1. The first author quoted is Plato, “who still saw here and there the vestiges of primitive community,” and M. Viollet tells us that he finds this in the Laws of Plato (Book III.). I turn to the passage mentioned, and this is what I find: “In very early times men lived in a pastoral state, supporting themselves by their herds of cattle and by hunting. At that time they had no laws. As to government, they knew no other than the δυναστεία, the authority, that is, of the master over his family and slaves. Like the Cyclops of Homer, they had neither public assemblies nor justice; they lived in caverns; and each ruled over his wife and children without troubling himself about his neighbours.” This is what Plato says, describing from imagination a primitive savage state. It must be some strange illusion which makes M. Viollet suppose that this passage describes men as cultivating the land in common. Plato says that they did not cultivate it at all. Where does he see that the land belonged to the people? Plato says that at this time there did not even exist a people. Where does he see that men were associated for purposes of cultivation? Plato says that each family lived apart, “without troubling itself about its neighbours.” M. Viollet then has taken this passage in precisely the opposite sense to the right one. Go through all the writings of the philosopher and you will find that he has nowhere said “that in his time he still saw the ruins of a primitive community.” Plato has, it is true, endowed his ideal city with a particular system of community in land; but he never says that it was practised in any actually existing city. Our first authority, then, is proved to have been misrepresented. 2. M. Viollet next refers to Virgil, who, in the Georgics (i. 125), describes a time “when the soil was neither divided nor marked out by boundaries, and when everything was common.” This at first sight seems convincing. The poet’s verse is correctly quoted.[199] But observe the context. The whole passage is an imaginary description of a time when men did not cultivate the soil: _Ante Jovem nulli subigebant arva coloni.... Ipsa tellus omnia liberius, nullo poscente, ferebat_. So long as men did not cultivate the ground, there could be no question of dividing it among them as private property. Virgil goes on to say that afterwards man learnt to till the ground, _ut sulcis frumenti quæreret herbam_; but he no longer says that everything was in common. It appears, then, that if M. Viollet had given it a little more attention, he would have dispensed with the use of this passage; for it describes savage life and has no connection at all with community of land in the agricultural state. What can the golden age, whether it existed or not, prove concerning the social life of Greek cities?