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And what of the trait we found fault with long agoCf. 374 B, 434 A, 443 D-E. For the specialty of function Cf. What Plato Said, p. 480, on Charm. 161 E.—the fact that in such a state the citizens are busy-bodies and jacks-of-all-trades, farmers, financiers and soldiers all in one? Do you think that is right? By no manner of means. Consider now whether this polity is not the first that admits that which is the greatest of all such evils. What? The allowing a man to sell all his possessions,So in the Laws the householder may not sell his lot, Laws 741 B-C, 744 D-E. Cf. 755 A, 857 A, Aristot. Pol. 1270 a 19, Newman i. p. 376. which another is permitted to acquire, and after selling them to go on living in the city, but as no part of it,Cf Aristot. Pol. 1326 a 20, Newman i. pp. 98 and 109. Cf Leslie Stephen, Util. ii. 111 A vast populace has grown up outside of the old order. neither a money-maker, nor a craftsman, nor a knight, nor a foot-soldier, but classified only as a pauperCf. Aristot. Pol. 1266 b 13. and a dependent. This is the first, he said. There certainly is no prohibition of that sort of thing in oligarchical states. Otherwise some of their citizens would not be excessively rich, and others out and out paupers. Right. But observe this. When such a fellow was spending his wealth, was he then of any more use to the state in the matters of which we were speaking, or did he merely seem to belong to the ruling class, while in reality he was neither ruler nor helper in the state, but only a consumer of goodsἑτοίμων things ready at hand. Cf. 573 A, Polyb. vi. (Teubner, vol. ii. p. 237); Horace Epist. i. 2. 27 fruges consumere nati.? It is so, he said; he only seemed, but was just a spendthrift. Shall we, then, say of him that as the droneCf. Laws 901 A, Hesiod, Works and Days 300 f., Aristoph. Wasps 1071 ff., Eurip. Suppl. 242, Xen. Oecon. 17. 15, and Virgil, Georg. iv. 168 ignavum fucos pecus a praesepibus arcent. the sentence was much quoted. Stallbaum refers to Ruhnken on Tim. 157 ff. for many illustration, and to Petavius ad Themist. Orat. xxiii. p. 285 D. springs up in the cell, a pest of the hive, so such a man grows up in his home, a pest of the state? By all means, Socrates, he said. And has not God, Adeimantus, left the drones which have wings and fly stingless one and all, while of the drones here who travel afoot he has made some stingless but has armed others with terrible stings? And from the stingless finally issue beggars in old age,Cf 498 A, Laws 653 A; also the modern distinction between defectives and delinquents. but from those furnished with stings all that are denominated κέκληνται: Cf. 344 B-C. malefactors? Most true, he said. It is plain, then, said I, that wherever you see beggars in a city, there are somewhere in the neighborhood concealed thieves and cutpurses and temple-robbers and similar artists in crime. Clearly, he said. Well, then, in oligarchical cities do you not see beggars? Nearly all are such, he said, except the ruling class. Are we not to suppose, then, that there are also many criminals in them furnished with stings, whom the rulers by their surveillance forcibly βίᾳ is so closely connected with κατέχουσιν that the double dative is not felt to be awkward. But Adam takes ἐπιμελείᾳ as an adverb. restrain? We must think so, he said. And shall we not say that the presence of such citizens is the result of a defective culture and bad breeding and a wrong constitution of the state? We shall. Well, at any rate such would be the character of the oligarchical state, and these, or perhaps even more than these, would be the evils that afflict it. Pretty nearly these, he said.
