Kitap 6
778
Ath. The temples we must erect all round the market-place, and in a circle round the whole city, on the highest spots, for the sake of ease in fencing them and of cleanliness: beside the temples we will set the houses of the officials and the law-courts, in which, as being most holy places, they will give and receive judgments,— partly because therein they deal with holy matters, and partly because they are the seats of holy gods; and in these will fittingly be held trials for murder and for all crimes worthy of death. As to walls, Megillus, I would agree with your Sparta in letting the walls lie sleeping in the ground, and not wake them up, and that for the following reasons. It is a fine saying of the poet,Unknown. Cp. Aristot. Pol. 1330b 32 ff., and the saying of Lycurgas (quoted by Plutarch, Lycurg. xix.) οὐκ ἂν ἔιη ἀτείχιστος πόλις ἅτις ἀνδράσι οὐ πλίνθοις ἐστεφάνωται. Earth (like πλίνθοι) here means really stone, the soil of Greece being rocky. and often repeated, that walls should be made of bronze and iron rather than of earth.
