Neither of these three relations lent itself readily to the Platonic vein of sentiment and ideality: neither of them led to any grand results either in war--or political ambition--or philosophical speculation; the three great roads, in one or other of which the Grecian ideality travelled. We know from the Republic that Plato did not appreciate the value of the family life, or the purposes for which men marry, according to the above passage cited from Demosthenes. In this point, Plato differs from Xenophon, who, in his Oeconomicus, enlarges much (in the discourse of Ischomachus) upon the value of the conjugal union, with a view to prudential results and good management of the household; while he illustrates the sentimental and affectionate side of it, in the story of Pantheia and Abradates (Cyropædia).] [Footnote 2: See the Oeconomicus of Xenophon, cap. iii. 12, vii. 5.] [Footnote 3: The beginning of the Platonic Charmidês illustrates what is here said, pp. 154-155; also that of the Protagoras and Lysis, pp. 205-206. Xenophon, Sympos. i. 8-11; iv. 11, 15. Memorab. i. 3, 8-14 (what Sokrates observes to Xenophon about Kritobulus). Dikæarchus (companion of Aristotle) disapproved the important influence which Plato assigned to Eros (Cicero, Tusc. D. iv. 34-71). If we pass to the second century after the Christian Era, we find some speakers in Athenæus blaming severely the amorous sentiments of Sokrates and the narrative of Alkibiades, as recited in the Platonic Symposium (v. 180-187; xi. 506-508 C). Athenæus remarks farther, that Plato, writing in this strain, had little right to complain (as we read in the Republic) of the licentious compositions of Homer and other poets, and to exclude them from his model city. Maximus Tyrius, in one of his four discourses (23-5) on the [Greek: e)rôtikê\] of Sokrates, makes the same remark as Athenæus about the inconsistency of Plato in banishing Homer from the model city, and composing what we read in the Symposion; he farther observes that the erotic dispositions of Sokrates provoked no censure from his numerous enemies at the time (though they assailed him upon so many other points), but had incurred great censure from contemporaries of Maximus himself, to whom he replies--[Greek: tou\s nuni\ katêgo/rous] (23, 6-7). The comparisons which he institutes (23, 9) between the sentiments and phrases of Sokrates, and those of Sappho and Anakreon, are very curious. Dionysius of Halikarnassus speaks of the [Greek: e)gkô/mia] on Eros in the Symposion, as "unworthy of serious handling or of Sokrates". (De Admir. Vi Dic. Demosth. p. 1027.)