Politics: A Treatise on Government

BOOK VII

CHAP­TER I

He who pro­pos­es to make that in­quiry which is nec­es­sary con­cern­ing what gov­ern­ment is best, ought first to de­ter­mine what man­ner of liv­ing is most el­igi­ble; for while this re­mains un­cer­tain it will al­so be equal­ly un­cer­tain what gov­ern­ment is best: for, pro­vid­ed no un­ex­pect­ed ac­ci­dents in­ter­fere, it is high­ly prob­able, that those who en­joy the best gov­ern­ment will live the most hap­pi­ly ac­cord­ing to their cir­cum­stances; he ought, there­fore, first to know what man­ner of life is most de­sir­able for all; and af­ter­wards whether this life is the same to the man and the cit­izen, or dif­fer­ent. As I imag­ine that I have al­ready suf­fi­cient­ly shown what sort of life is best in my pop­ular dis­cours­es on that sub­ject, I think I may very prop­er­ly re­peat the same here; as most cer­tain­ly no one ev­er called in ques­tion the pro­pri­ety of one of the di­vi­sions; name­ly, that as what is good, rel­ative to man, may be di­vid­ed in­to three sorts, what is ex­ter­nal, what ap­per­tains to the body, and what to the soul, it is ev­ident that all these must con­spire to make a man hap­py: for no one would say that a man was hap­py who had no for­ti­tude, no tem­per­ance, no jus­tice, no pru­dence; but was afraid of the flies that flew round him: nor would ab­stain from the mean­est theft if he was ei­ther hun­gry or dry, or would mur­der his dear­est friend for a far­thing; and al­so was in ev­ery par­tic­ular as want­ing in his un­der­stand­ing as an in­fant or an id­iot. These truths are so ev­ident that all must agree to them; though some may dis­pute about the quan­ti­ty and the de­gree: for they may think, that a very lit­tle virtue is suf­fi­cient for hap­pi­ness; but for rich­es, prop­er­ty, pow­er, hon­our, and all such things, they en­deav­our to in­crease them with­out bounds: but to such we re­ply, that it is easy to prove from what ex­pe­ri­ence teach­es us in these cas­es, that these ex­ter­nal goods pro­duce not virtue, but virtue them. As to a hap­py life, whether it is to be found in plea­sure or virtue or both, cer­tain it is, that those whose morals are most pure, and whose un­der­stand­ings are best cul­ti­vat­ed, will en­joy more of it, al­though their for­tune is but mod­er­ate than those do who own an ex­uber­ance of wealth, are de­fi­cient in those; and this util­ity any one who re­flects may eas­ily con­vince him­self of; for what­so­ev­er is ex­ter­nal has its bound­ary, as a ma­chine, and what­so­ev­er is use­ful in its ex­cess is ei­ther nec­es­sar­ily hurt­ful, or at best use­less to the pos­ses­sor; but ev­ery good qual­ity of the soul the high­er it is in de­gree, so much the more use­ful it is, if it is per­mit­ted on this sub­ject to use the word use­ful as well as no­ble. It is al­so very ev­ident, that the ac­ci­dents of each sub­ject take place of each oth­er, as the sub­jects them­selves, of which we al­low they are ac­ci­dents, dif­fer from each oth­er in val­ue; so that if the soul is more no­ble than any out­ward pos­ses­sion, as the body, both in it­self and with re­spect to us, it must be ad­mit­ted of course that the best ac­ci­dents of each must fol­low the same anal­ogy. Be­sides, it is for the sake of the soul that these things are de­sir­able; and it is on this ac­count that wise men should de­sire them, not the soul for them. Let us there­fore be well as­sured, that ev­ery one en­joys as much hap­pi­ness as he pos­sess­es virtue and wis­dom, and acts ac­cord­ing to their dic­tates; since for this we have the ex­am­ple of GOD Him­self, WHO IS COM­PLETE­LY HAP­PY, NOT FROM ANY EX­TER­NAL GOOD; BUT IN HlM­SELF, AND BE­CAUSE SUCH IS HIS NA­TURE. For good for­tune is some­thing dif­fer­ent from hap­pi­ness, as ev­ery good which de­pends not on the mind is ow­ing to chance or for­tune; but it is not from for­tune that any one is wise and just: hence it fol­lows, that that city is hap­pi­est which is the best and acts best: for no one can do well who acts not well; nor can the deeds ei­ther of man or city be praise­wor­thy with­out virtue and wis­dom; for what­so­ev­er is just, or wise, or pru­dent in a man, the same things are just, wise, and pru­dent in a city.

Thus much by way of in­tro­duc­tion; for I could not but just touch up­on this sub­ject, though I could not go through a com­plete in­ves­ti­ga­tion of it, as it prop­er­ly be­longs to an­oth­er ques­tion: let us at present sup­pose so much, that a man’s hap­pi­est life, both as an in­di­vid­ual and as a cit­izen, is a life of virtue, ac­com­pa­nied with those en­joy­ments which virtue usu­al­ly pro­cures. If [1324a] there are any who are not con­vinced by what I have said, their doubts shall be an­swered here­after, at present we shall pro­ceed ac­cord­ing to our in­tend­ed method.

CHAP­TER II

It now re­mains for us to say whether the hap­pi­ness of any in­di­vid­ual man and the city is the same or dif­fer­ent: but this al­so is ev­ident; for whoso­ev­er sup­pos­es that rich­es will make a per­son hap­py, must place the hap­pi­ness of the city in rich­es if it pos­sess­es them; those who pre­fer a life which en­joys a tyran­nic pow­er over oth­ers will al­so think, that the city which has many oth­ers un­der its com­mand is most hap­py: thus al­so if any one ap­proves a man for his virtue, he will think the most wor­thy city the hap­pi­est: but here there are two par­tic­ulars which re­quire con­sid­er­ation, one of which is, whether it is the most el­igi­ble life to be a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty and en­joy the rights of a cit­izen, or whether to live as a stranger, with­out in­ter­fer­ing in pub­lic af­fairs; and al­so what form of gov­ern­ment is to be pre­ferred, and what dis­po­si­tion of the state is best; whether the whole com­mu­ni­ty should be el­igi­ble to a share in the ad­min­is­tra­tion, or on­ly the greater part, and some on­ly: as this, there­fore, is a sub­ject of po­lit­ical ex­am­ina­tion and spec­ula­tion, and not what con­cerns the in­di­vid­ual, and the first of these is what we are at present en­gaged in, the one of these I am not obliged to speak to, the oth­er is the prop­er busi­ness of my present de­sign. It is ev­ident that gov­ern­ment must be the best which is so es­tab­lished, that ev­ery one there­in may have it in his pow­er to act vir­tu­ous­ly and live hap­pi­ly: but some, who ad­mit that a life o! virtue is most el­igi­ble, still doubt which is prefer­able a pub­lic life of ac­tive virtue, or one en­tire­ly dis­en­gaged from what is with­out and spent in con­tem­pla­tion; which some say is the on­ly one wor­thy of a philoso­pher; and one of these two dif­fer­ent modes of life both now and for­mer­ly seem to have been cho­sen by all those who were the most vir­tu­ous men; I mean the pub­lic or philo­soph­ic. And yet it is of no lit­tle con­se­quence on which side the truth lies; for a man of sense must nat­ural­ly in­cline to the bet­ter choice; both as an in­di­vid­ual and a cit­izen. Some think that a tyran­nic gov­ern­ment over those near us is the great­est in­jus­tice; but that a po­lit­ical one is not un­just: but that still is a re­straint on the plea­sures and tran­quil­li­ty of life. Oth­ers hold the quite con­trary opin­ion, and think that a pub­lic and ac­tive life is the on­ly life for man: for that pri­vate per­sons have no op­por­tu­ni­ty of prac­tis­ing any one virtue, more than they have who are en­gaged in pub­lic life the man­age­ment of the [1324b] state. These are their sen­ti­ments; oth­ers say, that a tyran­ni­cal and despot­ical mode of gov­ern­ment is the on­ly hap­py one; for even amongst some free states the ob­ject of their laws seems to be to tyran­nise over their neigh­bours: so that the gen­er­al­ity of po­lit­ical in­sti­tu­tions, where­so­ev­er dis­persed, if they have any one com­mon ob­ject in view, have all of them this, to con­quer and gov­ern. It is ev­ident, both from the laws of the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans and Cre­tans, as well as by the man­ner in which they ed­ucat­ed their chil­dren, that all which they had in view was to make them sol­diers: be­sides, among all na­tions, those who have pow­er enough and re­duce oth­ers to servi­tude are hon­oured on that ac­count; as were the Scythi­ans, Per­sians, Thra­cians, and Gauls: with some there are laws to height­en the virtue of courage; thus they tell us that at Carthage they al­lowed ev­ery per­son to wear as many rings for dis­tinc­tion as he had served cam­paigns. There was al­so a law in Mace­do­nia, that a man who had not him­self killed an en­emy should be obliged to wear a hal­ter; among the Scythi­ans, at a fes­ti­val, none were per­mit­ted to drink out of the cup was car­ried about who had not done the same thing. Among the Iberi­ans, a war­like na­tion, they fixed as many columns up­on a man’s tomb as he had slain en­emies: and among dif­fer­ent na­tions dif­fer­ent things of this sort pre­vail, some of them es­tab­lished by law, oth­ers by cus­tom. Prob­ably it may seem too ab­surd to those who are will­ing to take this sub­ject in­to their con­sid­er­ation to in­quire whether it is the busi­ness of a leg­is­la­tor to be able to point out by what means a state may gov­ern and tyran­nise over its neigh­bours, whether they will, or will not: for how can that be­long ei­ther to the politi­cian or leg­is­la­tor which is un­law­ful? for that can­not be law­ful which is done not on­ly just­ly, but un­just­ly al­so: for a con­quest may be un­just­ly made. But we see noth­ing of this in the arts: for it is the busi­ness nei­ther of the physi­cian nor the pi­lot to use ei­ther per­sua­sion or force, the one to his pa­tients, the oth­er to his pas­sen­gers: and yet many seem to think a despot­ic gov­ern­ment is a po­lit­ical one, and what they would not al­low to be just or prop­er, if ex­er­cised over them­selves, they will not blush to ex­er­cise over oth­ers; for they en­deav­our to be wise­ly gov­erned them­selves, but think it of no con­se­quence whether oth­ers are so or not: but a despot­ic pow­er is ab­surd, ex­cept on­ly where na­ture has framed the one par­ty for do­min­ion, the oth­er for sub­or­di­na­tion; and there­fore no one ought to as­sume it over all in gen­er­al, but those on­ly which are the prop­er ob­jects there­of: thus no one should hunt men ei­ther for food or sac­ri­fice, but what is fit for those pur­pos­es, and these are wild an­imals which are eat­able.

