Having become one of the chief inspirers of the imperial policy, Marsilius accompanied Louis of Bavaria to Italy, where he preached or circulated written attacks against the pope, especially at Milan, and where he came within the sight of the realization of his wildest utopias.
The idea of a Utopia is, even in literature, far older than More's romance; it appears in the Timaeus of Plato and is fully developed in his Republic. The idealized description of Sparta in Plutarch's life of Lycurgus belongs to the same class of literary Utopias, though it professes to be historical.
Many Utopias, such as the Fable of the Bees and Erewhon, are designed to satirize existing social conditions as well as to depict a more perfect civilization.
Like other Utopias, it is an easy-going compromise between dreams and possibilities.
