really the point.37 It is a pharmacological model propagandistically embraced by Magnesia’s authorities.38 Citizens are expected to engage in proper sexual relations only

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within state-approved marriages between members of the opposite sex. “Ideally no man”, says the Athenian Stranger, “would dare to have sexual relations with a respectable free-woman other than his wedded wife, nor would he dare to sow unacceptable and bastard seed among concubines, nor sterile seed in males contrary to nature” (841d1–5). This may, in part, reflect Plato’s disapproval of Athenian customs, especially after 414 with the population decreased after the disastrous Sicilian Expedition and already reeling from the earlier plague, which permitted men to entertain ‘legitimate’ relations with concubines.39 The Magnesians are clearly intended to follow a higher standard of marital conduct. The ideal of perfect citizenship in Magnesia is indelibly linked with just behaviour. The liberal education provided by the polis will instil the positive value of being “a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled with justice”.40 Yet, as we have seen, there is some concern that they might not always live up to the ideal. Plato’s narrator speculates on making a law in the event that some citizens’ virtue should happen to fall short. He says: If a man should have sexual intercourse with anyone, whether hired or procured by some other means, other than the woman he led into his household before the gods in sacred matrimony, except he keep it secret from all other men and women , I think we would do rightly in passing a law excluding him from state honours since he is in fact no better than a foreigner (emphasis mine – 841d6–e4). Some question remains as to whether or not this law has actually been (or will ever be) passed. The laws on sexual conduct present considerable difficulties in interpretation and often take the form of speculative forays into the possible rather than definitively concrete legislation.41 The prescribed remedy is to make the crime known to the public and thereby discourage everyone from further wrongdoing through the threat of shame and public censure. The penalty for women caught in adultery in Athens was immediate and perfunctory divorce along with a sort of social disenfranchisement including being banned from attending religious festivals, weddings and funeral along with likely being forbidden to re-marry.42 There were no such penalties for Athenian men who committed adultery

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unless it was with another married, citizen-woman. Magnesian law, by contrast, penalizes both men and women caught in adultery in addition to their public humiliation. The Athenian Stranger says that (784b–e), whether the adulterers are still within the childbearing age or beyond it, first the Marriage Wardens will admonish the married couple together with some serious marital counselling, regardless of whichever one of them actually committed the act, and they may be strongly encouraged to divorce. If they do not immediately reform, then the case is reported to the Law Wardens. They will then undertake a more serious level of admonishment and, if that fails to persuade the adulterer(s) to reform, then they will be reported to the magistrates. The case can go to court and the potentially be overturned, but if the adulterer loses, then his/her name is to be publicly posted and several consequences result. A male adulterer who has been so posted will then be banned from attending any marriage or children’s birthday feasts and if he does so, he may be publicly beaten by “anyone who wishes”. The same holds for a woman so posted for adultery and she will also not be allowed to partake of women’s festivals and will be denied state honours as well. The Athenian Stranger adds the caveat that “sexual conduct shall remain unmentioned or unprescribed by law when the majority evince due propriety”. The law only comes into force when they are caught and their actions become public (785a). Magnesia’s policies on legal sexual intercourse, while similar to those at Athens, have an altogether different emphasis and, perhaps to some extent, reflect more Laconian ideals. The punishments that breaking this law would incur act largely as psychological deterrents – but one imagines that they will be especially effective on the already- socialized populace. Anyone actually caught and penalized (i.e. for not having the propriety to keep an affair secret) would serve as a powerful, shame-based warning to others. Given the scrutiny under which all Magnesians live, one is inclined to wonder when or if they would ever have the opportunity to undertake such activities. Even so, there seems to be some uncertainty on Plato’s narrator’s part as to how far the state may infringe on the bedroom. Something further needs to be said about Magnesia’s prison system and its role in the reform and punishment of wrongdoers as it

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figures prominently into the overall penology outlined in the Laws. There are to be three prisons in Magnesia and, in Plato’s characteristically utilitarian approach, each serves a different function. The first is located in the agora and will deal with the majority of “the general run of offenders” who will either serve short-term sentences or be held in custody there until trial (908a).43 This corresponds loosely with Athens’ prison which was also situated in the agora and could hold at least 42 individuals in 415 BCE44 The second, and probably the most important one, may be referred to as the Institute of Correction or Reform, the sophronisterion, which is to be situated near where the Vigilance Committee meets. We are not told precisely where this is in the city, though it is likely to be somewhere close by the agora as well, along with the other governmental buildings.45 The third prison is for long-term offenders and will be located in an unpopulated region of the countryside, far away from the urban centre. As Hunter indicates, its “name implies retributive punishment (timoria)”.46 This tripartite penal system amounts to a significant revision of its parallel in Athens which was not designed with the intent of reform. Athens’ prison was mainly for the temporary detention of public debtors along with those passing through the legal system which could include, in the case of Socrates, those awaiting execution. Some public debtors, we are told, remained there for many years; however, escapes were common, with prisoners digging under or through the mud-brick walls.47 Conditions were harsh with physical restraint as the main form of security and prisoners were typically bound in chains.48 Discipline, however, was not routinely enforced and no reform or normalization of the inmates, to our knowledge, was ever attempted. Plato’s system in the Laws replicates its Athenian counterpart; however, he has gone beyond this model in a number of ways, effectively inventing at once both the concept of the prison term as well as the reformatory. Plato’s prisons reveal significant differences from any known system. And this is particularly the case with his innovative sophronisterion, or Institute of Correction as well as his somewhat inconsistent recourse to life imprisonment in the timoria . Apart from those who commit acts of impiety, there are nine stated instances where temporary imprisonment is considered the appropriate penalty. Many

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of them entail short-term imprisonment in the first prison which, much like its Athenian equivalent, is a kind of processing centre for the judicial system. For instance, it would be used for those accused of homicide who are unwilling or unable to render up three sureties and who would then have to remain there until their trial along with slaves accused of murder, as discussed above, who are automatically interred there without bail (871e). Other cases are not so clear- cut and may warrant time spent in the sophronisterion, although it will be up to the Magnesian legislators to decide the details of this. Thieves who cannot make restitution of twice what they stole are incarcerated until they either pay the fine or convince their gaoler to release them (857a–b). If an individual cannot pay a fine, and if he or she cannot get friends to pay it for them, then he or she would be subject to a lengthy and very public imprisonment along with some form of humiliation (855b). The Athenian Stranger specifies a one-year term for anyone forcibly preventing a witness from attending court (954e–955a). Involuntary homicides who breach their exile and return to Magnesia get a two-year prison term (864e). Citizens who assault a person twenty years their elder receive one year; foreigners who do the same get two (880b–c). Citizens engaging in the retail trade receive a year’s imprisonment, with repeat offenses incurring a double penalty (919a–920a). This development of prison terms (some up to five years) for Magnesia is interesting as it both makes a statement about the gravity of the crime and “it suggests that time in prison might have some effect on the outlook of the prisoner” both to deter him/her as well as perhaps to improve their moral character.49 It nicely illustrates Plato’s approach to penology which Saunders has rightly called “reformative” and “medical”, or as I have been saying, pharmacological.50 The timoria , or Retributive Punishment Centre, seems something of an anomaly. It will be located in the countryside, as far away from inhabited regions as possible, and is first introduced in the section of the Laws dealing with impiety (908e–909d). The committed atheist is to be imprisoned there for life. He is described as bestial or subhuman (909a) and deserving to die many deaths if it were possible. He is isolated and forbidden to associate with anyone else and thereby his pernicious influence is contained. We are not told whether any

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attempts will be made to reform him. Upon death, his body is to be cast out beyond the borders of Magnesia, unburied. We can assume that other bestial (theriodes) and incurable criminals may be imprisoned there as well; however, the timoria goes against the grain. Plato’s narrator insists that all curable criminals be punished with mercy and pity (731b–d). Retributive punishment that entails suffering is clearly identified as a thing to be despised as senseless (728c). So, why imprison some incurables in such a way that will cause them suffering, being isolated from the rest of humanity with no hope of reprieve, when others are condemned to death with much the same result of removing the problem as well as providing examples for deterrence? These apparent inconsistencies are never resolved. It is possible to speculate that some hope was being held out that reform might be affected in the longer term, but we are not told this. And we are left to wonder why someone who we are told deserves many deaths is not simply killed. The overall aims of Plato’s penology are to “cure” those who can be cured through reform and improvement, eradicating bad traits in their psyches and replacing them with good ones, to deter wrongdoers by example, to eliminate the incurables and thereby remove their negative influence from the polis. The Institute of Correction will deal specifically with those cases deemed “curable”. The “ just atheist” is offered as an example of one who would be sent to the sophronisterion. The Athenian narrator distinguishes between this type of criminal who is guilty of folly but whose character is not ultimately evil, as opposed to the committed atheist, see above, who is considered incurable. These go into the reformatory for a five-year term during which time they are isolated from the rest of society with the exception of members of the Vigilance Committee who visit them daily in order to admonish them and attempt to re- educate them into the correct mode of psychē (909a). If the prisoner has made adequate progress at the end of the term, then he or she will be considered to have been rehabilitated and may live among civil society again – with the caveat that, should he or she ever be convicted of atheism again, the penalty will be death. The Institute of Correction will be an instrument of the polis designed to cure through containment and instruction designed to

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reform the prisoner by restoring psychic health. While prisoners are isolated from society, we are not told that they will be isolated from one another. It is also plausible to assume that the “ just atheist” will not be the only type of prisoner present, nor that five-year terms will be the norm for everyone. We may assume that the sophronisterion could be widely used as a kind of re- education centre for a range of crimes from minor infractions of the moral code to more extreme ones such as “curable” atheism. It represents a revolutionary leap on Plato’s part in terms of penology as it signifies a unique advancement far ahead of anything else in the ancient world that cannot be said to have been properly established until the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. The Magnesian prison system far outstrips its Athenian equivalent while building upon it. The ordinary prison is almost identical to that found in Athens and this implies that its function is considered relevant and utilitarian even in the second-best polis. The Retributive Punishment Centre amounts to essentially the same thing as a medieval dungeon and, as indicated, seems problematic in a number of ways. The Institute of Correction, however, is remarkable and unusual except insofar as it reflects the overall penology of Magnesia which is reformative in nature. It stands in stark contrast to the attitudes expressed by Attic orators who never recommend a penalty in order to improve their opponents but who almost invariably “sought retribution or even out-and- out vengeance, arguing it would make others better or simply deter them”.51 The Institute of Correction entails principles that essentially alter the purpose of prison, making it a place of moral reform and redemption. Plato is specifically concerned with the state of the immortal psychē, although his concept of redemption obviously differs from that in the Christian moral tradition; even so, the idea “of the soul as requiring transformation lies at the heart of both”.52 Whatever we may think of Plato’s views on correct behaviour in civil society his Institute of Correction, along with the philosophy that underpins it, is worthy of note. As we have seen, the Magnesian legal system is complex by any standard, ancient or modern. It necessitates a detailed understanding of each individual citizen and aims to tailor its penalties appropriately in order to achieve the maximum effect on wrongdoers. It

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is largely non-retributive or even anti -retributive in many respects; although, at times retributive justice is seen as necessary in order to teach a broader lesson of obedience and to promote civic harmony among the populace. Magnesian justice is educative and reformative inasmuch as doing wrong is regarded as the product of a lack of understanding or insufficient moral development on the part of the criminal. It is this feature which primarily distinguishes the Magnesian legal system from any others in antiquity and indeed up until relatively modern times. Some criminals are deemed incurable; however, most are seen as in need of reform which can be affected by the application of appropriate pharmacological influences tendered by agents of the polis. In the modern era, we often consider pharmacological treatments in the literal rather than the figurative sense in order to address anti- social behaviour. And these may have their merits. Even so, it is left to us to ponder whether greater individual attention, both in a citizen’s education and upbringing as well as when they break the law, might not present a more enduring solution to the problems of criminal justice and the greater goals of social prosperity and civic harmony. Philosophers have long debated the Socratic formulation of criminality as a consequence of ignorance. Perhaps today we should re- examine that debate and see if the ancient wisdom of the Greeks could be brought to bear on our own social crises.

