Politics: A Treatise on Government

BOOK II

CHAP­TER I

Since then we pro­pose to in­quire what civ­il so­ci­ety is of all oth­ers best for those who have it in their pow­er to live en­tire­ly as they wish, it is nec­es­sary to ex­am­ine in­to the poli­ty of those states which are al­lowed to be well gov­erned; and if there should be any oth­ers which some per­sons have de­scribed, and which ap­pear prop­er­ly reg­ulat­ed, to note what is right and use­ful in them; and when we point out where­in they have failed, let not this be im­put­ed to an af­fec­ta­tion of wis­dom, for it is be­cause there are great de­fects in all those which are al­ready ‘es­tab­lished, that I have been in­duced to un­der­take this work. We will be­gin with that part of the sub­ject which nat­ural­ly presents it­self first to our con­sid­er­ation. The mem­bers of ev­ery state must of ne­ces­si­ty have all things in com­mon, or some things com­mon, and not oth­ers, or noth­ing at all com­mon. To have noth­ing in com­mon is ev­ident­ly im­pos­si­ble, for so­ci­ety it­self is one species of [1261a] com­mu­ni­ty; and the first thing nec­es­sary there­un­to is a com­mon place of habi­ta­tion, name­ly the city, which must be one, and this ev­ery cit­izen must have a share in. But in a gov­ern­ment which is to be well found­ed, will it be best to ad­mit of a com­mu­ni­ty in ev­ery­thing which is ca­pa­ble there­of, or on­ly in some par­tic­ulars, but in oth­ers not? for it is pos­si­ble that the cit­izens may have their wives, and chil­dren, and goods in com­mon, as in Pla­to’s Com­mon­wealth; for in that Socrates af­firms that all these par­tic­ulars ought to be so. Which then shall we pre­fer? the cus­tom which is al­ready es­tab­lished, or the laws which are pro­posed in that trea­tise?

CHAP­TER II

Now as a com­mu­ni­ty of wives is at­tend­ed with many oth­er dif­fi­cul­ties, so nei­ther does the cause for which he would frame his gov­ern­ment in this man­ner seem agree­able to rea­son, nor is it ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing that end which he has pro­posed, and for which he says it ought to take place; nor has he giv­en any par­tic­ular di­rec­tions for putting it in prac­tice. Now I al­so am will­ing to agree with Socrates in the prin­ci­ple which he pro­ceeds up­on, and ad­mit that the city ought to be one as much as pos­si­ble; and yet it is ev­ident that if it is con­tract­ed too much, it will be no longer a city, for that nec­es­sar­ily sup­pos­es a mul­ti­tude; so that if we pro­ceed in this man­ner, we shall re­duce a city to a fam­ily, and a fam­ily to a sin­gle per­son: for we ad­mit that a fam­ily is one in a greater de­gree than a city, and a sin­gle per­son than a fam­ily; so that if this end could be ob­tained, it should nev­er be put in prac­tice, as it would an­ni­hi­late the city; for a city does not on­ly con­sist of a large num­ber of in­hab­itants, but there must al­so be dif­fer­ent sorts; for were they all alike, there could be no city; for a con­fed­er­acy and a city are two dif­fer­ent things; for a con­fed­er­acy is valu­able from its num­bers, al­though all those who com­pose it are men of the same call­ing; for this is en­tered in­to for the sake of mu­tu­al de­fence, as we add an ad­di­tion­al weight to make the scale go down. The same dis­tinc­tion pre­vails be­tween a city and a na­tion when the peo­ple are not col­lect­ed in­to sep­arate vil­lages, but live as the Ar­ca­di­ans. Now those things in which a city should be one are of dif­fer­ent sorts, and in pre­serv­ing an al­ter­nate re­cip­ro­ca­tion of pow­er be­tween these, the safe­ty there­of con­sists (as I have al­ready men­tioned in my trea­tise on Morals), for amongst freemen and equals this is ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary; for all can­not gov­ern at the same time, but ei­ther by the year, or ac­cord­ing to some oth­er reg­ula­tion or time, by which means ev­ery one in his turn will be in of­fice; as if the shoe­mak­ers and car­pen­ters should ex­change oc­cu­pa­tions, and not al­ways be em­ployed in the same call­ing. But as it is ev­ident­ly bet­ter, that these should con­tin­ue to ex­er­cise their re­spec­tive trades; so al­so in civ­il so­ci­ety, where it is pos­si­ble, it would be bet­ter that the gov­ern­ment should con­tin­ue in the same hands; but where it [1261b] is not (as na­ture has made all men equal, and there­fore it is just, be the ad­min­is­tra­tion good or bad, that all should par­take of it), there it is best to ob­serve a ro­ta­tion, and let those who are their equals by turns sub­mit to those who are at that time mag­is­trates, as they will, in their turns, al­ter­nate­ly be gov­er­nors and gov­erned, as if they were dif­fer­ent men: by the same method dif­fer­ent per­sons will ex­ecute dif­fer­ent of­fices. From hence it is ev­ident, that a city can­not be one in the man­ner that some per­sons pro­pose; and that what has been said to be the great­est good which it could en­joy, is ab­so­lute­ly its de­struc­tion, which can­not be: for the good of any­thing is that which pre­serves it. For an­oth­er reaton al­so it is clear, that it is not for the best to en­deav­our to make a city too much one, be­cause a fam­ily is more suf­fi­cient in it­self than a sin­gle per­son, a city than a fam­ily; and in­deed Pla­to sup­pos­es that a city owes its ex­is­tence to that suf­fi­cien­cy in them­selves which the mem­bers of it en­joy. If then this suf­fi­cien­cy is so de­sir­able, the less the city is one the bet­ter.

CHAP­TER III

But ad­mit­ting that it is most ad­van­ta­geous for a city to be one as much as pos­si­ble, it does not seem to fol­low that this will take place by per­mit­ting all at once to say this is mine, and this is not mine (though this is what Socrates re­gards as a proof that a city is en­tire­ly one), for the word All is used in two sens­es; if it means each in­di­vid­ual, what Socrates pro­pos­es will near­ly take place; for each per­son will say, this is his own son, and his own wife, and his own prop­er­ty, and of ev­ery­thing else that may hap­pen to be­long to him, that it is his own. But those who have their wives and chil­dren in com­mon will not say so, but all will say so, though not as in­di­vid­uals; there­fore, to use the word all is ev­ident­ly a fal­la­cious mode of speech; for this word is some­times used dis­tribu­tive­ly, and some­times col­lec­tive­ly, on ac­count of its dou­ble mean­ing, and is the cause of in­con­clu­sive syl­lo­gisms in rea­son­ing. There­fore for all per­sons to say the same thing was their own, us­ing the word all in its dis­tribu­tive sense, would be well, but is im­pos­si­ble: in its col­lec­tive sense it would by no means con­tribute to the con­cord of the state. Be­sides, there would be an­oth­er in­con­ve­nience at­tend­ing this pro­pos­al, for what is com­mon to many is tak­en least care of; for all men re­gard more what is their own than what oth­ers share with them in, to which they pay less at­ten­tion than is in­cum­bent on ev­ery one: let me add al­so, that ev­ery one is more neg­li­gent of what an­oth­er is to see to, as well as him­self, than of his own pri­vate busi­ness; as in a fam­ily one is of­ten worse served by many ser­vants than by a few. Let each cit­izen then in the state have a thou­sand chil­dren, but let none of them be con­sid­ered as the chil­dren of that in­di­vid­ual, but let the re­la­tion of fa­ther and child be com­mon to them all, and they will all be ne­glect­ed. Be­sides, in con­se­quence of this, [1262a] when­ev­er any cit­izen be­haved well or ill, ev­ery per­son, be the num­ber what it would, might say, this is my son, or this man’s or that; and in this man­ner would they speak, and thus would they doubt of the whole thou­sand, or of what­ev­er num­ber the city con­sist­ed; and it would be un­cer­tain to whom each child be­longed, and when it was born, who was to take care of it: and which do you think is bet­ter, for ev­ery one to say this is mine, while they may ap­ply it equal­ly to two thou­sand or ten thou­sand; or as we say, this is mine in our present forms of gov­ern­ment, where one man calls an­oth­er his son, an­oth­er calls that same per­son his broth­er, an­oth­er nephew, or some oth­er re­la­tion, ei­ther by blood or mar­riage, and first ex­tends his care to him and his, while an­oth­er re­gards him as one of the same parish and the same tribe; and it is bet­ter for any one to be a nephew in his pri­vate ca­pac­ity than a son af­ter that man­ner. Be­sides, it will be im­pos­si­ble to pre­vent some per­sons from sus­pect­ing that they are broth­ers and sis­ters, fa­thers and moth­ers to each oth­er; for, from the mu­tu­al like­ness there is be­tween the sire and the off­spring, they will nec­es­sar­ily con­clude in what re­la­tion they stand to each oth­er, which cir­cum­stance, we are in­formed by those writ­ers who de­scribe dif­fer­ent parts of the world, does some­times hap­pen; for in Up­per Africa there are wives in com­mon who yet de­liv­er their chil­dren to their re­spec­tive fa­thers, be­ing guid­ed by their like­ness to them. There are al­so some mares and cows which nat­ural­ly bring forth their young so like the male, that we can eas­ily dis­tin­guish by which of them they were im­preg­nat­ed: such was the mare called Just, in Pharsalia.

