THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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in which there was only pleasure and plenty. Unencumbered with holy inscriptions, but provided in an intensified way with good nature, with that outside man, which
Euemeros had also trusted. It is Iamboulos' ‘Island of the Sun’, a communist and collective feast; hence thoroughly popular and yet new in its political festive character.
Wishes that were more than popular, namely rebellious ones, may also have played a part here. Iamboulos displays no frivolity, the surviving fragment of his work is at
once vigorous, ceremonial and cheerful. It sweeps away slaves and masters, posits mutual work and joy, is consistent in both. That is why this novel of an ideal state
also continued to be recalled for centuries, it was almost placed beside that of Plato. The fragments were well­known to the Renaissance, and also circulated in Italian
and French translations. Some influence on Thomas More and his ‘Utopia’ is probable; Campanella's ‘Civitas solis’ has points of contact with Iamboulos not just in its
title but also in its collective ethos. The collectivism in Iamboulos is more detailed and better thought­out in economic terms than that in Euemeros. Though a fabulous
nature myth, in the shape of a thousand­fold fertility, is not lacking here either. This tropical element is conditioned in terms of the novel by the situation of the ‘Island of
the Sun’, in practical terms it is a stopgap for still undeveloped forces of production. The Dionysian cult and the cult of Helios, from another age than the patriarchal age
or age of masters, may of course also have influenced the Hellenistic utopia. Such cults were still alive around the eastern Mediterranean, as cults of Dionysian liberation
in fact, as the cancellation of all class differences in intoxication and feasting. Iamboulos transfers his novel of an ideal state to seven equatorial islands: the happiness of
all is established there by the total lack of property. By alternating work in regular rotation, by doing away with the division of labour, and by deliberate education
towards agreement and harmony. Slavery is likewise abolished, as is every kind of caste and Platonic utopia based on caste; everyone is subject to the same
requirement to work, a totally unprecedented demand, isolated in a backward and forward direction, both in antiquity and in the feudal society which followed it. The
fact that in this connection no separate economic systems remain even for house, home, and family rounds off the collective image of this utopia, the last and most
radical to have been devised by antiquity. The uniting element still contained in the feast was also meant to enliven and cheer the requirement to work; tropical nature
helped things along, added plenty and ease to the rotation of work. The seven equatorial islands thus thoroughly give the impression of lying in