Now a city which is well gov­erned might be very [1325a] hap­py in it­self while it en­joyed a good sys­tem of laws, al­though it should hap­pen to be so sit­uat­ed as to have no con­nec­tion with any oth­er state, though its con­sti­tu­tion should not be framed for war or con­quest; for it would then have no oc­ca­sion for these. It is ev­ident there­fore that the busi­ness of war is to be con­sid­ered as com­mend­able, not as a fi­nal end, but as the means of procur­ing it. It is the du­ty of a good leg­is­la­tor to ex­am­ine care­ful­ly in­to his state; and the na­ture of the peo­ple, and how they may par­take of ev­ery in­ter­course, of a good life, and of the hap­pi­ness which re­sults from it: and in this re­spect some laws and cus­toms dif­fer from oth­ers. It is al­so the du­ty of a leg­is­la­tor, if he has any neigh­bour­ing states to con­sid­er in what man­ner he shall op­pose each of them’ or what good of­fices he shall show them. But what should be the fi­nal end of the best gov­ern­ments will be con­sid­ered here­after.

CHAP­TER III

We will now speak to those who, while they agree that a life of virtue is most el­igi­ble, yet dif­fer in the use of it ad­dress­ing our­selves to both these par­ties; for there are some who dis­ap­prove of all po­lit­ical gov­ern­ments, and think that the life of one who is re­al­ly free is dif­fer­ent from the life of a cit­izen, and of all oth­ers most el­igi­ble: oth­ers again think that the cit­izen is the best; and that it is im­pos­si­ble for him who does noth­ing to be well em­ployed; but that vir­tu­ous ac­tiv­ity and hap­pi­ness are the same thing. Now both par­ties in some par­tic­ulars say what is right, in oth­ers what is wrong, thus, that the life of a free­man is bet­ter than the life of a slave is true, for a slave, as a slave, is em­ployed in noth­ing hon­ourable; for the com­mon servile em­ploy­ments which he is com­mand­ed to per­form have noth­ing vir­tu­ous in them; but, on the oth­er hand, it is not true that a sub­mis­sion to all sorts of gov­ern­ments is slav­ery; for the gov­ern­ment of freemen dif­fers not more from the gov­ern­ment of slaves than slav­ery and free­dom dif­fer from each oth­er in their na­ture; and how they do has been al­ready men­tioned. To pre­fer do­ing of noth­ing to vir­tu­ous ac­tiv­ity is al­so wrong, for hap­pi­ness con­sists in ac­tion, and many no­ble ends are pro­duced by the ac­tions of the just and wise. From what we have al­ready de­ter­mined on this sub­ject, some one prob­ably may think, that supreme pow­er is of all things best, as that will en­able a man to com­mand very many use­ful ser­vices from oth­ers; so that he who can ob­tain this ought not to give it up to an­oth­er, but rather to seize it: and, for this pur­pose, the fa­ther should have no at­ten­tion or re­gard for the son, or the son for the fa­ther, or friend for friend; for what is best is most el­igi­ble: but to be a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty and be in fe­lic­ity is best. What these per­sons ad­vance might prob­ably be true, if the supreme good was cer­tain­ly theirs who plun­der and use vi­olence to oth­ers: but it is [1325b] most un­like­ly that it should be so; for it is a mere sup­po­si­tion: for it does not fol­low that their ac­tions are hon­ourable who thus as­sume the supreme pow­er over oth­ers, with­out they were by na­ture as su­pe­ri­or to them as a man to a wom­an, a fa­ther to a child, a mas­ter to a slave: so that he who so far for­sakes the paths of virtue can nev­er re­turn back from whence he de­part­ed from them: for amongst equals what­ev­er is fair and just ought to be re­cip­ro­cal; for this is equal and right; but that equals should not par­take of what is equal, or like to like, is con­trary to na­ture: but what­ev­er is con­trary to na­ture is not right; there­fore, if there is any one su­pe­ri­or to the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty in virtue and abil­ities for ac­tive life, him it is prop­er to fol­low, him it is right to obey, but the one alone will not do, but must be joined to the oth­er al­so: and, if we are right in what we have now said, it fol­lows that hap­pi­ness con­sists in vir­tu­ous ac­tiv­ity, and that both with re­spect to the com­mu­ni­ty as well as the in­di­vid­ual an ac­tive life is the hap­pi­est: not that an ac­tive life must nec­es­sar­ily re­fer to oth­er per­sons, as some think, or that those stud­ies alone are prac­ti­cal which are pur­sued to teach oth­ers what to do; for those are much more so whose fi­nal ob­ject is in them­selves, and to im­prove the judg­ment and un­der­stand­ing of the man; for vir­tu­ous ac­tiv­ity has an end, there­fore is some­thing prac­ti­cal; nay, those who con­trive the plan which oth­ers fol­low are more par­tic­ular­ly said to act, and are su­pe­ri­or to the work­men who ex­ecute their de­signs. But it is not nec­es­sary that states which choose to have no in­ter­course with oth­ers should re­main in­ac­tive; for the sev­er­al mem­bers there­of may have mu­tu­al in­ter­course with each oth­er; for there are many op­por­tu­ni­ties for this among the dif­fer­ent cit­izens; the same thing is true of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual: for, was it oth­er­wise, nei­ther could the De­ity nor the uni­verse be per­fect; to nei­ther of whom can any­thing ex­ter­nal sep­arate­ly ex­ist. Hence it is ev­ident that that very same life which is hap­py for each in­di­vid­ual is hap­py al­so for the state and ev­ery mem­ber of it.

CHAP­TER IV

As I have now fin­ished what was in­tro­duc­to­ry to this sub­ject, and con­sid­ered at large the na­ture of oth­er states, it now re­mains that I should first say what ought to be the es­tab­lish­ment of a city which one should form ac­cord­ing to one’s wish; for no good state can ex­ist with­out a mod­er­ate pro­por­tion of what is nec­es­sary. Many things there­fore ought to be fore­thought of as de­sir­able, but none of them such as are im­pos­si­ble: I mean rel­ative to the num­ber of cit­izens and the ex­tent of the ter­ri­to­ry: for as oth­er ar­ti­fi­cers, such as the weaver and the ship­wright, ought to have such ma­te­ri­als as are fit for their work, since so much the bet­ter they are, by so much [1326a] su­pe­ri­or will the work it­self nec­es­sar­ily be; so al­so ought the leg­is­la­tor and politi­cian en­deav­our to pro­cure prop­er ma­te­ri­als for the busi­ness they have in hand. Now the first and prin­ci­pal in­stru­ment of the politi­cian is the num­ber of the peo­ple; he should there­fore know how many, and what they nat­ural­ly ought to be: in like man­ner the coun­try, how large, and what it is. Most per­sons think that it is nec­es­sary for a city to be large to be hap­py: but, should this be true, they can­not tell what is a large one and what a small one; for ac­cord­ing to the mul­ti­tude of the in­hab­itants they es­ti­mate the great­ness of it; but they ought rather to con­sid­er its strength than its num­bers; for a state has a cer­tain ob­ject in view, and from the pow­er which it has in it­self of ac­com­plish­ing it, its great­ness ought to be es­ti­mat­ed; as a per­son might say, that Hip­pocrates was a greater physi­cian, though not a greater man, than one that ex­ceed­ed him in the size of his body: but if it was prop­er to de­ter­mine the strength of the city from the num­ber of the in­hab­itants, it should nev­er be col­lect­ed from the mul­ti­tude in gen­er­al who may hap­pen to be in it; for in a city there must nec­es­sar­ily be many slaves, so­journ­ers, and for­eign­ers; but from those who are re­al­ly part of the city and prop­er­ly con­sti­tute its mem­bers; a mul­ti­tude of these is in­deed a proof of a large city, but in a state where a large num­ber of me­chan­ics in­hab­it, and but few sol­diers, such a state can­not be great; for the great­ness of the city, and the num­ber of men in it, are not the same thing. This too is ev­ident from fact, that it is very dif­fi­cult, if not im­pos­si­ble, to gov­ern prop­er­ly a very nu­mer­ous body of men; for of all the states which ap­pear well gov­erned we find not one where the rights of a cit­izen are open to an in­dis­crim­inate mul­ti­tude. And this is al­so ev­ident from the na­ture of the thing; for as law is a cer­tain or­der, so good law is of course a cer­tain good or­der: but too large a mul­ti­tude are in­ca­pable of this, un­less un­der the gov­ern­ment of that DI­VINE POW­ER which com­pre­hends the uni­verse. Not but that, as quan­ti­ty and va­ri­ety are usu­al­ly es­sen­tial to beau­ty, the per­fec­tion of a city con­sists in the large­ness of it as far as that large­ness is con­sis­tent with that or­der al­ready men­tioned: but still there is a de­ter­mi­nate size to all cities, as well as ev­ery­thing else, whether an­imals, plants, or ma­chines, for each of these, if they are nei­ther too lit­tle nor too big, have their prop­er pow­ers; but when they have not their due growth, or are bad­ly con­struct­ed, as a ship a span long is not prop­er­ly a ship, nor one of two fur­longs length, but when it is of a fit size; for ei­ther from its small­ness or from its large­ness it may be quite use­less: so is it with a city; one that is too small has not [1326b] in it­self the pow­er of self-​de­fence, but this is es­sen­tial to a city: one that is too large is ca­pa­ble of self-​de­fence in what is nec­es­sary; but then it is a na­tion and not a city: for it will be very dif­fi­cult to ac­com­mo­date a form of gov­ern­ment to it: for who would choose to be the gen­er­al of such an un­wieldy mul­ti­tude, or who could be their her­ald but a sten­tor? The first thing there­fore nec­es­sary is, that a city should con­sist of such num­bers as will be suf­fi­cient to en­able the in­hab­itants to live hap­pi­ly in their po­lit­ical com­mu­ni­ty: and it fol­lows, that the more the in­hab­itants ex­ceed that nec­es­sary num­ber the greater will the city be: but this must not be, as we have al­ready said, with­out bounds; but what is its prop­er lim­it ex­pe­ri­ence will eas­ily show, and this ex­pe­ri­ence is to be col­lect­ed from the ac­tions both of the gov­er­nors and the gov­erned. Now, as it be­longs to the first to di­rect the in­fe­ri­or mag­is­trates and to act as judges, it fol­lows that they can nei­ther de­ter­mine caus­es with jus­tice nor is­sue their or­ders with pro­pri­ety with­out they know the char­ac­ters of their fel­low-​cit­izens: so that when­ev­er this hap­pens not to be done in these two par­tic­ulars, the state must of ne­ces­si­ty be bad­ly man­aged; for in both of them it is not right to de­ter­mine too hasti­ly and with­out prop­er knowl­edge, which must ev­ident­ly be the case where the num­ber of the cit­izens is too many: be­sides, it is more easy for strangers and so­journ­ers to as­sume the rights of cit­izens, as they will eas­ily es­cape de­tec­tion in so great a mul­ti­tude. It is ev­ident, then, that the best bound­ary for a city is that where­in the num­bers are the great­est pos­si­ble, that they may be the bet­ter able to be suf­fi­cient in them­selves, while at the same time they are not too large to be un­der the eye and gov­ern­ment of the mag­is­trates. And thus let us de­ter­mine the ex­tent of a city.