CHAP­TER IV

Be­sides, those who con­trive this plan of com­mu­ni­ty can­not eas­ily avoid the fol­low­ing evils; name­ly, blows, mur­ders in­vol­un­tary or vol­un­tary, quar­rels, and re­proach­es, all which it would be im­pi­ous in­deed to be guilty of to­wards our fa­thers and moth­ers, or those who are near­ly re­lat­ed to us; though not to those who are not con­nect­ed to us by any tie of affin­ity: and cer­tain­ly these mis­chiefs must nec­es­sar­ily hap­pen of­ten­er amongst those who do not know how they are con­nect­ed to each oth­er than those who do; and when they do hap­pen, if it is among the first of these, they ad­mit of a le­gal ex­pi­ation, but amongst the lat­ter that can­not be done. It is al­so ab­surd for those who pro­mote a com­mu­ni­ty of chil­dren to for­bid those who love each oth­er from in­dulging them­selves in the last ex­cess­es of that pas­sion, while they do not re­strain them from the pas­sion it­self, or those in­ter­cours­es which are of all things most im­prop­er, be­tween a Fa­ther and a son, a broth­er and a broth­er, and in­deed the thing it­self is most ab­surd. It is al­so ridicu­lous to pre­vent this in­ter­course be­tween the near­est re­la­tions, for no oth­er rea­son than the vi­olence of the plea­sure, while they think that the re­la­tion of fa­ther and daugh­ter, the broth­er and sis­ter, is of no con­se­quence at all. It seems al­so more ad­van­ta­geous for the state, that the hus­band­men should have their wives and chil­dren in com­mon than the mil­itary, for there will be less af­fec­tion [1262b] among them in that case than when oth­er­wise; for such per­sons ought to be un­der sub­jec­tion, that they may obey the laws, and not seek af­ter in­no­va­tions. Up­on the whole, the con­se­quences of such a law as this would be di­rect­ly con­trary to those things which good laws ought to es­tab­lish, and which Socrates en­deav­oured to es­tab­lish by his reg­ula­tions con­cern­ing wom­en and chil­dren: for we think that friend­ship is the great­est good which can hap­pen to any city, as noth­ing so much pre­vents sedi­tions: and ami­ty in a city is what Socrates com­mends above all things, which ap­pears to be, as in­deed he says, the ef­fect of friend­ship; as we learn from Aristo­phanes in the Erotics, who says, that those who love one an­oth­er from the ex­cess of that pas­sion, de­sire to breathe the same soul, and from be­ing two to be blend­ed in­to one: from whence it would nec­es­sar­ily fol­low, that both or one of them must be de­stroyed. But now in a city which ad­mits of this com­mu­ni­ty, the tie of friend­ship must, from that very cause, be ex­treme­ly weak, when no fa­ther can say, this is my son; or son, this is my fa­ther; for as a very lit­tle of what is sweet, be­ing mixed with a great deal of wa­ter is im­per­cep­ti­ble af­ter the mix­ture, so must all fam­ily con­nec­tions, and the names they go by, be nec­es­sar­ily dis­re­gard­ed in such a com­mu­ni­ty, it be­ing then by no means nec­es­sary that the fa­ther should have any re­gard for him he called a son, or the broth­ers for those they call broth­ers. There are two things which prin­ci­pal­ly in­spire mankind with care and love of their off­spring, know­ing it is their own, and what ought to be the ob­ject of their af­fec­tion, nei­ther of which can take place in this sort of com­mu­ni­ty. As for ex­chang­ing the chil­dren of the ar­ti­fi­cers and hus­band­men with those of the mil­itary, and theirs re­cip­ro­cal­ly with these, it will oc­ca­sion great con­fu­sion in what­ev­er man­ner it shall be done; for of ne­ces­si­ty, those who car­ry the chil­dren must know from whom they took and to whom they gave them; and by this means those evils which I have al­ready men­tioned will nec­es­sar­ily be the more like­ly to hap­pen, as blows, in­ces­tu­ous love, mur­ders, and the like; for those who are giv­en from their own par­ents to oth­er cit­izens, the mil­itary, for in­stance, will not call them broth­ers, sons, fa­thers, or moth­ers. The same thing would hap­pen to those of the mil­itary who were placed among the oth­er cit­izens; so that by this means ev­ery one would be in fear how to act in con­se­quence of con­san­guin­ity. And thus let us de­ter­mine con­cern­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of wives and chil­dren.

CHAP­TER V

We pro­ceed next to con­sid­er in what man­ner prop­er­ty should be reg­ulat­ed in a state which is formed af­ter the most per­fect mode of gov­ern­ment, whether it should be com­mon or not; for this may be con­sid­ered as a sep­arate ques­tion from what had been de­ter­mined con­cern­ing [1263a] wives and chil­dren; I mean, whether it is bet­ter that these should be held sep­arate, as they now ev­ery­where are, or that not on­ly pos­ses­sions but al­so the usufruct of them should be in com­mon; or that the soil should have a par­tic­ular own­er, but that the pro­duce should be brought to­geth­er and used as one com­mon stock, as some na­tions at present do; or on the con­trary, should the soil be com­mon, and should it al­so be cul­ti­vat­ed in com­mon, while the pro­duce is di­vid­ed amongst the in­di­vid­uals for their par­tic­ular use, which is said to be prac­tised by some bar­bar­ians; or shall both the soil and the fruit be com­mon? When the busi­ness of the hus­band­man de­volves not on the cit­izen, the mat­ter is much eas­ier set­tled; but when those labour to­geth­er who have a com­mon right of pos­ses­sion, this may oc­ca­sion sev­er­al dif­fi­cul­ties; for there may not be an equal pro­por­tion be­tween their labour and what they con­sume; and those who labour hard and have but a small pro­por­tion of the pro­duce, will cer­tain­ly com­plain of those who take a large share of it and do but lit­tle for that. Up­on the whole, as a com­mu­ni­ty be­tween man and man so en­tire as to in­clude ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble, and thus to have all things that man can pos­sess in com­mon, is very dif­fi­cult, so is it par­tic­ular­ly so with re­spect to prop­er­ty; and this is ev­ident from that com­mu­ni­ty which takes place be­tween those who go out to set­tle a colony; for they fre­quent­ly have dis­putes with each oth­er up­on the most com­mon oc­ca­sions, and come to blows up­on tri­fles: we find, too, that we of­ten­est cor­rect those slaves who are gen­er­al­ly em­ployed in the com­mon of­fices of the fam­ily: a com­mu­ni­ty of prop­er­ty then has these and oth­er in­con­ve­niences at­tend­ing it.

But the man­ner of life which is now es­tab­lished, more par­tic­ular­ly when em­bel­lished with good morals and a sys­tem of equal laws, is far su­pe­ri­or to it, for it will have the ad­van­tage of both; by both I mean prop­er­ties be­ing com­mon, and di­vid­ed al­so; for in some re­spects it ought to be in a man­ner com­mon, but up­on the whole pri­vate: for ev­ery man’s at­ten­tion be­ing em­ployed on his own par­tic­ular con­cerns, will pre­vent mu­tu­al com­plaints against each oth­er; nay, by this means in­dus­try will be in­creased, as each per­son will labour to im­prove his own pri­vate prop­er­ty; and it will then be, that from a prin­ci­ple of virtue they will mu­tu­al­ly per­form good of­fices to each oth­er, ac­cord­ing to the proverb, “All things are com­mon amongst friends;” and in some cities there are traces of this cus­tom to be seen, so that it is not im­prac­ti­ca­ble, and par­tic­ular­ly in those which are best gov­erned; some things are by this means in a man­ner com­mon, and oth­ers might be so; for there, ev­ery per­son en­joy­ing his own pri­vate prop­er­ty, some things he as­sists his friend with, oth­ers are con­sid­ered as in com­mon; as in Lacedae­mon, where they use each oth­er’s slaves, as if they were, so to speak, their own, as they do their hors­es and dogs, or even any pro­vi­sion they may want in a jour­ney.

It is ev­ident then that it is best to have prop­er­ty pri­vate, but to make the use of it com­mon; but how the cit­izens are to be brought to it is the par­tic­ular [1263b] busi­ness of the leg­is­la­tor. And al­so with re­spect to plea­sure, it is un­speak­able how ad­van­ta­geous it is, that a man should think he has some­thing which he may call his own; for it is by no means to no pur­pose, that each per­son should have an af­fec­tion for him­self, for that is nat­ural, and yet to be a self-​lover is just­ly cen­sured; for we mean by that, not one that sim­ply loves him­self, but one that loves him­self more than he ought; in like man­ner we blame a mon­ey-​lover, and yet both mon­ey and self is what all men love. Be­sides, it is very pleas­ing to us to oblige and as­sist our friends and com­pan­ions, as well as those whom we are con­nect­ed with by the rights of hos­pi­tal­ity; and this can­not be done with­out the es­tab­lish­ment of pri­vate prop­er­ty, which can­not take place with those who make a city too much one; be­sides, they pre­vent ev­ery op­por­tu­ni­ty of ex­er­cis­ing two prin­ci­pal virtues, mod­esty and lib­er­al­ity. Mod­esty with re­spect to the fe­male sex, for this virtue re­quires you to ab­stain from her who is an­oth­er’s; lib­er­al­ity, which de­pends up­on pri­vate prop­er­ty, for with­out that no one can ap­pear lib­er­al, or do any gen­er­ous ac­tion; for lib­er­al­ity con­sists in im­part­ing to oth­ers what is our own.

This sys­tem of poli­ty does in­deed rec­om­mend it­self by its good ap­pear­ance and specious pre­tences to hu­man­ity; and when first pro­posed to any one, must give him great plea­sure, as he will con­clude it to be a won­der­ful bond of friend­ship, con­nect­ing all to all; par­tic­ular­ly when any one cen­sures the evils which are now to be found in so­ci­ety, as aris­ing from prop­er­ties not be­ing com­mon, I mean the dis­putes which hap­pen be­tween man and man, up­on their dif­fer­ent con­tracts with each oth­er; those judg­ments which are passed in court in con­se­quence of fraud, and per­jury, and flat­ter­ing the rich, none of which arise from prop­er­ties be­ing pri­vate, but from the vices of mankind. Be­sides, those who live in one gen­er­al com­mu­ni­ty, and have all things in com­mon, of­ten­er dis­pute with each oth­er than those who have their prop­er­ty sep­arate; from the very small num­ber in­deed of those who have their prop­er­ty in com­mon, com­pared with those where it is ap­pro­pri­at­ed, the in­stances of their quar­rels are but few. It is al­so but right to men­tion, not on­ly the in­con­ve­niences they are pre­served from who live in a com­mu­nion of goods, but al­so the ad­van­tages they are de­prived of; for when the whole comes to be con­sid­ered, this man­ner of life will be found im­prac­ti­ca­ble.

We must sup­pose, then, that Socrates’s mis­take arose from the prin­ci­ple he set out with be­ing false; we ad­mit, in­deed, that both a fam­ily and a city ought to be one in some par­tic­ulars, but not en­tire­ly; for there is a point be­yond which if a city pro­ceeds in re­duc­ing it­self to one, it will be no longer a city.

There is al­so an­oth­er point at which it will still con­tin­ue to be a city, but it will ap­proach so near to not be­ing one, that it will be worse than none; as if any one should re­duce the voic­es of those who sing in con­cert to one, or a verse to a foot. But the peo­ple ought to be made one, and a com­mu­ni­ty, as I have al­ready said, by ed­uca­tion; as prop­er­ty at Laced­se­mon, and their pub­lic ta­bles at Crete, were made com­mon by their leg­is­la­tors. But yet, whoso­ev­er shall in­tro­duce any ed­uca­tion, and think there­by to make his city ex­cel­lent and re­spectable, will be ab­surd, while he ex­pects to form it by such reg­ula­tions, and not by man­ners, phi­los­ophy, and laws. And who­ev­er [1264a] would es­tab­lish a gov­ern­ment up­on a com­mu­ni­ty of goods, ought to know that he should con­sult the ex­pe­ri­ence of many years, which would plain­ly enough in­form him whether such a scheme is use­ful; for al­most all things have al­ready been found out, but some have been ne­glect­ed, and oth­ers which have been known have not been put in prac­tice. But this would be most ev­ident, if any one could see such a gov­ern­ment re­al­ly es­tab­lished: for it would be im­pos­si­ble to frame such a city with­out di­vid­ing and sep­arat­ing it in­to its dis­tinct parts, as pub­lic ta­bles, wards, and tribes; so that here the laws will do noth­ing more than for­bid the mil­itary to en­gage in agri­cul­ture, which is what the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans are at present en­deav­our­ing to do.

