Plato’s feminist doctrines are most clearly stated in the fifth book of the _Republic_ and the sixth, seventh, and eighth books of the _Laws_. These works are accessible to English readers (or, rather, their rough substance is accessible, for we can never reproduce the delicate music of Plato’s prose, and his subtle irony evaporates in English) in Jowett’s translation, and in the excellent version of the _Republic_ by Davies and Vaughan. But it may be convenient to give a brief summary of his argument. In the fifth book of the _Republic_ the ideal State is being discussed, and the rule κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων (‘among friends everything is common property’) has been laid down. It has, moreover, been made applicable to wives and children, for Plato at first hardly escapes from the fallacy that a man’s wife is as much a piece of property as a dog or a table. The organization of the communistic _régime_ in detail then comes up for consideration, but it is unanimously resolved that the question of community of women is of vital importance and must be explained at once. The philosopher accordingly, with some pretended reluctance, begins with a prayer to Nemesis—‘I am on a slippery road, and fear lest missing my footing I drag my friends down with me’—and thus approaches his subject: ‘The aim of our theory was, I believe, to make our men, as it were, guardians of a flock?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Let us keep on the same track and give corresponding rules for the propagation of the species, and for rearing the young; and let us observe whether we find them suitable or not.’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Thus. Do we think that the females of watch-dogs ought to guard the flock along with the males, and hunt with them, and share in all their other duties; or that the females ought to stay at home, because they are disabled by having to breed and rear the cubs, while the males are to labour and be charged with all the care of the flocks?’ ‘We expect them to share in whatever is to be done; only we treat the females as the weaker, and the males as the stronger.’ ‘Is it possible to use animals for the same work if you do not give them the same training and education?’ ‘It is not.’ ‘If, then, we are to employ the women in the same duties as the men, we must give them the same instructions?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘To the men we give music and gymnastic.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then we must train the women also in the same two arts, giving them, besides, a military education and treating them in the same way as the men.’