CHAP­TER V

What we have said con­cern­ing a city may near­ly be ap­plied to a coun­try; for as to what soil it should be, ev­ery one ev­ident­ly will com­mend it if it is such as is suf­fi­cient in it­self to fur­nish what will make the in­hab­itants hap­py; for which pur­pose it must be able to sup­ply them with all the nec­es­saries of life; for it is the hav­ing these in plen­ty, with­out any want, which makes them con­tent. As to its ex­tent, it should be such as may en­able the in­hab­itants to live at their ease with free­dom and tem­per­ance. Whether we have done right or wrong in fix­ing this lim­it to the ter­ri­to­ry shall be con­sid­ered more minute­ly here­after, when we come par­tic­ular­ly to in­quire in­to prop­er­ty, and what for­tune is req­ui­site for a man to live on, and how and in what man­ner they ought to em­ploy it; for there are many doubts up­on this ques­tion, while each par­ty in­sists up­on their own plan of life be­ing car­ried to an ex­cess, the one of sever­ity, the oth­er of in­dul­gence. What the sit­ua­tion of the coun­try should be it is not dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine, in some par­tic­ulars re­spect­ing that we ought to be ad­vised by those who are skil­ful in mil­itary af­fairs. It should be dif­fi­cult of ac­cess to an en­emy, but easy to the in­hab­itants: and as we said, that the num­ber of [1327a] in­hab­itants ought to be such as can come un­der the eye of the mag­is­trate, so should it be with the coun­try; for then it is eas­ily de­fend­ed. As to the po­si­tion of the city, if one could place it to one’s wish, it is con­ve­nient to fix it on the sea­side: with re­spect to the coun­try, one sit­ua­tion which it ought to have has been al­ready men­tioned, name­ly, that it should be so placed as eas­ily to give as­sis­tance to all places, and al­so to re­ceive the nec­es­saries of life from all parts, and al­so wood, or any oth­er ma­te­ri­als which may hap­pen to be in the coun­try.

CHAP­TER VI

But with re­spect to plac­ing a city in the neigh­bour­hood of the sea, there are some who have many doubts whether it is ser­vice­able or hurt­ful to a well-​reg­ulat­ed state; for they say, that the re­sort of per­sons brought up un­der a dif­fer­ent sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is dis­ser­vice­able to the state, as well by im­ped­ing the laws as by their num­bers; for a mul­ti­tude of mer­chants must nec­es­sar­ily arise from their traf­fick­ing back­ward and for­ward up­on the seas, which will hin­der the well-​gov­ern­ing of the city: but if this in­con­ve­nience should not arise, it is ev­ident that it is bet­ter, both on ac­count of safe­ty and al­so for the eas­ier ac­qui­si­tion of the nec­es­saries of life, that both the city and the coun­try should be near the sea; for it is nec­es­sary that those who are to sus­tain the at­tack of the en­emy should be ready with their as­sis­tance both by land and by sea, and to op­pose any in­road, both ways if pos­si­ble but if not, at least where they are most pow­er­ful, which they may do while they pos­sess both. A mar­itime sit­ua­tion is al­so use­ful for re­ceiv­ing from oth­ers what your own coun­try will not pro­duce, and ex­port­ing those nec­es­saries of your own growth which are more than you have oc­ca­sion for; but a city ought to traf­fic to sup­ply its own wants, and not the wants of oth­ers; for those who them­selves fur­nish an open mar­ket for ev­ery one, do it for the sake of gain; which it is not prop­er for a well-​es­tab­lished state to do, nei­ther should they en­cour­age such a com­merce. Now, as we see that many places and cities have docks and har­bours ly­ing very con­ve­nient for the city, while those who fre­quent them have no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the citadel, and yet they are not too far off, but are sur­round­ed by walls and such-​like for­ti­fi­ca­tions, it is ev­ident, that if any good aris­es from such an in­ter­course the city will re­ceive it, but if any­thing hurt­ful, it will be easy to re­strain it by a law declar­ing and deput­ing whom the state will al­low to have an in­ter­course with each oth­er, and whom not. As to a naval pow­er, it is by no means doubt­ful that it is nec­es­sary to have one to a cer­tain de­gree; and this not on­ly for the sake of the [1327b] city it­self, but al­so be­cause it may be nec­es­sary to ap­pear formidable to some of the neigh­bour­ing states, or to be able to as­sist them as well by sea as by land; but to know how great that force should be, the health of the state should be in­quired in­to, and if that ap­pears vig­or­ous and en­ables her to take the lead of oth­er com­mu­ni­ties, it is nec­es­sary that her force should cor­re­spond with her ac­tions. As for that mul­ti­tude of peo­ple which a mar­itime pow­er cre­ates, they are by no means nec­es­sary to a state, nor ought they to make a part of the cit­izens; for the mariners and in­fantry, who have the com­mand, are freemen, and up­on these de­pends a naval en­gage­ment: but when there are many ser­vants and hus­band­men, there they will al­ways have a num­ber of sailors, as we now see hap­pens to some states, as in Her­aclea, where they man many triremes, though the ex­tent of their city is much in­fe­ri­or to some oth­ers. And thus we de­ter­mine con­cern­ing the coun­try, the port, the city, the sea, and a mar­itime pow­er: as to the num­ber of the cit­izens, what that ought to be we have al­ready said.

CHAP­TER VII

We now pro­ceed to point out what nat­ural dis­po­si­tion the mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ought to be of: but this any one will eas­ily per­ceive who will cast his eye over the states of Greece, of all oth­ers the most cel­ebrat­ed, and al­so the oth­er dif­fer­ent na­tions of this hab­it­able world. Those who live in cold coun­tries, as the north of Eu­rope, are full of courage, but want­ing in un­der­stand­ing and the arts: there­fore they are very tena­cious of their lib­er­ty; but, not be­ing politi­cians, they can­not re­duce their neigh­bours un­der their pow­er: but the Asi­at­ics, whose un­der­stand­ings are quick, and who are con­ver­sant in the arts, are de­fi­cient in courage; and there­fore are al­ways con­quered and the slaves of oth­ers: but the Gre­cians, placed as it were be­tween these two bound­aries, so par­take of them both as to be at the same time both coura­geous and sen­si­ble; for which rea­son Greece con­tin­ues free, and gov­erned in the best man­ner pos­si­ble, and ca­pa­ble of com­mand­ing the whole world, could they agree up­on one sys­tem of pol­icy. Now this is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the Gre­cians and oth­er na­tions, that the lat­ter have but one of these qual­ities, where­as in the for­mer they are both hap­pi­ly blend­ed to­geth­er. Hence it is ev­ident, that those per­sons ought to be both sen­si­ble and coura­geous who will read­ily obey a leg­is­la­tor, the ob­ject of whose laws is virtue.-As to what some per­sons say, that the mil­itary must be mild and ten­der to those they know, but se­vere and cru­el to those they know not, it is courage which [1328a] makes any one love­ly; for that is the fac­ul­ty of the soul which we most ad­mire: as a proof of this, our re­sent­ment ris­es high­er against our friends and ac­quain­tance than against those we know not: for which rea­son Archi­laus ac­cus­ing his friends says very prop­er­ly to him­self, Shall my friends in­sult me? The spir­it of free­dom and com­mand al­so is what all in­her­it who are of this dis­po­si­tion for courage is com­mand­ing and in­vin­ci­ble. It al­so is not right for any one to say, that you should be se­vere to those you know not; for this be­haviour is prop­er for no one: nor are those who are of a no­ble dis­po­si­tion harsh in their man­ners, ex­cept­ing on­ly to the wicked; and when they are par­tic­ular­ly so, it is, as has been al­ready said, against their friends, when they think they have in­jured them; which is agree­able to rea­son: for when those who think they ought to re­ceive a favour from any one do not re­ceive it, be­side the in­jury done them, they con­sid­er what they are de­prived of: hence the say­ing, “Cru­el are the wars of broth­ers;” and this, “Those who have great­ly loved do great­ly hate.” And thus we have near­ly de­ter­mined how many the in­hab­itants of a city ought to be, and what their nat­ural dis­po­si­tion, and al­so the coun­try how large, and of what sort is nec­es­sary; I say near­ly, be­cause it is need­less to en­deav­our at as great ac­cu­ra­cy in those things which are the ob­jects of the sens­es as in those which are in­quired in­to by the un­der­stand­ing on­ly.