Nor has Socrates told us (nor is it easy to say) what plan of gov­ern­ment should be pur­sued with re­spect to the in­di­vid­uals in the state where there is a com­mu­ni­ty of goods es­tab­lished; for though the ma­jor­ity of his cit­izens will in gen­er­al con­sist of a mul­ti­tude of per­sons of dif­fer­ent oc­cu­pa­tions, of those he has de­ter­mined noth­ing; whether the prop­er­ty of the hus­band­man ought to be in com­mon, or whether each per­son should have his share to him­self; and al­so, whether their wives and chil­dren ought to be in com­mon: for if all things are to be alike com­mon to all, where will be the dif­fer­ence be­tween them and the mil­itary, or what would they get by sub­mit­ting to their gov­ern­ment? and up­on what prin­ci­ples would they do it, un­less they should es­tab­lish the wise prac­tice of the Cre­tans? for they, al­low­ing ev­ery­thing else to their slaves, for­bid them on­ly gym­nas­tic ex­er­cis­es and the use of arms. And if they are not, but these should be in the same sit­ua­tion with re­spect to their prop­er­ty which they are in oth­er cities, what sort of a com­mu­ni­ty will there be? in one city there must of ne­ces­si­ty be two, and those con­trary to each oth­er; for he makes the mil­itary the guardians of the state, and the hus­band­man, ar­ti­sans, and oth­ers, cit­izens; and all those quar­rels, ac­cu­sa­tions, and things of the like sort, which he says are the bane of oth­er cities, will be found in his al­so: notwith­stand­ing Socrates says they will not want many laws in con­se­quence of their ed­uca­tion, but such on­ly as may be nec­es­sary for reg­ulat­ing the streets, the mar­kets, and the like, while at the same time it is the ed­uca­tion of the mil­itary on­ly that he has tak­en any care of. Be­sides, he makes the hus­band­men mas­ters of prop­er­ty up­on pay­ing a trib­ute; but this would be like­ly to make them far more trou­ble­some and high-​spir­it­ed than the Helots, the Pen­es­tise, or the slaves which oth­ers em­ploy; nor has he ev­er de­ter­mined whether it is nec­es­sary to give any at­ten­tion to them in these par­tic­ulars, nor thought of what is con­nect­ed there­with, their poli­ty, their ed­uca­tion, their laws; be­sides, it is of no lit­tle con­se­quence, nor is it easy to de­ter­mine, how these should be framed so as to pre­serve the com­mu­ni­ty of the mil­itary.

Be­sides, if he makes the wives com­mon, while the prop­er­ty [1264b] con­tin­ues sep­arate, who shall man­age the do­mes­tic con­cerns with the same care which the man be­stows up­on his fields? nor will the in­con­ve­nience be reme­died by mak­ing prop­er­ty as well as wives com­mon; and it is ab­surd to draw a com­par­ison from the brute cre­ation, and say, that the same prin­ci­ple should reg­ulate the con­nec­tion of a man and a wom­an which reg­ulates theirs amongst whom there is no fam­ily as­so­ci­ation.

It is al­so very haz­ardous to set­tle the mag­is­tra­cy as Socrates has done; for he would have per­sons of the same rank al­ways in of­fice, which be­comes the cause of sedi­tion even amongst those who are of no ac­count, but more par­tic­ular­ly amongst those who are of a coura­geous and war­like dis­po­si­tion; it is in­deed ev­ident­ly nec­es­sary that he should frame his com­mu­ni­ty in this man­ner; for that gold­en par­ti­cle which God has mixed up in the soul of man flies not from one to the oth­er, but al­ways con­tin­ues with the same; for he says, that some of our species have gold, and oth­ers sil­ver, blend­ed in their com­po­si­tion from the mo­ment of their birth: but those who are to be hus­band­men and artists, brass and iron; be­sides, though he de­prives the mil­itary of hap­pi­ness, he says, that the leg­is­la­tor ought to make all the cit­izens hap­py; but it is im­pos­si­ble that the whole city can be hap­py, with­out all, or the greater, or some part of it be hap­py. For hap­pi­ness is not like that nu­mer­ical equal­ity which aris­es from cer­tain num­bers when added to­geth­er, al­though nei­ther of them may sep­arate­ly con­tain it; for hap­pi­ness can­not be thus added to­geth­er, but must ex­ist in ev­ery in­di­vid­ual, as some prop­er­ties be­long to ev­ery in­te­gral; and if the mil­itary are not hap­py, who else are so? for the ar­ti­sans are not, nor the mul­ti­tude of those who are em­ployed in in­fe­ri­or of­fices. The state which Socrates has de­scribed has all these de­fects, and oth­ers which are not of less con­se­quence.

CHAP­TER VI

It is al­so near­ly the same in the trea­tise up­on Laws which was writ af­ter­wards, for which rea­son it will be prop­er in this place to con­sid­er briefly what he has there said up­on gov­ern­ment, for Socrates has thor­ough­ly set­tled but very few parts of it; as for in­stance, in what man­ner the com­mu­ni­ty of wives and chil­dren ought to be reg­ulat­ed, how prop­er­ty should be es­tab­lished, and gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed.

Now he di­vides the in­hab­itants in­to two parts, hus­band­men and sol­diers, and from these he se­lect a third part who are to be sen­ators and gov­ern the city; but he has not said whether or no the hus­band­man and ar­ti­fi­cer shall have any or what share in the gov­ern­ment, or whether they shall have arms, and join with the oth­ers in war, or not. He thinks al­so that the wom­en ought to go to war, and have the same ed­uca­tion as the sol­diers; as to oth­er par­tic­ulars, he has filled his trea­tise with mat­ter for­eign to the pur­pose; and with re­spect to ed­uca­tion, he has on­ly said what that of the guards ought to be.

[1265a] As to his book of Laws, laws are the prin­ci­pal thing which that con­tains, for he has there said but lit­tle con­cern­ing gov­ern­ment; and this gov­ern­ment, which he was so de­sirous of fram­ing in such a man­ner as to im­part to its mem­bers a more en­tire com­mu­ni­ty of goods than is to be found in oth­er cities, he al­most brings round again to be the same as that oth­er gov­ern­ment which he had first pro­posed; for ex­cept the com­mu­ni­ty of wives and goods, he has framed both his gov­ern­ments alike, for the ed­uca­tion of the cit­izens is to be the same in both; they are in both to live with­out any servile em­ploy, and their com­mon ta­bles are to be the same, ex­cept­ing that in that he says the wom­en should have com­mon ta­bles, and that there should be a thou­sand men-​at-​arms, in this, that there should be five thou­sand.

All the dis­cours­es of Socrates are mas­ter­ly, no­ble, new, and in­quis­itive; but that they are all true it may prob­ably be too much to say. For now with re­spect to the num­ber just spo­ken of, it must be ac­knowl­edged that he would want the coun­try of Baby­lo­nia for them, or some one like it, of an im­mea­sur­able ex­tent, to sup­port five thou­sand idle per­sons, be­sides a much greater num­ber of wom­en and ser­vants. Ev­ery one, it is true, may frame an hy­poth­esis as he pleas­es, but yet it ought to be pos­si­ble. It has been said, that a leg­is­la­tor should have two things in view when he frames his laws, the coun­try and the peo­ple. He will al­so do well, if he has some re­gard to the neigh­bour­ing states, if he in­tends that his com­mu­ni­ty should main­tain any po­lit­ical in­ter­course with them, for it is not on­ly nec­es­sary that they should un­der­stand that prac­tice of war which is adapt­ed to their own coun­try, but to oth­ers al­so; for ad­mit­ting that any one choos­es not this life ei­ther in pub­lic or pri­vate, yet there is not the less oc­ca­sion for their be­ing formidable to their en­emies, not on­ly when they in­vade their coun­try, but al­so when they re­tire out of it.

It may al­so be con­sid­ered whether the quan­ti­ty of each per­son’s prop­er­ty may not be set­tled in a dif­fer­ent man­ner from what he has done it in, by mak­ing it more de­ter­mi­nate; for he says, that ev­ery one ought to have enough where­on to live mod­er­ate­ly, as if any one had said to live well, which is the most com­pre­hen­sive ex­pres­sion. Be­sides, a man may live mod­er­ate­ly and mis­er­ably at the same time; he had there­fore bet­ter have pro­posed, that they should live both mod­er­ate­ly and lib­er­al­ly; for un­less these two con­spire, lux­ury will come in on the one hand, or wretched­ness on the oth­er, since these two modes of liv­ing are the on­ly ones ap­pli­ca­ble to the em­ploy­ment of our sub­stance; for we can­not say with re­spect to a man’s for­tune, that he is mild or coura­geous, but we may say that he is pru­dent and lib­er­al, which are the on­ly qual­ities con­nect­ed there­with.

It is al­so ab­surd to ren­der prop­er­ty equal, and not to pro­vide for the in­creas­ing num­ber of the cit­izens; but to leave that cir­cum­stance un­cer­tain, as if it would reg­ulate it­self ac­cord­ing to the num­ber of wom­en who [1265b] should hap­pen to be child­less, let that be what it would be­cause this seems to take place in oth­er cities; but the case would not be the same in such a state which he pro­pos­es and those which now ac­tu­al­ly unite; for in these no one ac­tu­al­ly wants, as the prop­er­ty is di­vid­ed amongst the whole com­mu­ni­ty, be their num­bers what they will; but as it could not then be di­vid­ed, the su­per­nu­mer­aries, whether they were many or few, would have noth­ing at all. But it is more nec­es­sary than even to reg­ulate prop­er­ty, to take care that the in­crease of the peo­ple should not ex­ceed a cer­tain num­ber; and in de­ter­min­ing that, to take in­to con­sid­er­ation those chil­dren who will die, and al­so those wom­en who will be bar­ren; and to ne­glect this, as is done in sev­er­al cities, is to bring cer­tain pover­ty on the cit­izens; and pover­ty is the cause of sedi­tion and evil. Now Phi­don the Corinthi­an, one of the old­est leg­is­la­tors, thought the fam­ilies and the num­ber of the cit­izens should con­tin­ue the same; al­though it should hap­pen that all should have al­lot­ments at the first, dis­pro­por­tion­ate to their num­bers.

In Pla­to’s Laws it is how­ev­er dif­fer­ent; we shall men­tion here­after what we think would be best in these par­tic­ulars. He has al­so ne­glect­ed in that trea­tise to point out how the gov­er­nors are to be dis­tin­guished from the gov­erned; for he says, that as of one sort of wool the warp ought to be made, and of an­oth­er the woof, so ought some to gov­ern, and oth­ers to be gov­erned. But since he ad­mits, that all their prop­er­ty may be in­creased five­fold, why should he not al­low the same in­crease to the coun­try? he ought al­so to con­sid­er whether his al­lot­ment of the hous­es will be use­ful to the com­mu­ni­ty, for he ap­points two hous­es to each per­son, sep­arate from each oth­er; but it is in­con­ve­nient for a per­son to in­hab­it two hous­es. Now he is de­sirous to have his whole plan of gov­ern­ment nei­ther a democ­ra­cy nor an oli­garchy, but some­thing be­tween both, which he calls a poli­ty, for it is to be com­posed of men-​at-​arms. If Pla­to in­tend­ed to frame a state in which more than in any oth­er ev­ery­thing should be com­mon, he has cer­tain­ly giv­en it a right name; but if he in­tend­ed it to be the next in per­fec­tion to that which he had al­ready framed, it is not so; for per­haps some per­sons will give the pref­er­ence to the Lacedae­mo­ni­an form of gov­ern­ment, or some oth­er which may more com­plete­ly have at­tained to the aris­to­crat­ic form.

