Complete Works (225 page)

I can’t see any way to make them believe it themselves, but perhaps [d] there is one in the case of their sons and later generations and all the other people who come after them.

I understand pretty much what you mean, but even that would help to make them care more for the city and each other. However, let’s leave this matter wherever tradition takes it. And let’s now arm our earthborn and lead them forth with their rulers in charge. And as they march, let them look for the best place in the city to have their camp, a site from which they can most easily control those within, if anyone is unwilling to obey [e] the laws, or repel any outside enemy who comes like a wolf upon the flock. And when they have established their camp and made the requisite sacrifices, they must see to their sleeping quarters. What do you say?

I agree.

And won’t these quarters protect them adequately both in winter and summer?

Of course, for it seems to me that you mean their housing.

Yes, but housing for soldiers, not for money-makers.

How do you mean to distinguish these from one another?
[416]

I’ll try to tell you. The most terrible and most shameful thing of all is for a shepherd to rear dogs as auxiliaries to help him with his flocks in such a way that, through licentiousness, hunger, or some other bad trait of character, they do evil to the sheep and become like wolves instead of dogs.

That’s certainly a terrible thing.

Isn’t it necessary, therefore, to guard in every way against our auxiliaries [b] doing anything like that to the citizens because they are stronger, thereby becoming savage masters instead of kindly allies?

It is necessary.

And wouldn’t a really good education endow them with the greatest caution in this regard?

But surely they have had an education like that.

Perhaps we shouldn’t assert this dogmatically, Glaucon. What we can assert is what we were saying just now, that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if they are to have what will most make them gentle to each other and to those they are guarding. [c]

That’s right.

Now, someone with some understanding might say that, besides this education, they must also have the kind of housing and other property that will neither prevent them from being the best guardians nor encourage [d] them to do evil to the other citizens.

That’s true.

Consider, then, whether or not they should live in some such way as this, if they’re to be the kind of men we described. First, none of them should possess any private property beyond what is wholly necessary. Second, none of them should have a house or storeroom that isn’t open for all to enter at will. Third, whatever sustenance moderate and courageous [e] warrior-athletes require in order to have neither shortfall nor surplus in a given year they’ll receive by taxation on the other citizens as a salary for their guardianship. Fourth, they’ll have common messes and live together like soldiers in a camp. We’ll tell them that they always have gold and silver of a divine sort in their souls as a gift from the gods and so have no further need of human gold. Indeed, we’ll tell them that it’s impious for them to defile this divine possession by any admixture of such gold, because many impious deeds have been done that involve the
[417]
currency used by ordinary people, while their own is pure. Hence, for them alone among the city’s population, it is unlawful to touch or handle gold or silver. They mustn’t be under the same roof as it, wear it as jewelry, or drink from gold or silver goblets. In this way they’d save both themselves and the city. But if they acquire private land, houses, and currency themselves, they’ll be household managers and farmers instead of guardians—[b] hostile masters of the other citizens instead of their allies. They’ll spend their whole lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, more afraid of internal than of external enemies, and they’ll hasten both themselves and the whole city to almost immediate ruin. For all these reasons, let’s say that the guardians must be provided with housing and the rest in this way, and establish this as a law. Or don’t you agree?

I certainly do, Glaucon said.

1
.
Odyssey
xi.489–91. Odysseus is being addressed by the dead Achilles in Hades.

2
.
Iliad
xx.64–65. The speaker is the god of the underworld—who is afraid that the earth will split open and reveal that his home is dreadful, etc.

3
.
Iliad
xxiii.103–4. Achilles speaks these lines as the soul of the dead Patroclus leaves for Hades.

4
.
Odyssey
x.495. Circe is speaking to Odysseus about the prophet Tiresias.

5
.
Iliad
xvi.856–57. The words refer to Patroclus, who has just been mortally wounded by Hector.

6
.
Iliad
xxiii.100–101. The soul referred to is Patroclus’.

7
.
Odyssey
xxiv.6–9. The souls are those of the suitors of Penelope, whom Odysseus has killed.

8
. “Cocytus” means river of wailing or lamenting; “Styx” means river of hatred or gloom.

9
. The last three references and quotations are to
Iliad
xxiv.3–12,
Iliad
xviii.23–24, and
Iliad
xxii.414–15, respectively.

10
.
Iliad
xviii.54. Thetis, the mother of Achilles, is mourning his fate among the Nereids.

11
.
Iliad
xxii.168–69 (Zeus is watching Hector being pursued by Achilles), and
Iliad
xvi.433–34.

12
.
Iliad
i.599–600.

13
.
Odyssey
xvii.383–84.

14
. The last three citations are, respectively,
Iliad
iv.412, where Diomedes rebukes his squire and quiets him;
Iliad
iii.8 and iv.431, not in fact (in our Homer text) adjacent to one another or the preceding; and
Iliad
i.225 (Achilles is insulting his commander, Agamemnon).

15
. Odysseus in
Odyssey
ix.8–10;
Odyssey
xii.342 (Eurylochus urges the men to slay the cattle of Helios in Odysseus’ absence).

16
.
Odyssey
viii.266 ff.

17
.
Odyssey
xx.17–18. The speaker is Odysseus.

18
. The source of the passage is unknown. Cf. Euripides,
Medea
964.

19
.
Iliad
ix.602–5.

20
.
Iliad
xxii.15, 20.

21
. The last four references are to
Iliad
xxi.232 ff.,
Iliad
xxiii.141–52,
Iliad
xxiv.14–18, and
Iliad
xxiii.175, respectively.

22
. According to some legends, Theseus and Pirithous abducted Helen and tried to abduct Persephone from Hades.