Chapter 5

The Magnesian Polity: Classical Democracy Recast

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say ‘In spite of all!’ has the calling for politics. — Max Weber, Politik als Beruf1

Humanity will not be rid of its evils until either the class of those who philosophise in truth and rectitude attain political power or when those who are the most powerful in the state, under some divine dispensation, really get to philosophising. — Plato (Letter VII, 326a–b)

Plato’s Laws proposes a unique and interesting form of government for the hypothetical city- state (polis) outlined there and called Magnesia. It is on the one hand nominally a system of participatory democracy with a lively political culture. On the other, it is an authoritarian state, ruled by an elite and secretive council that carefully scrutinizes its subjects and interferes with their lives in ways that today conjure shadows of the bygone Soviet Union. The electoral system is set up so that those in power may remove any potentially unwanted candidate. And the unelected, supreme council (known as the Vigilance Committee or synlogos nukterinos), which has final say over the interpretation of the law and being the only ones invested with the ability to change the law, have close ties with the official state religion so as, to the modern reader, to recollect the Assembly of Experts of the Leadership in post-revolutionary

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Iran. The Vigilance Committee has at its disposal the highly trained Guardians of the Laws as their agents of enforcement with the statesanctioned monopoly on violence. Education, religion and the legal system reinforce patriotism and obedience to the Magnesian authorities. From their days as students in its state-run schools, all citizens of Magnesia, whatever their abilities, will be impressed with a sense of obedience and conformity to their constitution and the importance of each fulfilling his/her proper role in society. A young Magnesian may grow up to become one of the many citizens whose primary function is to practise virtue (but not to partake of higher political offices) or, if their aptitude so admits, they may become a Guardian of the Laws or even a member of the powerful nukterinos council. The Magnesian education represents a fundamental means of social control and ideological inculcation from a very early age and thus functions as an agent for the perpetuation of such officially sanctioned ideals as obedience, liberty (which is here specially defined with respect and obedience), intelligence (also specifically defined) and civic concord. This is in part regarded as necessary considering the degrees of freedom of choice that the Athenian Stranger allows his citizens in terms of their political system. Their choices will be directed along certain specific paths from an early age. As before, it is beneficial to approach Magnesia as if it were a real polis of the ancient world, informed by our knowledge of that era, in an attempt to grasp its characteristics. Property law, as discussed in a previous chapter, is one of many areas of life directly regulated by the Magnesian state and it gives us some indication as to the polis’ potential population. Balance is to be maintained in Magnesia through permanent marriages with an economic basis in land- division.2 Each of the prescribed 5,040 land units is divided into two parts and no citizen may have more land than any other. Any population surplus exceeding that which can be reasonably contained within the 5,040 family units will be shipped off to a colony.3 Here too is another difference in terms of Magnesia’s semi-private landholdings based on the family unit as opposed to the communal property of the Republic.4 One may refer to them as semi-private since these lots can never be purchased or sold. As discussed, I estimated the total population to

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be approximately 30,240 citizens (male and female, including children). We may assume a total population of citizens and their slaves living in the urban centre at around 60,480.5 This does not, of course, take into account those citizens and slaves who reside mainly on the country estates out with the urban centre, the resident aliens (mainly ambassadors, merchants and educators) or state- owned, municipal slaves who maintain infrastructure and are quartered in the city.6 In fact, I was inclined to add another 5,040 or more slaves to the total for arms bearers, but I will allow the possibility of other slaves, already accounted for, performing a double duty.7 An attempt to estimate the total population for Magnesia, including slaves and resident aliens, with roughly 3 square kilometres containing the urban centre and 258 for the hinterland, gives figures of around 150,700 persons occupying about 261 square kilometres. Even when taken conservatively, these figures represent a significant civic population to be governed by ancient or modern standards. In addition to including women in some public roles, albeit to a clearly limited extent, Plato’s narrator has also admitted an uncharacteristically high degree of democracy into the second- best polis . Its size may necessitate such an extensively bureaucratic system and it makes economic sense to take advantage of their superior education and socially inculcated sense of judgement to put the populace to work at governing itself. Magnesia’s partially democratic election system is also moderated by the hypothetical society’s other peculiarities. As Bobonich says, this political activity on the part of the Magnesians, “that is, participation in the social institutions of the just city aimed at furthering the common good, is good in itself and forms an important part of each citizen’s happiness”.8 All citizens, engaged as they are in the pursuit of aretē (virtue/excellence), should posses a better technē (skill, specialized knowledge) for political decisions than the populace of the average Greek democracy. This utopianization of democracy is part of the reason why Magnesian women are granted such an unprecedented political status. Politicians are not paid. Their needs are either met by the state or through their own resources as permitted under law. Counsellors in the boulē (council) of 360 are chosen according to property class

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(90 from each of the 4).9 Their role, presumably, is to be comparable to the boulē of Classical, democratic Athens in that they shall set the agenda for the general assembly (ekklesia). The latter will consist of all citizen males of the first and second classes who are compelled to attend under penalty of fine; although, the right to do so is afforded to “anyone who wishes” and extends likewise to the other two, lower property classes as democratically optional.10 The wording of the statement “anyone who wishes”, echoing the democratic values of Athens after Solon’s reforms, would also appear to include certain Magnesian women as well – if not all of them. The function of the assembly in Magnesia, however, appears to be more bureaucratic than its real-world counterpart since Plato’s hypothetical polis is largely regulated by legal statutes, enforced by the Guardians of the Laws, magistrates, numerous community wardens (including Marriage Guardians, women who go into newlyweds homes to encourage reproduction and the proper rearing of children) with varying remits and presided over by the supreme Vigilance Committee in a kind of surveillance culture that puts such similar efforts of previous governments in the UK to shame. Plato’s narrator only mentions that the assembly will decide on matters of immigration, although, presumably they will have other administrative functions as well.11 This is all that Plato’s narrator has to say about them apart from the assertion that assembly members must not engage in personal, verbal abuse with one another during meetings as was regularly the case in Athens.12 The bureaucratic system of Magnesia will eliminate a great deal of democratic wrangling and it appears to be a kind of ‘rubber stamp’ democracy in practice.13 Perhaps telling too is the number of adult, male citizens likely to be engaged in politics of any sort in the city which stands at 5,040, corresponding to the number of citizen households. This is strikingly similar to the number of political participants in Athens, in 411 BCE, after the failed coup of the 400 was temporarily replaced by the oligarchy of the 5,000.14 And these would be events with which Plato was personally familiar. It may be that he considered this a reasonable number in which to engage in a limited form of democratic activity; although, it remains unclear whether all citizens will participate in the Magnesian assembly or only the kyrioi.

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The assembly will not be allowed to make laws or to change existing laws. They are deprived of any real legislative or judicial role. They have no say in terms of defining the polis’ goals. “In short,” as Brisson aptly describes it, “power no longer resides in the discourse which, particularly in Athens, unfolds at the Assembly and the courts, but in the knowledge possessed and cultivated by members of a Council established by law, which escapes all control”.15 These and other such qualities that have been discussed previously lend an authoritarian character to Plato’s Magnesia. Given the rather extreme extent to which the state interferes with, and dictates, the public and private lives of its citizens, one could arguably call it totalitarian. It certainly does have a kind of autocratic slant, considering the limitations on democracy, and the supreme authority of its oligarchic council. However, unlike modern equivalents, autocracy is moderated in Magnesia by an albeit limited democratic engagement in the political culture. And as we have seen, it is nowhere near as militaristic or totalitarian as Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.16 Apart from his potential inclusion of women, which is never fully elaborated, Plato has turned Habermas’ notion of ‘radical democracy’ on its head and the Athenian Stranger’s ‘immanent critique’ of Athenian democracy necessarily limits the Magnesian citizens’ participation in their own government.17 We are told that there will be archons (785b), as in Athens, but not how they will be chosen. It is reasonable to assume that they will be elected by lot from the upper property classes much as in Athens. The election of higher magistrates such as Guardians of the Laws and Scrutineers is done by recourse to a ballot undertaken in several rounds and accompanied by various secondary procedures and ritual gestures.18 They appear to be designed to promote the notion of divine choice rather than human. Military magistrates and administrators of sacred property are elected by a process of nomination and voting by raised hands; although, crucially Plato has substituted nomination by “anyone who wishes” for nomination by existing magistrates only.19 Counter nominations may be made by any members of the council who are present. Military magistrates are chosen by their corps. In the cases of City Wardens, Market Wardens and Chairpersons of competitions, there is a combined method of election involving a show of hands

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and drawing of lots. For Chairpersons, as with military magistrates, genuine competence in their areas of expertise is a requirement. The Minister of Education is chosen by secret ballot undertaken only by existing magistrates but excluding the Guardians of the Laws. Priests and priestesses are chosen by drawing of lots which is considered to express the judgement of the gods. Exegetes (religious specialists) are to be nominated by their tribes with their choice ratified by Delphian Apollo, in typically, though not exclusively, Spartan fashion.20 There are 37 special officials of the state apart from the elected boulē and the unelected nukterinos council. These are chosen through an elaborate system of voting by deletion. The electoral system of Magnesia bears some similarities to that of Athens (i.e. officials chosen by lot) but elections “have neither the same meaning nor the same function as they do in Athenian democracy”.21 The list of nominees for “ministers of the laws” and military commanders, such as hipparchs, phylarchs and taxiarchs, are to be placed in public for 30 days and “anyone who thinks it fit” may remove any name they wish.22 This feature demonstrates some of the limitations imposed on democracy inasmuch as certain people might always tend to be excluded or included by the time of election. The nukterinos council, Guardians and sitting officials will scrutinize these undertakings with care and may remove or add names themselves at any juncture in the election. The outgoing ministers still in office take the 300 of the remaining names and place them on a ballot for the citizens to cast a second round of votes, again by deletion. The magistrates choose a hundred names from the second shortlisting and then “anyone who wishes” may cast their actual votes for them. The 37 who receive the most votes will be examined by the sitting magistrates and, if they pass scrutiny, are then installed into office (753c–d). It is unclear whether or not the “anyone who wishes” who are permitted to strike names from the list of candidates and then to vote on them refers to those who possess heavy weapons or are from the citizen-populace at large. The Athenian Stranger appears to say that the selection of candidates for nomination is to be limited to those who possess the requisite arms, though this would, in fact, include all male citizens and many female ones. The actual

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short-listing and voting would seem to be the privilege of the citizen populace as a whole including as many men and as many women who wish to do so. It remains unclear whether women will sit on the supreme nukterinos council or if they will be eligible for any elected position.23 Since its members are appointed from the eldest of the Guardians of the Laws, it is possible to assume that they might be included – although this is never explicitly specified.24 Women’s role in higher Magnesian politics is clearly marginal, but their implied potential, along with their more public role generally, emphasizes the contrast between the ideal world of a second-best utopia and the realities of Ancient Greece. The Laws, as Saunders says, “gives a powerful impression of the range of activities under the control of nomos (custom, law, habitual practice etc.) in one sense or another”.25 As in the Republic, there are to be Guardians of the Laws whose job it is to police the Magnesian state in every conceivable way, along with their teams of wardens, and to enforce the law in both the public and private spheres. Men and women will have to regard them as figures of state authority as they have the power to fine and detain lawbreakers in accord with the city’s statutes. As mentioned above, there will also be female Marriage Guardians along with (presumably but not necessarily male) Market Wardens, City Wardens, Rural Wardens and various bureaucrats to regulate and oversee the numerous slaves, the city’s foreign educators, other non- citizens and orphans and many other areas of life as well.26 Perhaps Plato had a model for his Guardians (both in the Republic and the Laws) in the form of an Athenian institution that reputedly existed before Pericles. In the aristocratic council of the Areopagos, as it was prior to Ephialtes’ reforms (early-fifth- century BCE), there may have been comparable guardians. Aristotle says that Solon “assigned the council of the Areopagos to the duty of guarding the laws, acting as before as the supervisor of the constitution”. He goes on to indicate that Ephialtes reduced its authority over guarding the constitution and assigned some of them to the council of the five hundred and others to the demos (the civic populace) and the popular courts.27 It is possible that this alleged institution of the prePericlean Areopagos was the inspiration, or at least an inspiration,

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for the Athenian Stranger’s Guardians of the Laws.28 Cicero, heavily influenced by Plato, commends “the Greeks” for establishing officers called nomophylakes, who guarded the text of the laws, observing the actions of citizens and calling them to obedience.29 It is not possible to say whether such guardians actually existed in ancient Athens and, if so, that they were an inspiration for Plato.30 His nomophylakes appear to have more in common with the Spartan ephors.31 As Morrow says, they add a Lakonian “monarchical element in the city”.32 Their superiors in Magnesia also recollect other Spartan elements rather than Athenian.33 Above all the various guardians, and drawn from the eldest of the Guardians of the Laws, is the synlogos nukterinos, “Nocturnal Council” or “Vigilance Committee” to which I have referred throughout this text.34 Its gerontocratic character is one of many points of similarity to the Spartan gerousia , the members of which were also required to be over the age of 60.35 The Athenian Stranger says that his Nocturnal Council will function in a ‘watchdog’ capacity, ideally just making recommendations, and will serve to keep the ship of state on course.36 Its powers, as with the gerousia , are considerably broader than this innocent- sounding remit suggests. Its membership includes the eldest Guardians of the Laws and the ministers of education past and present. These will exert influence over such areas as religious events, education, music, choruses and all civic activities that involve the inculcation of morality and accepted ideology. The nukterinos council has also been afforded the unique authority, only on rare and special occasions we are told, to alter Magnesia’s laws. This is a power reserved to them alone and denied to all of the polis’ other governmental agencies. Brisson proposes the term “Vigilance Committee” instead of the more traditional rendering of “Nocturnal Council”. As he indicates, this body “sees to it that the laws of the City are based on the order manifest in the universe, [and] becomes the most essential element in the project of the Laws”.37 The term nukterinos “connotes the idea of wakefulness” and, indeed, the Vigilance Committee is meant to meet each day from well before dawn until the sun has risen.38 Morrow suggests that the inspiration for the Vigilance Committee must be the Academy itself since, as he says, “its studies bear an unmistakable