Some per­sons say, that the most per­fect gov­ern­ment should be com­posed of all oth­ers blend­ed to­geth­er, for which rea­son they com­mend that of Laced­se­mon; for they say, that this is com­posed of an oli­garchy, a monar­chy, and a democ­ra­cy, their kings rep­re­sent­ing the monar­chi­cal part, the sen­ate the oli­garchi­cal; and, that in the ephori may be found the demo­crat­ical, as these are tak­en from the peo­ple. But some say, that in the ephori is ab­so­lute pow­er, and that it is their com­mon meal and dai­ly course of life, in which the demo­crat­ical form is rep­re­sent­ed. It is al­so said in this trea­tise of [1266a] Laws, that the best form of gov­ern­ment must, be one com­posed of a democ­ra­cy and a tyran­ny; though such a mix­ture no one else would ev­er al­low to be any gov­ern­ment at all, or if it is, the worst pos­si­ble; those pro­pose what is much bet­ter who blend many gov­ern­ments to­geth­er; for the most per­fect is that which is formed of many parts. But now in this gov­ern­ment of Pla­to’s there are no traces of a monar­chy, on­ly of an oli­garchy and democ­ra­cy; though he seems to choose that it should rather in­cline to an oli­garchy, as is ev­ident from the ap­point­ment of the mag­is­trates; for to choose them by lot is com­mon to both; but that a man of for­tune must nec­es­sar­ily be a mem­ber of the as­sem­bly, or to elect the mag­is­trates, or take part in the man­age­ment of pub­lic af­fairs, while oth­ers are passed over, makes the state in­cline to an oli­garchy; as does the en­deav­our­ing that the greater part of the rich may be in of­fice, and that the rank of their ap­point­ments may cor­re­spond with their for­tunes.

The same prin­ci­ple pre­vails al­so in the choice of their sen­ate; the man­ner of elect­ing which is favourable al­so to an oli­garchy; for all are obliged to vote for those who are sen­ators of the first class, af­ter­wards they vote for the same num­ber out of the sec­ond, and then out of the third; but this com­pul­sion to vote at the elec­tion of sen­ators does not ex­tend to the third and fourth class­es and the first and sec­ond class on­ly are obliged to vote for the fourth. By this means he says he shall nec­es­sar­ily have an equal num­ber of each rank, but he is mis­tak­en–for the ma­jor­ity will al­ways con­sist of those of the first rank, and the most con­sid­er­able peo­ple; and for this rea­son, that many of the com­mon­al­ty not be­ing obliged to it, will not at­tend the elec­tions. From hence it is ev­ident, that such a state will not con­sist of a democ­ra­cy and a monar­chy, and this will be fur­ther proved by what we shall say when we come par­tic­ular­ly to con­sid­er this form of gov­ern­ment.

There will al­so great dan­ger arise from the man­ner of elect­ing the sen­ate, when those who are elect­ed them­selves are af­ter­wards to elect oth­ers; for by this means, if a cer­tain num­ber choose to com­bine to­geth­er, though not very con­sid­er­able, the elec­tion will al­ways fall ac­cord­ing to their plea­sure. Such are the things which Pla­to pro­pos­es con­cern­ing gov­ern­ment in his book of Laws.

CHAP­TER VII

There are al­so some oth­er forms of gov­ern­ment, which have been pro­posed ei­ther by pri­vate per­sons, or philoso­phers, or politi­cians, all of which come much near­er to those which have been re­al­ly es­tab­lished, or now ex­ist, than these two of Pla­to’s; for nei­ther have they in­tro­duced the in­no­va­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty of wives and chil­dren, and pub­lic ta­bles for the wom­en, but have been con­tent­ed to set out with es­tab­lish­ing such rules as are ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary.

There are some per­sons who think, that the first ob­ject of gov­ern­ment should be to reg­ulate well ev­ery­thing re­lat­ing to pri­vate prop­er­ty; for they say, that a ne­glect here­in is the source of all sedi­tions what­so­ev­er. For this rea­son, Phaleas the Chal­cedo­nian first pro­posed, that the for­tunes of the cit­izens should be equal, which he thought was not dif­fi­cult to ac­com­plish when a com­mu­ni­ty was first set­tled, but that it was a work of greater dif­fi­cul­ty in one that had been long es­tab­lished; but yet that it might be ef­fect­ed, and an equal­ity of cir­cum­stances in­tro­duced by these means, that the rich should give mar­riage por­tions, but nev­er re­ceive any, while the poor should al­ways re­ceive, but nev­er give.

But Pla­to, in his trea­tise of Laws, thinks that a dif­fer­ence in cir­cum­stances should be per­mit­ted to a cer­tain de­gree; but that no cit­izen should be al­lowed to pos­sess more than five times as much as the low­est cen­sus, as we have al­ready men­tioned. But leg­is­la­tors who would es­tab­lish this prin­ci­ple are apt to over­look what they ought to con­sid­er; that while they reg­ulate the quan­ti­ty of pro­vi­sions which each in­di­vid­ual shall pos­sess, they ought al­so to reg­ulate the num­ber of his chil­dren; for if these ex­ceed the al­lot­ted quan­ti­ty of pro­vi­sion, the law must nec­es­sar­ily be re­pealed; and yet, in spite of the re­peal, it will have the bad ef­fect of re­duc­ing many from wealth to pover­ty, so dif­fi­cult is it for in­no­va­tors not to fall in­to such mis­takes. That an equal­ity of goods was in some de­gree ser­vice­able to strength­en the bands of so­ci­ety, seems to have been known to some of the an­cients; for Solon made a law, as did some oth­ers al­so, to re­strain per­sons from pos­sess­ing as much land as they pleased. And up­on the same prin­ci­ple there are laws which for­bid men to sell their prop­er­ty, as among the Locri­ans, un­less they can prove that some no­to­ri­ous mis­for­tu­ue has be­fall­en them. They were al­so to pre­serve their an­cient pat­ri­mo­ny, which cus­tom be­ing bro­ken through by the Leu­ca­di­ans, made their gov­ern­ment too demo­crat­ic; for by that means it was no longer nec­es­sary to be pos­sessed of a cer­tain for­tune to be qual­ified to be a mag­is­trate. But if an equal­ity of goods is es­tab­lished, this may be ei­ther too much, when it en­ables the peo­ple to live lux­uri­ous­ly, or too lit­tle, when it obliges them to live hard. Hence it is ev­ident, that it is not prop­er for the leg­is­la­tor to es­tab­lish an equal­ity of cir­cum­stances, but to fix a prop­er medi­um. Be­sides, if any one should reg­ulate the di­vi­sion of prop­er­ty in such a man­ner that there should be a mod­er­ate suf­fi­cien­cy for all, it would be of no use; for it is of more con­se­quence that the cit­izen should en­ter­tain a sim­ilar­ity of sen­ti­ments than an equal­ity of cir­cum­stances; but this can nev­er be at­tained un­less they are prop­er­ly ed­ucat­ed un­der the di­rec­tion of the law. But prob­ably Phaleas may say, that this in what he him­self men­tions; for he both pro­pos­es a equal­ity of prop­er­ty and one plan of ed­uca­tion in his city. But he should have said par­tic­ular­ly what ed­uca­tion he in­tend­ed, nor is it of any ser­vice to have this to much one; for this ed­uca­tion may be one, and yet such as will make the cit­izens over-​greedy, to grasp af­ter hon­ours, or rich­es, or both. Be­sides, not on­ly an in equal­ity of pos­ses­sions, but al­so of hon­ours, will oc­ca­sion [1267a] sedi­tions, but this up­on con­trary grounds; for the vul­gar will be sedi­tious if there be an in­equal­ity of goods, by those of more el­evat­ed sen­ti­ments, if there is an equal­ity of hon­ours.

“When good and bad do equal hon­ours share.”

For men are not guilty of crimes for nec­es­saries on­ly (for which he thinks an equal­ity of goods would be a suf­fi­cient rem­edy, as they would then have no oc­ca­sion to steal cold or hunger), but that they may en­joy what the de­sire, and not wish for it in vain; for if their de­sire ex­tend be­yond the com­mon nec­es­saries of life, they were be wicked to grat­ify them; and not on­ly so, but if their wish­es point that way, they will do the same to en­joy those plea­sures which are free from the al­loy of pain. What rem­edy then shall we find for these three dis­or­der; and first, to pre­vent steal­ing from ne­ces­si­ty, let ev­ery one be sup­plied with a mod­er­ate sub­sis­tence, which may make the ad­di­tion of his own in­dus­try nec­es­sary; sec­ond to pre­vent steal­ing to pro­cure the lux­uries of life, tem­per­ance be en­joined; and third­ly, let those who wish for plea­sure in it­self seek for it on­ly in phi­los­ophy, all oth­ers want the as­sis­tance of men.

Since then men are guilty of the great­est crimes from am­bi­tion, and not from ne­ces­si­ty, no one, for in­stance aims at be­ing a tyrant to keep him from the cold, hence great hon­our is due to him who kills not a thief, but tyrant; so that poli­ty which Phaleas es­tab­lish­es would on­ly be salu­tary to pre­vent lit­tle crimes. He has al­so been very de­sirous to es­tab­lish such rules as will con­duce to per­fect the in­ter­nal pol­icy of his state, and he ought al­so to have done the same with re­spect to its neigh­bours and all for­eign na­tions; for the con­sid­er­ations of the mil­itary es­tab­lish­ment should take place in plan­ning ev­ery gov­ern­ment, that it may not be un­pro­vid­ed in case of a war, of which he has said noth­ing; so al­so with re­spect to prop­er­ty, it ought not on­ly to be adapt­ed to the ex­igen­cies of the state, but al­so to such dan­gers as may arise from with­out.

Thus it should not be so much as to tempt those who are near, and more pow­er­ful to in­vade it, while those who pos­sess it are not able to drive out the in­vaders, nor so lit­tle as that the state should not be able to go to war with those who are quite equal to it­self, and of this he has de­ter­mined noth­ing; it must in­deed be al­lowed that it is ad­van­ta­geous to a com­mu­ni­ty to be rather rich than poor; prob­ably the prop­er bound­ary is this, not to pos­sess enough to make it worth while for a more pow­er­ful neigh­bour to at­tack you, any more than he would those who had not so much as your­self; thus when Au­tophra­da­tus pro­posed to be­siege Atarneus, Eu­bu­lus ad­vised him to con­sid­er what time it would re­quire to take the city, and then would have him de­ter­mine whether it would an­swer, for that he should choose, if it would even take less than he pro­posed, to quit the place; his say­ing this made Au­tophra­da­tus re­flect up­on the busi­ness and give over the siege. There is, in­deed, some ad­van­tage in an equal­ity of goods amongst the cit­izens to pre­vent sedi­tions; and yet, to say truth, no very great one; for men of great abil­ities will stom­ach their be­ing put up­on a lev­el with the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty. For which rea­son they will very of­ten ap­pear ready for ev­ery com­ma­tion and sedi­tion; for the wicked­ness of mankind is in­sa­tiable. For though at first two oboli might be suf­fi­cient, yet when once it is be­come cus­tom­ary, they con­tin­ual­ly want some­thing more, un­til they set no lim­its to their ex­pec­ta­tions; for it is the na­ture of our de­sires to be bound­less, and many live on­ly to grat­ify them. But for this pur­pose the first ob­ject is, not so much to es­tab­lish an equal­ity of for­tune, as to pre­vent those who are of a good dis­po­si­tion from de­sir­ing more than their own, and those who are of a bad one from be­ing able to ac­quire it; and this may be done if they are kept in an in­fe­ri­or sta­tion, and not ex­posed to in­jus­tice. Nor has he treat­ed well the equal­ity of goods, for he has ex­tend­ed his reg­ula­tion on­ly to land; where­as a man’s sub­stance con­sists not on­ly in this, but al­so in slaves, cat­tle, mon­ey, and all that va­ri­ety of things which fall un­der the name of chat­tels; now there must be ei­ther an equal­ity es­tab­lished in all these, or some cer­tain rule, or they must be left en­tire­ly at large. It ap­pears too by his laws, that he in­tends to es­tab­lish on­ly a small state, as all the ar­ti­fi­cers are to be­long to the pub­lic, and add noth­ing to the com­ple­ment of cit­izens; but if all those who are to be em­ployed in pub­lic works are to be the slaves of the pub­lic, it should be done in the same man­ner as it is at Ep­idamnum, and as Dio­phan­tus for­mer­ly reg­ulat­ed it at Athens. From these par­tic­ulars any one may near­ly judge whether Phaleas’s com­mu­ni­ty is well or ill es­tab­lished.

