Republic

Wealth and poverty, said I, since the one brings luxury, idleness and innovation, and the other illiberality and the evil of bad workmanship in addition to innovation. Assuredly, he said; yet here is a point for your consideration, Socrates, how our city, possessing no wealth, will be able to wage war, especially if compelled to fight a large and wealthy state. Obviously, said I, it would be rather difficult to fight one such, but easier to fight two.[*](Apparent paradox to stimulate attention. Cf. 377 A, 334 A, 382 A, 414 B-C, 544 C, Laws 919 B. For images from boxing cf. Aristotle Met. 985 a 14, and Demosthenes’ statement (Philip. i. 40-41) that the Athenians fight Philip as the barbarians box. The Greeks felt that lesser breeds without the law were inferior in this manly art of self-defense. Cf. the amusing description of the boxing of Orestes and Plylades by the ἄγγελος in Euripides I. T. 1366 ff.) What did you mean by that? he said. Tell me first, I said, whether, if they have to fight, they will not be fighting as athletes of war[*](Cf. 416 E, 403 E.) against men of wealth? Yes, that is true, he said. Answer me then, Adeimantus. Do you not think that one boxer perfectly trained in the art could easily fight two fat rich men who knew nothing of it? Not at the same time perhaps, said he. Not even, said I, if he were allowed to retreat[*](Cf. Herodotus iv. 111.) and then turn and strike the one who came up first, and if he repeated the procedure many times under a burning and stifling sun? Would not such a fighter down even a number of such opponents? Doubtless, he said; it wouldn’t be surprising if he did. Well, don’t you think that the rich have more of the skill and practice[*](Two elements of the triad φύσις, μελέτη, ἐπιστήμη. Cf. 374 D.) of boxing than of the art of war? I do, he said. It will be easy, then, for our athletes in all probability to fight with double and triple their number. I shall have to concede the point, he said, for I believe you are right. Well then, if they send an embassy to the other city and say what is in fact true[*](Cf. Herodotus vii. 233 τὸν ἀληθέστατον τῶν λόγων, Catullus x. 9 id quod erat.): We make no use of gold and silver nor is it lawful for us but it is for you: do you then join us in the war and keep the spoils of the enemy,[*](The style is of intentional Spartan curtness.)—do you suppose any who heard such a proposal would choose to fight against hard and wiry hounds rather than with the aid of the hounds against fat and tender sheep? I think not. Yet consider whether the accumulation of all the wealth of other cities in one does not involve danger for the state that has no wealth. What happy innocence, said I, to suppose that you can properly use the name city of any other than the one we are constructing. Why, what should we say? he said. A greater predication, said I, must be applied to the others. For they are each one of them many cities, not a city, as it goes in the game.[*](As they say in the game or in the jest. The general meaning is plain. We do not know enough about the game called πόλεις (cf. scholiast, Suidas, Hesychius, and Photius) to be more specific. Cf. for conjectures and deatils Adam’s note, and for the phrase Thompson on Meno 77 A.)