CHAP­TER VI­II

As in nat­ural bod­ies those things are not ad­mit­ted to be parts of them with­out which the whole would not ex­ist, so al­so it is ev­ident that in a po­lit­ical state ev­ery­thing that is nec­es­sary there­un­to is not to be con­sid­ered as a part of it, nor any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty from whence one whole is made; for one thing ought to be com­mon and the same to the com­mu­ni­ty, whether they par­take of it equal­ly or un­equal­ly, as, for in­stance, food, land, or the like; but when one thing is for the ben­efit of one per­son, and an­oth­er for the ben­efit of an­oth­er, in this there is noth­ing like a com­mu­ni­ty, ex­cept­ing that one makes it and the oth­er us­es it; as, for in­stance, be­tween any in­stru­ment em­ployed in mak­ing any work, and the work­men, as there is noth­ing com­mon be­tween the house and the builder, but the art of the builder is em­ployed on the house. Thus prop­er­ty is nec­es­sary for states, but prop­er­ty is no part of the state, though many species of it have life; but a city is a com­mu­ni­ty of equals, for the pur­pose of en­joy­ing the best life pos­si­ble: but the hap­pi­est life is the best which con­sists in the per­fect prac­tice of vir­tu­ous en­er­gies: as there­fore some per­sons have great, oth­ers lit­tle or no op­por­tu­ni­ty of be­ing em­ployed in these, it is ev­ident that this is the cause of the dif­fer­ence there is be­tween the dif­fer­ent cities and com­mu­ni­ties there are to be found; for while each of these en­deav­our to ac­quire what is best by var­ious and dif­fer­ent means, they give [1328b] rise to dif­fer­ent modes of liv­ing and dif­fer­ent forms of gov­ern­ment. We are now to con­sid­er what those things are with­out which a city can­not pos­si­bly ex­ist; for what we call parts of the city must of ne­ces­si­ty in­here in it: and this we shall plain­ly un­der­stand, if we know the num­ber of things nec­es­sary to a city: first, the in­hab­itants must have food: sec­ond­ly, arts, for many in­stru­ments are nec­es­sary in life: third­ly, arms, for it is nec­es­sary that the com­mu­ni­ty should have an armed force with­in them­selves, both to sup­port their gov­ern­ment against those of their own body who might refuse obe­di­ence to it, and al­so to de­fend it from those who might at­tempt to at­tack it from with­out: fourth­ly, a cer­tain rev­enue, as well for the in­ter­nal ne­ces­si­ties of the state as for the busi­ness of war: fifth­ly, which is in­deed the chief con­cern, a re­li­gious es­tab­lish­ment: sixth­ly in or­der, but first of all in ne­ces­si­ty, a court to de­ter­mine both crim­inal and civ­il caus­es. These things are ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary, so to speak, in ev­ery state; for a city is a num­ber of peo­ple not ac­ci­den­tal­ly met to­geth­er, but with a pur­pose of en­sur­ing to them­selves suf­fi­cient in­de­pen­den­cy and self-​pro­tec­tion; and if any­thing nec­es­sary for these pur­pos­es is want­ing, it is im­pos­si­ble that in such a sit­ua­tion these ends can be ob­tained. It is nec­es­sary there­fore that a city should be ca­pa­ble of ac­quir­ing all these things: for this pur­pose a prop­er num­ber of hus­band­men are nec­es­sary to pro­cure food, al­so ar­ti­fi­cers and sol­diers, and rich men, and priests and judges, to de­ter­mine what is right and prop­er.

CHAP­TER IX

Hav­ing de­ter­mined thus far, it re­mains that we con­sid­er whether all these dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ments shall be open to all; for it is pos­si­ble to con­tin­ue the same per­sons al­ways hus­band­men, ar­ti­fi­cers, judges, or coun­sel­lors; or shall we ap­point dif­fer­ent per­sons to each of those em­ploy­ments which we have al­ready men­tioned; or shall some of them be ap­pro­pri­at­ed to par­tic­ulars, and oth­ers of course com­mon to all? but this does not take place in ev­ery state, for, as we have al­ready said, it is pos­si­ble that all may be com­mon to all, or not, but on­ly com­mon to some; and this is the dif­fer­ence be­tween one gov­ern­ment and an­oth­er: for in democ­ra­cies the whole com­mu­ni­ty par­takes of ev­ery­thing, but in oli­garchies it is dif­fer­ent.

Since we are in­quir­ing what is the best gov­ern­ment pos­si­ble, and it is ad­mit­ted to be that in which the cit­izens are hap­py; and that, as we have al­ready said, it is im­pos­si­ble to ob­tain hap­pi­ness with­out virtue; it fol­lows, that in the best-​gov­erned states, where the cit­izens are re­al­ly men of in­trin­sic and not rel­ative good­ness, none of them should be per­mit­ted to ex­er­cise any me­chan­ic em­ploy­ment or fol­low mer­chan­dise, as be­ing ig­no­ble and de­struc­tive to virtue; nei­ther should they be hus­band-[1329a] men, that they may be at leisure to im­prove in virtue and per­form the du­ty they owe to the state. With re­spect to the em­ploy­ments of a sol­dier, a sen­ator, and a judge, which are ev­ident­ly nec­es­sary to the com­mu­ni­ty, shall they be al­lot­ted to dif­fer­ent per­sons, or shall the same per­son ex­ecute both? This ques­tion, too, is eas­ily an­swered: for in some cas­es the same per­sons may ex­ecute them, in oth­ers they should be dif­fer­ent, where the dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ments re­quire dif­fer­ent abil­ities, as when courage is want­ing for one, judg­ment for the oth­er, there they should be al­lot­ted to dif­fer­ent per­sons; but when it is ev­ident, that it is im­pos­si­ble to oblige those who have arms in their hands, and can in­sist on their own terms, to be al­ways un­der com­mand; there these dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ments should be trust­ed to one per­son; for those who have arms in their hands have it in their op­tion whether they will or will not as­sume the supreme pow­er: to these two (name­ly, those who have courage and judg­ment) the gov­ern­ment must be en­trust­ed; but not in the same man­ner, but as na­ture di­rects; what re­quires courage to the young, what re­quires judg­ment to the old; for with the young is courage, with the old is wis­dom: thus each will be al­lot­ted the part they are fit for ac­cord­ing to their dif­fer­ent mer­its. It is al­so nec­es­sary that the land­ed prop­er­ty should be­long to these men; for it is nec­es­sary that the cit­izens should be rich, and these are the men prop­er for cit­izens; for no me­chan­ic ought to be ad­mit­ted to the rights of a cit­izen, nor any oth­er sort of peo­ple whose em­ploy­ment is not en­tire­ly no­ble, hon­ourable, and vir­tu­ous; this is ev­ident from the prin­ci­ple we at first set out with; for to be hap­py it is nec­es­sary to be vir­tu­ous; and no one should say that a city is hap­py while he con­sid­ers on­ly one part of its cit­izens, but for that pur­pose he ought to ex­am­ine in­to all of them. It is ev­ident, there­fore, that the land­ed prop­er­ty should be­long to these, though it may be nec­es­sary for them to have hus­band­men, ei­ther slaves, bar­bar­ians, or ser­vants. There re­mains of the dif­fer­ent class­es of the peo­ple whom we have enu­mer­at­ed, the priests, for these ev­ident­ly com­pose a rank by them­selves; for nei­ther are they to be reck­oned amongst the hus­band­men nor the me­chan­ics; for rev­er­ence to the gods is high­ly be­com­ing ev­ery state: and since the cit­izens have been di­vid­ed in­to or­ders, the mil­itary and the coun­cil, and it is prop­er to of­fer due wor­ship to the gods, and since it is nec­es­sary that those who are em­ployed in their ser­vice should have noth­ing else to do, let the busi­ness of the priest­hood be al­lot­ted to those who are in years. We have now shown what is nec­es­sary to the ex­is­tence of a city, and of what parts it con­sists, and that hus­band­men, me­chan­ic, and mer­ce­nary ser­vants are nec­es­sary to a city; but that the parts of it are sol­diers and sailors, and that these are al­ways dif­fer­ent from those, but from each oth­er on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly.

