Republic

I cannot conceive, Socrates, he said, unless it be in some need that those very constituents have of one another. Perhaps that is a good suggestion, said I; we must examine it and not hold back. First of all, then, let us consider what will be the manner of life of men thus provided. Will they not make bread and wine and garments and shoes? And they will build themselves houses and carry on their work in summer for the most part unclad and unshod and in winter clothed and shod sufficiently? And for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves, and, reclined on rustic beds strewn with bryony and myrtle, they will feast with their children, drinking of their wine thereto, garlanded and singing hymns to the gods in pleasant fellowship, not begetting offspring beyond their means lest they fall into poverty or war? Here Glaucon broke in: No relishes[*](ὄψον is anything eaten with bread, usually meat or fish, as Glaucon means; but Socrates gives it a different sense.) apparently, he said, for the men you describe as feasting. True said I; I forgot that they will also have relishes—salt, of course, and olives and cheese and onions and greens, the sort of things they boil in the country, they will boil up together. But for dessert we will serve them figs and chickpeas and beans, and they will toast myrtle-berries and acorns before the fire, washing them down with moderate potations and so, living in peace and health, they will probably die in old age and hand on a like life to their offspring. And he said, If you were founding a city of pigs,[*](Cf. Introduction p. xiv. By the mouth of the fine gentleman, Glaucon, Plato expresses with humorous exaggeration his own recognition of the inadequacy for ethical and social philosophy of his idyllic ideal. Cf. Mandeville, Preface to Fable of the Bees: A golden age must be as free/ For acorns as for honesty.) Socrates, what other fodder than this would you provide? Why, what would you have, Glaucon? said I. What is customary, he replied; They must recline on couches, I presume, if they are not to be uncomfortable, and dine from tables and have made dishes and sweetmeats such as are now in use. Good, said I, I understand. It is not merely the origin of a city, it seems, that we are considering but the origin of a luxurious city. Perhaps that isn’t such a bad suggestion, either. For by observation of such a city it may be we could discern the origin of justice and injustice in states. The true state I believe to be the one we have described—the healthy state, as it were. But if it is your pleasure that we contemplate also a fevered state, there is nothing to hinder.

For there are some, it appears, who will not be contented with this sort of fare or with this way of life; but couches will have to be added thereto and tables and other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls[*](On flute-girls as the accompaniment of a banquet Cf. Symposium 176 E, Aristophanes Ach. 1090-1092, Catullus 13. 4. But apart from this, the sudden mention of an incongruous item in a list is a device of Aristophanic humor which even the philosophic Emerson did not disdain: The love of little maids and berries.) and cakes—all sorts of all of them. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities,[*](τὰ ἁναγκαῖα predicatively, in the measure prescribed by necessity. Cf. 369 D the indispensable minimum of a city. The historical order is: (1) arts of necessity, (2) arts of pleasure and luxury, (3) disinterested science. Cf. Critias 110 A, Aristotle Met. 981 b 20.) but we must set painting to work and embroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments, must we not?Yes, he said. Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators,[*](θηρευταί and μιμηταί are generalized Platonic categories, including much not ordinarily signified by the words. For a list of such Platonic generalizations Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 500.) many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music—the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors[*](Contractors generally, and especially theatrical managers.)—and the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women’s adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don’t you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet[*](The mothers of the idyllic state nursed their own children, but in the ideal state the wives of the guardians are relieved of this burden by special provision. Cf. 460 D.) and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers[*](The rhetoricians of the empire liked to repeat that no barber was known at Rome in the first 200 or 300 years of the city.) and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures[*](Illogical idiom referring to the swine. Cf. 598 C.) in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten, shall we not? Yes. Doctors, too, are something whose services[*](χρείαις: Greek idiom could use either singular or plural. Cf. 410 A; Phaedo 87 C; Laws 630 E. The plural here avoids hiatus.) we shall be much more likely to require if we live thus than as before? Much. And the territory, I presume, that was then sufficient to feed the then population, from being adequate will become too small. Is that so or not? It is. Then we shall have to cut out a cantle[*](Cf. Isocrates iii. 34.) of our neighbor’s land if we are to have enough for pasture and ploughing, and they in turn of ours if they too abandon themselves to the unlimited[*](Cf. 591 D. Natural desires are limited. Luxury and unnatural forms of wealth are limitless, as the Greek moralists repeat from Solon down.) acquisition of wealth, disregarding the limit set by our necessary wants. Inevitably, Socrates. We shall go to war[*](The unnecessary desires are the ultimate causes of wars.Phaedo 66 C. The simple life once abandoned, war is inevitable. My lord, said St. Francis to the Bishop of Assisi, if we possessed property we should have need of arms for its defense (Sabatier, p. 81). Similarly that very dissimilar thinker, Mandeville. Cf. on 372 C. Plato recognizes the struggle for existence (Spencer, Data of Ethics, 6), and the bellum omnium contra omnes, Laws 625 E. Cf. Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, i, 2: The Republic of Plato seems in many respects divergent from the reality. And yet he contemplates war as a permanent, unalterable fact to be provided for in the ideal state. Spencer on the contrary contemplates a completely evolved society in which the ethics of militarism will disappear.) as the next step, Glaucon—or what will happen? What you say, he said. And we are not yet to speak, said I, of any evil or good effect of war, but only to affirm that we have further[*](i.e. as well as the genesis of society. 369 B.) discovered the origin of war, namely, from those things from which[*](ἐξ ὧν: i.e. ἐκ τούτων ἐξ ὧν, namely the appetites and the love of money.) the greatest disasters, public and private, come to states when they come. Certainly.