There are two at the least at enmity with one another, the city of the rich and the city of the poor,[*](Cf. Aristotle Politics 1316 b 7 and 1264 a 25.) and in each of these there are many. If you deal with them as one you will altogether miss the mark, but if you treat them as a multiplicity by offering to the one faction the property, the power, the very persons of the other, you will continue always to have few enemies and many allies. And so long as your city is governed soberly in the order just laid down, it will be the greatest of cities. I do not mean greatest in repute, but in reality, even though it have only a thousand[*](Aristotle, Politics 1261 b 38, takes this as the actual number of the military class. Sparta, according to Xenephon, Rep. Lac. 1. 1, was τῶν ὀλιγανθρωποτάτων πόλεων, yet one of the strongest. Cf. also Aristotle Politics 1270 a 14 f. In the LawsPlato proposes the number 5040 which Aristotle thinks too large, Politics 1265 a 15.) defenders. For a city of this size that is really one[*](Commentators, I think, miss the subtlety of this sentence; μίαν means truly one as below in D, and its antithesis is not so much πολλάς as δοκούσας which means primarily the appearance of unity, and only secondarily refers to μεγάλην. καί then is rather and than even. So large a city that is really one you will not easily find, but the semblance (of one big city) you will find in cities many and many times the size of this. Cf. also 462 A-B, and my paper Plato’s Laws and the Unity of Plato’s Thought, Class. Phil . 1914, p. 358. For Aristotle’s comment Cf. Politics 1261 a 15.) you will not easily discover either among Greeks or barbarians—but of those that seem so you will find many and many times the size of this. Or do you think otherwise?No, indeed I don’t, said he. Would not this, then, be the best rule and measure for our governors of the proper size of the city and of the territory that they should mark off for a city of that size and seek no more? What is the measure? I think, said I, that they should let it grow so long as in its growth it consents[*](The Greek idea of government required that the citizens know one another. They would not have called Babylon, London, or Chicago cities. Cf. Introduction p. xxviii, Fowler, Greek City State, passim, Newman, Aristotle Politics vol. i. Introduction pp. 314-315, and Isocrates’ complaint that Athens was too large, Antidosis 171-172.) to remain a unity, but no further. Excellent, he said. Then is not this still another injunction that we should lay upon our guardians, to keep guard in every way that the city shall not be too small, nor great only in seeming, but that it shall be a sufficient city and one? That behest will perhaps be an easy[*](Ironical, of course.) one for them, he said. And still easier,[*](Ironical, of course.) haply, I said, is this that we mentioned before[*](Cf. on 415 B.) when we said that if a degenerate offspring was born to the guardians he must be sent away to the other classes, and likewise if a superior to the others he must be enrolled among the guardians; and the purport of all this was[*](The special precept with regard to the guardians was significant of the universal principle, one man, one task. Cf. 443 C, 370 B-C (note), 394 E, 374 A-D, Laws 846 D-847 B.) that the other citizens too must be sent to the task for which their natures were fitted, one man to one work, in order that each of them fulfilling his own function may be not many men, but one, and so the entire city may come to be not a multiplicity but a unity.[*](It is a natural growth, not an artificial contrivance. For Aristotle’s criticism cf. Politics 1261 A.) Why yes, he said, this is even more trifling than that. These are not, my good Adeimantus, as one might suppose, numerous and difficult injunctions that we are imposing upon them, but they are all easy, provided they guard, as the saying is, the one great thing[*](The proverbial one great thing (one thing needful). The proverb perhaps is: πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα (Suidas). Cf. Archil. fr. 61 ἓν δ’ ἐπίσταμαι μέγα, Politicus 297 A μέχριπερ ἂν ἓν μέγα φυλάττωσι.)—or instead of great let us call it sufficient.[*](μέγα has the unfavorable associations of ἔπος μέγα, and ἱκανόν, adequate, is characteristically preferred by Plato.) What is that? he said.

Their education and nurture, I replied. For if a right education[*](Cf. on 416 E. Plato of course has in mind the education already described and the higher education of books VI. and VII.) makes of them reasonable men they will easily discover everything of this kind—and other principles that we now pass over, as that the possession of wives and marriage, and the procreation of children and all that sort of thing should be made as far as possible the proverbial goods of friends that are common.[*](The indirect introduction of the proverb is characteristic of Plato’s style. Cf. on 449 C, where the paradox thus lightly introduced is taken up for serious discussion. Quite fantastic is the hypothesis on which much ink has been wasted, that the Ecclesiazusae of Aristophanes was suggested by this sentence and is answered by the fifth book. Cf. introduction pp. xxv and xxxiv. It ought not to be necessary to repeat that Plato’s communism applies only to the guardians, and that its main purpose is to enforce their disinterestedness. Cf. Introduction pp. xv and note a, xxxiv, xlii, xliv, and Plato’s Laws and the Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 358. Aristotle’s criticism is that the possessions of friends ought to be common in use but not in ownership. Cf. Politics 1263 a 30, and Euripides Andromache 376-377.) Yes, that would be the best way, he said. And, moreover, said I, the state, if it once starts[*](Cf. Politcus 305 D τὴν ἀρχήν τε καὶ ὁρμήν.) well, proceeds as it were in a cycle[*](No concrete metaphor of wheel, hook or circle seems to be intended, but only the cycle of cumulative effect of education on nature and nature on education, described in what follows. See the evidence collected in my note, Class. Phil. vol. v. pp. 505-507.) of growth. I mean that a sound nurture and education if kept up creates good natures in the state, and sound natures in turn receiving an education of this sort develop into better men than their predecessors both for other purposes and for the production of offspring as among animals also.[*](Cf. 459 A.) It is probable, he said. To put it briefly, then, said I, it is to this that the overseers of our state must cleave and be watchful against its insensible corruption. They must throughout be watchful against innovations in music and gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their power guard against them, fearing when anyone says that

1. That song is most regarded among men
2. Which hovers newest on the singer’s lips,