doubtless in a Platonic form.1030
Utopian social theories after the time of Aristotle were by no means limited to those of Zeno and Chrysippus. As Souchon has observed,1031 the period between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the second centuries was especially favorable to such speculation. The skeptical criticism of the Sophists had prepared the following generations to call in question the most elementary social principles. Ideal states, such as those of Phaleas and Plato, had opened the way for future imitations. The conquests of Alexander had broadened the vision of the Greek, so that he no longer thought in terms of Plato’s circumscribed city, but rather in terms of a world-state. Moreover, the utter political confusion and unstable economic conditions of the time aroused the more serious-minded to dream of an ideal past or golden age; to idealize the simple, “natural” life of the so-called “pious” barbarian nomads,1032 or even of the animal world, as opposed to the “artificial” conditions of civilization; and to exaggerate the virtues and communistic character of the old Spartan constitution.1033 The social theories were largely Stoic in tendency, and thus present a strange combination of individualistic and communistic ideas.1034