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resemblance to those cultivated in Plato’s Academy, and the purpose they are intended to serve is identical . . . viz. to apply philosophy to the saving of the city- state”.39 Like the Academy, the members of the Vigilance Committee will have been inducted into the innermost mysteries of philosophy. Also, not unlike certain of the Academy’s membership, they too will hold real administrative auctoritas over the state. It was generally agreed that Solon founded the Classical, democratic Athenian republic as we tend to think of it mainly by admitting the lower classes into the democratic process through both the franchise and jury duty on appeals courts. After which, the democrats gained greater powers by degrees over time as virtually everyone preferred to appeal the decisions of aristocratic magistrates to these democratic courts. It is therefore not surprising that Plutarch himself later wrote Solon’s biography whereas Kleisthenes, a major constitutional reformer at the level of policy, and arguably a more significant proponent of democracy, only gets a notable mention. The rapid changes in the government of Athens in the later part of the fifth century brought the issue of the “ancestral constitution”, or “ancestral law”, to the forefront.40 There was an intellectual opposition to the bourgeoning democracy in Athens at this time. Among them, as Finley says, “the appeal to the ancestral constitution retained vitality”.41 Isocrates the rhetorician and his wealthy followers, ostensibly eschewing oligarchy, favoured a “mixed constitution” that hearkened back to some non- specific, idealized past.42 Plato even has his fictional Socrates praise him at the end of the Phaedrus, though this may in fact be sarcasm. Ancestral constitutions had popular appeal. Suffice it to say that Plato took a different approach to the issue. He was about 18 when Kleitophon moved the amendment that opened the debate on the subject of an “ancestral constitution”.43 As a member of one of Athens’ more prominent political families with close ties to Pericles himself, Plato had close personal connections with some of the highest policy makers and a keen eye for the relevant events. When the time came, he set aside the historical discussion without altogether dismissing it, while introducing a new method based on philosophical reason. His philosophy of government never rested solely on ancestral arguments.44 Certainly Plato reveals conservative

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tendencies and his views may have also been informed by recourse to an idealized vision of the past. In the Statesman we have his answer to the matter. Perhaps building on the works of Gorgias and the sophists,45 Plato’s narrator espouses a novel concept: having established that there is a specialism (epistēmē) of politics, he posits that the proof of a correct constitution is that it should be based on science and that it also has to be scientifically administered. The question of whether or not it is historically well- grounded becomes largely irrelevant, though, a useful fiction to persuade the masses at times. In various dialogues Plato’s narrators typically support a particular formulation of aristocratic rule over any other type. The difference between his aristocracy and that of the real world lies with the role of philosophy in law. “Correct leadership” is, rather strikingly for the time, a science practised only by those who have been specially educated in the subject.46 In the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger demonstrates that formal legislation in a democratic assembly is actually unnecessary and potentially a very dangerous thing.47 His analogy describes hypothetical legislators passing and modifying laws on medicine and navigation – subjects about which they know little or nothing – and how such a process will never successfully navigate ships or cure sick people.48 The best constitution therefore is one that is based on science informed by the superior insights of philosophy. “That is always Plato’s answer:” as Finley says, “of all existing constitutions, even the best are mere imitations of the true constitution; the debate over ancestral constitution is a waste of time or worse; constitutions cannot be judged by reference to this or that past hero or constitution”.49 In Weberian terms, the authority of the ‘eternal yesterday’ has appeal but is not alone sufficient to justify adhering to its precepts.50 Authority must be based on rationality and politics must be the product of science. The laws of Magnesia are philosophically inspired in their creation. Above and beyond all else, it is Philosophy (in the sense of Natural Philosophy which holds a broad scientific remit) that is to be the ultimate standard on which the rule of nomos is based. The changeability of Magnesia’s laws is extremely limited with virtually no legislation, as we think of it, permitted. As indicated, only the philosophically illuminated Vigilance Committee may alter the law and theirs is the

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supreme interpretation of it. As Nightingale says, “the lawcode is conceived as a distinct genre of writing which is not only elevated above all other modes of discourse but is accorded an almost scriptural status”.51 Nomos here means something like rationally, scientifically and philosophically derived laws with permanent binding force. If an historical law is found to be philosophically sound, then it will be utilized.52 Plato’s narrator is no stranger to borrowing from useful sources. He has repeatedly availed himself of the wealth of information in existing legal codes. The Magnesian nomoi have regard for ancient custom and ‘unwritten laws’, but these are subordinated to the scrutiny of science and the rule of Reason (logos). The Athenian Stranger may have anticipated George Orwell by two and a half millennia in terms of their mutual agreement that there will always arise in society those who tend to be ‘more equal’ than others.53 He sometimes refers to this as the “rule of symmetrical inequality” and it applies to many aspects of life, and even death.54 The ‘best of the best’ in Magnesia occupy the highest offices in the land. It is they who will be afforded the most comprehensive form of education available. This class of rulers includes the Guardians of the Laws and the members of the Vigilance Committee. The education of the former is the same as that of the latter up to a point. The future members of the supreme council, however, will be expected to continue their studies in greater depth. This synod of Magnesia’s elders has a more intense and deeper education than the majority of their peers (965a7–9). Their preparation closely parallels that of the Guardians of the Laws and the Philosopher Kings/Queens of the Republic. As with these, the Magnesians are seemingly not limited by sex in the choice of officials for duties of state administration.55 As indicated, the Vigilance Committee will be made up of ten of the most senior Guardians of the Laws along with the archōns (ministers) of Education past and present.56 They form the executive branch of the government and recollect the traditional role of the aristocratic Areopagos of pre- democratic Athens. As I said at the beginning, they are not dissimilar to the Assembly of Experts of the Leadership of modern- day Iran in terms of their supreme interpretive power over the law and government. Magnesia is to be a gerontocracy, comparable in many ways to Classical Sparta, and its elderly leadership exert

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considerable regulatory power over all state institutions.57 The ranks from which they are chosen constitute a class unto itself having been especially trained from birth in esoteric scholarship for their future role in administration. The Athenian Stranger indicates that a list must be kept of the intellectual and moral capacities of all eligible citizens from whom to draw the Guardians of the Laws and thence the elite council (968c9–d3). Part of their special educational regime requires them to travel abroad in order to observe the laws and customs of other peoples. They will return and make their reports to the sitting Vigilance Committee. On reflection, some of these foreign practices may be applied to Magnesia if deemed appropriate (951a ff.). This freedom to travel and learn will be granted only to senior Guardians of the Laws and magistrates who have presumably passed certain levels of qualification making them worthy of it.58 One expects that only dyed-in-the-wool Magnesians would be allowed this privilege. Many detailed aspects of the Vigilance Committee’s education are omitted from the Laws. We are told some of it and may deduce much of the rest. Their command of the arts of statecraft must necessarily be excellent since they are to be better versed in the letter and spirit of Magnesia’s laws than most. The members of the nukterinos council are to “posses a more accurate grasp of aretē, both in word and deed, than the majority of people” (964d4–5). They must be paragons of civic virtue. In order to achieve this extraordinary status they will undergo intense training and scrutiny for at least five decades. One of their primary subjects of study will be dialectics. They have to understand that the four virtues of Reason, Courage, Moderation and Justice are truly one virtue and “how this is so”.59 They must pay attention to the many, but always strive for the ‘One’. Although the word ‘dialectic’ is not actually employed in the Athenian Stranger’s discussions here or elsewhere in the text, the method of practice that he has outlined is unmistakable.60 The rulers of Magnesia must also be able to apply their philosophical insights on “the Beautiful and the Good” to the practice of governance.61 This represents one of the more esoteric aspects of their education and clearly distinguishes them from the rest of the citizenry who, we are told, “follow only the pronouncements of the

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laws”.62 The Vigilance Committee’s candidates undertake a thorough study of divine matters so that they might come to an understanding of the mysteries of philosophy. Some of these the Athenian Stranger has discussed in book X, they will utilize other Platonic resources as well.63 No Magnesian may serve even as a Guardian of the Laws unless he/she has first learned the basics of cosmology and metaphysics. The Athenian Stranger mentions several subcategories of this education in “divine matters” that will bring about a superior skill of governing for the members of the Vigilance Committee and, to a lesser degree, the Guardians of the Laws. A primary feature is psychical metaphysics, or the nature of souls. They must learn that the soul is the most ancient and divine of things whose main activity is that of “perpetually providing being”.64 They should understand that the soul is immortal, reincarnates and “rules over all bodies”.65 Since the motions of celestial objects are caused by Soul and governed by Reason, they also undertake a rigorous study of astronomy, geometry and other such sciences that demonstrate this divine principle.66 Finally, they must attain an intense comprehension of musical theory and then be able to “apply it harmoniously to the institutions and rules of ethics”.67 The esoteric learning of metaphysical matters appears to be a primary dividing point between the upper and lower echelons of the Magnesian government since any who cannot grasp these deeper things will be limited, at best, to lesser bureaucratic positions or excluded altogether from politics. The Laws does not seek to establish a perfect polis on earth but sets about the task of detailing a next-to-perfect code of laws by which an imperfect human society may be governed. We should not, as Field says, “draw any conclusions about a possible change in Plato’s views . . . we are expressly told that the provisions of the Republic still represent the ideal, but are not regarded as practicable in these circumstances”.68 Thus Magnesia is “second-best”, as we have already seen. The importance of written law is brought to the forefront and, while there is ample discussion of rulers with superior moral knowledge, the nukterinos council does not function in precisely the same capacity as the philosopher kings/queens of the Republic. Law is virtually supreme, albeit less than perfect, and serves as the instrument for the moral and social regulation of society. Sufficient commentary

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on its theory and execution is provided as guidance for the future. The Athenian Stranger says that we should “order our private households and our public societies alike by obeying the immortal element within us, giving the name of law to the ordering of understanding”.69 The laws of Magnesia, grounded in eternal truths, govern the entire life of the community and they embody and express the philosophical vision of the Good. Or, at least, that was their author’s vision. I am not suggesting that we emulate Plato’s second-best constitution. However, I feel that we could learn a great deal from it. This is true both in terms of its historical application in the development of our own polities and in terms of considerations for our future. There are many aspects of Magnesian society that are applicable today, such as careful town planning, quality education, fiscal responsibility, gender equality and an informed electorate. Maybe there is something too worth imitating in the degree of social responsibility for the general wellness and, interestingly, the happiness of its citizens by their state, not to mention the lively civic culture, even if it is partly a façade. However, Magnesia’s potential for dystopia merits our greater attentions. The twentieth century was subjected to some of the worst aspects of utopianism gone spectacularly and disastrously awry. Plato’s Laws may serve us both as a warning from the past as well as a blueprint for a brighter future, if perhaps in the sense of an object lesson in what to avoid. We ought to take its lessons to heart and keep a circumspect estimation of those who aim to dramatically reform society supposedly for its own good.

Chapter 6

Welcome to the City of Magnesia

I am devoted to learning; landscapes and trees can teach me nothing – only the people in the city can do that. — Plato, Phaedrus 230d

Let us imagine, just until the close of this book, that Plato’s secondbest city of Magnesia is a real place and that you, the reader, might visit it. We shall dispense with the difficulties entailed by such issues as time-travel and linguistics. Assume that you are a worldly traveller, much in the same vein as Pausanias, interested in exploring novel localities and observing strange customs. What would you expect to find there? How would you be treated as an outsider? What would you do on your visit? It is likely that you would arrive by sea. As a visitor, your first glimpse of Magnesia, indeed literally your first port of call, would be the city’s harbour and the mercantile community of resident aliens situated thereabouts. There is a bustling market with craftsmen of all sorts as well as accommodation for hire to foreigners. The harbour is 80 stadia (about 9 or 10 miles) from the urban centre of Magnesia itself. It might surprise you to learn that there is no alien-tax levied on your visit which would certainly be the case in Athens and elsewhere. There will be officials on hand to examine your credentials, to question you about your intentions and to determine what, if any, access you should be permitted to Magnesian territory. The market and other wardens would keep a close eye on you as a stranger with an unknown itinerary. Upon discovering that you are a scholarly type who is interested in learning about the ways and customs of the Magnesians, you would likely be granted temporary freedom of the

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city and might even be given a guide (or perhaps “minder” is a more appropriate term) from one of the Guardians of the Laws to show you around and explain the nuances of the culture. You would be required to stay in the foreigners’ enclave on the harbour but could then visit the city proper and, with some advanced notice, perhaps some of the villages in the rural chōra . Having obtained your entry visa, you would then need to exchange your Hellenic currency for local script at the bureaux de change set up in the harbour market as you would be expected to provide for your own sustenance and accommodation while there. Chances are that you would first be invited to a meeting with polis officials to discuss at length the reasons for your visit. At which time, you would probably be given a lengthy disquisition on the history, nature and character of Magnesia. It would also be explained in no uncertain terms the standard of behaviour to which you would be held while present in Magnesian territory. They might give you a prepared pamphlet (at no cost to yourself) summarizing the code of conduct for non- citizens and relevant laws and preambles that could apply to you. At the end of the session, the officials would confer and, if their observations of you and your motivations revealed nothing negative, then you would be free, within limitations and degrees, to carry on with your explorations. As indicated, one of the Guardians or another lesser official might be quite keen to show you around the city and give an explanation for Magnesia’s peculiar institutions. You would see respectably sized houses neatly laid out in a grid where citizens reside. Perhaps one or two of them would be willing to take a short break from their pursuit of virtue and invite you inside, under the close scrutiny of your guide, to see the interior. Plato offers little detail on the interiors of citizens’ houses but one can expect them to be on two or more levels, as with Athenian houses, and sparsely (though not stingily) furnished, in essentially Spartan fashion. Slaves would be bustling about undertaking their allotted tasks. A couple of things that might strike you less by their presence than by their absence would be the lack of private shrines and kitchen/dining facilities. Though, presumably the latter would be hidden away in the back part of the house, albeit to a lesser degree than in a normal Greek

