Laudator Temporis Acti

Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, tr. Gilbert Highet, Vol. III: The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato (1944; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 218-219, with note on p. 337:

Panhellenism for Plato did not mean a general planing down of all differences, and a resolution of all individuality into a flabby average Greekness, so that it would be easier to manage. He thought the worst thing that could happen was the mingling of all Greek stocks with one another.²⁷ He held that that was just as bad as the mingling of Greeks and barbarians.

27. Cf. Laws 692e-693a.

Plato, Laws 3.692e-693a (tr. R.G. Bury):

Many are the discreditable charges one would have to bring against Greece in relating the events of that war; indeed, it would be wrong to say that Greece defended herself, for had not the bondage that threatened her been warded off by the concerted policy of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, practically all the Greek races would have been confused together by now, and barbarians confused with Greeks and Greeks with barbarians,—just as the races under the Persian empire today are either scattered abroad or jumbled together and live in a miserable plight.

πολλὰ δὲ λέγων ἄν τις τὰ τότε γενόμενα περὶ ἐκεῖνον τὸν πόλεμον, τῆς Ἑλλάδος οὐδαμῶς εὐσχήμονα ἂν κατηγοροῖ· οὐδ᾽ αὖ ἀμύνασθαι τήν γε Ἑλλάδα λέγων ὀρθῶς ἂν λέγοι, ἀλλ᾽ εἰ μὴ τό τε Ἀθηναίων καὶ τὸ Λακεδαιμονίων κοινῇ διανόημα ἤμυνεν τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν δουλείαν, σχεδὸν ἂν ἤδη πάντ᾽ ἦν μεμειγμένα τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων γένη ἐν ἀλλήλοις, καὶ βάρβαρα ἐν Ἕλλησι καὶ Ἑλληνικὰ ἐν βαρβάροις, καθάπερ ὧν Πέρσαι τυραννοῦσι τὰ νῦν διαπεφορημένα καὶ συμπεφορημένα κακῶς ἐσπαρμένα κατοικεῖται.

ἐσπαρμένα del. G. Cobet, "Platonica," Mnemosyne 2 (1874) 241-283 (p. 260): ἐφθαρμένα R.G. Bury, "On Some Passages in Plato's Laws," Classical Review 35 (1921) 145-146 (p. 145)