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 to crush anything like heresy or dissent among the members of the social body. The state, if it existed at all, must be at one with itself; and they would point to Sparta as a triumphant proof that a rational character night be created by the all-powerful hand of a legislator like Lycurgus. Pericles indeed might boast that at Athens there were no sour looks at a neighbour's eccentricities, and that it was emphatically

but, as we have seen in the case of Socrates, Athenian tolerance might be tried too far, and theories which tended in their view to outrage religion and morality, could not be endured with the same equanimity as in our sceptical and so-called enlightened age.

The opening scene in the "Republic" is such an excellent specimen of Plato's powers of description, that it is well worth giving in full. It is Socrates who speaks:—

I went down yesterday to the Piræus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, to offer up prayer to the goddess, and also from a wish to see how the festival, then to be held for the first time, would be celebrated. I was very much pleased with the native Athenian procession, though that of the Thracians appeared to be no less brilliant. We had finished our prayers, and satisfied our curiosity, and were returning to the city, when Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us at a distance as we were on our way towards home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant came behind me, took hold of my cloak, and said, "Polemarchus bids you wait." I turned round, and asked him where his master was. "There he is," he replied, "coming on behind: pray wait for him."