Economics

Where is there greater facility for passing the winter comforted by generous fire and warm baths, than on a farm? Where is it pleasanter to spend the summer enjoying the cool waters and breezes and shade, than in the country?

What other art yields more seemly first-fruits for the gods, or gives occasion for more crowded festivals? What art is dearer to servants, or pleasanter to a wife, or more delightful to children, or more agreeable to friends?

To me indeed it seems strange, if any free man has come by a possession pleasanter than this, or has found out an occupation pleasanter than this or more useful for winning a livelihood.

Yet again, the earth willingly[*](Or θεὸς οὖα, is a goddess and.) teaches righteousness to those who can learn; for the better she is served, the more good things she gives in return.

And if haply those who are occupied in farming, and are receiving a rigorous and manly teaching, are forced at any time to quit their lands by great armies, they, as men well-found in mind and in body, can enter the country of those who hinder them, and take sufficient for their support. Often in time of war it is safer to go armed in search of food than to gather it with farming implements.

Moreover, husbandry helps to train men for corporate effort. For men are essential to an expedition against an enemy, and the cultivation of the soil demands the aid of men.

Therefore nobody can be a good farmer unless he makes his labourers both eager and obedient; and the captain who leads men against an enemy must contrive to secure the same results by rewarding those who act as brave men should act and punishing the disobedient.

And it is no less necessary for a farmer to encourage his labourers often, than for a general to encourage his men. And slaves need the stimulus of good hopes no less, nay, even more than free men, to make them steadfast.

It has been nobly said that husbandry is the mother and nurse of the other arts. For when husbandry flourishes, all the other arts are in good fettle; but whenever the land is compelled to lie waste, the other arts of landsmen and mariners alike well-nigh perish.

Well, Socrates, replied Critobulus to this, I think you are right so far. But in husbandry a man can rely very little on forecast. For hailstorms and frosts sometimes, and droughts and rains and blight ruin schemes well planned and well carried out; and sometimes well-bred stock is miserably destroyed by an outbreak of disease.

Well, said Socrates in reply,[*](Mem. I. iv. 15; iv. iii. 12. Cyrop. I. vi. 46.) I thought you knew, Critobulus, that the operations of husbandry no less than those of war are in the hands of the gods. And you observe, I suppose, that men engaged in war try to propitate the gods before taking action; and with sacrifices and omens seek to know what they ought to do and what they ought not to do;

and for the business of husbandry do you think it less necessary to ask the blessing of the gods? Know of a surety that right-minded men offer prayer for fruits and crops and cattle and horses and sheep, aye and for all that they possess.

Well, Socrates, I think you are right when you bid me try to begin every undertaking with the gods’ help, since the gods control the works of peace no less than of war. We will try, then, to do so. But now go back to the point where you broke off in your talk about estate management, and try to expound the subject completely step by step, since after hearing what you have said so far, I seem even now to discern rather more clearly than before what I must do to earn my living.

I suggest then, resumed Socrates, that we should first recapitulate those points of our discussion on which we have already reached agreement, in order that we may try to agree as thoroughly, if possible, when we go through the remaining steps.

O yes; when several are jointly interested in money, it is pleasant to have no disagreement in going over the accounts; and it is equally pleasant for us, as the interested parties in a discussion, to agree as we go over the several steps.

Well now, we thought that estate management is the name of a branch of knowledge, and this knowledge appeared to be that by which men can increase estates, and an estate appeared to be identical with the total of one’s property, and we said that property is that which is useful for supplying a livelihood, and useful things turned out to be all those things that one knows how to use.

Now we thought that it is impossible to learn all the sciences, and we agreed with our states in rejecting the so-called illiberal arts, because they seem to spoil the body and unnerve the mind.

We said[*](Nothing to this effect occurs in c. iv.) that the clearest proof of this would be forthcoming, if in the course of a hostile invasion the husbandmen and craftsmen were made to sit apart, and each group were asked whether they voted for defending the country or withdrawing from the open and guarding the fortresses.

We thought that in these circumstances the men who have to do with the land would give their vote for defending it, the craftsmen for not fighting, but sitting still, as they have been brought up to do, aloof from toil and danger.