CHAP­TER X

It seems nei­ther now nor very late­ly to have been known [1329b] to those philoso­phers who have made pol­itics their study, that a city ought to be di­vid­ed by fam­ilies in­to dif­fer­ent or­ders of men; and that the hus­band­men and sol­diers should be kept sep­arate from each oth­er; which cus­tom is even to this day pre­served in Egypt and in Crete; al­so Sesostris hav­ing found­ed it in Egypt, Mi­nos in Crete. Com­mon meals seem al­so to have been an an­cient reg­ula­tion, and to have been es­tab­lished in Crete dur­ing the reign of Mi­nos, and in a still more re­mote pe­ri­od in Italy; for those who are the best judges in that coun­try say that one Italus be­ing king of AEno­tria., from whom the peo­ple, chang­ing their names, were called Ital­ians in­stead of AEno­tri­ans, and that part of Eu­rope was called Italy which is bound­ed by the Scyl­let­ic Gulf on the one side and the Lamet­ic on the oth­er, the dis­tance be­tween which is about half a day’s jour­ney. This Italus, they re­late, made the AEno­tri­ans, who were for­mer­ly shep­herds, hus­band­men, and gave them dif­fer­ent laws from what they had be­fore, and to have been the first who es­tab­lished com­mon meals, for which rea­son some of his de­scen­dants still use them, and ob­serve some of his laws. The Opi­ci in­hab­it that part which lies to­wards the Tyrrhe­ni­an Sea, who both now are and for­mer­ly were called Au­so­ni­ans. The Chones in­hab­it­ed the part to­ward Iapi­gia and the Io­ni­an Sea which is called Syr­tis. These Chones were de­scend­ed from the AEno­tri­ans. Hence arose the cus­tom of com­mon meals, but the sep­ara­tion of the cit­izens in­to dif­fer­ent fam­ilies from Egypt: for the reign of Sesostris is of much high­er an­tiq­ui­ty than that of Mi­nos. As we ought to think that most oth­er things were found out in a long, nay, even in a bound­less time (rea­son teach­ing us that want would make us first in­vent that which was nec­es­sary, and, when that was ob­tained, then those things which were req­ui­site for the con­ve­niences and or­na­ment of life), so should we con­clude the same with re­spect to a po­lit­ical state; now ev­ery­thing in Egypt bears the marks of the most re­mote an­tiq­ui­ty, for these peo­ple seem to be the most an­cient of all oth­ers, and to have ac­quired laws and po­lit­ical or­der; we should there­fore make a prop­er use of what is told us of them, and en­deav­our to find out what they have omit­ted. We have al­ready said, that the land­ed prop­er­ty ought to be­long to the mil­itary and those who par­take of the gov­ern­ment of the state; and that there­fore the hus­band­men should be a sep­arate or­der of peo­ple; and how large and of what na­ture the coun­try ought to be: we will first treat of the di­vi­sion of the land, and of the hus­band­men, how many and of what sort they ought to be; since we by no means hold that prop­er­ty ought to be com­mon, as some per­sons have said, on­ly thus far, in friend­ship, it [1330a] should be their cus­tom to let no cit­izen want sub­sis­tence. As to com­mon meals, it is in gen­er­al agreed that they are prop­er in well-​reg­ulat­ed cities; my rea­sons for ap­prov­ing of them shall be men­tioned here­after: they are what all the: cit­izens ought to par­take of; but it will not be easy for the poor, out of what is their own, to fur­nish as much as they are or­dered to do, and sup­ply their own house be­sides. The ex­pense al­so of re­li­gious wor­ship should be de­frayed by the whole state. Of ne­ces­si­ty there­fore the land ought to be di­vid­ed in­to two parts, one of which should be­long to the com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al, the oth­er to the in­di­vid­uals sep­arate­ly; and each of these parts should again be sub­di­vid­ed in­to two: half of that which be­longs to the pub­lic should be ap­pro­pri­at­ed to main­tain the wor­ship of the gods, the oth­er half to sup­port the com­mon meals. Half of that which be­longs to the in­di­vid­uals should be at the ex­trem­ity of the coun­try, the oth­er half near the city, so that these two por­tions be­ing al­lot­ted to each per­son, all would par­take of land in both places, which would be both equal and right; and in­duce them to act in con­cert with greater har­mo­ny in any war with their neigh­bours: for when the land is not di­vid­ed in this man­ner, one par­ty ne­glects the in­roads of the en­emy on the bor­ders, the oth­er makes it a mat­ter of too much con­se­quence and more than is nec­es­sary; for which rea­son in some places there is a law which for­bids the in­hab­itants of the bor­ders to have any vote in the coun­cil when they are de­bat­ing up­on a war which is made against them as their pri­vate in­ter­est might pre­vent their vot­ing im­par­tial­ly. Thus there­fore the coun­try ought to be di­vid­ed and for the rea­sons be­fore men­tioned. Could one have one’s choice, the hus­band­men should by all means be slaves, not of the same na­tion, or men of any spir­it; for thus they would be la­bo­ri­ous in their busi­ness, and safe from at­tempt­ing any nov­el­ties: next to these bar­bar­ian ser­vants are to be pre­ferred, sim­ilar in nat­ural dis­po­si­tion to these we have al­ready men­tioned. Of these, let those who are to cul­ti­vate the pri­vate prop­er­ty of the in­di­vid­ual be­long to that in­di­vid­ual, and those who are to cul­ti­vate the pub­lic ter­ri­to­ry be­long to the pub­lic. In what man­ner these slaves ought to be used, and for what rea­son it is very prop­er that they should have the promise of their lib­er­ty made them, as a re­ward for their ser­vices, shall be men­tioned here­after.

CHAP­TER XI

We have al­ready men­tioned, that both the city and all the coun­try should com­mu­ni­cate both with the sea and the con­ti­nent as much as pos­si­ble. There are these four things which we should be par­tic­ular­ly de­sirous of in the po­si­tion of the city with re­spect to it­self: in the first place, health is to be con­sult­ed as the first thing nec­es­sary: now a city which fronts the east and re­ceives the winds which blow from thence is es­teemed most health­ful; next to this that which has a north­ern po­si­tion is to be pre­ferred, as best in win­ter. It should next be con­trived that it may have a prop­er sit­ua­tion for the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment and for de­fence in war: that in war the cit­izens may [1330b] have easy ac­cess to it; but that it may be dif­fi­cult of ac­cess to, and hard­ly to be tak­en by, the en­emy. In the next place par­tic­ular­ly, that there may be plen­ty of wa­ter, and rivers near at hand: but if those can­not be found, very large cis­terns must be pre­pared to save rain-​wa­ter, so that there may be no want of it in case they should be driv­en in­to the town in time of war. And as great care should be tak­en of the health of the in­hab­itants, the first thing to be at­tend­ed to is, that the city should have a good sit­ua­tion and a good po­si­tion; the sec­ond is, that they may have good wa­ter to drink; and this not be neg­li­gent­ly tak­en care of; for what we chiefly and most fre­quent­ly use for the sup­port of the body must prin­ci­pal­ly in­flu­ence the health of it; and this in­flu­ence is what the air and wa­ter nat­ural­ly have: for which rea­son in all wise gov­ern­ments the wa­ters ought to be ap­pro­pri­at­ed to dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es, and if they are not equal­ly good, and if there is not a plen­ty of nec­es­sary wa­ter, that which is to drink should be sep­arat­ed from that which is for oth­er us­es. As to for­ti­fied places, what is prop­er for some gov­ern­ments is not prop­er for all; as, for in­stance, a lofty citadel is prop­er for a monar­chy and an oli­garchy; a city built up­on a plain suits a democ­ra­cy; nei­ther of these for an aris­toc­ra­cy, but rather many strong places. As to the form of pri­vate hous­es, those are thought to be best and most use­ful for their dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es which are dis­tinct and sep­arate from each oth­er, and built in the mod­ern man­ner, af­ter the plan of Hip­po­damus: but for safe­ty in time of war, on the con­trary, they should be built as they for­mer­ly were; for they were such that strangers could not eas­ily find their way out of them, and the method of ac­cess to them such as an en­emy could with dif­fi­cul­ty find out if he pro­posed to be­siege them. A city there­fore should have both these sorts of build­ings, which may eas­ily be con­trived if any one will so reg­ulate them as the planters do their rows of vines; not that the build­ings through­out the city should be de­tached from each oth­er, on­ly in some parts of it; thus el­egance and safe­ty will be equal­ly con­sult­ed. With re­spect to walls, those who say that a coura­geous peo­ple ought not to have any, pay too much re­spect to ob­so­lete no­tions; par­tic­ular­ly as we may see those who pride them­selves there­in con­tin­ual­ly con­fut­ed by facts. It is in­deed dis­rep­utable for those who are equal, or near­ly so, to the en­emy, to en­deav­our to take refuge with­in their walls–but since it very of­ten hap­pens, that those who make the at­tack are too pow­er­ful for the brav­ery and courage of those few who op­pose them to re­sist, if you would not suf­fer the calami­ties of war and the in­so­lence of the en­emy, it must be thought the part of a good sol­dier to seek for safe­ty un­der the shel­ter and pro­tec­tion of walls more es­pe­cial­ly since so many mis­sile weapons and ma­chines have been most in­ge­nious­ly in­vent­ed to be­siege cities with. In­deed to ne­glect sur­round­ing a city with a wall would be sim­ilar to choos­ing a coun­try which is easy of ac­cess to an en­emy, or lev­el­ling the em­inences of it; or as if an in­di­vid­ual should not have a wall to his house lest it should be thought that the own­er of it was a cow­ard: nor should this be left un­con­sid­ered, that those who have a city sur­round­ed with walls may act both ways, ei­ther as if it had or as if it had not; but where it has not they can­not do this. If this is true, it is not on­ly nec­es­sary to have walls, but care must be tak­en that they may be a prop­er or­na­ment to the city, as well as a de­fence in time of war; not on­ly ac­cord­ing to the old meth­ods, but the mod­ern im­prove­ments al­so: for as those who make of­fen­sive war en­deav­our by ev­ery way pos­si­ble to gain ad­van­tages over their ad­ver­saries, so should those who are up­on the de­fen­sive em­ploy all the means al­ready known, and such new ones as phi­los­ophy can in­vent, to de­fend them­selves: for those who are well pre­pared are sel­dom first at­tacked.

CHAP­TER XII

As the cit­izens in gen­er­al are to eat at pub­lic ta­bles in cer­tain com­pa­nies, and it is nec­es­sary that the walls should have bul­warks and tow­ers in prop­er places and at prop­er dis­tances, it is ev­ident that it will be very nec­es­sary to have some of these in the tow­ers; let the build­ings for this pur­pose be made the or­na­ments of the walls. As to tem­ples for pub­lic wor­ship, and the hall for the pub­lic ta­bles of the chief mag­is­trates, they ought to be built in prop­er places, and con­tigu­ous to each oth­er, ex­cept those tem­ples which the law or the or­acle or­ders to be sep­arate from all oth­er build­ings; and let these be in such a con­spic­uous em­inence, that they may have ev­ery ad­van­tage of sit­ua­tion, and in the neigh­bour­hood of that part of the city which is best for­ti­fied. Ad­join­ing to this place there ought to be a large square, like that which they call in Thes­saly The Square of Free­dom, in which noth­ing is per­mit­ted to be bought or sold; in­to which no me­chan­ic nor hus­band­man, nor any such per­son, should be per­mit­ted to en­ter, un­less com­mand­ed by the mag­is­trates. It will al­so be an or­na­ment to this place if the gym­nas­tic ex­er­cis­es of the el­ders are per­formed in it. It is al­so prop­er, that for per­form­ing these ex­er­cis­es the cit­izens should be di­vid­ed in­to dis­tinct class­es, ac­cord­ing to their ages, and that the young per­sons should have prop­er of­fi­cers to be with them, and that the se­niors should be with the mag­is­trates; for hav­ing them be­fore their eyes would great­ly in­spire true mod­esty and in­gen­uous fear. There ought to be an­oth­er square [1331b] sep­arate from this for buy­ing and sell­ing, which should be so sit­uat­ed as to be com­modi­ous for the re­cep­tion of goods both by sea and land. As the cit­izens may be di­vid­ed in­to mag­is­trates and priests, it is prop­er that the pub­lic ta­bles of the priests should be in build­ings near the tem­ples. Those of the mag­is­trates who pre­side over con­tracts, in­dict­ments, and such-​like, and al­so over the mar­kets, and the pub­lic streets near the square, or some pub­lic way, I mean the square where things are bought and sold; for I in­tend­ed the oth­er for those who are at leisure, and this for nec­es­sary busi­ness. The same or­der which I have di­rect­ed here should be ob­served al­so in the coun­try; for there al­so their mag­is­trates such as the sur­vey­ors of the woods and over­seers of the grounds, must nec­es­sar­ily have their com­mon ta­bles and their tow­ers, for the pur­pose of pro­tec­tion against an en­emy. There ought al­so to be tem­ples erect­ed at prop­er places, both to the gods and the heroes; but it is un­nec­es­sary to dwell longer and most minute­ly on these par­tic­ulars–for it is by no means dif­fi­cult to plan these things, it is rather so to car­ry them in­to ex­ecu­tion; for the the­ory is the child of our wish­es, but the prac­ti­cal part must de­pend up­on for­tune; for which rea­son we shall de­cline say­ing any­thing far­ther up­on these sub­jects.

