and then Plato passes on to the origin of society. In the "Republic," the State is made to spring from the mutual needs of men; but here it is developed from the House—in fact, we find in this treatise the "patriarchal" theory.
In the illimitable past, says Plato, there must have been thousands and thousands of cities which rose and flourished for a time, and then were swept away; for at certain fixed periods a deluge comes, which covers the whole earth and destroys all existing civilisation, leaving only a vast expanse of desert, and a few survivors on the mountain-tops. This remnant clings together with the instinct of self-preservation. Each little family, under the strict rule of the "house father," lives in a primitive and simple manner on the produce of its flocks and herds, like the Homeric Cyclops:—
Spring to their hand; but they no councils know,
Nor justice, but for ever lawless go.
Housed in the hills, they neither buy nor sell,
No kindly offices demand or show;
Each in the hollow cave where he doth dwell
Gives law to wife and children, as he thinketh well."[1]
Gradually several of these isolated units coalesced, and thus the family developed into the tribe, and several tribes uniting made the State. Then came a government, and a code of laws.
- ↑ Homer, Od. ix., Worsley's transl. There is an interesting account of this patriarchal age in Maine's Ancient Law, chap. v.
