For there are some, it appears, who will not be contented with this sort of fare or with this way of life; but couches will have to be added thereto and tables and other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls Footnote 1On flute-girls as the accompaniment of a banquet Cf. Symposium 176 E, Aristophanes Ach. 1090-1092, Catullus 13. 4. But apart from this, the sudden mention of an incongruous item in a list is a device of Aristophanic humor which even the philosophic Emerson did not disdain:
The love of little maids and berries.
and cakes—all sorts of all of them. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities, Footnote 2τὰ ἁναγκαῖα predicatively, in the measure prescribed by necessity.
Cf. 369 D the indispensable minimum of a city.
The historical order is: (1) arts of necessity, (2) arts of pleasure and luxury, (3) disinterested science. Cf. Critias 110 A, Aristotle Met. 981 b 20. but we must set painting to work and embroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments, must we not?Yes,
he said. Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, Footnote 3θηρευταί and μιμηταί are generalized Platonic categories, including much not ordinarily signified by the words. For a list of such Platonic generalizations Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 500. many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music—the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors Footnote 4Contractors generally, and especially theatrical managers. —and the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women’s adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don’t you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet Footnote 5The mothers of the idyllic state nursed their own children, but in the ideal state the wives of the guardians are relieved of this burden by special provision. Cf. 460 D. and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers Footnote 6The rhetoricians of the empire liked to repeat that no barber was known at Rome in the first 200 or 300 years of the city. and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures Footnote 7Illogical idiom referring to the swine. Cf. 598 C. in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten, shall we not?
Yes.
Doctors, too, are something whose services Footnote 8χρείαις: Greek idiom could use either singular or plural. Cf. 410 A; Phaedo 87 C; Laws 630 E. The plural here avoids hiatus. we shall be much more likely to require if we live thus than as before?
Much.
And the territory, I presume, that was then sufficient to feed the then population, from being adequate will become too small. Is that so or not?
It is.
Then we shall have to cut out a cantle Footnote 9Cf. Isocrates iii. 34. of our neighbor’s land if we are to have enough for pasture and ploughing, and they in turn of ours if they too abandon themselves to the unlimited Footnote 10Cf. 591 D. Natural desires are limited. Luxury and unnatural forms of wealth are limitless, as the Greek moralists repeat from Solon down. acquisition of wealth, disregarding the limit set by our necessary wants.
Inevitably, Socrates.
We shall go to war Footnote 11The unnecessary desires are the ultimate causes of wars.Phaedo 66 C. The simple life once abandoned, war is inevitable.
My lord,
said St. Francis to the Bishop of Assisi, if we possessed property we should have need of arms for its defense
(Sabatier, p. 81). Similarly that very dissimilar thinker, Mandeville. Cf. on 372 C. Plato recognizes the struggle for existence (Spencer, Data of Ethics, 6), and the bellum omnium contra omnes,
Laws 625 E. Cf. Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, i, 2: The Republic of Plato seems in many respects divergent from the reality. And yet he contemplates war as a permanent, unalterable fact to be provided for in the ideal state.
Spencer on the contrary contemplates a completely evolved society in which the ethics of militarism will disappear. as the next step, Glaucon—or what will happen?What you say,
he said. And we are not yet to speak,
said I, of any evil or good effect of war, but only to affirm that we have further Footnote 12i.e. as well as the genesis of society. 369 B. discovered the origin of war, namely, from those things from which Footnote 13ἐξ ὧν: i.e. ἐκ τούτων ἐξ ὧν, namely the appetites and the love of money. the greatest disasters, public and private, come to states when they come.
Certainly.
Book 2