CHAP­TER XI­II

We will now show of what num­bers and of what sort of peo­ple a gov­ern­ment ought to con­sist, that the state may be hap­py and well ad­min­is­tered. As there are two par­tic­ulars on which the ex­cel­lence and per­fec­tion of ev­ery­thing de­pend, one of these is, that the ob­ject and end pro­posed should be prop­er; the oth­er, that the means to ac­com­plish it should be adapt­ed to that pur­pose; for it may hap­pen that these may ei­ther agree or dis­agree with each oth­er; for the end we pro­pose may be good, but in tak­ing the means to ob­tain it we may err; at oth­er times we may have the right and prop­er means in our pow­er, but the end may be bad, and some­times we may mis­take in both; as in the art of medicine the physi­cian does not some­times know in what sit­ua­tion the body ought to be, to be healthy; nor what to do to pro­cure the end he aims at. In ev­ery art and sci­ence, there­fore, we should be mas­ter of this knowl­edge, name­ly, the prop­er end, and the means to ob­tain it. Now it is ev­ident that all per­sons are de­sirous to live well and be hap­py; but that some have the means there­of in their own pow­er, oth­ers not; and this ei­ther through na­ture [1332a] or for­tune; for many in­gre­di­ents are nec­es­sary to a hap­py life; but few­er to those who are of a good than to those who are of a bad dis­po­si­tion. There are oth­ers who con­tin­ual­ly have the means of hap­pi­ness in their own pow­er, but do not right­ly ap­ply them. Since we pro­pose to in­quire what gov­ern­ment is best, name­ly, that by which a state may be best ad­min­is­tered, and that state is best ad­min­is­tered where the peo­ple are the hap­pi­est, it is ev­ident that hap­pi­ness is a thing we should not be un­ac­quaint­ed with. Now, I have al­ready said in my trea­tise on Morals (if I may here make any use of what I have there shown), that hap­pi­ness con­sists in the en­er­gy and per­fect prac­tice of virtue; and this not rel­ative­ly, but sim­ply; I mean by rel­ative­ly, what is nec­es­sary in some cer­tain cir­cum­stances; by sim­ply, what is good and fair in it­self: of the first sort are just pun­ish­ments, and re­straints in a just cause; for they arise from virtue and are nec­es­sary, and on that ac­count are vir­tu­ous; though it is more de­sir­able that nei­ther any state nor any in­di­vid­ual should stand in need of them; but those ac­tions which are in­tend­ed ei­ther to pro­cure hon­our or wealth are sim­ply good; the oth­ers el­igi­ble on­ly to re­move an evil; these, on the con­trary, are the foun­da­tion and means of rel­ative good. A wor­thy man in­deed will bear pover­ty, dis­ease, and oth­er un­for­tu­nate ac­ci­dents with a no­ble mind; but hap­pi­ness con­sists in the con­trary to these (now we have al­ready de­ter­mined in our trea­tise on Morals, that he is a man of worth who con­sid­ers what is good be­cause it is vir­tu­ous as what is sim­ply good; it is ev­ident, there­fore, that all the ac­tions of such a one must be wor­thy and sim­ply good): this has led some per­sons to con­clude, that the cause of hap­pi­ness was ex­ter­nal goods; which would be as if any one should sup­pose that the play­ing well up­on the lyre was ow­ing to the in­stru­ment, and not to the art. It nec­es­sar­ily fol­lows from what has been said, that some things should be ready at hand and oth­ers pro­cured by the leg­is­la­tor; for which rea­son in found­ing a city we earnest­ly wish that there may be plen­ty of those things which are sup­posed to be un­der the do­min­ion of for­tune (for some things we ad­mit her to be mis­tress over); but for a state to be wor­thy and great is not on­ly the work of for­tune but of knowl­edge and judg­ment al­so. But for a state to be wor­thy it is nec­es­sary that those cit­izens which are in the ad­min­is­tra­tion should be wor­thy al­so; but as in our city ev­ery cit­izen is to be so, we must con­sid­er how this may be ac­com­plished; for if this is what ev­ery one could be, and not some in­di­vid­uals on­ly, it would be more de­sir­able; for then it would fol­low, that what might be done by one might be done by all. Men are wor­thy and good three ways; by na­ture, by cus­tom, by rea­son. In the first place, a man ought to be born a man, and not any oth­er an­imal; that is to say, he ought to have both a body and soul; but it avails not to be on­ly born [1332b] with some things, for cus­tom makes great al­ter­ations; for there are some things in na­ture ca­pa­ble of al­ter­ation ei­ther way which are fixed by cus­tom, ei­ther for the bet­ter or the worse. Now, oth­er an­imals live chiefly a life of na­ture; and in very few things ac­cord­ing to cus­tom; but man lives ac­cord­ing to rea­son al­so, which he alone is en­dowed with; where­fore he ought to make all these ac­cord with each oth­er; for if men fol­lowed rea­son, and were per­suad­ed that it was best to obey her, they would act in many re­spects con­trary to na­ture and cus­tom. What men ought nat­ural­ly to be, to make good mem­bers of a com­mu­ni­ty, I have al­ready de­ter­mined; the rest of this dis­course there­fore shall be up­on ed­uca­tion; for some things are ac­quired by habit, oth­ers by hear­ing them.

CHAP­TER XIV

As ev­ery po­lit­ical com­mu­ni­ty con­sists of those who gov­ern and of those who are gov­erned, let us con­sid­er whether dur­ing the con­tin­uance of their lives they ought to be the same per­sons or dif­fer­ent; for it is ev­ident that the mode of ed­uca­tion should be adapt­ed to this dis­tinc­tion. Now, if one man dif­fered from an­oth­er as much, as we be­lieve, the gods and heroes dif­fer from men: in the first place, be­ing far their su­pe­ri­ors in body; and, sec­ond­ly, in the soul: so that the su­pe­ri­or­ity of the gov­er­nors over the gov­erned might be ev­ident be­yond a doubt, it is cer­tain that it would be bet­ter for the one al­ways to gov­ern, the oth­er al­ways to be gov­erned: but, as this is not easy to ob­tain, and kings are not so su­pe­ri­or to those they gov­ern as Scy­lax in­forms us they are in In­dia, it is ev­ident that for many rea­sons it is nec­es­sary that all in their turns should both gov­ern and be gov­erned: for it is just that those who are equal should have ev­ery­thing alike; and it is dif­fi­cult for a state to con­tin­ue which is found­ed in in­jus­tice; for all those in the coun­try who are de­sirous of in­no­va­tion will ap­ply them­selves to those who are un­der the gov­ern­ment of the rest, and such will be their num­bers in the state, that it will be im­pos­si­ble for the mag­is­trates to get the bet­ter of them. But that the gov­er­nors ought to ex­cel the gov­erned is be­yond a doubt; the leg­is­la­tor there­fore ought to con­sid­er how this shall be, and how it may be con­trived that all shall have their equal share in the ad­min­is­tra­tion. Now, with re­spect to this it will be first said, that na­ture her­self has di­rect­ed us in our choice, lay­ing down the self­same thing when she has made some young, oth­ers old: the first of whom it be­comes to obey, the lat­ter to com­mand; for no one when he is young is of­fend­ed at his be­ing un­der gov­ern­ment, or thinks him­self too good for it; more es­pe­cial­ly when he con­sid­ers that he him­self shall re­ceive the same hon­ours which he pays when he shall ar­rive at a prop­er age. In some re­spects it must be ac­knowl­edged that the gov­er­nors and the gov­erned are the same, in oth­ers they are dif­fer­ent; it is there­fore nec­es­sary that their ed­uca­tion should be in [1333a] some re­spect the same, in oth­ers dif­fer­ent: as they say, that he will be a good gov­er­nor who has first learnt to obey. Now of gov­ern­ments, as we have al­ready said, some are in­sti­tut­ed for the sake of him who com­mands; oth­ers for him who obeys: of the first sort is that of the mas­ter over the ser­vant; of the lat­ter, that of freemen over each oth­er. Now some things which are com­mand­ed dif­fer from oth­ers; not in the busi­ness, but in the end pro­posed there­by: for which rea­son many works, even of a servile na­ture, are not dis­grace­ful for young freemen to per­form; for many things which are or­dered to be done are not hon­ourable or dis­hon­ourable so much in their own na­ture as in the end which is pro­posed, and the rea­son for which they are un­der­tak­en. Since then we have de­ter­mined, that the virtue of a good cit­izen and good gov­er­nor is the same as of a good man; and that ev­ery one be­fore he com­mands should have first obeyed, it is the busi­ness of the leg­is­la­tor to con­sid­er how his cit­izens may be good men, what ed­uca­tion is nec­es­sary to that pur­pose, and what is the fi­nal ob­ject of a good life. The soul of man may be di­vid­ed in­to two parts; that which has rea­son in it­self, and that which hath not, but is ca­pa­ble of obey­ing its dic­tates: and ac­cord­ing to the virtues of these two parts a man is said to be good: but of those virtues which are the ends, it will not be dif­fi­cult for those to de­ter­mine who adopt the di­vi­sion I have al­ready giv­en; for the in­fe­ri­or is al­ways for the sake of the su­pe­ri­or; and this is equal­ly ev­ident both in the works of art as well as in those of na­ture; but that is su­pe­ri­or which has rea­son. Rea­son it­self al­so is di­vid­ed in­to two parts, in the man­ner we usu­al­ly di­vide it; the the­oret­ic and the prac­ti­cal; which di­vi­sion there­fore seems nec­es­sary for this part al­so: the same anal­ogy holds good with re­spect to ac­tions; of which those which are of a su­pe­ri­or na­ture ought al­ways to be cho­sen by those who have it in their pow­er; for that is al­ways most el­igi­ble to ev­ery one which will pro­cure the best ends. Now life is di­vid­ed in­to labour and rest, war and peace; and of what we do the ob­jects are part­ly nec­es­sary and use­ful, part­ly no­ble: and we should give the same pref­er­ence to these that we do to the dif­fer­ent parts of the soul and its ac­tions, as war to pro­cure peace; labour, rest; and the use­ful, the no­ble. The politi­cian, there­fore, who com­pos­es a body of laws ought to ex­tend his views to ev­ery­thing; the dif­fer­ent parts of the soul and their ac­tions; more par­tic­ular­ly to those things which are of a su­pe­ri­or na­ture and ends; and, in the same man­ner, to the lives of men and their dif­fer­ent ac­tions.

