S.

excessive regard to physical considerations in marriage. Again, the equal share in education, in war, and in administration which the women are supposed to enjoy in Plato’s state, was, if not so revolting, quite as contrary to common Hellenic sentiment [cp. Thucyd. ii. 45]. The Spartan women exercised a great influence on public affairs, but this was mainly indirect [cp. Laws 7. 806; Arist. Pol. ii. 9, § 8]; they did not hold office or learn the use of arms. At Athens, as is well known, the women, of the upper classes at least, lived in an almost Oriental seclusion, and were wholly absorbed in household duties (Laws 7. 805 E). (3) Finally, the government of philosophers had no analogy in the Hellenic world of Plato’s time. He may have taken the suggestion from the stories of the Pythagorean rule in Magna Graecia. But it is also possible that these accounts of the brotherhood of Pythagoras, some of which have reached us on very doubtful authority, may be themselves to a considerable extent coloured and distorted by features adapted from the Republic. Whether this is the case or not, we can hardly doubt that Plato was chiefly indebted to his own imagination for