“Let a man go out to war from twenty to sixty years, and for a woman if there appear any need of making use of her in military service, let the time of service be after she shall have brought forth children up to fifty years of age” (Laws, VI., 785).

Having thus abolished woman, except as a breeder of sons, Plato proceeds to eliminate marriage and morality.  “The brave man is to have more wives than others, and he is to have first choice in such matters more than others” (Republic, V., 468).  All wives, however, must be in common, no man having a monopoly of a woman.  Nor must there be any choice or preference for individuals.  The mothers are to be arranged by officials, who will see that the good pair with the good, the bad with the bad, the offspring of the latter being destroyed, just as is done in the breeding of animals.  Maternal and filial love also must be abolished, infants being taken from their mothers and educated in common.  Nor must husband and wife remain together longer than is necessary for the perpetuation of the species.  This is the only object of marriage in Plato’s opinion; for he recommends (Laws, VI., 784) that if a couple have no children after being married ten years, they should be “divorced for their mutual benefit.”

In all history there is not a more extraordinary spectacle than that presented by the greatest philosopher of Greece, proposing in his ideal republic to eliminate every variety of family affection, thus degrading the relations of the sexes to a level inferior in some respects even to that of Australian savages, who at least allow mothers to rear their own children.  And this philosopher, the most radical enemy love has ever known—­practically a champion of promiscuity—­has, by a strange irony of fate, lent his name to the purest and most exalted form of love![307]

SPARTAN OPPORTUNITIES FOR LOVE

Had Plato lived a few centuries earlier he might have visited at least one Greek state where his barbarous ideal of the sexual relations was to a considerable extent realized.  The Spartan law-maker Lycurgus shared his views regarding marriage, and had the advantage of being able to enforce them.  He, too, believed that human beings should be bred like cattle.  He laughed, so Plutarch tells us in his biographic sketch, at those who, while exercising care in raising dogs and horses, allowed unworthy husbands to have offspring.  This, in itself, was a praiseworthy thought; but the method adopted by Lycurgus to overcome that objection was subversive of all morality and affection.  He considered it advisable that among worthy men there should be a community of wives and children, for which purpose he tried to suppress jealousy, ridiculing those who insisted on a conjugal monopoly and who even engaged in fights on account of it.  Elderly men were urged to share their wives with younger men