ABSTRACT
Plato grew to manhood in the brilliant climax and devastating catastrophe of fifth-century Athenian democracy. The society of fifth-century Athens was strongly mercantile, and Athenian ships and Athenian commercial arrangements dominated the Aegean. A code of international law, both public and private, evolved and found its symbol and enforcement in Athens, the "imperial" city, and the Athenian fleet. Again, as a necessary consequence the development of Athenian history was marked by sharp political conflict—between landowners and dispossessed, great landowners and small peasants, great landowners and wealthy merchants, landed patricians and the democracy, merchants, usurers, peasants, and artisans. The alliances and quarrels between these various groups constitute the warp and woof of Athenian political history. Ancient society, we may say, was based on slave labor, in contrast to Oriental society, which could employ slaves only to build cult objects like temples and pyramids, and feudal society, based on the free peasant.