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home, in order to provide for the slaves and non- citizen servants who do not partake of the communal dining halls. It is unlikely that you would be invited to attend the sysittia , or a supervised symposion for that matter either, as an outsider though it is not beyond the realm of possibility if the city officials deemed your presence there sufficiently educational inasmuch as you might want to report on these activities to the outside world. In which case, they might go out of their way to ensure that you witness the best possible exemplars of these institutions. You may then choose to take a jaunt out to the countryside to see the rural, second homes of the Magnesians and observe their agrarian industries hard at work. Travelling down a well-paved road through the rural chōra , you would be surrounded by vast fields growing staple crops of all sorts, raising sheep and other animals, and tended by a veritable army of slaves. You would likely see Guardians of the Laws, rural Wardens and occasionally citizen landholders supervising them in their labours. You would probably first come across a small village made up of slaves, servants and metic craftsmen who service the rural estates. This would entail only a handful of houses, stables and workshops. You would likely find no inns or pubs here or in the city itself for that matter; although, such places exist in the harbour sector for foreigners. The rural Magnesian house would probably be larger than a townhouse, in part, to accommodate a greater number of slaves who would be needed to maintain it and the immediate grounds of the working farm. It dominates the surrounding landscape as the central focus of all activities there and has much in common with its medieval equivalent, the manorial hall. There might be several of these in sight of one another, depending on natural resources present and as space allows, and this would be in keeping with Magnesia’s surveillance culture where each citizen is in some ways expected to keep an eye on the moral rectitude of his neighbour. One might expect to find a son or daughter of the citizen- owner present with their family and these could also potentially offer you a tour providing they had the time to do so. On the way back to town, your guide might take you on a diversion to visit one of Magnesia’s famous cemeteries where the citizendead are buried with honours. Most of the tombs are rather plain

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and even the most decorated consist of only a sepulchre with a simple altar. More pronounced, perhaps, would be lines of encomium engraved on the tombs of notable individuals. Though, there is a kind of democracy here in death as most citizens are deemed worthy of poetic praise and all, apart from city heroes, have comparable monuments. If, on the course of your journey, your eye should happen to fall upon the odd burial site away from anything else in particular, your guide might either quickly try to divert your attention away from it or else explain in hushed terms about the stigma attached to shameful suicides (as opposed to honourable ones). It is not perhaps the case that there are many of these but their observation by foreigners could constitute a source of embarrassment for the polis. Also, you might notice your guide goes out of his or her way to avoid stepping over the centres of crossroads or, when they do, making a warding gesture as they pass by and, if pressed on the point, another hushed explanation would follow. Back in the urban centre you would observe the city alive with activity. There would be slaves everywhere going about their business. Various Guardians of the Laws, Wardens and citizens would be busily engaged in their respective activities. You might see groups of schoolchildren being herded off to class by their tutors and you would likely see the city’s defenders, arrayed in armour, marching in formation through the neatly paved streets. You would see people going to court and attending religious services at temples. Although, it is unlikely that you would see a mass of citizens engaged in public business of the sort you would expect to find in Athens. The assembly only meets on certain days and most government takes place behind the scenes. Depending on when you arrived, a number of religious or civic ceremonies might be under way. There could be weddings happening at any given point and funerals as well. Magnesian boys and girls clad in armour might be performing choral dances both to entertain the public as well as to hone their individual fighting skills. It would perhaps come as a surprise to you to find girls engaged in these activities as well as training as soldiers at appropriate establishments throughout the city. All of these activities are undertaken with the utmost sobriety and moderation, even in celebratory mode.

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If you happen upon a Magnesian funeral, it could be described as a dignified and restrained affair. They take place early in the morning so you would have to be awake before dawn and might, at that time, catch a glimpse of members of the Vigilance Committee setting off for their session. The funeral procession is highly regulated by the Guardians of the Laws and an attitude of sōphrosynē accompanies all funerary events. No excessive grieving is permitted, though grief in subdued proportions is allowed. The corpse is carried in a closed coffin and the ekphora has to be out of the city before daybreak. Crying aloud is forbidden while the remains are being borne through the Magnesian streets to the city’s cemetery. If you’re lucky, you might have arrived just at the time of the yearly ritual in honour of all of Magnesia’s deceased. It is a grand affair with a procession and religious recitations and, of course, a similar orderliness is compulsory for the participants. If you’re very lucky, you might arrive on the day of commemoration for priests of Apollo and the Sun. An exception to the general rule of equality in funerals and ceremonial activities is allowed in both their burials as in their commemoration. The assembly of the entire citizen population choose these revered individuals each year from the populace aged over 55 (946a–b). The funerals of those elected priests of Apollo and the Sun are elaborate affairs of Magnesian patriotism. They entail lengthy celebrations with choruses of boys and girls singing poetic hymns during the entire day before the burial. As with ordinary citizens, no dirges or overt lamentations will be permitted (947b5–6). At dawn the bier is carried by a 100 young men from the gymnasion who are chosen by the deceased’s relatives. The procession consists of unmarried youths in light armour along with cavalry and infantry in heavy armour. Boys singing the national anthem go in front and girls follow behind, along with women who have passed the childbearing age, and after these the city’s priests and priestesses modestly though conspicuously arrayed in their liturgical finery. As with ordinary citizens, the crypts of these priests are constructed underground and made of porous stone for endurance. These are state heroes and they merit special attention in the commemoration of their virtuous lives. A sacred grove of trees stands around the site of their tombs. Each year musical, gymnastic and equestrian contests are performed by

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the citizen-body in honour of the city’s heroic dead and attended by the populace at large. One of these celebratory rituals would certainly make an interesting addition to your growing book of notes on Magnesia. There are many other religious ceremonies and festivals that regularly take place in Magnesia and you might have arrived while one of these is under way. They consist of a series of publically performed hymns, encomia and prayers to the various gods, heroes and spirits that meet with the approval of the Magnesian authorities (801e). Plato’s narrator insists that no one will be permitted to sing such praises in honour of notable citizens while they still live. When they have passed on, they may be officially deemed worthy of public displays of adoration and only then will it be appropriate to add their names to the consecrated lists. Sacred songs constitute a major component of Magnesia’s religious ceremonies. Different songs are chosen according to rhythm, meter and content, relative to the particular religious occasions, in order to correspond properly with the sex of the individuals who partake of them. There are certain types of songs specific to men’s religious events, others specific to women’s and some deemed suitable for both when the occasion requires them to be together. The right to be honoured in sacred songs for living a virtuous and noble life is extended equally to both sexes. The Athenian Stranger says “let all these things be in common amongst us for both men and women and those of either sex who are conspicuously good” (802a3–5). This process of state sanctioned apotheosis would appear to provide exemplars for ordinary citizens to emulate through their pursuit of aretē. It also provides an incentive for good behaviour as well as a tremendous honour for the family to whom the heroic deceased belonged. Perhaps the Athenian Stranger intends that most families will have at least one relative among the ranks of ‘city heroes’ thus democratically spreading the honours. Twelve festivals for the 12 Olympian gods, who will give their names to the same number of Magnesian phylai, will be undertaken annually. These consist of monthly sacrifices held explicitly in the public sphere and accompanied by other festivities. Gymnastic events, musical contests and choruses figure prominently in these. Magnesia’s priests and priestesses “will distribute the women’s festivals, as many

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as it is appropriate to celebrate, apart from men and as many as are not” (828c5–6). Little is actually said about those religious festivals specific to women except for the passage that deals with the offering of woven goods to temples on special occasions (956a–b) and the “moderate” type of music they are permitted to perform. One may expect all Magnesian religious festivals to be expressions of civic virtue and religious piety, undertaken in appropriately sensible fashion. If you happen to have arrived during one of these festivals, you would see the temples and shrines bedecked in splendour, not lavishly but commanding appropriate respect. The temple of Hestia, in particular, at the heart of the city would be a major one to view along with others which are placed strategically close civic and governmental buildings in order to symbolically reinforce their legitimacy.1 You might choose to watch a Magnesian comedy or tragedy in the state-run theatre. Dramatic performances here do occur, unlike in the Kallipolis outlined in the Republic, but they are highly regulated and censored at every level. The impact of drama on the psychology of individuals is carefully guarded. Such states of mind as excessive emotionality, instability and unpredictability are considered ignoble and analogous to “inferior types such as women, slaves and worthless mobs of men” (431b9–c3). Such emotive tragedies, of which the Athenian Stranger says educated (Athenian) women were especially fond, along with ridiculing comedies, are banned outright from Magnesia. Free citizens may learn about the imitative arts, but they are strictly forbidden from engaging in their practice (816e). The Athenian Stranger, in significant shift from the stance of Socrates in the Republic, indicates that some poetic works of tragedy and serious drama may be acceptable so long as they do not teach harmful lessons that might destabilize the Magnesian civic harmony. Poets are kept on a tight leash. Anyone who writes a comedy for Magnesia (and he appears to be referring to citizens here) must be over the age of 50 and have gained the approval of the archōn for Education (829c–d, 936a–b). Aspiring authors must also have attained some esteem in the eyes of the city before they will be permitted to undertake the writing of a Magnesian comedy (829c–d). Only the truly morally upright are allowed to write comedic plays because they alone will use ridicule correctly. Their style of dramatic

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writing must be particularly virtuous. While the Athenian Stranger does allow for this eventuality, he is insistent that the comedies must never be allowed to ridicule any of the citizens, either in words or by way of mimēsis, whether it be with or without passion. Neither should the audience derive too much pleasure from these productions. They should be educational and contain some implicit moral approved by the polis. Only non- citizens or purely fictional characters that have no discernable analogues in Magnesia may be subject to comedy’s piquant wit. Even this must be done in moderation and there is every indication that mockery will not be permitted at all in Magnesian comedies. So, even if a play is being staged in Magnesia while you are there, you may or may not choose to view it. It would certainly be educational; however, its entertainment value might fall well below that which you would have come to expect from the likes of Aristophanes or Euripides. So, you have now visited Magnesia and witnessed many of its wonders and unique characteristics. It is certainly like no place you have been before, though, it does bear some semblances to Sparta as well as Athens while, at the same time, being alien to both of them. You must not assume that you have plumbed the depths of Magnesia in your short stay there. One thing that will have struck you right away, and left an impression on you as well over time, is the guarded and somewhat secretive nature of the citizens. Although they are friendly enough to you and more than willing to talk about their lives and society, you always feel as if they are holding something back, keeping some essential part of themselves to themselves. There is a smug sense of superiority that most citizens seem to exude. And you observed this even in young children to no small extent. But whatever mysteries the citizens are protecting, they keep them locked up tightly and away from the prying eyes of visitors such as yourself. As you board your trireme to depart for other exotic localities, you also reflect on the degree of fear that you felt was present in the Magnesian community at large. It was clear at every level of society, from the slaves and foreigners to citizens and officials, and becomes more noticeable by its absence as you leave the sovereign jurisdiction of the polis. Every word was guarded, every action self- consciously done. You never witnessed any moral correction taking place but will

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have heard about these sorts of things from other foreigners there plying their trade. And you cannot help but wonder, as the rowers heft your vessel out to sea and its sails unfurl, whether the whole calculated and constructed enterprise of Magnesia is truly worthwhile if it produces such a state of psychological anxiety in all of its subjects. But, then again, perhaps you misread the situation entirely and things are not as bad as all that. At least, so you think, until a Magnesian naval vessel pulls up alongside your own, officials board and forcibly remove several “rowers” who prove to be citizen-youths attempting clandestine emigration. Your ship under way again, the mood onboard lightens. You suppress a shudder and breathe a sigh of relief as Magnesia’s harbour and environs pass beyond the horizon. Your notebook now full, you decide to give Magnesia’s sister city, Kallipolis, a miss and prepare for an extended leave in Alexandria where you may satisfy your appetites for culture and baser delights to your heart’s content.

Notes

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Second Treatise on Government, chapter 6, para 57 from The Works of John Locke. A New Edition, Corrected. In Ten Volumes. Vol. V. London: Printed for Thomas Tegg; W. Sharpe and Son; G. Offor; G. and J. Robinson; J. Evans and Co.: Also R. Griffin and Co. Glasgow; and J. Gumming, Dublin. 1823 Morrow 1960, 11. See Hanson 2006, 17 ff. See Barjomovic 2005. Though, we should bear in mind too such modern city- states as Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City and, arguably, Kosovo. See Hanson 2006, 51 ff. Hanson 2006, 52. See too Chamoux 1953, 69–127. Mumford 1981, 124. Robinson and Groves 2000, 50. 625b – possibly near or in the famous Idaean cave re- discovered in the ninthcentury CE. On the age of the interlocutors in this dialogue, see 625b, 685a, 712b, 770a (that they are older than Magnesia’s proposed Guardians of the Laws – themselves at least 50) 820c, 821a, 846c. Brisson 1998. 1972, 90–2. See. Thuc. II.35–46 and MacDonald (1959) 108–9 for a criticism of Toynbee’s view and see Moore (2005) chapter III on education, esp. the part about the ‘Best and Truest Tragedy’. 1986, 225; see Gorgias 515e. See esp. Rep. VIII.558c5–6, where it “distributes a kind of equality to equal and unequal alike”. See Moore 2005 chapters III and IV. 1998, 49; see too 45, 143. Ostwald 1986, 83. 860e, 919d, 946b and 969a. 704b–705c. Plato’s Magnesia will not build a navy. See Macdonald 1959, 108–9 on this as a “conservative prejudice” against Athenian democracy and empire through naval power. 624a7–b3, see too Odyssey XIX, 178–9. 631b. Cf. Polyb. VI for a more negative view of Cretan tradition. Hdt. I.65. Pol . 1274a, 25–31. This Thaletas is the Melic poet who was said to have established the naked-boy dances (gymnopaidiai ) at Sparta. See Rep. 452c. Nik. Eth . 1102a, 8–11.

