line. 66 Hippodamos," he says, " was ambitious of reaching eminence in all kinds of knowledge, and is the first author who, without any practice in affairs, wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government. His republic consisted of ten thousand men, divided into the three classes of artificers, husbandmen, and soldiers. The territory he likewise divides into three portions; the sacred, destined for the various exigencies of public worship, (church lands;) the common, to be cultivated for the common benefit of the soldiers; and the private, to be separately appropriated by the husbandmen. His laws also were divided into three kinds, because he thought there were only three sorts of injuries; insults, damages, and death. He instituted a court of appeal, composed of select senators. Sentence, he thought, ought not to be passed by votes or ballot; but that each judge should be furnished with a tablet, on which he should write guilty, if he simply condemned, and which he should leave unwritten, if he simply acquitted; but on which, if he found the defendant in some measure guilty, but not to the full extent of the indictment, he should mark this difference, stating how much the culprit should pay, or what punishment he should suffer.

"As the law formerly stood, Hippodamos observed, that in all cases requiring this distinction, the judge, who was bound by oath to observe justice in his decisions, must commit perjury whenever he either simply and positively condemned, or simply and positively acquitted. Hippodamos

also established a law in favour of those whose inventions tended to improve the constitution of the commonwealth; they were to be distinguished by peculiar honours; and the children of those who fell in battle were to be maintained and educated at the public expense. This last regulation, first introduced by the architect of Miletos, has been adopted by Athens and other cities. According to his plan of polity, the magistrates were all of them to be elected by the free and impartial suffrages of their fellow-citizens, consisting of the three classes of men above mentioned: the concerns of the state, the affairs of strangers, the care and management of orphans, formed the three important objects intrusted to their administration."

66

It will be seen that in the Republic of Hippodamos, more care is bestowed on the material structure of the state, than on the spirit by which it was to be animated. But let us listen to the judgment which Aristotle, who was a severe political critic, passes upon this imaginary commonwealth :'Such," he observes, are the leading features of the Republic of Hippodamos, in examining which the first difficulty that occurs has reference to his division of the citizens. The husbandmen, the artificers, and the soldiers, are all of them to be members of the state; but the husbandmen, destitute of arms, will maintain a very unequal conflict with the soldiers, if these last should be tempted to enslave them. An association of men, so unequally treated by the legislator, must continually tend to dissolution. The great executive

Can

magistracies, together with every office of military command, devolve of course on the soldiers. the two remaining classes be expected to wish the continuance of a government, from whose honours and emoluments they are for ever to be excluded? A revolution, therefore, must speedily take place, unless the military be more powerful than both the husbandmen and the artificers united; and if they actually be so, of what signification is it, that these degraded classes are summoned to give their votes at elections, and mocked with the appellation of citizens? Artificers, subsisting by the fruits of their own labour, are essential to the existence of every city or community. But the class of husbandmen as regulated by Hippodamos, by what tie of utility are they linked to the state? The common lands might be cultivated by the military themselves, which would destroy the distinction between the soldiers and the peasants. They might be cultivated by men destitute of private estates; and this would form a fourth class, distinct from the husbandmen of Hippodamos, who, by a most awkward regulation, are to labour one district, consisting of their private estates, for their own maintenance, and another, consisting of the common lands, for the maintenance of the military; a most useless distinction of property, and most absurd partition of employment, by which much valuable time would be lost, and much unnecessary expense incurred."

He is equally severe upon the judicial regulations of this ancient Utopia, which, he insists, "are

not less blamable, since their direct tendency is to convert judges into arbiters, and thereby to arm them with an arbitrary power of decision, which can never be expedient to the parties, unless it be specially granted, and voluntarily entrusted. In matters submitted to arbitration, communication of sentiment and discussion of opinion are not only allowed, but required. In courts of justice most legislators have strictly prohibited both; commanding each judge simply to condemn, or simply to acquit, as his own reason directs. By the innovations of Hippodamos, legal proceedings would be involved in inextricable confusion. The defendant might be ordered by one judge to pay twenty minæ, by another more, and by a third less; each might differ from every other, and all from the plaintiff. The sentence would be thus split into such a multitude of parts, as it would be difficult to collect, and impossible to unite; and all these difficulties would be created and encountered, in order to obviate an imaginary inconvenience; for it is false that the judge is perjured, who simply acquits a party sued for twenty minæ, although he may believe that he really owes half that sum. The judge would, on the contrary, be perjured if he did not acquit him; and in all similar cases, the fault lies not in the law or in the judge, but in the libel and in the plaintiff, whose cause is not correctly stated, and whose action is not fairly brought." 12

12 I have here made use of the able, but somewhat paraphrastic, and not always faithful translation of Dr. Gillies, ii. 6.

Notices of several other imaginary commonwealths have been preserved, chiefly by Aristotle; as that, for example, of Phaleas of Chalcedon, in which the principal object was the equalization of property; but the most extraordinary Utopia of which we discover any trace among ancient writers, is the one briefly described in an obscure fragment of Theopompos of Chios. This writer, whose diligence and ability as an historian entitled him to the praise of Athenæus and Dionysius of Halicarnassos, collected in the course of his reading a number of extraordinary relations, which he published under the title of avμacía. In this work, as Servius, in his Commentary on the Sixth book of the Eneid, observes, the singular romance I am about to notice was originally found. But the Collection itself has long since perished, and this fragment is all, I believe, now left by which to judge of its nature and value.

Theopompos, says the sophist, to whom we are indebted for the story, has preserved a certain dialogue, which once took place between Seilenos and Midas, king of Phrygia. This Seilenos, as is well known, was the son of a nymph, inferior in condition to the gods, but endued with immortality, and by nature superior to mankind. He conversed familiarly with Midas upon many subjects, and, among other things, informed him that Europe, Asia, and Libya, are but so many islands com

Gottling, who, like Dr. Gillies himself, loves to alter the arrangement of the text, calls it chapter v. Bekker preserves the divisions of the received editions.