| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 742d | Pl. Leg. 744e (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 747a |
744aof more honor in the State than temperance, or wealth than health and temperance, it will quite clearly be a wrong enactment. Thus the lawgiver must ofttimes put this question to himself— “What is it that I intend?” and, “Am I succeeding in this, or am I wide of the mark?” In this way he might, perhaps, get through the task of legislation himself, and save others the trouble of it; but in no other way could he ever possibly do so. The man who has received an allotment shall hold it, as we say,
744bon the terms stated. It would indeed have been a splendid thing if each person, on entering the colony, had had all else equal as well. Since this, however, is impossible, and one man will arrive with more money and another with less, it is necessary for many reasons, and for the sake of equaIizing chances in public life, that there should be unequal valuations, in order that offices and contributions may be assigned in accordance with the assessed valuation in each case,—being framed not in proportion only to the moral excellence of a man's ancestors or of himself, nor to his bodily strength
744cand comeliness, but in proportion also to his wealth or poverty,—so that by a rule of symmetrical inequality note they may receive offices and honors as equally as possible, and may have no quarrelling. For these reasons we must make four classes, graded by size of property, and called first, second, third and fourth (or by some other names) , alike when the individuals remain in the same class and when, through a change from poverty to wealth or from wealth to poverty, they pass over each to that class to which he belongs.
744dThe kind of law that I would enact as proper to follow next after the foregoing would be this: It is, as we assert, necessary in a State which is to avoid that greatest of plagues, which is better termed disruption than dissension, note that none of its citizens should be in a condition of either painful poverty or wealth, since both these conditions produce both these results; consequently the lawgiver must now declare a limit for both these conditions. The limit of poverty shall be the value of the allotment:
744ethis must remain fixed, and its diminution in any particular instance no magistrate should overlook, nor any other citizen who aspires to goodness. And having set this as the (inferior) limit, the lawgiver shall allow a man to possess twice this amount, or three times, or four times. Should anyone acquire more than this—whether by discovery or gift or money-making, or through gaining a sum exceeding
745athe due measure by some other such piece of luck, if he makes the surplus over to the State and the gods who keep the State, he shall be well-esteemed and free from penalty. But if anyone disobeys this law, whoso wishes may get half by laying information, and the man that is convicted shall pay out an equal share of his own property, and the half shall go to the gods. All the property of every man over and above his allotment shall be publicly written out and be in the keeping of the magistrates appointed by law,
745bso that legal rights pertaining to all matters of property may be easy to decide and perfectly clear. In the next place, the lawgiver must first plant his city as nearly as possible in the center of the country, choosing a spot which has all the other conveniences also which a city requires, and which it is easy enough to perceive and specify. After this, he must divide off twelve portions of land,—when he has first set apart a sacred glebe for Hestia, Zeus and Athena, to which he shall give the name “acropolis” and circle it round with a ring-wall;
745cstarting from this he must divide up both the city itself and all the country into the twelve portions. The twelve portions must be equalized by making those consisting of good land small, and those of inferior land larger. He must mark off 5,040 allotments, and each of these he must cut in two and join two pieces to form each several allotment, so that each contains a near piece and a distant piece,—joining the piece next the city with the piece furthest off, the second nearest with the second furthest, and so on with all the rest. note
745dAnd in dealing with these separate portions, they must employ the device we mentioned a moment ago, about poor land and good, and secure equality by making the assigned portions of larger or smaller size. And he must divide the citizens also into twelve parts, making all the twelve parts as equal as possible in respect of the value of the rest of their property, after a census has been made of all. After this they must also appoint twelve allotments for the twelve gods, and name and consecrate the portion allotted to each god,
745egiving it the name of “phyle.” note And they must also divide the twelve sections of the city in the same manner as they divided the rest of the country; and each citizen must take as his share two dwellings, one near the center of the country the other near the outskirts. Thus the settlement shall be completed. But we must by all means notice this,—that all the arrangements now described will never be likely to meet with such favorable conditions that the whole program can be carried out
746aaccording to plan. This requires that the citizens will raise no objection to such a mode of living together, and will tolerate being restricted for life to fixed and limited amounts of property and to families such as we have stated, and being deprived of gold and of the other things which the lawgiver is clearly obliged by our regulations to forbid, and will submit also to the arrangements he has defined for country and city, with the dwellings set in the center and round the circumference,—almost as if he were telling nothing but dreams, or moulding, so to say,
| Plato, Laws (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Leg.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Leg. 742d | Pl. Leg. 744e (Greek) | >>Pl. Leg. 747a |