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Plut. Solon 12. Plutarch’s source was likely an ancient one, possibly Theopompos; cf. Diog. I.109. See Halsall 1998, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/450- gortyn.html for the dating of this ancient legal code’s inscription to the middle of the fi fth century. 1960, 20. 1991, 347. This issue of Cretan influences is taken up later throughout. Dion LIII.2. See Plato’s Letter VII. See Rawson 1969, 65 ff. for more on Sparta and the Republic. The written laws from archaic Chios (c. 600–550 BCE) may have been another constitutional influence as well as those from Dreros. See Rawson 1969, 4–6 for an outline of reforms attributed to the mythohistorical Lykourgos by the fi fth century. The fact that Spartan laws were unwritten (as opposed to the Code of Gortyn or the laws of Chios or Dreros) appears to represent a degree of sophistication removed from written legal codes, but the theoretical structure of the Spartan state proved no less interesting to Plato and many other ancient Greeks. Rep. 544c; cf. too Krito 52e. Aristotle, Politics II.9.1271b1 sq., criticizes the Laws as advancing particularly warlike virtues. However, such a claim could only be tested in terms of actual experimentation and goes against the Athenian Stranger’s expressed intent. See Bobonich 2002, 119–22. For example Laws 631b3–6, 718b2–4, 743c5–6 and 806c3–7. 2002, 120 and 198, n. 126. See Laws 660d sq., 696b–697c and 742d–744a. II.5 ff. Jaeger 1923, 300–1, n. 1. See Moore 2009 on this and Kennedy 2010 for further insights into Plato’s connections with the Pythagoreans. 1960, 31. There is an ancient inscription from Magnesia- on-the-Maeander (third- century BCE) in Asia Minor that records its foundation by colonists from the original Cretan Magnesia, see Kern 1900, 17, lines 7 ff. This inscription is likewise discussed by von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1895, 177–98. For another account of this same tradition see Strabo XIV, 1.2. Also, The Palatine Anthology (VII.304) preserves a grave inscription of a man from Cretan Magnesia. On Greek colonial relations with indigenous populations, see Descoeudres 1990. For recent Cretan archaeology, see http://www.interkriti.org/. Calame 2003, 115. See Burnet 1920, 35 and Diels- Kranz 1903; Xenophanes frs. 15–16. Sourvinou-Inwood 1990, 310–11. See Ath. Pol . 21.6 on Cleisthenes’ cultic innovations and their reception.

Chapter 2 1

‘Politik als Beruf’, Gesammelte Politische Schriften (München 1921), 396–450. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker & Humblodt, Munich.

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Kant, Immanuel; translated by James W. Ellington [1785] (1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed. Hackett, 7. 1265a13. At 1276a29, Babylon “it is said, had been captured for two whole days before some of the inhabitants knew of the fact”. 1990, 163. Brisson 1998. On this designation see Laws 739, 807b. Interestingly, the Athenian Stranger discusses the attributes of an ideal vs. a second- and third-best state not only in terms of the moral behaviour of their citizens but also in terms of private vs. communal property. See Xen. Lak. Pol . VII.1–3, for a similar situation reputed among the Spartans. Laws 772e7–e4. If the wealthy only marry the wealthy and the poor marry only the poor, in time the division between the classes will be so great as to cause tensions and possibly class conflicts which Plato rightly seeks to avoid (cf. 744a8–745b1). Rep. 459d–460b; cf. 546a1–547a6 for the infamous ‘Nuptial Number’; there are numerous works dealing with this complex passage among which include, but are not limited to, Aristotle, Pol . E 12. 1316a4 ff.; Macrobius, Somn. Scip. II 11. 10 on the so- called Great Year or Cycle; Proclus, In. Remp. II, 38; see Adam’s edition of the Respublica 1891, 79 ff. See Laws 684d for the difficulty of land distribution; there are 5,040 (a number divisible by 12, 10, etc.) administrative units for land-holdings by the citizens of the city (737e); each lot supports one family, the number of families is meant to remain at more or less a constant of 5,040 (740b–c): one of the male children will inherit the holding and the females are given in marriage where appropriate; excess offspring will be obliged to emigrate (740d–e, 741). See Xen. Lak. Pol. I.9, VII.3–6 and Polyb., Hist . VI.45, 3–5, for a (reputedly) similar situation of land allotment in Sparta. See Moore 2005, chapter V, for more on this curious land- division as well as Aristotle’s objections to it. See Moore 2005, chapter VI. Republic 416d ff., 420a, 422d, 464b ff., 543b. Lacey 1968, 178. It also seems unlikely that he is borrowing this idea from Sparta since, as Patterson 1998, 250, n. 12, says “Plato’s silence on any such Spartan system of indivisibility and inalienability of klēros while setting up just such a system in the Laws (in the presence of a Spartan) is strong evidence that there was none”. There is some evidence of a similar practice in ancient Crete (Code of Gortyn IV.32 ff.); see too Aristotle, Pol. II.2, 5 (1263a) and Plut. Moralia 238e–f. In Xenophon’s Oikonomikos (VII.24), Ischomachos expresses the notion that women ‘naturally’ have more affection for newborn and young children than do men. Plato experienced at least two households in his youth between the time that his father, Ariston, died and his mother remarried her uncle, Pyrilampes.

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The main one would have been Pyrilampes’, the other Ariston’s and/or possibly Periktione’s father’s (or her own, which had been Ariston’s?). See Davies 1971, 332–5. 1990, 127. In real ancient societies infant mortality was not only high but also unpredictable. Even if every family aimed at five live births or thereabouts (generally assumed to be what is necessary for biologically reproducing the given population) they would not each end up with two children: some would have five and some zero surviving to adulthood. Equally the balance of sexes among children was unpredictable. Property was repeatedly divided and combined as a result of these pressures. Plato’s cities do not have to worry about this so second homes etc. are quite different there. Justinian (iii.3) seems to have adopted Plato’s attitude and speaks of dowries as frena . Saunders 1970, 254, n. 14. 1992, 480; see too ibid., n. 119. As Garner 1987, 14, says, “marriage to a woman of greater wealth could be viewed as a loss of freedom”. XI.40; III.49. XXVII, 42–5; for example Archippe’s huge dowry, Dem. XLV. 28. It consisted of “a talent from Peparethos, a talent from here, a lodging house worth 100 minai , female slaves, the gold jewellery and other things of hers”. A gift from his friend, the tyrant of Syracuse, Letter XIII, 361d–e. Code of Gortyn Col. X. 14–20. Ibid. Col. III, 40–4; also for Athenian regulations on women, regardless of their social class, who reclaimed their dowries see Isae. III.8 and III.78. For examples of widows’ dowries, see Dem. XXVII. 5, 13–14, 13 with id . XLV, 28; Isae. VIII.8; Lysias XXXII.6; and see Hypereides (390–322 BCE), Lykophron , I.5 where a widow’s kurios (her brother) arranged her marriage, but her child’s guardian, who was administrating her first dowry, provided her with the dowry. Sealey 1990, 29. It was, as Lacey 1968, 109, says, “deemed to be her share of her paternal estate, a share set apart for her maintenance”. According to Plutarch (Moralia 227 ff.), the Spartan lawgiver had forbidden dowries by legislation believing, much as the Athenian Stranger, that character rather than wealth should determine the choice of a bride. See Pomeroy 1997, 43 and Hodkinson 2000, 98–103, on this complex passage from the Politics of Aristotle. He indicates, 103, that “Even if one rejects my hypothesis of universal female inheritance and prefers to view landed dowries as voluntary gifts, it is apparent that by the fourth century marriagesettlements were often quite large”. See next note. Politics II.9.1269b12–1270a6. Aristotle, in his statement about heiresses and dowries, could have been referring, says Blundell 1995, 156, “somewhat inaccurately, to two types of female inheritance, one where the daughter inherited the entire estate, and one where she received a share of it on marriage”. Hodkinson 2000, 98; see Patterson 1998, 250.

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Mor. 227 ff., Hermippos fr. 87 apud Athenaios 555c. According to Plut. Mor. 242b, “a poor [Spartan] girl, being asked what dowry she brought to the man who married her, replied, ‘the family sōphrosynē ’”. Hodkinson 2000, 44–5, 72 and 93–4 for third- century Spartan revolutionary connections with Plato (and esp. the Laws). See Cartledge 2001, 119–20 on Aristotle’s criticism of Cretan and Spartan dowries and inheritance laws. See Moore 2005, chapter III on the ephēbeia , and below. Hodkinson 2000, 99. The Code of Gortyn (VI.9–12) also refers to the transfer of property to a bride by her father and indicates that, as in Sparta, it remained under her control. Cartledge 1981, 98, argues that “what Aristotle calls ‘large dowries’ were really . . . marriage- settlements consisting of landed property together with any movables that a rich father (or mother) saw fit to bestow on a daughter”. See Pomeroy 1997, 55; for Hellenistic and Roman sources on Spartan dowries see Plut. Mor. 227f–228a, Lys. XXX.5–6; Ael. VH VI.6, Ath. XIII.555c and Justin III.3.8. See Moore 2005, chapter V. The Athenian Stranger allows a degree of freedom of choice for women in marriage. He offers another potential situation in which an heiress might exert some control over her future bridegroom. If the city is suffering from a lack of heirs, the heiress (who has no brothers and whose father has left no will) may then recall someone who has been dispatched to a colony. If he is a family member (not an immediate relative such as brother), however distant, he then automatically becomes heir and ‘son’ to the deceased and betrothed to the heiress (925b7). In this case, no permission would be required from the heiress’ guardians since the heir is the nearest eligible relative. However, if the man chosen is from outside the heiress’ household (i.e. not part of her anchisteia – see below) then he may only marry her on the condition that her guardians give permission (925b6–c3). He also proposes that, when a man dies both intestate and leaving only daughters, and if the family lacks all of the relatives described in the list, then “the girl, along with her guardians, may freely choose a willing man from the city . . . [who will become] the legal heir of the deceased and husband of the daughter” (925a5–b2). It appears to be only a slight liberty but, as England 1921, 527, says of this statute, “the amount of choice allowed by Plato to the bride was probably much in advance of Attic custom”. Stears 1998, 116, the anchisteia is a bilateral kinship grouping centred on an individual and extending to the children of cousins. See Moore 2005, chapter VI for more on this. Pomeroy 1997, 20. Plato’s mother, Periktione, remarried her paternal uncle, Pyrilampes, after the death of Ariston; on this see Davies 1971, 332–5 and above. Pseud. Dem. XLIV.18, indicates that “whatever woman is pledged on just terms to be a wife by her father, or by her brother who has the same father, or by her paternal grandfather, the children born of her shall be legitimate”. 923e4–6. This compares well with ancient Hebrew law where, “If a man die, and have no sons, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his

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daughter” (Numbers 27.8), she then passes the inheritance on to her offspring via her husband (whether of the same clan or not – ibid. 36.3, 36.8). See MacDowell 1978, 86 ff. for a comparable emphasis in Athenian law. See Rep. 547b–548b on the perceived overthrow of these values that characterized Spartan decline. Burnett 1976, 3 and plate 1.1, discusses the use of weighted metal ingots as a means of exchange among cultures of the ancient near East and Early Roman transactions that were conducted through the use of un- cast bronze lumps (the so- called aes rude) or bronze bars with a large component of iron (the aes signatum). Lak. Pol . VI.5–6; Polybios, Hist . IV, 45, 4–6, also says that money was esteemed of no value among the Spartans. Yet this apparently diminished significance of wealth probably represents an ethos from an idealized past that either never happened or was no longer in practice by the time of Plato’s Laws. As even Xenophon (Lak. Pol . XIV.3–4) reports, “in former days they were afraid to be discovered possessing gold; but nowadays there are some who boastfully display their property”. 2000, 167. Sparta minted no coinage of her own until the 260s or 250s. As he says, ‘several sources from the fourth century onwards claim that gold and silver coinage issued by other states was excluded by Lykourgos and that this prohibition remained in force until 404 when the booty sent to Sparta by Lysander was admitted for public use’. Svoronos 1906, 192–202 suggests that they might have taken the form of a roasting spit, or obelos – hence the subsequent use of the related term obolos in Southern Greek coinage systems. See Hodkinson 2000, 162–4. 959d1. 959d3–6. These restrictions of expenditure follow up the comments which the Athenian Stranger made at 719d–e where he indicated that a poet might praise a costly funeral for a wealthy woman as well as a skimpy funeral for a poor man as both being well-measured “but one must tell what and how much is a ‘measured’ amount” before it can become law. It is perhaps worth noting that Plato (Letter XIII, 361e) reported a planned expenditure of 10 minai for the tomb of his mother, Periktione. On representations of families (and especially of women) in ancient Athenian funerary practices, see Osborne 1997, 3–33 and Stears 1995, 113 ff. See Rubinstein (1989), 411–20, for a survey of Athenian funerary monuments in relation to economic class. See Dem. XLIII.62 and Plut. Solon 21. Pomeroy 1995, 112, discusses these Solonian funerary laws, which bear a striking resemblance to Magnesia’s, in greater detail. 959e3–5. See Cohen 1991. Beck 1964, 255; see Isocrates, Panathenaikos 30–2. See Moore 2005, chapter II. 804d4–6. As Cartledge 2001, 84, says “there was no State (with a capital ‘S’) in a post-Hobbesian sense in Classical Greece”. Rather, there was the koinōnia of citizens whose interests overrode those of the individual.

