Republic

By all means.How, then, would the greatest benefit result? Tell me this, Glaucon. I see that you have in your house hunting-dogs and a number of pedigree cocks.[*](Cf. Laws 789 B-C.) Have you ever considered something about their unions and procreations?What?[*](The riddling question to which the response is what? is a mannerism derived from tragedy, which becomes very frequent in the later style of the Sophist, Politicus and Philebus.) he said. In the first place, I said, among these themselves, although they are a select breed, do not some prove better than the rest? They do. Do you then breed from all indiscriminately, or are you careful to breed from the best[*](This commonplace of stirpiculture or eugenics, as it is now called, begins with Theognis 184, and has thus far got no further.)? From the best. And, again, do you breed from the youngest or the oldest, or, so far as may be, from those in their prime? From those in their prime. And if they are not thus bred, you expect, do you not, that your birds and hounds will greatly degenerate? I do, he said. And what of horses and other animals? I said; is it otherwise with them? It would be strange if it were, said he. Gracious, said I, dear friend, how imperative, then, is our need of the highest skill in our rulers, if the principle holds also for mankind. Well, it does, he said, but what of it? This, said I, that they will have to employ many of those drugs[*](A recurrence to the metaphor of 389 B, as we are reminded below in D.) of which we were speaking. We thought that an inferior physician sufficed for bodies that do not need drugs but yield to diet and regimen. But when it is necessary to prescribe drugs we know that a more enterprising and venturesome physician is required. True; but what is the pertinency? This, said I: it seems likely that our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit[*](Cf. 389 B, 414 C, and Laws 663 D ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ ψεύδεσθαι ) of their subjects. We said, I believe, that the use of that sort of thing was in the category of medicine. And that was right, he said. In our marriages, then, and the procreation of children, it seems there will be no slight need of this kind of right. How so? It follows from our former admissions, I said, that the best men must cohabit with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst in the fewest, and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the other not, if the flock[*](Cf. on 343 A-B and Politicus 267 B-C, 268 B. αὖ below merely marks the second consideration, harmony, the first being eugenics.) is to be as perfect as possible. And the way in which all this is brought to pass must be unknown to any but the rulers, if, again, the herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from dissension. Most true, he said.

We shall, then, have to ordain certain festivals and sacrifices, in which we shall bring together the brides and the bridegrooms, and our poets must compose hymns suitable to the marriages that then take place. But the number of the marriages we will leave to the discretion of the rulers, that they may keep the number of the citizens as nearly as may be the same,[*](Plato apparently forgets that this legislation applies only to the guardians. The statement that ancient civilization was free from the shadow of Malthusianism requires qualification by this and many other passages. Cf. 372 C and Laws 740 D-E. The ancients in fact took it for granted.) taking into account wars and diseases and all such considerations, and that, so far as possible, our city may not grow too great or too small.Right, he said. Certain ingenious lots, then, I suppose, must be devised so that the inferior man at each conjugation may blame chance and not the rulers. Yes, indeed, he said. And on the young men, surely, who excel in war and other pursuits we must bestow honors and prizes, and, in particular, the opportunity of more frequent intercourse with the women, which will at the same time be a plausible pretext for having them beget as many of the children as possible. Right. And the children thus born will be taken over by the officials appointed for this, men or women or both, since, I take it, the official posts too are common to women and men. The offspring of the good, I suppose, they will take to the pen or créche, to certain nurses who live apart in a quarter of the city, but the offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret,[*](Opinions differ whether this is euphemism for exposure. On the frequency or infrequency of this practice cf. Professor La Rue Van Hook’s article in T.A.P.A. vol. li, and that of H. Bolkestein, Class. Phil. vol. xvii. (1922) pp. 222-239.) so that no one will know what has become of them. That is the condition, he said, of preserving the purity of the guardians’ breed. They will also supervise the nursing of the children, conducting the mothers to the pen when their breasts are full, but employing every device[*](Cf. on 414 B and Aristotle Politics 1262 a 14 ff.) to prevent anyone from recognizing her own infant. And they will provide others who have milk if the mothers are insufficient. But they will take care that the mothers themselves shall not suckle too long, and the trouble of wakeful nights and similar burdens they will devolve upon the nurses, wet and dry. You are making maternity a soft job[*](Another favorite idea and expression. Cf. Gorgias 459 C, Laws 648 C, 713 D, 720 C, 779 A, 903 E, Isocrates iv. 36, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 13. 5.) for the women of the guardians. It ought to be, said I, but let us pursue our design. We said that the offspring should come from parents in their prime. True. Do you agree that the period of the prime may be fairly estimated at twenty years for a woman and thirty for a man? How do you reckon it?[*](Cf. on 458 C.) he said. The women, I said, beginning at the age of twenty, shall bear for the state[*](Half humorous legal language. Cf. Aristotle Politics 1335 b 28 λειτουργεῖν . . . πρὸς τεκνοποιίαν, and Lucan’s urbi pater est, urbique maritus (Phars. ii. 388). The dates for marriage are given a little differently in the Laws, 785 B, 833 C-D, men 30-35, women 16-20. On the whole question and Aristotle’s opinion cf. Newman, Introduction to Aristotle Politics p. 183; cf. also Grube, Class. Quarterly 1927, pp. 95 ff., The Marriage Laws in Plato’s Republic.) to the age of forty, and the man shall beget for the state from the time he passes his prime in swiftness in running to the age of fifty-five.