rtune, that he is mild or courageous, but we
may say that he is prudent and liberal, which are the only qualities
connected therewith.
It is also absurd to render property equal, and not to provide for
the increasing number of the citizens; but to leave that circumstance
uncertain, as if it would regulate itself according to the number of
women who [1265b] should happen to be childless, let that be what it
would because this seems to take place in other cities; but the case
would not be the same in such a state which he proposes and those which
now actually unite; for in these no one actually wants, as the property
is divided amongst the whole community, be their numbers what they will;
but as it could not then be divided, the supernumeraries, whether they
were many or few, would have nothing at all. But it is more necessary
than even to regulate property, to take care that the increase of the
people should not exceed a certain number; and in determining that,
to take into consideration those children who will die, and also those
women who will be barren; and to neglect this, as is done in several
cities, is to bring certain poverty on the citizens; and poverty is the
cause of sedition and evil. Now Phidon the Corinthian, one of the oldest
legislators, thought the families and the number of the citizens should
continue the same; although it should happen that all should have
allotments at the first, disproportionate to their numbers.
In Plato's Laws it is however different; we shall mention hereafter what
we think would be best in these particulars. He has also neglected in
that treatise to point out how the governors are to be distinguished
from the governed; for he says, that as of one sort of wool the warp
ought to be made, and of another the woof, so ought some to govern, and
others to be governed. But since he admits, that all their property may
be increased fivefold, why should he not allow the same increase to the
country? he ought also to consider whether his allotment of the houses
will be useful to the community, for he appoints two houses to each
person, separate from each other; but it is inconvenient for a person
to inhabit two houses. Now he is desirous to have his whole plan of
government neither a democracy nor an oligarchy, but something between
both, which he calls a polity, for it is to be composed of men-at-arms.
If Plato intended to frame a state in which more than in any other
everything should
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