110 60

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794a ff. See 808c–d for the analogy between a “herd” of children and that of beasts. This recollects the Spartan “boy herd”, see Cartledge (2001), 83. See Moore 2005, chapters I and II. 701d10–11. Yunis 1996, 215. Platonic freedom must also be construed, paradoxically, as the rational submission to proper authority (762e). 1974, 161. These fears are expressed by the women of Troy at Iliad VI.238. Such a doom was inflicted upon Skione by the Athenians in 422 and on Melos in 416; on Hysiai by the Spartans in 417, on Plataiai by the Thebans in 373 and upon Thebes, in turn, by Alexander the Great. See also Polybios II.58, 9–12 ff. for the similar fate that befell Mytilene. Mossman 1995, 23 ff. See Eur. Hekuba 60–1, 98–103, 156–61, 234–5, 332–3, 444 ff., 459–60, 550–2, 741, 798, 809 ff., 821–3, 881, 905 ff., 1289, 1293–5. Anderson 1997, 141. See Andromache 147–53, 155, 555–6, 577–8, 583. 836d5–e1–3. See Hdt VII.101–4, where Demaratus tells Xerxes that the Greeks “are free – yes – but not entirely free, for they have a master and that master is Law (nomos), which they fear much more than your subjects fear you”. See Moore 2005, chapter II. The Athenian Stranger says that “if a native should stray to some other craft rather than the cultivation of aretē then the city wardens will engage in chastising him with reproaches and dishonours until they restore him to his proper course” (847a5–b2). Laws 643e9–644a6. On the avoidance excessive wealth in order to build a good character, see Republic 422a1 ff. In Herodotos, Kroisos advises Kyros on how to make the Lydians soft and easy to rule saying that he should ‘command them to educate their sons to play the kithara , pluck the lyre and practice retail trade’ (I.155.4). See Kurke 1999, 76 on this. Nightingale 2001, 141; she says that the Platonic implication that Athenian democratic elites engaged in banausic “wage- earning” by profiting from their educations and thus “working for the multitude, is a bold piece of rhetoric that collapses traditional hierarchies”. See Hesk 2000, 121, 136. The term ‘banausic’ is derived from metallurgy, see Kurke 1999, 44–5 on its etymology. 918d–919b, perhaps recollecting Plato’s experiences in Sicily. “Yet if someone – which should never happen nor ever will – were to compel (it is laughable to say but nonetheless it will be said) the best men everywhere to be innkeepers for a period of time, or to engage in retail trade or to practice one of such like things, or likewise if one were to compel [the best] women, out of some necessity of fate, to partake of such a way of life, we would know how friendly and dear each of these things is, and if it should happen according to an uncorrupted principle, all such innkeepers would be honoured as in the guise of a mother or a nurse” (918d8–e7). Is this morally responsible capitalism? The Athenian Stranger says that none of the citizens who hold a share of land among the 5,040 hearths “is to be a retail trader, either voluntarily or

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involuntarily, or a merchant or a waiting- servant or to render services whatsoever to private individuals who do not return to him equal services – except for a father and mother and to those household members of a younger generation and to all those elder than himself [or herself], as many as are free and freely served” (919d3–e2). 76 LVII.31. The fact that Euxitheos, in this speech, could have his citizenship questioned on account of his mother working as a nurse and selling her ‘homespun’ lace ribbons underscores this status- oriented prejudice. 77 See Politics 1254–5 and 1257 ff. on the “appropriate” work of women and slaves in the household. 78 Lovibond 1994, 96. 79 742b. “Hellenic” is Plato’s own term. See Morrow 1960, 192. 80 742c, 849e, 915d–e. This rule is even extended to the resident aliens. 81 See MacDowell 1978, 137–8. 82 See Gentzis et al. 1996. There is coal present in sufficient quantities to merit mining, which would potentially be a useful commodity but it would not have been a significant source of revenue as coal was not widely exploited in antiquity. 83 See Vanhoutte 1954, 238, who takes up the position that there is a contradiction here given that the fines are stated in terms of drachma . 84 Morrow 1960, 139, n. 129. 85 Morrow (ibid.) points out that resident alien craftsmen will need to make purchases on the economy from one another for raw materials. 86 Seignobos 1975, 69. 87 Roux 1992, 390. 88 Wellard 1972, 154. 89 Oats 1979, 148. 90 See Roux 1992, 390. 91 Although, Kish is today one of several villages near the ruins of Babylon; see Moorey 1976, 65–6. 92 5,040 is the smallest number that may be divided by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 without a remainder. This arithmetical peculiarity makes an easy division for administrative purposes. But the number of citizens is huge for an ancient polis ; as Nixon and Price 1990, 162–3 say, “Plato in certain parts of the Laws takes over current practices from Athens or other states; with the number of citizens he is led by theoretical principles to offer a number much larger than that possible for the majority of tribute payers”. This was a concern for Aristotle in the Politics (see above), but Magnesia’s monetary policies are other than traditional and may function without the need for so many tribute payers. ‘Tribute’, as such, comes in the form of food for common meals and labour for service, building and maintenance. These will be provided by agrarian and municipal slaves owned by the polis . 93 Laws 740d; the “highest and most distinguished” official is to be appointed to oversee population control. See also 818d8, Protagoras 345d and Simonides Fr. 5. See Hippokrates (fourth- century BCE) Nature of Women 98, for herbal methods of contraception available and see also Lefkowitz

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and Fant 1982, 88–9. Interestingly, Aristotle claimed that overpopulation in Crete in the Classical age, due to their agricultural prosperity, was the main cause for the establishment of pederasty as a state- sanctioned institution – an action which he attributes to king Minos (Politics II 10). It was a tradition for which the Cretans were famous in ancient times, as they were for the introduction of the myth of Zeus and Ganymede, an action for which Plato blames them at Laws 636d; on which see Moore 2005, 177–83, 231, n. 69 and 287, n. 55. 740c4–e6. Purcell 1990, 45, writes, “In particular, strain on élite resources, whether the ‘élite’ is an aristocracy of few dozen families or an exclusive citizenship of several thousand males, may be the perceived problem: actual demographic increase among the rich, upward social mobility, accommodation in various ways of mobile élite members from other communities, escalation in the resources needed for satisfactory display, these may all bring this about, without our needing to predicate an anomalous general demographic boom of the human population all told.” See Gallant 1991, 11–33 as well as Hansen 2006, 75, n. 9. Hansen 2006, 74. Aristotle also proposes a similar arrangement in his idealized polis, see Politics 1330a14. 704b–705c. Plato’s Magnesia will not build a navy. See MacDonald 1959, 108–9 on this as a “conservative prejudice” against Athenian democracy and empire through naval power. As discussed in Chapter 1, the Athenian Stranger enjoins his hypothetical colonists to honour any local divinities worshipped by the earlier inhabitants of this same site. This may indicate, as Morrow says, “that Plato remembers – or imagines – an ancient Cretan city named Magnesia”, 1960, 31. There is an ancient inscription from Magnesia- on-the- Maeander (third- century BCE) in Asia Minor that records its foundation by colonists from the original Cretan Magnesia, see Kern 1900, 17, lines 7 ff. This inscription is likewise discussed by von Wilamowitz- Moellendorff 1895, 177–98. For another account of this same tradition see Strabo XIV, 1.2. Also, The Palatine Anthology (VII.304) preserves a grave inscription of a man from a Cretan Magnesia. For some recent Cretan archaeology, see http://www.interkriti.org/. Thuc. 2.2–6; Hdt. 7.233.2 Hoepfner and Schwandner 1994, 190. Hansen and Heine 2004, 135–7. 2002, 103; but see too Hansen 2006, 109, 177, n. 24. Athens maintained state- owned slaves for public works along with the archers who policed the city under the authority of the Eleven and other officials. See MacDowell 1978, 83. But Magnesia would either need to have a population of professional ‘builder slaves’ or else hire metics to undertake such work. They would cost (Hellenic) money as well as require accommodation within the city. See Hansen 2006, 109 for an overview of the problem of counting slaves in antiquity. On hoplites’ arms being carried by slaves, see Hdt. VII.229.1 and Thuc. VII.75.5.

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MacDowell 1978, 76–7. The annual alien tax in Athens was 12 drachma for a man and 6 for a woman – failure to pay could result in enslavement as was the case with the philosopher Xenocrates until Demetrios of Phaleron purchased him and set him free; see. Demosthenes 37.21, 51; 53.20, 55.21–2 and Hyperides, Athenogenes 22. 1960, 148. 1927, 22. See Morrow 1960, 147 and n. 154 on Magnesian metic law being in advance of Attic law. Ways and Means III.2. See Hansen 2006, 78–81, 91. At 763ff., he mentions slaves and attendants used for farming and also that citizen-youths will be encouraged to hunt, presumably, the results of which will also go to the common messes. See MacDowell 1978, 133 ff. Magnesian citizens are officially encouraged to act justly with regard to their servants and slaves as this, in turn, will discourage them from committing hybris (777d4). See Hodkinson 2000, 347, 417 for more on this persistent problem in Laconia. Hodkinson 2000, 133. Jameson 1992, 137 and Roebuck 1945, 151, 156–7 and see Hansen 2006, 91. Hodkinson 2000, 132. Again, this is an estimate at best; see Garnsey 1988 for some useful, comparative figures. See Moggi 1976. See Cavanagh 1991, 97–118 on the synoecisms in Sicily; on Cassandreia see Samsaris 1987, 353–437.

Chapter 3 1

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3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10

Attributed to Karl von Clausewitz from On War, this phrase ought to be properly attributed to Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus: Trans by Milner N. P. De Re Militari . Liverpool University Press 1993, 63. Philosophical Perspectives on Peace: An Anthology of Classical and Modern Sources (1987) by Howard P. Kainz, 81. Hanson 1999, 112. Ibid. 139. I suspect that Magnesia will require a very limited sort of naval force (or coast guard – maybe 5–10 triremes at most) to police its harbour, but nothing like the vast numbers of ships maintained by other sea- faring poleis. Austin and Vidal-Naquet 1977, 107 ff. Hesk 2000, 87 ff. Aeschines, On the Embassy 167. Discussed below. 1982, 105; on Epikrates’ law, cf. Harpokration’s Lexikon , s. v. Epikrates. 1971, 123–4.

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Ibid. 137–8. On the Embassy 167. Plato, in the Laws , refers to the Magnesian equivalent of the ephēbeia (the agronomoi ) indicating the etymological meaning of peripolos saying that they “circle around” the city first in one direction and then in the other (760b); see below. Cf. Xen. Mem . IV, III.6.10 and Kyr. I.2.9–12, and Aristotle, Rhet . I.1360a for a similar tack on rural guardians and cf. Ober 1985, 92–3 for a comparison between Plato’s agronomoi and the ephēbeia . See De Marcellus 1994, 35. Ibid. 37–8. Ibid. 30. Antidosis 286–90; cf. also Xen. Mem . III.5.19. 666e ff.; cf. De Marcellus 1994, 30. Also at Laches 179a, Lysimachos expresses the wish that there should be something constructive that his teenage sons could be doing other than gambling and drinking. 1968, 164. He goes on to say that “A cette époque ce register intéressait tous les futurs citoyens, tous les futurs éphèbes”. Ath. Pol. 42.5. Vidal-Naquet 1986a, 107. See Cartledge 2001, 82–3. See too Finley 1968, 158, who indicates that the Spartan agōgē “and the eunomia it was held responsible for, which in the end caught the Greek fancy and lay at the heart of the Spartan mirage”. See too Laws 634d, where the Athenian Stranger praises the Spartan agōgē as one of the finest institutions of that polis since it prohibits the youths from “inquiring whether any of the laws is good or not”. That is, that they may have served as a kind of ‘hit squad’ or undertaken the work of thugs. Cf. Hesk 2000, 87, 100–1 on these and Winkler 1990, 34. But, as Vidal-Naquet 1986b, 142 indicates, “What is true of the Athenian ephebe at the level of myth is true of the Spartan kruptos in practice”. Although, it may have been derived at least as much from the Spartan krypteia and the Cretan agelai. See Laws 760b; and Vidal-Naquet 1986a, 107 ff. Renehan 1970, 219–31, makes a good case for Lycurgus of Athens’ close association with Plato and Platonic philosophy which can be observed both in his political dealings as well as in his only surviving forensic oration, Against Leocrates. Renehan 1970, 230–1. Tarn and Griffith 1966, 96. 1944, 250. Jaeger does not indicate a direct dependence here of Lycurgus on Plato. However, in his study of the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus, he also discusses both Lycurgus and Plato’s Laws. Ober 1985, 92. Ibid. 90–3. Cf. also 135, 223 ff. The ephēbes were trained at the Mounichia and Akte forts. See Thuc. I.105.4, Lysias, Funeral Oration 50–3 when some youths (whether ephēboi or otherwise) were compelled to enter combat during the Peloponnesian Wars. Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1986a, 106–8, 112–13 on similar practices in Crete and Sparta. Tarn and Griffith 1966, 96.

