VI. The Republic may be described as the Spartan constitution appended to a government of philosophers. But in the Laws an Athenian element is also introduced. Many enactments are taken from the Athenian; the four classes are borrowed from the constitution of Cleisthenes, which Plato regards as the best form of Athenian government, and the guardians of the law bear a certain resemblance to the archons. In the constitution of the Laws nearly all officers are elected by a vote more or less popular and by lot. But the assembly only exists for the purposes of election, and has no legislative or executive powers. The Nocturnal Council, which is the highest body in the state, has several of the functions of the ancient Athenian Areopagus, after which it appears to be modelled. Life is to wear, as at Athens, a joyous and festive look; there are to be Bacchic choruses, and men of mature age are encouraged in moderate potations. On the other hand, the common meals, the public education, the crypteia are borrowed from Sparta and not from Athens, and the superintendence of private life, which was to be practised by the governors, has also its prototype in Sparta. The extravagant dislike which Plato shows both to a naval power and to extreme democracy is the reverse of Athenian. The best-governed Hellenic states traced the origin of their laws to individual lawgivers. These were real persons, though we are uncertain how far they originated or only modified the institutions which are ascribed to them. But the lawgiver, though not a myth, was a fixed idea in the mind of the Greek,--as fixed as the Trojan war or the earth-born Cadmus. 'This was what Solon meant or said'--was the form in which the Athenian expressed his own conception of right and justice, or argued a disputed point of law. And the constant reference in the Laws of Plato to the lawgiver is altogether in accordance with Greek modes of thinking and speaking.