CHAP­TER VI­II

Hip­po­damus, the son of Eu­ruphon a Mile­sian, con­trived the art of lay­ing out towns, and sep­arat­ed the Pireus. This man was in oth­er re­spects too ea­ger af­ter no­tice, and seemed to many to live in a very af­fect­ed man­ner, with his flow­ing locks and his ex­pen­sive or­na­ments, and a coarse warm vest which he wore, not on­ly in the win­ter, but al­so in the hot weath­er. As he was very de­sirous of the char­ac­ter of a uni­ver­sal schol­ar, he was the first who, not be­ing ac­tu­al­ly en­gaged in the man­age­ment of pub­lic af­fairs, sat him­self to in­quire what sort of gov­ern­ment was best; and he planned a state, con­sist­ing of ten thou­sand per­sons, di­vid­ed in­to three parts, one con­sist­ing of ar­ti­sans, an­oth­er of hus­band­men, and the third of sol­diers; he al­so di­vid­ed the lands in­to three parts, and al­lot­ted one to sa­cred pur­pos­es, an­oth­er to the pub­lic, and the third to in­di­vid­uals. The first of these was to sup­ply what was nec­es­sary for the es­tab­lished wor­ship of the gods; the sec­ond was to be al­lot­ted to the sup­port of the sol­diery; and the third was to be the prop­er­ty of the hus­band­man. He thought al­so that there need on­ly be three sorts of laws, cor­re­spond­ing to the three sorts of ac­tions which can be brought, name­ly, for as­sault, tres­pass­es, or death. He or­dered al­so that there should be a par­tic­ular court of ap­peal, in­to which all caus­es might be re­moved which were sup­posed to have been un­just­ly de­ter­mined else­where; which court should be com­posed of old men cho­sen for that pur­pose. He thought al­so [1268a] that they should not pass sen­tence by votes; but that ev­ery one should bring with him a tablet, on which he should write, that he found the par­ty guilty, if it was so, but if not, he should bring a plain tablet; but if he ac­quit­ted him of one part of the in­dict­ment but not of the oth­er, he should ex­press that al­so on the tablet; for he dis­ap­proved of that gen­er­al cus­tom al­ready es­tab­lished, as it obliges the judges to be guilty of per­jury if they de­ter­mined pos­itive­ly ei­ther on the one side or the oth­er. He al­so made a law, that those should be re­ward­ed who found out any­thing for the good of the city, and that the chil­dren of those who fell in bat­tle should be ed­ucat­ed at the pub­lic ex­pense; which law had nev­er been pro­posed by any oth­er leg­is­la­tor, though it is at present in use at Athens as well as in oth­er cities, he would have the mag­is­trates cho­sen out of the peo­ple in gen­er­al, by whom he meant the three parts be­fore spo­ken of; and that those who were so elect­ed should be the par­tic­ular guardians of what be­longed to the pub­lic, to strangers, and to or­phans.

These are the prin­ci­pal parts and most wor­thy of no­tice in Hip­po­damus’s plan. But some per­sons might doubt the pro­pri­ety of his di­vi­sion of the cit­izens in­to three parts; for the ar­ti­sans, the hus­band­men, and the sol­diers are to com­pose one com­mu­ni­ty, where the hus­band­men are to have no arms, and the ar­ti­sans nei­ther arms nor land, which would in a man­ner ren­der them slaves to the sol­diery. It is al­so im­pos­si­ble that the whole com­mu­ni­ty should par­take of all the hon­ourable em­ploy­ments in it–for the gen­er­als and the guardians of the state must nec­es­sar­ily be ap­point­ed out of the sol­diery, and in­deed the most hon­ourable mag­is­trates; but as the two oth­er parts will not have their share in the gov­ern­ment, how can they be ex­pect­ed to have any af­fec­tion for it? But it is nec­es­sary that the sol­diery should be su­pe­ri­or to the oth­er two parts, and this su­pe­ri­or­ity will not be eas­ily gained with­out they are very nu­mer­ous; and if they are so, why should the com­mu­ni­ty con­sist of any oth­er mem­bers? why should any oth­ers have a right to elect the mag­is­trates? Be­sides, of what use are the hus­band­men to this com­mu­ni­ty? Ar­ti­sans, ’tis true, are nec­es­sary, for these ev­ery city wants, and they can live up­on their busi­ness. If the hus­band­men in­deed fur­nished the sol­diers with pro­vi­sions, they would be prop­er­ly part of the com­mu­ni­ty; but these are sup­posed to have their pri­vate prop­er­ty, and to cul­ti­vate it for their own use. More­over, if the sol­diers them­selves are to cul­ti­vate that com­mon land which is ap­pro­pri­at­ed for their sup­port, there will be no dis­tinc­tion be­tween the sol­dier and the hus­band­man, which the leg­is­la­tor in­tend­ed there should be; and if there should be any oth­ers who are to cul­ti­vate the pri­vate prop­er­ty of the hus­band­man and the com­mon lands of the mil­itary, there will be a fourth or­der in the state which will have no share in it, and al­ways en­ter­tain hos­tile sen­ti­ments to­wards it. If any one should pro­pose that the same per­sons should cul­ti­vate their own lands and the pub­lic ones al­so, then there would be a de­fi­cien­cy [1268b] of pro­vi­sions to sup­ply two fam­ilies, as the lands would not im­me­di­ate­ly yield enough for them­selves and the sol­diers al­so; and all these things would oc­ca­sion great con­fu­sion.

Nor do I ap­prove of his method of de­ter­min­ing caus­es, when he would have the judge split the case which comes sim­ply be­fore him; and thus, in­stead of be­ing a judge, be­come an ar­bi­tra­tor. Now when any mat­ter is brought to ar­bi­tra­tion, it is cus­tom­ary for many per­sons to con­fer to­geth­er up­on the busi­ness that is be­fore them; but when a cause is brought be­fore judges it is not so; and many leg­is­la­tors take care that the judges shall not have it in their pow­er to com­mu­ni­cate their sen­ti­ments to each oth­er. Be­sides, what can pre­vent con­fu­sion on the bench when one judge thinks a fine should be dif­fer­ent from what an­oth­er has set it at; one propos­ing twen­ty mi­nae, an­oth­er ten, or be it more or less, an­oth­er four, and an­oth­er five; and it is ev­ident, that in this man­ner they will dif­fer from each oth­er, while some will give the whole dam­ages sued for, and oth­ers noth­ing; in this sit­ua­tion, how shall their de­ter­mi­na­tions be set­tled? Be­sides, a judge can­not be obliged to per­jure him­self who sim­ply ac­quits or con­demns, if the ac­tion is fair­ly and just­ly brought; for he who ac­quits the par­ty does not say that he ought not to pay any fine at all, but that he ought not to pay a fine of twen­ty mi­nae. But he that con­demns him is guilty of per­jury if he sen­tences him to pay twen­ty mi­nae while he be­lieves the dam­ages ought not to be so much.

Now with re­spect to these hon­ours which he pro­pos­es to be­stow on those who can give any in­for­ma­tion use­ful to the com­mu­ni­ty, this, though very pleas­ing in spec­ula­tion, is what the leg­is­la­tor should not set­tle, for it would en­cour­age in­form­ers, and prob­ably oc­ca­sion com­mo­tions in the state. And this pro­pos­al of his gives rise al­so to fur­ther con­jec­tures and in­quiries; for some per­sons have doubt­ed whether it is use­ful or hurt­ful to al­ter the es­tab­lished law of any coun­try, if even for the bet­ter; for which rea­son one can­not im­me­di­ate­ly de­ter­mine up­on what he here says, whether it is ad­van­ta­geous to al­ter the law or not. We know, in­deed, that it is pos­si­ble to pro­pose to new mod­el both the laws and gov­ern­ment as a com­mon good; and since we have men­tioned this sub­ject, it may be very prop­er to en­ter in­to a few par­tic­ulars con­cern­ing it, for it con­tains some dif­fi­cul­ties, as I have al­ready said, and it may ap­pear bet­ter to al­ter them, since it has been found use­ful in oth­er sci­ences.

Thus the sci­ence of physic is ex­tend­ed be­yond its an­cient bounds; so is the gym­nas­tic, and in­deed all oth­er arts and pow­ers; so that one may lay it down for cer­tain that the same thing will nec­es­sar­ily hold good in the art of gov­ern­ment. And it may al­so be af­firmed, that ex­pe­ri­ence it­self gives a proof of this; for the an­cient laws are too sim­ple and bar­barous; which al­lowed the Greeks to wear swords in the city, and to buy their wives of each [1269a]. oth­er. And in­deed all the re­mains of old laws which we have are very sim­ple; for in­stance, a law in Cuma rel­ative to mur­der. If any per­son who pros­ecutes an­oth­er for mur­der can pro­duce a cer­tain num­ber of wit­ness­es to it of his own re­la­tions, the ac­cused per­son shall be held guilty. Up­on the whole, all per­sons ought to en­deav­our to fol­low what is right, and not what is es­tab­lished; and it is prob­able that the first men, whether they sprung out of the earth, or were saved from some gen­er­al calami­ty, had very lit­tle un­der­stand­ing or knowl­edge, as is af­firmed of these abo­rig­ines; so that it would be ab­surd to con­tin­ue in the prac­tice of their rules. Nor is it, more­over, right to per­mit writ­ten laws al­ways to re­main with­out al­ter­ation; for as in all oth­er sci­ences, so in pol­itics, it is im­pos­si­ble to ex­press ev­ery­thing in writ­ing with per­fect ex­act­ness; for when we com­mit any­thing to writ­ing we must use gen­er­al terms, but in ev­ery ac­tion there is some­thing par­tic­ular to it­self, which these may not com­pre­hend; from whence it is ev­ident, that cer­tain laws will at cer­tain times ad­mit of al­ter­ations. But if we con­sid­er this mat­ter in an­oth­er point of view, it will ap­pear to re­quire great cau­tion; for when the ad­van­tage pro­posed is tri­fling, as the ac­cus­tom­ing the peo­ple eas­ily to abol­ish their laws is of bad con­se­quence, it is ev­ident­ly bet­ter to pass over some faults which ei­ther the leg­is­la­tor or the mag­is­trates may have com­mit­ted; for the al­ter­ations will not be of so much ser­vice as a habit of dis­obey­ing the mag­is­trates will be of dis­ser­vice. Be­sides, the in­stance brought from the arts is fal­la­cious; for it is not the same thing to al­ter the one as the oth­er. For a law de­rives all its strength from cus­tom, and this re­quires long time to es­tab­lish; so that, to make it an easy mat­ter to pass from the es­tab­lished laws to oth­er new ones, is to weak­en the pow­er of laws. Be­sides, here is an­oth­er ques­tion; if the laws are to be al­tered, are they all to be al­tered, and in ev­ery gov­er­ment or not, and whether at the plea­sure of one per­son or many? all which par­tic­ulars will make a great dif­fer­ence; for which rea­son we will at present drop the in­quiry, to pur­sue it at some oth­er time.