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1998. In the real world, rhetoric and mathematics were taught exclusively to males, see Foley 1985, 231. 2002, 23. Santas 2002, 24–5. See Cuchet and Ernoult 2007, 179, who write: “Si, dans la Republique , la participation des femmes à la guerre résulte d’une conception non generée de l’organisation sociale de la classe des gardiens, elle est, dans les Lois, justifiée par la nécessité de renforcer le potential militaire”. Cuchet and Ernoult 2007, 180, and see Santas (2002), 23. This suggests that a charge of undue license may be levelled against Spartan and Cretan women if we are to believe Euripides (Andromeda 595 ff.); On the phrase eis to phos as a poetical expression cf. Prot. 320d, Theaet. 157d, Tim. 91d, Laws 869c and Rep. 461c. Philo of Alexandria, fond of merging Platonic philosophy with Judaic ideas, considered the female sex to be more inclined towards sensuality and thus naturally impeded with regard to virtue (Allegorical Interpretations III.56). He identified Eve with sensory perception and associated her with the Pleasure principle. The Judeo-Christian Fall, as Philo and others have interpreted it, brought consequences for women such that they must bear children through painful labour and then rear their offspring while the men-folk toiled and developed technical skills (associated with the Mind). Additionally, Philo believed that a direct consequence of the Fall was that women should lose their freedom and accept the mastery of their husbands (On Creation 167). Plato’s narrator has Magnesian women bound by marriage and engaged in childbearing but he has also provided slaves and servants to educate and rear the offspring. It is difficult to determine how subservient a Magnesian wife would have to be to her husband in consequence of her questionable nature. See Cuchet and Ernoult 2007, 178–84 for a detailed discussion of women’s martial role in the Laws. See Schöpsdau 2002, 331–40 and Moore 2005, chapter 5. 1974, 34. See Butler 1995, 50–1. Cuchet and Ernoult 2007, 182. Herodotus’ Histories, as Harrison 1997, 191, indicates, “suggest the belief in women as ‘legal minors’” permanently in need of restraint. But, compare this with their capacity for responsibility enshrined in Athenian law as described by Gould 1980, 44–5. Harrison goes on to say that “when Athenian women (in the dim, distant past) stab to death with their brooches the bearer of the news of the deaths of their husbands . . . the Athenian response is only to change their style of dress from Dorian to Ionian, so that they would no longer wear brooches (V.87.2–3); they could not be trusted to hold back from similar hysterical outbursts (equally perhaps any punishment would have been pointless?)”. See Brisson 1982 and 1994 for a more extensive discussion of Plato’s use of mythology.

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Aristotle, Pol. 1270 ff. indicates that the Spartan women’s “license” was due, in part, to the male army being away for so long at a time and that Lykourgos ‘gave up’ trying to bring them under control when they resisted his reforms. Whether Aristotle realized it or not, this would also seem to point to their role in homeland defence out of necessity in the absence of the men. 806a5–c1. As Cartledge 2001, 113, says, a “Spartan girl – like her counterparts in other Greek states (cf. Hesiod, Op. 520) – resided with her parents until marriage. Specifically, she continued to reside with her mother, for the matricentral character of a Spartan girl’s home-life was heavily accentuated by the fact that her father was expected to spend most of his time living communally and in public with his male peers”. See below on the Sauromatians and Amazons. 2004, 4. See too Brisson 1982 and 1994. 804e. See Hartog 1988, 31–2 and 39. The Scythians reportedly called the Amazons oiorpata which means ‘killers of men’ (Hdt. IV.27). This perhaps recalls Homer’s term for them at Iliad III.171 ff. and VI.186, which is antianeirai and, as Hartog ibid. 240, indicates, is “playing on the prefi x anti , both the ‘equals’ and the ‘enemies’ of males”. Cf. ibid. 3 ff. on the ‘imaginary Scythians’. See Moore 2005 chapter IV for more on Graeco-Asian relations. 1989, 132. See Thomas 2000, 61–2 on Herodotus’ ethnography of the Scythians and Amazons in terms of ancient medical beliefs about the effects of herbs and types of edible game in relation to the “humours” and “bile”. Such regional influences are considered to have affected the particular development of the Amazons. The grass in Scythia was thought to produce more “bile” than all other “grasses that we know” (Hdt. IV.58). See Harrison 1997, 187. Hippokrates, Airs, Waters, Places XVII. Cf. Thomas 2000, 88. 1998, 171. See Bovon 1963, 580 ff. on modes of ‘barbarian’ attire and, 598 ff. on its reception in Greece as “decadent” and “soft”. Except, perhaps to some degree the Spartans. See also Hardwick 1996, 173–4 who also discusses the Amazonian/Laconian female Guardians of Republic V. 1988, 222. See Tyrrell 1984, 2–3. Aristotle (Pol . 1327b18–34) condemns Asiatics as inferior, as does Herodotus (IX.122.3), largely by virtue of their local climate and where they live (e.g. not Greece). Ephorus (Steph. Byz., s. v. Amazones) applied similar “geographical predestination” to the Amazons. See Moore 2005, chapter IV for more on Greeks and barbarians. See too Thomas 2000, 56. Hardwick 1996, 158, 161 discusses this along with some of the modern associations between Amazons, lesbians and feminists as altogether “manly” women. Blundell 1998, 55. Tyrrell 1984, 66, says that Amazons “are beautiful women who arouse men sexually, but their erotic appeal cannot be civilised in marriage, its proper sphere, and so is loose, socially unproductive, and dangerous”. But they are ‘civilized’ through conquest and marriage in popular art and myth. 1997, 186–7. Cf. Homer, Iliad VI.490–3.

Notes 65

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The author of the Hippokratic text on Diseases of Women indicates (I.6) that the healthiest type of woman is “masculine”, but such a one is less inclined towards maternity and conception. 1988, 216. Strabo XI.5.1; female children were kept and reared as Amazons, male children were returned to their fathers. But some accounts show a nefarious intent against the male sex. Among the Hippokratic corpus, the author of On Joints (53.iv.232, 7–13) discusses the dislocation of joints and adds the anecdotal detail that the Amazons dislocated the joints of their male children who, thus hobbled, would be less capable of causing difficulties for the women. He admits that he does not know if this report is truthful, cf. Thomas 2000, 61 and 245. III.35. See, Dover 1978, 100–1, on male expectations of sexual passivity for Athenian women. See. Hdt. IV.110 ff. Hartog 1988, 217.

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Bobonich 1991, 382. Brisson 1994, 120. Pangle 2009, 460. Saunders 1963, 196. Emphasis in original. Pangle 2009, 461, n. 8. On the Myth of Er, see Republic 614–21. Hobbes (Leviathan 15, 19), perhaps following the Platonic arguments here and elsewhere, is critical of retributive punishment but not punishment per se , when deemed necessary, for the purposes of deterrence. This seems to beg a question about the case of Alcibiades in the Symposium . He says that he recalls the agreements made with Socrates (presumably about virtue and philosophy), and yet he allows himself to be seduced by the Many and thus to turn to politics and the excessive pursuit of pleasure. Is he incurable? Whitaker 2004, 77. See 768c ff. Pangle 2009, 461. Although, one might consider various contemporary reformists and liberal agendas along these very lines as well as the advent of modern technology which can, in theory at least, develop just such a personal psychological profile of individuals. As far as I am aware, no one has yet applied it to the legal system to the extent that Plato’s narrator suggests. Pangle 2009, 461. See Moore (2009a), 95–110. A similar statute existed in ancient Athens whereby temple robbers were said to have been denied burial in all of Attica (Xenophon, Hellenika 1.7.22). That is except where “not only the father, but his father and grandfather before him, have been convicted of a capital crime”, in which case the whole family gets deported (856c). See for example Wasps generally and, on Cleon the Athenian demagogue’s alleged influence on court cases, 197, 242, 409, 596, 759, 1220, 1224, 1237, 1285.

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38

Notes

880e9–881d7. The Athenian Stranger states at 880e8–9 that ideally this situation should never arise in Magnesia. Fear of the penalties that such offenders earn in Hades should keep them in line (881a3–5) – but the length and elaborateness of his legal formula for dealing with potential parent- beaters suggests a fear that it might nonetheless happen even in the second-best polis. For example, if they were suffering from senility or other mental debilities – 928d ff. LSJ s. v. huion and anthropon . 929b2–3, her anchisteia or cognate kinship group. 917a1–7. Cp. 690a ff. and see Moore 2005, chapter 6. Demosthenes 39.39. MacDowell 1978, 91. Golden 1990, 110. Golden 1990, 110. See also Aristotle, Ath. Pol . 56.6; Aristophanes, Nub. 844–6; Xenophon, Mem . I.2.49; Aeschines 3.251. Aristotle recognized the dangers posed by senile kurioi and so he recommended retirement around the age of 70 “when a man begins to lose his vigour” (Pol . 7.1335a36). Apuleius, Apologia 37.1.2; Lucian of Samosata, Macrobii 24; Plutarch, Moralia 785a; Cicero, de Senectute 7.22. 701b7–8; see Rep. 424e. 701b11–14; he indicates that something similar happened to the Titans. 869a4–b2. Not unlike the case of the Hippolytus in Euripides’ play by the same name (1401–46) – except that the roles of parent and child are reversed in comparison to the Athenian Stranger’s law. Demosthenes 43. 56–7; 47. 72. 866b–c. Resident aliens who commit involuntary homicide against another foreigner and are successfully prosecuted for it must go into exile for only one year, in addition to undertaking the rites of purification. Non-resident foreigners who do so (against another foreigner or resident alien) will be barred from Magnesia for life. Gernet 1917, n. 106. Morrow 1960, 275. Saunders 1963, 198–9. He concludes that the “whole passage reveals hasty and unrevised composition . . . Plato wishes to be at once precise and concise, the result is ripe confusion.” On the burial practices of Magnesia, see Moore 2005, 141–3; and see Stears 1998 and 1995 for traditional Greek burial practices by contrast. See Lysias 1, on the Murder of Eratosthenes, and Demosthenes 23.53, for a similar law on the books in Athens; however, the normal practice appears to have been a fine and/or public humiliation. See MacDowell 1978, 124. 840d6–e1, see Euripides, Hellen 190. Cp. Herodotus, Histories 2.64 and 4.180 for a contrasting animalistic analogy; and see Rosellini and Saïd 1978, 965 on Herodotus’ slanted ethnography of ‘savage’ promiscuity among foreign peoples. See Hesk 2000, 153–6, 159–62 on Platonic pharmaka . In contrast to Plato, Diogenes the Cynic, in his hypothetical constitution, considered promiscuity with mutual consent to be the most satisfactory sexual arrangement and

Notes

39

40

41 42 43 44

45

46 47

48

49 50 51

52

119

he regarded the sexual act (as with eating, masturbation and excretion) as not especially private (Diogenes Laertes 6.72, 97). On comparable modes of sexual propaganda see Xenophon, Lak. Pol . 1.7–9 for alleged Spartan wife swapping and, again, on Herodotus who portrayed barbarian cultures as being sexually promiscuous, see 1.203, 3.101, 4.180 and also Rosellini and Saïd 1978, 955–66. Rhodes 1981, 331; MacDowell 1978, 89–90 and Harrison 1971, 13–17; see too Demosthenes 23; Aristotle, Ath. Pol . 53; Gellius 15.30.6 and Athenaeus 13. Before Pericles’ law, the male offspring of such unions could become citizens; afterwards, with emphasis squarely focused on the mother’s legitimacy, such offspring were then regarded as bastards (nothoi ). See Harrison 1971, 24–8, 61–8 for an assemblage of the evidence on mixed marriages and bastards. The law on citizenship was relaxed, whether officially or otherwise, in the closing years of the Peloponnesian Wars due to a decline in the population of legitimate citizens. 643e5–6. See Whitaker 2004, 79, where he describes the indelible link between perfect citizenship and perfect justice in the Laws. For more on this subject, see Moore 2005, chapters 6 and 7. MacDowell 1978, 124–5. See Saunders 1991, 157. See Plato, Phaedo 59d–e; Dem. 24.208; on the 42 conspirators held there in 415, see Andoc. 1.43–5; Thuc. 6.60. On the Vigilance Committee, see 961a–968e and my chapter 5; and see too Morrow 1960, 500–15. Hunter 2008, 194. On longer-term sentences see Andron: Dem. 24.125, 135; Aristogeiton: Dem. 25.30, 61; Din. 2. 2, 9. On escapes, see Hunter 2008, 195 and n. 7. We have instances of prisoners complaining about life in the Athenian desmoterion (a name which implies “being bound”), see Andoc. 2.15; Antiph. 5.18; Dep. Ep. 2.17. Hunter 2008, 197–8. Saunders 1991, on “reformative” 354 and on “medical” 139–95. Hunter 2008, 201. On Attic orators and their retributive penalties see for example Dem. 21.37, 227; Dem. 53.1–2; Dem. 58.1–2, 58–9; Dem. 59.1, 12, 126; Lycurg. 1.27, 141; Lys. 12.94–6; Lys. 13.1, 41–2; Lys. 22.19–20; Lys. 27.5–7; Lys. 30.23–4. Hunter 2008, 201.