23
. See 380d ff.

24
. Thought to be from Aeschylus’ lost play
Niobe
.

25
.
Iliad
i.15–16.

26
. The instrument here is the
aulos
, which was not really a flute but a reed instrument. It was especially good at conveying emotion.

27
. After Athena had invented the
aulos
, she discarded it because it distorted her features to play it. It was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was foolish enough to challenge Apollo (inventor of the lyre) to a musical contest. He was defeated, and Apollo flayed him alive. Satyrs were bestial in their behavior and desires—especially their sexual desires.

28
. See 368c–d.

29
. See
Iliad
xi.580 ff., 828–36, and 624–50.

30
. Phocylides of Miletus was a mid-sixth-century elegiac and hexameter poet best known for his epigrams.

31
.
Iliad
iv.218–19.

32
. Cf. Aeschylus
Agamemnon
1022 ff., Euripides
Alcestis
3, Pindar
Pythians
3.55–58.

33
.
Iliad
xvii.588.

34
. See 382a ff.

Book IV

[419]
And Adeimantus interrupted: How would you defend yourself, Socrates, he said, if someone told you that you aren’t making these men very happy and that it’s their own fault? The city really belongs to them, yet they derive no good from it. Others own land, build fine big houses, acquire furnishings to go along with them, make their own private sacrifices to the gods, entertain guests, and also, of course, possess what you were talking about just now, gold and silver and all the things that are thought to belong to people who are blessedly happy. But one might well say that your guardians are simply settled in the city like mercenaries and that all
[420]
they do is watch over it.

Yes, I said, and what’s more, they work simply for their keep and get no extra wages as the others do. Hence, if they want to take a private trip away from the city, they won’t be able to; they’ll have nothing to give to their mistresses, nothing to spend in whatever other ways they wish, as people do who are considered happy. You’ve omitted these and a host of other, similar facts from your charge.

Well, let them be added to the charge as well.

Then, are you asking how we should defend ourselves? [b]

Yes.

I think we’ll discover what to say if we follow the same path as before. We’ll say that it wouldn’t be surprising if these people were happiest just as they are, but that, in establishing our city, we aren’t aiming to make any one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible. We thought that we’d find justice most easily in such a city and injustice, by contrast, in the one that is governed worst and that, by observing both cities, we’d be able to judge the question we’ve been inquiring into for so long. We take ourselves, then, to be fashioning the happy [c] city, not picking out a few happy people and putting them in it, but making the whole city happy. (We’ll look at the opposite city soon.
¹
)

Suppose, then, that someone came up to us while we were painting a statue and objected that, because we had painted the eyes (which are the most beautiful part) black rather than purple, we had not applied the most beautiful colors to the most beautiful parts of the statue. We’d think it reasonable to offer the following defense: “You mustn’t expect us to paint the eyes so beautifully that they no longer appear to be eyes at all, and [d] the same with the other parts. Rather you must look to see whether by dealing with each part appropriately, we are making the whole statue beautiful.” Similarly, you mustn’t force us to give our guardians the kind of happiness that would make them something other than guardians. We know how to clothe the farmers in purple robes, festoon them with gold [e] jewelry, and tell them to work the land whenever they please. We know how to settle our potters on couches by the fire, feasting and passing the wine around, with their wheel beside them for whenever they want to make pots. And we can make all the others happy in the same way, so that the whole city is happy. Don’t urge us to do this, however, for if we do, a farmer wouldn’t be a farmer, nor a potter a potter, and none of the
[421]
others would keep to the patterns of work that give rise to a city. Now, if cobblers become inferior and corrupt and claim to be what they are not, that won’t do much harm to the city. Hence, as far as they and the others like them are concerned, our argument carries less weight. But if the guardians of our laws and city are merely believed to be guardians but are not, you surely see that they’ll destroy the city utterly, just as they alone have the opportunity to govern it well and make it happy.

If we are making true guardians, then, who are least likely to do evil to the city, and if the one who brought the charge is talking about farmers and banqueters who are happy as they would be at a festival rather than [b] in a city, then he isn’t talking about a city at all, but about something else. With this in mind, we should consider whether in setting up our guardians we are aiming to give them the greatest happiness, or whether—since our aim is to see that the city as a whole has the greatest happiness—we must compel and persuade the auxiliaries and guardians to follow our other [c] policy and be the best possible craftsmen at their own work, and the same with all the others. In this way, with the whole city developing and being governed well, we must leave it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness.

I think you put that very well, he said.

Will you also think that I’m putting things well when I make the next point, which is closely akin to this one?

Which one exactly?

Consider whether or not the following things corrupt the other workers, [d] so that they become bad.

What things?

Wealth and poverty.

How do they corrupt the other workers?

Like this. Do you think that a potter who has become wealthy will still be willing to pay attention to his craft?

Not at all.

Won’t he become more idle and careless than he was?

Much more.

Then won’t he become a worse potter?

Far worse.

And surely if poverty prevents him from having tools or any of the other things he needs for his craft, he’ll produce poorer work and will [e] teach his sons, or anyone else he teaches, to be worse craftsmen.

Of course.

So poverty and wealth make a craftsman and his products worse.

Apparently.

It seems, then, that we’ve found other things that our guardians must guard against in every way, to prevent them from slipping into the city unnoticed. What are they?

[422]
Both wealth and poverty. The former makes for luxury, idleness, and revolution; the latter for slavishness, bad work, and revolution as well.

That’s certainly true. But consider this, Socrates: If our city hasn’t got any money, how will it be able to fight a war, especially if it has to fight against a great and wealthy city?

[b] Obviously, it will be harder to fight one such city and easier to fight two.