S.

v. Art). The restless energy of the Athenian character is perhaps reflected in the discipline imposed upon the ruling class (7. 540), who when they have reached fifty are dispensed from continuous public service, but must then devote themselves to abstract study, and also be willing to take their turn when necessary at the helm of state [cp. Laws 7. 807; Thucyd. i. 70; ii. 40]. —II. The most peculiar features of Plato’s state are (1) the community of property, (2) the position of women, (3) the government of philosophers. (1)The first (see s. v.), though suggested in some measure by the example of Sparta or Crete [cp. Arist. Pol. ii. 5, § 6], is not known to have been actually practised anywhere in Hellas, unless possibly among such a body as the Pythagorean brotherhood. (2) Nothing in all the Republic was probably stranger to his contemporaries than the place which Plato assigns to women in the state. The community of wives and children, though carefully guarded by him from the charge of licentiousness (5. 458 E), would appear worse in Athenian eyes than the traditional ‘licence’ of the Spartan women [Arist. Pol. ii. 9, § 5), which, so far as it really existed, no doubt arose out of an