CHAP­TER IX

There are two con­sid­er­ations which of­fer them­selves with re­spect to the gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished at Laced­se­mon and Crete, and in­deed in al­most all oth­er states what­so­ev­er; one is whether their laws do or do not pro­mote the best es­tab­lish­ment pos­si­ble? the oth­er is whether there is any­thing, if we con­sid­er ei­ther the prin­ci­ples up­on which it is found­ed or the ex­ec­utive part of it, which pre­vents the form of gov­ern­ment that they had pro­posed to fol­low from be­ing ob­served; now it is al­lowed that in ev­ery well-​reg­ulat­ed state the mem­bers of it should be free from servile labour; but in what man­ner this shall be ef­fect­ed is not so easy to de­ter­mine; for the Pen­estse have very of­ten at­tacked the Thes­salians, and the Helots the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans, for they in a man­ner con­tin­ual­ly watch an op­por­tu­ni­ty for some mis­for­tune be­falling them. But no such thing has ev­er hap­pened to the Cre­tans; the [1269b] rea­son for which prob­ably is, that al­though they are en­gaged in fre­quent wars with the neigh­bour­ing cities, yet none of these would en­ter in­to an al­liance with the re­volters, as it would be dis­ad­van­ta­geous for them, who them­selves al­so have their vil­lains. But now there is per­pet­ual en­mi­ty be­tween the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans and all their neigh­bours, the Ar­gives, the Messe­ni­ans, and the Ar­ca­di­ans. Their slaves al­so first re­volt­ed from the Thes­salians while they were en­gaged in wars with their neigh­bours the Acheans, the Perrabeans, and the Mag­ne­sians. It seems to me in­deed, if noth­ing else, yet some­thing very trou­ble­some to keep up­on prop­er terms with them; for if you are re­miss in your dis­ci­pline they grow in­so­lent, and think them­selves up­on an equal­ity with their mas­ters; and if they are hard­ly used they are con­tin­ual­ly plot­ting against you and hate you. It is ev­ident, then, that those who em­ploy slaves have not as yet hit up­on the right way of man­ag­ing them.

As to the in­dulging of wom­en in any par­tic­ular lib­er­ties, it is hurt­ful to the end of gov­ern­ment and the pros­per­ity of the city; for as a man and his wife are the two parts of a fam­ily, if we sup­pose a city to be di­vid­ed in­to two parts, we must al­low that the num­ber of men and wom­en will be equal.

In what­ev­er city then the wom­en are not un­der good reg­ula­tions, we must look up­on one half of it as not un­der the re­straint of law, as it there hap­pened; for the leg­is­la­tor, de­sir­ing to make his whole city a col­lec­tion of war­riors with re­spect to the men, he most ev­ident­ly ac­com­plished his de­sign; but in the mean­time the wom­en were quite ne­glect­ed, for they live with­out re­straint in ev­ery im­prop­er in­dul­gence and lux­ury. So that in such a state rich­es will nec­es­sar­ily be in gen­er­al es­teem, par­tic­ular­ly if the men are gov­erned by their wives, which has been the case with many a brave and war­like peo­ple ex­cept the Celts, and those oth­er na­tions, if there are any such, who open­ly prac­tise ped­erasty. And the first mythol­ogists seem not im­prop­er­ly to have joined Mars and Venus to­geth­er; for all na­tions of this char­ac­ter are great­ly ad­dict­ed ei­ther to the love of wom­en or of boys, for which rea­son it was thus at Lacedae­mon; and many things in their state were done by the au­thor­ity of the wom­en. For what is the dif­fer­ence, if the pow­er is in the hands of the wom­en, or in the hands of those whom they them­selves gov­ern? it must turn to the same ac­count. As this bold­ness of the wom­en can be of no use in any com­mon oc­cur­rences, if it was ev­er so, it must be in war; but even here we find that the Lacedae­mo­ni­an wom­en were of the great­est dis­ser­vice, as was proved at the time of the The­ban in­va­sion, when they were of no use at all, as they are in oth­er cities, but made more dis­tur­bance than even the en­emy.

The ori­gin of this in­dul­gence which the Lacedae­mo­ni­an wom­en en­joy is eas­ily ac­count­ed for, from the long time the men were ab­sent from home up­on for­eign ex­pe­di­tions [1270a] against the Ar­gives, and af­ter­wards the Ar­ca­di­ans and Messe­ni­ans, so that, when these wars were at an end, their mil­itary life, in which there is no lit­tle virtue, pre­pared them to obey the pre­cepts of their law-​giv­er; but we are told, that when Ly­cur­gus en­deav­oured al­so to re­duce the wom­en to an obe­di­ence to his laws, up­on their re­fusal he de­clined it. It may in­deed be said that the wom­en were the caus­es of these things, and of course all the fault was theirs. But we are not now con­sid­er­ing where the fault lies, or where it does not lie, but what is right and what is wrong; and when the man­ners of the wom­en are not well reg­ulat­ed, as I have al­ready said, it must not on­ly oc­ca­sion faults which are dis­grace­ful to the state, but al­so in­crease the love of mon­ey. In the next place, fault may be found with his un­equal di­vi­sion of prop­er­ty, for some will have far too much, oth­ers too lit­tle; by which means the land will come in­to few hands, which busi­ness is bad­ly reg­ulat­ed by his laws. For he made it in­fa­mous for any one ei­ther to buy or sell their pos­ses­sions, in which he did right; but he per­mit­ted any one that chose it to give them away, or be­queath them, al­though near­ly the same con­se­quences will arise from one prac­tice as from the oth­er. It is sup­posed that near two parts in five of the whole coun­try is the prop­er­ty of wom­en, ow­ing to their be­ing so of­ten sole heirs, and hav­ing such large for­tunes in mar­riage; though it would be bet­ter to al­low them none, or a lit­tle, or a cer­tain reg­ulat­ed pro­por­tion. Now ev­ery one is per­mit­ted to make a wom­an his heir if he pleas­es; and if he dies in­tes­tate, he who suc­ceeds as heir at law gives it to whom he pleas­es. From whence it hap­pens that al­though the coun­try is able to sup­port fif­teen hun­dred horse and thir­ty thou­sand foot, the num­ber does not amount to one thou­sand.

And from these facts it is ev­ident, that this par­tic­ular is bad­ly reg­ulat­ed; for the city could not sup­port one shock, but was ru­ined for want of men. They say, that dur­ing the reigns of their an­cient kings they used to present for­eign­ers with the free­dom of their city, to pre­vent there be­ing a want of men while they car­ried on long wars; it is al­so af­firmed that the num­ber of Spar­tans was for­mer­ly ten thou­sand; but be that as it will, an equal­ity of prop­er­ty con­duces much to in­crease the num­ber of the peo­ple. The law, too, which he made to en­cour­age pop­ula­tion was by no means cal­cu­lat­ed to cor­rect this in­equal­ity; for be­ing will­ing that the Spar­tans should be as nu­mer­ous as [1270b] pos­si­ble, to make them de­sirous of hav­ing large fam­ilies he or­dered that he who had three chil­dren should be ex­cused the night-​watch, and that he who had four should pay no tax­es: though it is very ev­ident, that while the land was di­vid­ed in this man­ner, that if the peo­ple in­creased there must many of them be very poor.

Nor was he less blam­able for the man­ner in which he con­sti­tut­ed the ephori; for these mag­is­trates take cog­ni­sance of things of the last im­por­tance, and yet they are cho­sen out of the peo­ple in gen­er­al; so that it of­ten hap­pens that a very poor per­son is elect­ed to that of­fice, who, from that cir­cum­stance, is eas­ily bought. There have been many in­stances of this for­mer­ly, as well as in the late af­fair at An­dros. And these men, be­ing cor­rupt­ed with mon­ey, went as far as they could to ru­in the city: and, be­cause their pow­er was too great and near­ly tyran­ni­cal, their kings were obliged to nat­ter them, which con­tribut­ed great­ly to hurt the state; so that it al­tered from an aris­toc­ra­cy to a democ­ra­cy. This mag­is­tra­cy is in­deed the great sup­port of the state; for the peo­ple are easy, know­ing that they are el­igi­ble to the first of­fice in it; so that, whether it took place by the in­ten­tion of the leg­is­la­tor, or whether it hap­pened by chance, this is of great ser­vice to their af­fairs; for it is nec­es­sary that ev­ery mem­ber of the state should en­deav­our that each part of the gov­ern­ment should be pre­served, and con­tin­ue the same. And up­on this prin­ci­ple their kings have al­ways act­ed, out of re­gard to their hon­our; the wise and good from their at­tach­ment to the sen­ate, a seat where­in they con­sid­er as the re­ward of virtue; and the com­mon peo­ple, that they may sup­port the ephori, of whom they con­sist. And it is prop­er that these mag­is­trates should be cho­sen out of the whole com­mu­ni­ty, not as the cus­tom is at present, which is very ridicu­lous. The ephori are the supreme judges in caus­es of the last con­se­quence; but as it is quite ac­ci­den­tal what sort of per­sons they may be, it is not right that they should de­ter­mine ac­cord­ing to their own opin­ion, but by a writ­ten law or es­tab­lished cus­tom. Their way of life al­so is not con­sis­tent with the man­ners of the city, for it is too in­dul­gent; where­as that of oth­ers is too se­vere; so that they can­not sup­port it, but are obliged pri­vate­ly to act con­trary to law, that they may en­joy some of the plea­sures of sense. There are al­so great de­fects in the in­sti­tu­tion of their sen­ators. If in­deed they were fit­ly trained to the prac­tice of ev­ery hu­man virtue, ev­ery one would read­ily ad­mit that they would be use­ful to the gov­ern­ment; but still it might be de­bat­ed whether they should be con­tin­ued judges for life, to de­ter­mine points of the great­est mo­ment, since the mind has its old age as well as the body; but as they are so brought up, [1271a] that even the leg­is­la­tor could not de­pend up­on them as good men, their pow­er must be in­con­sis­tent with the safe­ty of the state: for it is known that the mem­bers of that body have been guilty both of bribery and par­tial­ity in many pub­lic af­fairs; for which rea­son it had been much bet­ter if they had been made an­swer­able for their con­duct, which they are not. But it may be said the ephori seem to have a check up­on all the mag­is­trates. They have in­deed in this par­tic­ular very great pow­er; but I af­firm that they should not be en­trust­ed with this con­trol in the man­ner they are. More­over, the mode of choice which they make use of at the elec­tion of their sen­ators is very child­ish. Nor is it right for any one to so­lic­it for a place he is de­sirous of; for ev­ery per­son, whether he choos­es it or not, ought to ex­ecute any of­fice he is fit for. But his in­ten­tion was ev­ident­ly the same in this as in the oth­er parts of his gov­ern­ment. For mak­ing his cit­izens am­bi­tious af­ter hon­ours, with men of that dis­po­si­tion he has filled his sen­ate, since no oth­ers will so­lic­it for that of­fice; and yet the prin­ci­pal part of those crimes which men are de­lib­er­ate­ly guilty of arise from am­bi­tion and avarice.