Chapter 5 1

2

‘Politik als Beruf’, Gesammelte Politische Schriften (München 1921), 396–450. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker & Humblodt, Munich. See Laws 684d for the difficulty of land distribution; there are 5,040 (a number divisible by 12, 10, etc.) administrative units for land-holdings by the citizens of the city (737e); each lot supports one family, the number of families is meant to remain at more or less a constant of 5,040 (740b–c): one of the

120

3

4 5 6

7

8 9

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24 25

Notes

male children will inherit the holding and the females are given in marriage where appropriate; excess offspring will be obliged to emigrate (740d–e, 741). See Xen. Lak. Pol. I.9, VII.3–6 and Polyb. Hist. VI.45, 3–5, for a (reputedly) similar situation of land allotment in Sparta. See Moore 2005 chapter V. See Moore 2005 chapter V for more on this curious land- division as well as Aristotle’s objections to it. See Moore 2005 chapter VI. 2002, 103; but see too Hansen 2006, 109, 177, n. 24. Athens maintained state- owned slaves for public works along with the archers who policed the city under the authority of the Eleven and other officials. See MacDowell 1978, 83. But Magnesia would either need to have a population of professional ‘builder slaves’ or else hire metics to undertake such work. They would cost (Hellenic) money as well as require accommodation within the city. See Hansen 2006, 109 for an overview of the problem of counting slaves in antiquity. On hoplites’ arms being carried by slaves, see Hdt. VII.229.1 and Thuc. VII.75.5. 2002, 448. 756c9–10; this process is quite elaborate and involves a random lottery at the final stage, after all the rounds of voting, to decide the candidates who then must be scrutinized, see below; see Plut. Solon XVIII.4–5 and ff., for this common democratic formula of “anyone who wishes” in Solon’s reforms. 764a–b. 849a–b. 934–5. Brisson 2005, 109, says “In the city in the Laws , elections no longer play a role in legislative or judicial areas . . . elections do exist in the Laws , but they have been emptied of their content.” Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 8.73 ff. Brisson 2005, 107. See Jackson and Sǿrensen 2003, 39. See Grodnick 2005. See Brisson 2005, 107–8. “Nomination” here means something rather different than it did for Athenian democracy. There, magistrates were nominated by members of the Assembly; however, in Magnesia, they are drawn up by the Guardians of the Laws, the Strategoi and perhaps Cavalry commanders. This measure is clearly designed as a limitation on democratic participation. See Piérart 1974, 245. See Brisson 2005, 108 ff. Brisson 2005, 106. 755b ff. They are officially identified as functioning in a ‘watchdog’ capacity, making recommendations and keeping the ship of state ‘on course’ (960–5), but their actual power is nearly absolute – just below that of the laws. See Moore 2005 chapter III on their special education and II on their authority. In many ways, they are reminiscent of the Spartan gerousia , see Cartledge 2001, 34–5, 60, 84 on their powers. 951d8–e4; see 813c6–8. 1970, 5–14.

Notes 26

27

28

29 30 31

32 33 34

35

36 37 38

39 40 41 42

43 44

45

46

47 48

121

On the selection and education of these Guardians of the Laws, see (for the female guardians) 783d ff., 794a ff., 930a ff., 932b–e (and generally), 968c ff. Ath. Pol . VIII.4; see Plut. Solon 19.2. For the Areopagos prior to Solon, see Aristotle, Ath. Pol . III.6; and for the reference to Ephialtes see XXV.2. See Diod. XI.77.6, who adds a ‘moral’ to the story, saying that Ephialtes was punished for “attempting such lawlessness . . . he was done to death by night”. As has been proposed by Chase 1933, 135. Of course, we don’t actually know whether or not this institution of guardians in the Areopagos actually existed. See Morrow 1960, 211–14. De Legibus III.46. See Cawkwell 1997, 115–30 for a fuller discussion of this issue. See Hodkinson 2000, 56–7 on the ephors and their role in enforcing Spartan sōphrosynē. 1960, 526. See Richer 1999, 99–100. See Moore 2005 chapter III. See Laws 908a, 909a, 951d ff., 961a ff. and 968a. For a similar ‘Nocturnal Council’ of Atlantis, see Critias 120a ff. That is, if Aristotle and Plutarch are to be believed, see Aristotle, Pol . 1270b; Plut. Lyk . 26. Laws 960–5. 1998. Ibid. On the name nukterinos see Laws 968a; for their meeting time see 951d. 1960, 509. See Rhodes 1981, 115, 376–7. 1986, 50. Although, Plato’s approach to it is markedly different. The Isocratean passages on the “ancestral constitution” are assembled and examined in Jost 1936, 140–5. See Rhodes 1981, 323, 371–2, 421, 429–30 on Plato’s characterization of Athenian politicians and views on oligarchy. Aristotle, Ath. Pol . XXXIV.3. See Rhodes 1981, 375–7. There are exceptions, as indicated above. For example, Solon is mentioned 18 times in the extant Platonic corpus with casual and friendly references. He was a good lawgiver, the alleged source of the Atlantis myth, a gnomic poet to be quoted and reputed to have been an honourable ancestor of Plato’s mother, Periktione. His legalistic theories represent a kind of “ancestral law” that might be seen as influencing Plato. See Lambert 1993, 316–17. See Hartog 1988, 217, 219 on the Atlantis myths and their potential historical connections with Solon. The Dissoi Logoi , one of the only texts of the sophists to survive, also posits a hypothetical society that is antithetical to Athens (although not completely opposite), see Thomas 2000, 130–1, 231. The Magnesians will not only study law. Plato’s narrator, as Nightingale 1999, 103, says, “even explicates the precise goal of this activity: one ‘studies’ the law in order to become a better person and a better judge of the other kinds of logoi ”. 293b–299a. The proposed laws on medicine and navigation are to be displayed on kyrbeis (as laws were posted in Solon’s day) and on stelai (as in Plato’s).

122 49 50 51 52

53

54

55

56

57 58

59

60

61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69

Notes

1986, 51–2. Weber, Politik als Beruf. 1999, 102; see Laws 858a–859a. As the Athenian Stranger has done in the case of Solon’s laws, see Moore 2005 chapters V and VI. I borrow the phrase ‘more equal’ from Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. On the Athenian Stranger’s formulation of relativistic equality see Laws 744b ff., 757; see too Rep. 557a, 561b–563. archas hōs . . . tō anisō symmetrō; see Laws 744b–c, as applicable both to state positions and funerary honours; and see too Aristotle, Politics VI.2.1318b, 26, for a similar formulation, albeit by a different methodological approach. He says that “the law has already granted him permission, and still gives permission, to choose whomever he wishes of the men and women of the state for that public commission” (813c6–9). 951d8–e4. On the selection and training of this committee, see 951d–e, 952a, 961–9. Powell 1994, 280. See Xenophon (Lak . Pol. XIII.10–11), for similar travel restriction in his Lykourgian Sparta. 963a7–11, c11–d2, 965b5–9, 965c9–e4, 966a5–10; cf. 631c ff. As opposed to five cardinal virtues in the Protagoras (see Protag. 349b, 359a). See Rep. 484, 537b ff., where dialectics are described, as Bury says (1999, 555, n. 3), “as a kind of induction whereby the mind ascends from ‘the many’ particulars to ‘the one’ universal concept or ‘idea’: a comprehensive view of the whole that marks the dialectician”. 966a5–10. 966c5–7. This includes the text of the Laws itself and potentially the Republic, the Timaeus and others – 966c1–9. 966d12–e3. 967d4–8; see 903d. 966e3–967e1; see 818a ff. and Rep. 607b–c. 967e2–5; see 710a and Rep. 399. 1969, 74; see Laws 739a–740a, cp. 742c. 714a1–2.

Chapter 6 1

This mirrors a practice in Sparta where the privileged relationship of phobos with the authoritative ephors is underscored, as Mactoux 1993, 280, indicates, by “the spatial contiguity of the place where ephoric power was exercised” and the temple of deified Phobos, thus reinforcing religious piety of a particular sort with official authority.

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Index

Academy, the 9–10, 88–9 Aeschines 44 Aeschylus 61 Oresteia 61 Agamemnon 3 Alexander the Great 3, 42 Amazons 50–5 Archaic period 3 Archidamian War 42 Aristophanes 7, 64, 102 Wasps 64 Aristotle 8, 9, 13, 14, 18, 20, 31, 38, 45, 87 Politics 9, 10, 13, 14, 18 Athenian Stranger, The (narrator) 28–9, 33, 34, 36, 42, 48, 50, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 83, 84, 86, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 100, 102 passim Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, The 31 Battle of Leuktra, the 20 Beck, F. A. G. 23 Bobonich, C. 9, 56, 83 Brisson, L. 47, 50, 85, 88 Cadmus 3 Cecrops 3 Cicero 88 city-state cultures in Assyria 2 Hittite Empire, the 2 Magnesia 11–12 see also Magnesia under individual entries Minoans 3 Mycenaeans 3 in Palestine 2

Sumerians 2 in Syria 2 Clausewitz, Karl von 41 Cleisthenes 11 Code of Gortyn 2, 8, 67 Code of Hammurabi 2 colonies (apoikismos ) 3 De Marcellus, H. V. 44 Demosthenes 19, 26 Diodorus 53 Eleatic Stranger, the 90 Epaminondas 42 ephēbeia 41, 43–6, 48, 53, 55 Epikrates 43–5 Epimenides 8 Erechtheus 3 Ernoult, N. 47 Euripides 25, 52 Andromache 25 Hekuba 25 Herakles 52 euthanasia vs. cowardly suicide 72 Finley, M. I. 89, 90 Fisher, N. R. E. 18 Furies, the 61 Gargarians 53 Gould, J. 51 Great Rhetra 2 Greece mode of communication 4 Habermas, J. 85 Hansen, M. H. 14

132 Harrison, T. 52 Hartog, F. 52, 53 Hellenistic Age 3 Herodotus 27, 31, 51, 52 Hesk, J. 43 Hestia 63, 64, 101 Hippolyte 52 Hodkinson, S. 22 Homer 3, 8, 52 Hunter, V. 76 Isaios 19 Isocrates 44, 45, 89 Jaeger, W. 9, 46 Justice 1 Kallipolis 1–2, 16, 39, 101, 103 Kant, I. 13, 41 Kleisthenes 89 Locke, J. 1 Lycurgus of Athens 45–6 MacDowell, D. M. 67 Magnesia 1–2, 7, 10, 12, 13–40, 95–103 passim currency and transaction 29–30 economic plan for 14–40 funeral 99 government for 81–94 Vigilance Committee 81, 82, 84, 88–93 inheritance in 21, 65–7 legal system for 56–80 Institute of Correction 78–9 lawful homicide 73 Plato’s legal thesis 56 Retributive Punishment Centre 77 sexual conduct, laws on 73–5 military 41–55 ephēbeia 41 residence in 34 slaves of 25–6 taxation in 35 women, life of 50

Index Megillus 44 Menelaus 3 Middle Bronze Age 2 mimēsis 102 Morrow, G. A. 8, 10, 28, 30, 35, 70, 88 Nightingale, A. W. 26, 91 Nixon, L. 13 Odysseus 3 Orwell, G. 91 Pangle, L. S. 58, 61 Pausanias 95 peripoloi 46 Persian War 44 Plato 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 18, 20, 25, 26, 27, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 53, 56, 59, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 100 passim Laws , The 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 24, 25, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 53, 56, 57, 61, 65, 76, 77, 81, 87, 92, 93, 94 passim Phaedrus, The 89, 95 Protagoras 9, 57 Republic , the 1, 2, 7, 9, 14, 24, 27, 39, 47, 57, 58, 82, 87, 91, 93, 101 Statesman 90 Plutarch 9, 20, 40, 89 polis 1, 38, 40, 42, 64, 82, 84 passim development of 1–7 Plato’s Magnesia and 8–12 Greek 3–5 Price, S. 13 radical democracy 85 Reinmuth, O. W. 44 Renehan, R. F.46 Romm, J. 51 Rosaldo, M. Z. 49

Index Saunders, T. J. 8, 18, 57, 71, 77, 87 Sauromatia 51 Snodgrass, A. 18 Socrates 6, 9, 24, 57, 64, 76, 89 Solon of Athens 8, 89 Sophocles 68 Oedipus at Kolonos 68 Strabo 10, 53 sunephēboi 44 synlogos nukterinos 88 see also vigilance commitee

teknopoiia 49 Theseus 52 Vidal- Naquet, P. 43, 45 Weber, M. 13, 81 Whitaker, A. K. 59 Xenophanes 11 Xenophon 22, 35, 40

133