They ought to be fit­ted both for labour and war, but rather [1333b] for rest and peace; and al­so to do what is nec­es­sary and use­ful, but rather what is fair and no­ble. It is to those ob­jects that the ed­uca­tion of the chil­dren ought to tend, and of all the youths who want in­struc­tion. All the Gre­cian states which now seem best gov­erned, and the leg­is­la­tors who found­ed those states, ap­pear not to have framed their poli­ty with a view to the best end, or to ev­ery virtue, in their laws and ed­uca­tion; but ea­ger­ly to have at­tend­ed to what is use­ful and pro­duc­tive of gain: and near­ly of the same opin­ion with these are some per­sons who have writ­ten late­ly, who, by prais­ing the Lacedae­mo­ni­an state, show they ap­prove of the in­ten­tion of the leg­is­la­tor in mak­ing war and vic­to­ry the end of his gov­ern­ment. But how con­trary to rea­son this is, is eas­ily proved by ar­gu­ment, and has al­ready been proved by facts (but as the gen­er­al­ity of men de­sire to have an ex­ten­sive com­mand, that they may have ev­ery­thing de­sir­able in the greater abun­dance; so Thi­bron and oth­ers who have writ­ten on that state seem to ap­prove of their leg­is­la­tor for hav­ing pro­cured them an ex­ten­sive com­mand by con­tin­ual­ly enur­ing them to all sorts of dan­gers and hard­ships): for it is ev­ident, since the Lacede­mo­ni­ans have now no hope that the supreme pow­er will be in their own hand, that nei­ther are they hap­py nor was their leg­is­la­tor wise. This al­so is ridicu­lous, that while they pre­served an obe­di­ence to their laws, and no one op­posed their be­ing gov­erned by them, they lost the means of be­ing hon­ourable: but these peo­ple un­der­stand not right­ly what sort of gov­ern­ment it is which ought to re­flect hon­our on the leg­is­la­tor; for a gov­ern­ment of freemen is no­bler than despot­ic pow­er, and more con­so­nant to virtue. More­over, nei­ther should a city be thought hap­py, nor should a leg­is­la­tor be com­mend­ed, be­cause he has so trained the peo­ple as to con­quer their neigh­bours; for in this there is a great in­con­ve­nience: since it is ev­ident that up­on this prin­ci­ple ev­ery cit­izen who can will en­deav­our to pro­cure the supreme pow­er in his own city; which crime the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans ac­cuse Pau­sa­nias of, though he en­joyed such great hon­ours.

Such rea­son­ing and such laws are nei­ther po­lit­ical, use­ful nor true: but a leg­is­la­tor ought to in­stil those laws on the minds of men which are most use­ful for them, both in their pub­lic and pri­vate ca­pac­ities. The ren­der­ing a peo­ple fit for war, that they may en­slave their in­fe­ri­ors ought not to be the care of the leg­is­la­tor; but that they may not them­selves be re­duced to slav­ery by oth­ers. In [1334a] the next place, he should take care that the ob­ject of his gov­ern­ment is the safe­ty of those who are un­der it, and not a despo­tism over all: in the third place, that those on­ly are slaves who are fit to be on­ly so. Rea­son in­deed con­curs with ex­pe­ri­ence in show­ing that all the at­ten­tion which the leg­is­la­tor pays to the busi­ness of war, and all oth­er rules which he lays down, should have for their ob­ject rest and peace; since most of those states (which we usu­al­ly see) are pre­served by war; but, af­ter they have ac­quired a supreme pow­er over those around them, are ru­ined; for dur­ing peace, like a sword, they lose their bright­ness: the fault of which lies in the leg­is­la­tor, who nev­er taught them how to be at rest.

CHAP­TER XV

As there is one end com­mon to a man both as an in­di­vid­ual and a cit­izen, it is ev­ident that a good man and a good cit­izen must have the same ob­ject in view; it is ev­ident that all the virtues which lead to rest are nec­es­sary; for, as we have of­ten said, the end of war is peace, of labour, rest; but those virtues whose ob­ject is rest, and those al­so whose ob­ject is labour, are nec­es­sary for a lib­er­al life and rest; for we want a sup­ply of many nec­es­sary things that we may be at rest. A city there­fore ought to be tem­per­ate, brave, and pa­tient; for, ac­cord­ing to the proverb, “Rest is not for slaves;” but those who can­not brave­ly face dan­ger are the slaves of those who at­tack them. Brav­ery, there­fore, and pa­tience are nec­es­sary for labour, phi­los­ophy for rest, and tem­per­ance and jus­tice in both; but these chiefly in time of peace and rest; for war obliges men to be just and tem­per­ate; but the en­joy­ment of plea­sure, with the rest of peace, is more apt to pro­duce in­so­lence; those in­deed who are easy in their cir­cum­stances, and en­joy ev­ery­thing that can make them hap­py, have great oc­ca­sion for the virtues of tem­per­ance and jus­tice. Thus if there are, as the po­ets tell us, any in­hab­itants in the hap­py isles, to these a high­er de­gree of phi­los­ophy, tem­per­ance, and jus­tice will be nec­es­sary, as they live at their ease in the full plen­ty of ev­ery sen­su­al plea­sure. It is ev­ident, there­fore, that these virtues are nec­es­sary in ev­ery state that would be hap­py or wor­thy; for he who is worth­less can nev­er en­joy re­al good, much less is he qual­ified to be at rest; but can ap­pear good on­ly by labour and be­ing at war, but in peace and at rest the mean­est of crea­tures. For which rea­son virtue should not be cul­ti­vat­ed as the Lacedae­mo­ni­ans did; for they did not dif­fer from oth­ers in their opin­ion con­cern­ing the supreme good, but in [1334b] imag­in­ing this good was to be pro­cured by a par­tic­ular virtue; but since there are greater goods than those of war, it is ev­ident that the en­joy­ment of those which are valu­able in them­selves should be de­sired, rather than those virtues which are use­ful in war; but how and by what means this is to be ac­quired is now to be con­sid­ered. We have al­ready as­signed three caus­es on which it will de­pend; na­ture, cus­tom, and rea­son, arid shown what sort of men na­ture must pro­duce for this pur­pose; it re­mains then that we de­ter­mine which we shall first be­gin by in ed­uca­tion, rea­son or cus­tom, for these ought al­ways to pre­serve the most en­tire har­mo­ny with each oth­er; for it may hap­pen that rea­son may err from the end pro­posed, and be cor­rect­ed by cus­tom. In the first place, it is ev­ident that in this as in oth­er things, its be­gin­ning or pro­duc­tion aris­es from some prin­ci­ple, and its end al­so aris­es from an­oth­er prin­ci­ple, which is it­self an end. Now, with us, rea­son and in­tel­li­gence are the end of na­ture; our pro­duc­tion, there­fore, and our man­ners ought to be ac­com­mo­dat­ed to both these. In the next place, as the soul and the body are two dis­tinct things, so al­so we see that the soul is di­vid­ed in­to two parts, the rea­son­ing and not-​rea­son­ing, with their habits which are two in num­ber, one be­long­ing to each, name­ly ap­petite and in­tel­li­gence; and as the body is in pro­duc­tion be­fore the soul, so is the not-​rea­son­ing part of the soul be­fore the rea­son­ing; and this is ev­ident; for anger, will and de­sire are to be seen in chil­dren near­ly as soon as they are born; but rea­son and in­tel­li­gence spring up as they grow to ma­tu­ri­ty. The body, there­fore, nec­es­sar­ily de­mands our care be­fore the soul; next the ap­petites for the sake of the mind; the body for the sake of the soul.

