Greek Texts & Translations

Your discourse, Stranger, is most excellent, and I must do as you advise.

Well then, after all that has now been said, you will next come, I suppose, to the task of appointing magistrates for your State.

That is so.

In this there are two branches of civic organization involved,— first, the appointment of magistracies and magistrates, with the fixing of the right number required and the proper method of appointment; and next the assignment to each magistracy of 751bsuch and so many laws as are in each case appropriate. ^note But before we make our selection, let us pause for a moment, and make a statement concerning it of a pertinent kind.

What statement is that?

It is this:— It is a fact clear to everyone that, the work of legislation being a great one, the placing of unfit officers in charge of well-framed laws in a well-equipped State not only robs those laws of all their value and gives rise to widespread ridicule, 751cbut is likely also to prove the most fertile source of damage and danger in such States.

Undoubtedly.

Let us then, my friend, mark this result in dealing now with your polity and State. You see that it is necessary, in the first place, that those who rightly undertake official functions should in every case have been fully tested— both themselves and their families— from their earliest years up to the time of their selection; and, secondly, that those who are to be the selectors should have been reared in law-abiding habits, 751dand be well trained for the task of rightly rejecting or accepting those candidates who deserve their approval or disapproval. Yet as regards this point, can we suppose that men who have but recently come together, with no knowledge of one another and with no training, could ever possibly select their officials in a faultless manner?

It is practically impossible.

Yet, “with the hand on the plough,” as they say, “there is no looking back.” ^note And so it must be now with you and me; for you, as you tell me, ^note have given your pledge 751eto the Cretan nation that you, with your nine colleagues, will devote yourself to the founding of that State; and I, for my part, have promised 752ato lend you aid in the course of our present imaginative sketch. And indeed I should be loth to leave our sketch headless; ^note for it would look entirely shapeless if it wandered about in that guise.

I heartily approve of what you say, Stranger.

And what is more, I shall act as I say to the best of my power.

By all means let us do as we say.

It shall be done, if God will and if we can thus far master our old age. 752b

Probably God will be willing.

Probably he will; and with him as leader let us observe this also—

What?

How bold and adventurous is the fashion in which we shall now have founded this State of ours.

What is now specially in your mind, and what makes you say so?

The fact that we are legislating lightheartedly and boldly for inexperienced men, in the hope that they will accept the laws we have now enacted. Thus much at least is plain, Clinias, to almost everyone—even to the meanest intelligence—