We will in­quire at an­oth­er time whether the of­fice of a king is use­ful to the state: thus much is cer­tain, that they should be cho­sen from a con­sid­er­ation of their con­duct and not as they are now. But that the leg­is­la­tor him­self did not ex­pect to make all his cit­izens hon­ourable and com­plete­ly vir­tu­ous is ev­ident from this, that he dis­trusts them as not be­ing good men; for he sent those up­on the same em­bassy that were at vari­ance with each oth­er; and thought, that in the dis­pute of the kings the safe­ty of the state con­sist­ed. Nei­ther were their com­mon meals at first well es­tab­lished: for these should rather have been pro­vid­ed at the pub­lic ex­pense, as at Crete, where, as at Lacedae­mon, ev­ery one was obliged to buy his por­tion, al­though he might be very poor, and could by no means bear the ex­pense, by which means the con­trary hap­pened to what the leg­is­la­tor de­sired: for he in­tend­ed that those pub­lic meals should strength­en the demo­crat­ic part of his gov­ern­ment: but this reg­ula­tion had quite the con­trary ef­fect, for those who were very poor could not take part in them; and it was an ob­ser­va­tion of their fore­fa­thers, that the not al­low­ing those who could not con­tribute their pro­por­tion to the com­mon ta­bles to par­take of them, would be the ru­in of the state. Oth­er per­sons have cen­sured his laws con­cern­ing naval af­fairs, and not with­out rea­son, as it gave rise to dis­putes. For the com­man­der of the fleet is in a man­ner set up in op­po­si­tion to the kings, who are gen­er­als of the army for life.

[1271b] There is al­so an­oth­er de­fect in his laws wor­thy of cen­sure, which Pla­to has giv­en in his book of Laws; that the whole con­sti­tu­tion was cal­cu­lat­ed on­ly for the busi­ness of war: it is in­deed ex­cel­lent to make them con­querors; for which rea­son the preser­va­tion of the state de­pend­ed there­on. The de­struc­tion of it com­menced with their vic­to­ries: for they knew not how to be idle, or en­gage in any oth­er em­ploy­ment than war. In this par­tic­ular al­so they were mis­tak­en, that though they right­ly thought, that those things which are the ob­jects of con­tention amongst mankind are bet­ter pro­cured by virtue than vice, yet they wrong­ful­ly pre­ferred the things them­selves to virtue. Nor was the pub­lic rev­enue well man­aged at Spar­ta, for the state was worth noth­ing while they were obliged to car­ry on the most ex­ten­sive wars, and the sub­si­dies were very bad­ly raised; for as the Spar­tans pos­sessed a large ex­tent of coun­try, they were not ex­act up­on each oth­er as to what they paid in. And thus an event con­trary to the leg­is­la­tor’s in­ten­tion took place; for the state was poor, the in­di­vid­uals avari­cious. Enough of the Lacedae­mo­ni­an gov­ern­ment; for these seem the chief de­fects in it.

CHAP­TER X

The gov­ern­ment of Crete bears a near re­sem­blance to this, in some few par­tic­ulars it is not worse, but in gen­er­al it is far in­fe­ri­or in its con­trivance. For it ap­pears and is al­lowed in many par­tic­ulars the con­sti­tu­tion of Lacedae­mon was formed in im­ita­tion of that of Crete; and in gen­er­al most new things are an im­prove­ment up­on the old. For they say, that when Ly­cur­gus ceased to be guardian to King Char­illes he went abroad and spent a long time with his re­la­tions in Crete, for the Ly­cians are a colony of the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans; and those who first set­tled there adopt­ed that body of laws which they found al­ready es­tab­lished by the in­hab­itants; in like man­ner al­so those who now live near them have the very laws which Mi­nos first drew up.

This is­land seems formed by na­ture to be the mis­tress of Greece, for it is en­tire­ly sur­round­ed by a nav­iga­ble ocean which wash­es al­most all the mar­itime parts of that coun­try, and is not far dis­tant on the one side from Pelo­pon­nesus, on the oth­er, which looks to­wards Asia, from Tri­opi­um and Rhodes. By means of this sit­ua­tion Mi­nos ac­quired the em­pire of the sea and the is­lands; some of which he sub­dued, in oth­ers plant­ed colonies: at last he died at Cam­icus while he was at­tack­ing Sici­ly. There is this anal­ogy be­tween the cus­toms of the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans and the Cre­tans, the Helots cul­ti­vate the grounds [1272a] for the one, the do­mes­tic slaves for the oth­er. Both states have their com­mon meals, and the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans called these for­mer­ly not _psidi­tia_ but _and­pia_, as the Cre­tans do; which proves from whence the cus­tom arose. In this par­tic­ular their gov­ern­ments are al­so alike: the ephori have the same pow­er with those of Crete, who are called _kos­moi_; with this dif­fer­ence on­ly, that the num­ber of the one is five, of the oth­er ten. The sen­ators are the same as those whom the Cre­tans call the coun­cil. There was for­mer­ly al­so a king­ly pow­er in Crete; but it was af­ter­wards dis­solved, and the com­mand of their armies was giv­en to the _kos­moi_. Ev­ery one al­so has a vote in their pub­lic as­sem­bly; but this has on­ly the pow­er of con­firm­ing what has al­ready passed the coun­cil and the _kos­moi_.

The Cre­tans con­duct­ed their pub­lic meals bet­ter than the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans, for at Laced­se­mon each in­di­vid­ual was obliged to fur­nish what was as­sessed up­on him; which if he could not do, there was a law which de­prived him of the rights of a cit­izen, as has been al­ready men­tioned: but in Crete they were fur­nished by the com­mu­ni­ty; for all the corn and cat­tle, tax­es and con­tri­bu­tions, which the do­mes­tic slaves were obliged to fur­nish, were di­vid­ed in­to parts and al­lot­ted to the gods, the ex­igen­cies of the state, and these pub­lic meals; so that all the men, wom­en, and chil­dren were main­tained from a com­mon stock. The leg­is­la­tor gave great at­ten­tion to en­cour­age a habit of eat­ing spar­ing­ly, as very use­ful to the cit­izens. He al­so en­deav­oured, that his com­mu­ni­ty might not be too pop­ulous, to lessen the con­nec­tion with wom­en, by in­tro­duc­ing the love of boys: whether in this he did well or ill we shall have some oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty of con­sid­er­ing. But that the pub­lic meals were bet­ter or­dered at Crete than at Lacedae­mon is very ev­ident.

The in­sti­tu­tion of the _kos­moi_, was still worse than that of the ephori: for it con­tained all the faults in­ci­dent to that mag­is­tra­cy and some pe­cu­liar to it­self; for in both cas­es it is un­cer­tain who will be elect­ed: but the Lacedae-​mo­ni­ans have this ad­van­tage which the oth­ers have not, that as all are el­igi­ble, the whole com­mu­ni­ty have a share in the high­est hon­ours, and there­fore all de­sire to pre­serve the state: where­as among the Cre­tans the _kos­moi_ are not cho­sen out of the peo­ple in gen­er­al, but out of some cer­tain fam­ilies, and the sen­ate out of the _kos­moi_. And the same ob­ser­va­tions which may be made on the sen­ate at Lacedae­mon may be ap­plied to these; for their be­ing un­der no con­trol, and their con­tin­uing for life, is an hon­our greater than they mer­it; and to have their pro­ceed­ings not reg­ulat­ed by a writ­ten law, but left to their own dis­cre­tion, is dan­ger­ous. (As to there be­ing no in­sur­rec­tions, al­though the peo­ple share not in the man­age­ment of pub­lic af­fairs, this is no proof of a well-​con­sti­tut­ed gov­ern­ment, as the _kos­moi_ have no op­por­tu­ni­ty of be­ing bribed like the ephori, as they live in an [1272b] is­land far from those who would cor­rupt them.) But the method they take to cor­rect that fault is ab­surd, im­politic, and tyran­ni­cal: for very of­ten ei­ther their fel­low-​mag­is­trates or some pri­vate per­sons con­spire to­geth­er and turn out the _kos­moi_. They are al­so per­mit­ted to re­sign their of­fice be­fore their time is elapsed, and if all this was done by law it would be well, and not at the plea­sure of the in­di­vid­uals, which is a bad rule to fol­low. But what is worst of all is, that gen­er­al con­fu­sion which those who are in pow­er in­tro­duce to im­pede the or­di­nary course of jus­tice; which suf­fi­cient­ly shows what is the na­ture of the gov­ern­ment, or rather law­less force: for it is usu­al with the prin­ci­pal per­sons amongst them to col­lect to­geth­er some of the com­mon peo­ple and their friends, and then re­volt and set up for them­selves, and come to blows with each oth­er. And what is the dif­fer­ence, if a state is dis­solved at once by such vi­olent means, or if it grad­ual­ly so al­ters in pro­cess of time as to be no longer the same con­sti­tu­tion? A state like this would ev­er be ex­posed to the in­va­sions of those who were pow­er­ful and in­clined to at­tack it; but, as has been al­ready men­tioned, its sit­ua­tion pre­serves it, as it is free from the in­roads of for­eign­ers; and for this rea­son the fam­ily slaves still re­main qui­et at Crete, while the Helots are per­pet­ual­ly re­volt­ing: for the Cre­tans take no part in for­eign af­fairs, and it is but late­ly that any for­eign troops have made an at­tack up­on the is­land; and their rav­ages soon proved the in­ef­fec­tu­al­ness of their laws. And thus much for the gov­ern­ment of Crete.

CHAP­TER XI

The gov­ern­ment of Carthage seems well es­tab­lished, and in many re­spects su­pe­ri­or to oth­ers; in some par­tic­ulars it bears a near re­sem­blance to the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans; and in­deed these three states, the Cre­tans, the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans and the Carthagini­ans are in some things very like each oth­er, in oth­ers they dif­fer great­ly. Amongst many ex­cel­lent con­sti­tu­tions this may show how well their gov­ern­ment is framed, that al­though the peo­ple are ad­mit­ted to a share in the ad­min­is­tra­tion, the form of it re­mains un­al­tered, with­out any pop­ular in­sur­rec­tions, worth no­tice, on the one hand, or de­gen­er­at­ing in­to a tyran­ny on the oth­er. Now the Carthagini­ans have these things in com­mon with the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans: pub­lic ta­bles for those who are con­nect­ed to­geth­er by the tie of mu­tu­al friend­ship, af­ter the man­ner of their Phidi­tia; they have al­so a mag­is­tra­cy, con­sist­ing of an hun­dred and four per­sons, sim­ilar to the ephori, or rather se­lect­ed with more judg­ment; for amongst the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans, all the cit­izens are el­igi­ble, but amongst the Carthagini­ans, they are cho­sen out of those of the bet­ter sort: there is al­so some anal­ogy be­tween the king and the sen­ate in both these gov­ern­ments, though the Carthagini­an method of ap­point­ing their kings is best, for they do not con­fine them­selves to one fam­ily; nor do they per­mit the elec­tion to be at large, nor have they any re­gard to se­nior­ity; for if amongst the can­di­dates there are any of greater mer­it than the rest, these they pre­fer to those who may be old­er; for as their pow­er is very ex­ten­sive, if they are [1273a] per­sons of no ac­count, they may be very hurt­ful to the state, as they have al­ways been to the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans; al­so the greater part of those things which be­come rep­re­hen­si­ble by their ex­cess are com­mon to all those gov­ern­ments which we have de­scribed.

Now of those prin­ci­ples on which the Carthagini­ans have es­tab­lished their mixed form of gov­ern­ment, com­posed of an aris­toc­ra­cy and democ­ra­cy, some in­cline to pro­duce a democ­ra­cy, oth­ers an oli­garchy: for in­stance, if the kings and the sen­ate are unan­imous up­on any point in de­bate, they can choose whether they will bring it be­fore the peo­ple or no; but if they dis­agree, it is to these they must ap­peal, who are not on­ly to hear what has been ap­proved of by the sen­ate, but are fi­nal­ly to de­ter­mine up­on it; and whoso­ev­er choos­es it, has a right to speak against any mat­ter what­so­ev­er that may be pro­posed, which is not per­mit­ted in oth­er cas­es. The five, who elect each oth­er, have very great and ex­ten­sive pow­ers; and these choose the hun­dred, who are mag­is­trates of the high­est rank: their pow­er al­so con­tin­ues longer than any oth­er mag­is­trates, for it com­mences be­fore they come in­to of­fice, and is pro­longed af­ter they are out of it; and in this par­tic­ular the state in­clines to an oli­garchy: but as they are not elect­ed by lot, but by suf­frage, and are not per­mit­ted to take mon­ey, they are the great­est sup­port­ers imag­in­able of an aris­toc­ra­cy.

