The Republic Reviewed

The chief theme of my discourse yesterday was the State—how it was constituted, and what kind of citizens would be most perfect to compose it.

We began by separating the husbandmen and the artisans from the class of defenders of the State.

We gave each one that single employment and art which was suited to his nature.

We said who we wanted to be our warriors. These were to be guardians of the city against attacks from inside and out. They have no other employment. They were to be merciful in judging their subjects, of whom they were by nature friends, but fierce to their enemies.

The guardians should be gifted with a temperament in a high degree both passionate and philosophical. They will be trained in gymnastic, music, and all other knowledge proper for them.

They were not to consider gold or silver or anything else to be their own private property. They were to be like hired troops, receiving pay for keeping guard from those who were protected by them. The pay was to be no more than would suffice for men of simple life.

They were to spend in common, and live together in the continual practice of virtue, which was to be their sole pursuit.

We declared that the natures of women should be assimilated and brought into harmony with those of the men. Common pursuits should be assigned to them both in time of war and in their ordinary life.

All wives and children were to be in common. No one one should ever know his own child. They were to imagine that they were all one family.

Those who were within a suitable limit of age were to be brothers and sisters, those who were of an elder generation parents and grandparents, and those of a younger, children and grandchildren.

To secure the best breed, the chief magistrates, male and female, should contrive secretly to use certain lots in order to arrange the nuptial meeting. In this way, the bad of either sex and the good of either sex might pair with their like. There was to be no quarrelling on this account, for they would imagine that the union was a mere accident, and was to be attributed to the lot.

The children of the good parents were to be educated. The children of the bad were to be secretly dispersed among the inferior citizens. While they were all growing up, the rulers should always be looking to bring up from below those who were worthy to replace them. Those who were unworthy were to take the places left behind by those who came up.

I want to tell you about the State which we have described.

I am like a person who, on beholding beautiful animals either created by the painter’s art, or, better still, alive but at rest, is seized with a desire of seeing them in motion or engaged in some struggle or conflict to which their forms appear suited;

All cities go through conflicts. I want to hear the story of our own city:

• carried on a struggle against her neighbours and went to war in a becoming manner

Everyone can see that the poets, past and present, are a tribe of imitators. They will imitate best and most easily the life in which they have been brought up. While that which is beyond the range of a man’s education he finds hard to carry out in action, and still harder adequately to represent in language.

The Sophists have plenty of brave words and fair conceits. But I am afraid that being only wanderers from one city to another, and having never had habitations of their own, they may fail in their conception of philosophers and statesmen, and may not know what they do and say in time of war, when they are fighting or holding parley with their enemies.

Thus, people of your class are the only ones remaining who by nature and education can take part both in politics and philosophy simultaneously.

Here is Timaeus, of Locris in Italy, a city which has admirable laws.

• He is as wealthy and has a rank equal to any of his fellow-citizens.
• He has held the most important and honourable offices in his own state.
• He has scaled the heights of all philosophy.

Here is Critias, whom every Athenian knows is no novice in philosophy.

Many witnesses say Hermocrates has genius and education which qualify him for any philosophical speculation.

Yesterday, you wanted me to describe the formation of the State.