should drink wine at all, and
no soldier while he is on a campaign, and no magistrate or officer while
he is on duty, and that no one should drink by daylight or on a bridal
night. And there are so many other occasions on which wine ought to
be prohibited, that there will not be many vines grown or vineyards
required in the state.

BOOK III. If a man wants to know the origin of states and societies, he
should behold them from the point of view of time. Thousands of cities
have come into being and have passed away again in infinite ages,
every one of them having had endless forms of government; and if we
can ascertain the cause of these changes in states, that will probably
explain their origin. What do you think of ancient traditions about
deluges and destructions of mankind, and the preservation of a remnant?
'Every one believes in them.' Then let us suppose the world to have
been destroyed by a deluge. The survivors would be hill-shepherds, small
sparks of the human race, dwelling in isolation, and unacquainted with
the arts and vices of civilization. We may further suppose that the
cities on the plain and on the coast have been swept away, and that all
inventions, and every sort of knowledge, have perished. 'Why, if all
things were as they now are, nothing would have ever been invented. All
our famous discoveries have been made within the last thousand years,
and many of them are but of yesterday.' Yes, Cleinias, and you must not
forget Epimenides, who was really of yesterday; he practised the lesson
of moderation and abstinence which Hesiod only preached. 'True.' After
the great destruction we may imagine that the earth was a desert, in
which there were a herd or two of oxen and a few goats, hardly enough
to support those who tended them; while of politics and governments
the survivors would know nothing. And out of this state of things have
arisen arts and laws, and a great deal of virtue and a great deal of
vice; little by little the world has come to be what it is. At first,
the few inhabitants would have had a natural fear of descending into the
plains; although they would want to have intercourse with one another,
they would have a difficulty in getting about, having lost the arts,
and having no means of extracting metals from the earth, or of felling
timber; for even if they had saved any tools, these would soon have been
worn out, and they could get no more until the art of metallurgy had
been again revived.