The de­ter­min­ing all caus­es by the same mag­is­trates, and not orae in one court and an­oth­er in an­oth­er, as at Lacedae­mon, has the same in­flu­ence. The con­sti­tu­tion of Carthage is now shift­ing from an aris­toc­ra­cy to an oli­garchy, in con­se­quence of an opin­ion which is favourably en­ter­tained by many, who think that the mag­is­trates in the com­mu­ni­ty ought not to be per­sons of fam­ily on­ly, but of for­tune al­so; as it is im­pos­si­ble for those who are in bad cir­cum­stances to sup­port the dig­ni­ty of their of­fice, or to be at leisure to ap­ply to pub­lic busi­ness. As choos­ing men of for­tune to be mag­is­trates make a state in­cline to an oli­garchy, and men of abil­ities to an aris­toc­ra­cy, so is there a third method of pro­ceed­ing which took place in the poli­ty of Carthage; for they have an eye to these two par­tic­ulars when they elect their of­fi­cers, par­tic­ular­ly those of the high­est rank, their kings and their gen­er­als. It must be ad­mit­ted, that it was a great fault in their leg­is­la­tor not to guard against the con­sti­tu­tion’s de­gen­er­at­ing from an aris­toc­ra­cy; for this is a most nec­es­sary thing to pro­vide for at first, that those cit­izens who have the best abil­ities should nev­er be obliged to do any­thing un­wor­thy their char­ac­ter, but be al­ways at leisure to serve the pub­lic, not on­ly when in of­fice, but al­so when pri­vate per­sons; for if once you are obliged to look among the wealthy, that you may have men at leisure to serve you, your great­est of­fices, of king and gen­er­al, will soon be­come ve­nal; in con­se­quence of which, rich­es will be more hon­ourable than virtue and a love of mon­ey be the rul­ing prin­ci­ple in the city-​for what those who have the chief pow­er re­gard as hon­ourable will nec­es­sar­ily be the ob­ject which the [1273b] cit­izens in gen­er­al will aim at; and where the first hon­ours are not paid to virtue, there the aris­to­crat­ic form of gov­ern­ment can­not flour­ish: for it is rea­son­able to con­clude, that those who bought their places should gen­er­al­ly make an ad­van­tage of what they laid out their mon­ey for; as it is ab­surd to sup­pose, that if a man of pro­bity who is poor should be de­sirous of gain­ing some­thing, a bad man should not en­deav­our to do the same, es­pe­cial­ly to re­im­burse him­self; for which rea­son the mag­is­tra­cy should be formed of those who are most able to sup­port an aris­toc­ra­cy. It would have been bet­ter for the leg­is­la­ture to have passed over the pover­ty of men of mer­it, and on­ly to have tak­en care to have en­sured them suf­fi­cient leisure, when in of­fice, to at­tend to pub­lic af­fairs.

It seems al­so im­prop­er, that one per­son should ex­ecute sev­er­al of­fices, which was ap­proved of at Carthage; for one busi­ness is best done by one per­son; and it is the du­ty of the leg­is­la­tor to look to this, and not make the same per­son a mu­si­cian and a shoe­mak­er: so that where the state is not small it is more politic and more pop­ular to ad­mit many per­sons to have a share in the gov­ern­ment; for, as I just now said, it is not on­ly more usu­al, but ev­ery­thing is bet­ter and soon­er done, when one thing on­ly is al­lot­ted to one per­son: and this is ev­ident both in the army and navy, where al­most ev­ery one, in his turn, both com­mands and is un­der com­mand. But as their gov­ern­ment in­clines to an oli­garchy, they avoid the ill ef­fects of it by al­ways ap­point­ing some of the pop­ular par­ty to the gov­ern­ment of cities to make their for­tunes. Thus they con­sult this fault in their con­sti­tu­tion and ren­der it sta­ble; but this is de­pend­ing on chance; where­as the leg­is­la­tor ought to frame his gov­ern­ment, that there the no room for in­sur­rec­tions. But now, if there should be any gen­er­al calami­ty, and the peo­ple should re­volt from their rulers, there is no rem­edy for re­duc­ing them to obe­di­ence by the laws. And these are the par­tic­ulars of the Lacedae­mo­ni­an, the Cre­tan, and the Carthagini­an gov­ern­ments which seem wor­thy of com­men­da­tion.

CHAP­TER XII

Some of those per­sons who have writ­ten up­on gov­ern­ment had nev­er any share in pub­lic af­fairs, but al­ways led a pri­vate life. Ev­ery­thing wor­thy of no­tice in their works we have al­ready spoke to. Oth­ers were leg­is­la­tors, some in their own cities, oth­ers were em­ployed in reg­ulat­ing the gov­ern­ments of for­eign states. Some of them on­ly com­posed a body of laws; oth­ers formed the con­sti­tu­tion al­so, as Ly­cur­gus; and Solon, who did both. The Lacedae­mo­ni­ans have been al­ready men­tioned. Some per­sons think that Solon was an ex­cel­lent leg­is­la­tor, who could dis­solve a pure oli­garchy, and save the peo­ple from that slav­ery which hung over them, and es­tab­lish the an­cient demo­crat­ic form of gov­ern­ment in his coun­try; where­in ev­ery part of it was so framed as to be well adapt­ed to the whole. In the sen­ate of Are­opa­gus an oli­garchy was pre­served; by the man­ner of elect­ing their [1274a] mag­is­trates, an aris­toc­ra­cy; and in their courts of jus­tice, a democ­ra­cy.

Solon seems not to have al­tered the es­tab­lished form of gov­ern­ment, ei­ther with re­spect to the sen­ate or the mode of elect­ing their mag­is­trates; but to have raised the peo­ple to great con­sid­er­ation in the state by al­lot­ting the supreme ju­di­cial de­part­ment to them; and for this some per­sons blame him, as hav­ing done what would soon over­turn that bal­ance of pow­er he in­tend­ed to es­tab­lish; for by try­ing all caus­es what­so­ev­er be­fore the peo­ple, who were cho­sen by lot to de­ter­mine them, it was nec­es­sary to flat­ter a tyran­ni­cal pop­ulace who had got this pow­er; which con­tribut­ed to bring the gov­ern­ment to that pure democ­ra­cy it now is.

Both Ephialtes and Per­icles abridged the pow­er of the Are­opagites, the lat­ter of whom in­tro­duced the method of pay­ing those who at­tend­ed the courts of jus­tice: and thus ev­ery one who aimed at be­ing pop­ular pro­ceed­ed in­creas­ing the pow­er of the peo­ple to what we now see it. But it is ev­ident that this was not Solon’s in­ten­tion, but that it arose from ac­ci­dent; for the peo­ple be­ing the cause of the naval vic­to­ry over the Medes, as­sumed great­ly up­on it, and en­list­ed them­selves un­der fac­tious dem­agogues, al­though op­posed by the bet­ter part of the cit­izens. He thought it in­deed most nec­es­sary to en­trust the peo­ple with the choice of their mag­is­trates and the pow­er of call­ing them to ac­count; for with­out that they must have been slaves and en­emies to the oth­er cit­izens: but he or­dered them to elect those on­ly who were per­sons of good ac­count and prop­er­ty, ei­ther out of those who were worth five hun­dred med­imns, or those who were called xeugi­tai, or those of the third cen­sus, who were called horse­men.

As for those of the fourth, which con­sist­ed of me­chan­ics, they were in­ca­pable of any of­fice. Za­leu­cus was the leg­is­la­tor of the West­ern Locri­ans, as was Charon­das, the Catanean, of his own cities, and those al­so in Italy and Sici­ly which be­longed to the Cal­cid­ians. Some per­sons en­deav­our to prove that Ono­macri­tus, the Locri­an, was the first per­son of note who drew up laws; and that he em­ployed him­self in that busi­ness while he was at Crete, where he con­tin­ued some time to learn the prophet­ic art: and they say, that Thales was his com­pan­ion; and that Ly­cur­gus and Za­leu­cus were the schol­ars of Thales, and Charon­das of Za­leu­cus; but those who ad­vance this, ad­vance what is re­pug­nant to chronol­ogy. Philo­laus al­so, of the fam­ily of the Bac­chi­ades, was a The­ban leg­is­la­tor. This man was very fond of Dio­cles, a vic­tor in the Olympic games, and when he left his coun­try from a dis­gust at an im­prop­er pas­sion which his moth­er Alithoe had en­ter­tained for him, and set­tled at Thebes, Philo­laus fol­lowed him, where they both died, and where they still show their tombs placed in view of each oth­er, but so dis­posed, that one of them looks to­wards Corinth, the oth­er does not; the rea­son they give for this is, that Diodes, from his de­tes­ta­tion of his moth­er’s pas­sion, would have his tomb so placed that no one could see Corinth from it; but Philo­laus chose that it might be seen from his: and this was the cause of their liv­ing at Thebes. [1274b]

As Philo­laus gave them laws con­cern­ing many oth­er things, so did he up­on adop­tion, which they call adop­tive laws; and this he in par­tic­ular did to pre­serve the num­ber of fam­ilies. Charon­das did noth­ing new, ex­cept in ac­tions for per­jury, which he was the first per­son who took in­to par­tic­ular con­sid­er­ation. He al­so drew up his laws with greater el­egance and ac­cu­ra­cy than even any of our present leg­is­la­tors. Philo­laus in­tro­duced the law for the equal dis­tri­bu­tion of goods; Pla­to that for the com­mu­ni­ty of wom­en, chil­dren, and goods, and al­so for pub­lic ta­bles for the wom­en; and one con­cern­ing drunk­en­ness, that they might ob­serve so­bri­ety in their sym­po­siums. He al­so made a law con­cern­ing their war­like ex­er­cis­es; that they should ac­quire a habit of us­ing both hands alike, as it was nec­es­sary that one hand should be as use­ful as the oth­er.

As for Dra­co’s laws, they were pub­lished when the gov­ern­ment was al­ready es­tab­lished, and they have noth­ing par­tic­ular in them worth men­tion­ing, ex­cept their sever­ity on ac­count of the enor­mi­ty of their pun­ish­ments. Pit­ta­cus was the au­thor of some laws, but nev­er drew up any form of gov­ern­ment; one of which was this, that if a drunk­en man beat any per­son he should be pun­ished more than if he did it when sober; for as peo­ple are more apt to be abu­sive when drunk than sober, he paid no con­sid­er­ation to the ex­cuse which drunk­en­ness might claim, but re­gard­ed on­ly the com­mon ben­efit. An­dro­madas Reg­mus was al­so a law­giv­er to the Thra­cian tal­cid­ians. There are some laws of his con­cern­ing mur­ders and heiress­es ex­tant, but these con­tain noth­ing that any one can say is new and his own. And thus much for dif­fer­ent sorts of gov­ern­ments, as well those which re­al­ly ex­ist as those which dif­fer­ent per­sons have pro­posed.