[Side-note: Platonic type of character compared with Xenophontic, is like the Athenian compared with the Spartan.] The type of character here contemplated by Plato deserves particular notice, as contrasted with that of Xenophon. It is the Athenian type against the Spartan. Periklês in his funeral oration, delivered at Athens in the first year of the Peloponnesian war, boasts that the Athenians had already reached a type similar to this--and that too, without any special individual discipline, legally enforced: that they combined courage, ready energy, and combined action--with developed intelligence, the love of discourse, accessibility to persuasion, and taste for the Beautiful. That which Plato aims at accomplishing in his Guardians, by means of a state-education at once musical and gymnastical--Periklês declares to have been already realised at Athens without any state-education, through the spontaneous tendencies of individuals called forth and seconded by the general working of the political system.[44] He compliments his countrymen as having accomplished this object without the unnecessary rigour of a positive state-discipline, and without any other restraints than the special injunctions and prohibitions of a known law. It is this absence of state-discipline to which both Xenophon and Plato are opposed. Both of them follow Lykurgus in proclaiming the insufficiency of mere prohibitions; and in demanding a positive routine of duty to be prescribed by authority, and enforced upon individuals through life. In regard to end, Plato is more in harmony with Periklês: in regard to means, with Xenophon. [Footnote 44: Thucyd. ii. 38-39-40. The comparison between this speech and the third book of Plato's Republic (pp. 401-402-410-411), is very interesting. The words of Perikles, [Greek: philokalou=men ga\r met' eu)telei/as kai\ philosophou=men a)/neu malaki/as], taken along with the chapter preceding, mark that concurrent development of [Greek: to\ philo/sophon] and [Greek: to\ thumoeide\s] which Plato provides, and the avoidance of those defects which spring from the separate and exclusive cultivation of either.] Plato's views respecting special laws and criminal procedure generally are remarkable. He not only manifests that repugnance towards the Dikastery--which is common to Sokrates, Xenophon, Isokrates, and Aristophanes--but he excludes it almost entirely from his system, as being superseded by the constant public discipline of the Guardians. [Side-note: Professional soldiers are the proper modern standard of comparison with the regulations of Plato and Xenophon.]