Book 2
1267b
and also the baseness of human beings is a thing insatiable, and though at the first a dole of only two obolsTwopence-halfpenny for a seat in the theater at Athens paid for citizens by the State after the time of Pericles. is enough, yet when this has now become an established custom, they always want more, until they get to an unlimited amount; for appetite is in its nature unlimited, and the majority of mankind live for the satisfaction of appetite. The starting-point in such matters therefore, rather than levelling estates, is to train those that are respectable by nature so that they may not wish for excessive wealth, and to contrive that the base may not be able to do so, and this is secured if they are inferior in number and not unjustly treated. And also we cannot approve what Phaleas has said about equality of property, for he makes the citizens equal in respect of landed estate only, but wealth also consists in slaves and cattle and money, and there is an abundance of property in the shape of what is called furniture; we must therefore either seek to secure equality or some moderate regulation as regards all these things, or we must permit all forms of wealth. And it is clear from Phaleas’s legislation that he makes the citizen-population a small one, inasmuch as all the artisans are to be publicly owned slaves and are not to furnish any complement of the citizen-body. But if it is proper to have public slaves, the laborers employed upon the public works ought to be of that status (as is the case at Epidamnus and as Diophantus once tried to institute at Athens).
1267b
These remarks may serve fairly well to indicate such meritsand defects as may be contained in the constitution of Phaleas.