CHAP­TER XVI

If then the leg­is­la­tor ought to take care that the bod­ies of the chil­dren are as per­fect as pos­si­ble, his first at­ten­tion ought to be giv­en to mat­ri­mo­ny; at what time and in what sit­ua­tion it is prop­er that the cit­izens should en­gage in the nup­tial con­tract. Now, with re­spect to this al­liance, the leg­is­la­tor ought both to con­sid­er the par­ties and their time of life, that they may grow old at the same part of time, and that their bod­ily pow­ers may not be dif­fer­ent; that is to say, the man be­ing able to have chil­dren, but the wom­an too old to bear them; or, on the con­trary, the wom­an be young enough to pro­duce chil­dren, but the man too old to be a fa­ther; for from such a sit­ua­tion dis­cords and dis­putes con­tin­ual­ly arise. In the next place, with re­spect to the suc­ces­sion of chil­dren, there ought not to be too great an in­ter­val of time be­tween them and their par­ents; for when there is, the par­ent can re­ceive no ben­efit from his child’s af­fec­tion, or the child any ad­van­tage from his fa­ther’s pro­tec­tion; [1335a] nei­ther should the dif­fer­ence in years be too lit­tle, as great in­con­ve­niences may arise from it; as it pre­vents that prop­er rev­er­ence be­ing shown to a fa­ther by a boy who con­sid­ers him as near­ly his equal in age, and al­so from the dis­putes it oc­ca­sions in the econ­omy of the fam­ily. But, to re­turn from this di­gres­sion, care ought to be tak­en that the bod­ies of the chil­dren may be such as will an­swer the ex­pec­ta­tions of the leg­is­la­tor; this al­so will be af­fect­ed by the same means. Since sea­son for the pro­duc­tion of chil­dren is de­ter­mined (not ex­act­ly, but to speak in gen­er­al), name­ly, for the man till sev­en­ty years, and the wom­an till fifty, the en­ter­ing in­to the mar­riage state, as far as time is con­cerned, should be reg­ulat­ed by these pe­ri­ods. It is ex­treme­ly bad for the chil­dren when the fa­ther is too young; for in all an­imals what­so­ev­er the parts of the young are im­per­fect, and are more like­ly to be pro­duc­tive of fe­males than males, and diminu­tive al­so in size; the same thing of course nec­es­sar­ily holds true in men; as a proof of this you may see in those cities where the men and wom­en usu­al­ly mar­ry very young, the peo­ple in gen­er­al are very small and ill framed; in child-​birth al­so the wom­en suf­fer more, and many of them die. And thus some per­sons tell us the or­acle of Traeze­ni­um should be ex­plained, as if it re­ferred to the many wom­en who were de­stroyed by too ear­ly mar­riages, and not their gath­er­ing their fruits too soon. It is al­so con­ducive to tem­per­ance not to mar­ry too soon; for wom­en who do so are apt to be in­tem­per­ate. It al­so pre­vents the bod­ies of men from ac­quir­ing their full size if they mar­ry be­fore their growth is com­plet­ed; for this is the de­ter­mi­nate pe­ri­od, which pre­vents any fur­ther in­crease; for which rea­son the prop­er time for a wom­an to mar­ry is eigh­teen, for a man thir­ty-​sev­en, a lit­tle more or less; for when they mar­ry at that time their bod­ies are in per­fec­tion, and they will al­so cease to have chil­dren at a prop­er time; and more­over with re­spect to the suc­ces­sion of the chil­dren, if they have them at the time which may rea­son­ably be ex­pect­ed, they will be just ar­riv­ing in­to per­fec­tion when their par­ents are sink­ing down un­der the load of sev­en­ty years. And thus much for the time which is prop­er for mar­riage; but more­over a prop­er sea­son of the year should be ob­served, as many per­sons do now, and ap­pro­pri­ate the win­ter for this busi­ness. The mar­ried cou­ple ought al­so to re­gard the pre­cepts of physi­cians and nat­ural­ists, each of whom have treat­ed on these [1335b] sub­jects. What is the fit dis­po­si­tion of the body will be bet­ter men­tioned when we come to speak of the ed­uca­tion of the child; we will just slight­ly men­tion a few par­tic­ulars. Now, there is no oc­ca­sion that any one should have the habit of body of a wrestler to be ei­ther a good cit­izen, or to en­joy a good con­sti­tu­tion, or to be the fa­ther of healthy chil­dren; nei­ther should he be in­firm or too much dispir­it­ed by mis­for­tunes, but be­tween both these. He ought to have a habit of labour, but not of too vi­olent labour; nor should that be con­fined to one ob­ject on­ly, as the wrestler’s is; but to such things as are prop­er for freemen. These things are equal­ly nec­es­sary both for men and wom­en. Wom­en with child should al­so take care that their di­et is not too spar­ing, and that they use suf­fi­cient ex­er­cise; which it will be easy for the leg­is­la­tor to ef­fect if he com­mands them once ev­ery day to re­pair to the wor­ship of the gods who are sup­posed to pre­side over mat­ri­mo­ny. But, con­trary to what is prop­er for the body, the mind ought to be kept as tran­quil as pos­si­ble; for as plants par­take of the na­ture of the soil, so does the child re­ceive much of the dis­po­si­tion of the moth­er. With re­spect to the ex­pos­ing or bring­ing up of chil­dren, let it be a law, that noth­ing im­per­fect or maimed shall be brought up, ………. As the prop­er time has been point­ed out for a man and a wom­an to en­ter in­to the mar­riage state, so al­so let us de­ter­mine how long it is ad­van­ta­geous for the com­mu­ni­ty that they should have chil­dren; for as the chil­dren of those who are too young are im­per­fect both in body and mind, so al­so those whose par­ents are too old are weak in both: while there­fore the body con­tin­ues in per­fec­tion, which (as some po­ets say, who reck­on the dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods of life by sev­ens) is till fifty years, or four or five more, the chil­dren may be equal­ly per­fect; but when the par­ents are past that age it is bet­ter they should have no more. With re­spect to any con­nec­tion be­tween a man and a wom­an, or a wom­an and a man, when ei­ther of the par­ties are be­trothed, let it be held in ut­ter de­tes­ta­tion [1336a] on any pre­text what­so­ev­er; but should any one be guilty of such a thing af­ter the mar­riage is con­sum­mat­ed, let his in­famy be as great as his guilt de­serves.

CHAP­TER XVII

When a child is born it must be sup­posed that the strength of its body will de­pend great­ly up­on the qual­ity of its food. Now who­ev­er will ex­am­ine in­to the na­ture of an­imals, and al­so ob­serve those peo­ple who are very de­sirous their chil­dren should ac­quire a war­like habit, will find that they feed them chiefly with milk, as be­ing best ac­com­mo­dat­ed to their bod­ies, but with­out wine, to pre­vent any dis­tem­pers: those mo­tions al­so which are nat­ural to their age are very ser­vice­able; and to pre­vent any of their limbs from be­ing crooked, on ac­count of their ex­treme duc­til­ity, some peo­ple even now use par­tic­ular ma­chines that their bod­ies may not be dis­tort­ed. It is al­so use­ful to enure them to the cold when they are very lit­tle; for this is very ser­vice­able for their health; and al­so to enure them to the busi­ness of war; for which rea­son it is cus­tom­ary with many of the bar­bar­ians to dip their chil­dren in rivers when the wa­ter is cold; with oth­ers to clothe them very slight­ly, as among the Celts; for what­ev­er it is pos­si­ble to ac­cus­tom chil­dren to, it is best to ac­cus­tom them to it at first, but to do it by de­grees: be­sides, boys have nat­ural­ly a habit of lov­ing the cold, on ac­count of the heat. These, then, and such-​like things ought to be the first ob­ject of our at­ten­tion: the next age to this con­tin­ues till the child is five years old; dur­ing which time it is best to teach him noth­ing at all, not even nec­es­sary labour, lest it should hin­der his growth; but he should be ac­cus­tomed to use so much mo­tion as not to ac­quire a lazy habit of body; which he will get by var­ious means and by play al­so: his play al­so ought to be nei­ther il­lib­er­al nor too la­bo­ri­ous nor lazy. Their gov­er­nors and pre­cep­tors al­so should take care what sort of tales and sto­ries it may be prop­er for them to hear; for all these ought to pave the way for their fu­ture in­struc­tion: for which rea­son the gen­er­al­ity of their play should be im­ita­tions of what they are af­ter­wards to do se­ri­ous­ly. They too do wrong who for­bid by laws the dis­putes be­tween boys and their quar­rels, for they con­tribute to in­crease their growth–as they are a sort of ex­er­cise to the body: for the strug­gles of the heart and the com­pres­sion of the spir­its give strength to those who labour, which hap­pens to boys in their dis­putes. The pre­cep­tors al­so ought to have an eye up­on their man­ner of life, and those with whom they con­verse; and to take care that they are nev­er in the com­pa­ny of slaves. At this time and till they are sev­en [1336b] years old it is nec­es­sary that they should be ed­ucat­ed at home. It is al­so very prop­er to ban­ish, both from their hear­ing and sight, ev­ery­thing which is il­lib­er­al and the like. In­deed it is as much the busi­ness of the leg­is­la­tor as any­thing else, to ban­ish ev­ery in­de­cent ex­pres­sion out of the state: for from a per­mis­sion to speak what­ev­er is shame­ful, very quick­ly aris­es the do­ing it, and this par­tic­ular­ly with young peo­ple: for which rea­son let them nev­er speak nor hear any such thing: but if it ap­pears that any free­man has done or said any­thing that is for­bid­den be­fore he is of age to be thought fit to par­take of the com­mon meals, let him be pun­ished by dis­grace and stripes; but if a per­son above that age does so, let him be treat­ed as you would a slave, on ac­count of his be­ing in­fa­mous. Since we for­bid his speak­ing ev­ery­thing which is for­bid­den, it is nec­es­sary that he nei­ther sees ob­scene sto­ries nor pic­tures; the mag­is­trates there­fore are to take care that there are no stat­ues or pic­tures of any­thing of this na­ture, ex­cept on­ly to those gods to whom the law per­mits them, and to which the law al­lows per­sons of a cer­tain age to pay their de­vo­tions, for them­selves, their wives, and chil­dren. It should al­so be il­le­gal for young per­sons to be present ei­ther at iambics or come­dies be­fore they are ar­rived at that age when they are al­lowed to par­take of the plea­sures of the ta­ble: in­deed a good ed­uca­tion will pre­serve them from all the evils which at­tend on these things. We have at present just touched up­on this sub­ject; it will be our busi­ness here­after, when we prop­er­ly come to it, to de­ter­mine whether this care of chil­dren is un­nec­es­sary, or, if nec­es­sary, in what man­ner it must be done; at present we have on­ly men­tioned it as nec­es­sary. Prob­ably the say­ing of Theodoras, the trag­ic ac­tor, was not a bad one: That he would per­mit no one, not even the mean­est ac­tor, to go up­on the stage be­fore him, that he might first en­gage the ear of the au­di­ence. The same thing hap­pens both in our con­nec­tions with men and things: what we meet with first pleas­es best; for which rea­son chil­dren should be kept strangers to ev­ery­thing which is bad, more par­tic­ular­ly what­so­ev­er is loose and of­fen­sive to good man­ners. When five years are ac­com­plished, the two next may be very prop­er­ly em­ployed in be­ing spec­ta­tors of those ex­er­cis­es they will af­ter­wards have to learn. There are two pe­ri­ods in­to which ed­uca­tion ought to be di­vid­ed, ac­cord­ing to the age of the child; the one is from his be­ing sev­en years of age to the time of pu­ber­ty; the oth­er from thence till he is one-​and-​twen­ty: for those who di­vide ages by the num­ber sev­en [1337a] are in gen­er­al wrong: it is much bet­ter to fol­low the di­vi­sion of na­ture; for ev­ery art and ev­ery in­struc­tion is in­tend­ed to com­plete what na­ture has left de­fec­tive: we must first con­sid­er if any reg­ula­tion what­so­ev­er is req­ui­site for chil­dren; in the next place, if it is ad­van­ta­geous to make it a com­mon care, or that ev­ery one should act there­in as he pleas­es, which is the gen­er­al prac­tice in most cities; in the third place, what it ought to be.