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2 0 4 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3reductionist interpretations offered by Kamtekar and Vlastos are unsound. Insections V–VI, I will analyze the reductionist or semireductionist argumentsof Reeve and Morrison, showing that they, too, are unsound. In section VII, Iwill draw out the conclusions mentioned above: the persistent gap between theprivate and the common good and the need to read the Republic as a drama.II.Socrates three times declares that the goal in building the city in speech is tomake the city happy as a whole (420b, 466a, 519e). 9 The first discussion of thehappiness of the city as a whole comes at the beginning of book 4, after theintroduction of communism of property among the guardians (415b–417d)and shortly before the building of the city reaches its first conclusion (427c–d). Socrates argues that the guardians must not be allowed private homes,private wealth, or even private rooms, lest such possessions tempt them toabandon their role as guardians and, like predatory wolves, to use their powerto exploit their fellow citizens. Rather, the guardians will live in common, andthey will be paid for their services with food, which they will eat in commonlike soldiers (415d–417a). Socrates asserts that, living this way, the guardians“would save themselves as well as save the city” (417a). Glaucon is apparentlyconvinced that these arrangements are good all around, but they prove toomuch for Adeimantus, who interrupts the conversation to ask Socrates whatdefense he might offer were someone to accuse him of making the guardiansmiserable by forcing them to live in this austere manner. He says:What would your apology be, Socrates, if someone were to say thatyou’re hardly making these men happy, and further, that it’s their ownfault—they to whom the city in truth belongs but who enjoy nothinggood from the city as do others, who possess lands, and build fine bighouses, …and make sacrifices to gods, and entertain foreigners, and,of course, also acquire…gold and silver and all that’s conventionallyheld to belong to men who are going to be blessed? But, he would say,they look exactly like mercenary auxiliaries who sit in the city and donothing but keep watch. (419a–420a)Far from rejecting these charges, Socrates amplifies them by noting that,since the guardians are paid in food, they are unable to leave the city on aprivate journey, or to give gifts to mistresses, or to gratify any other desirethat requires spending money. As a result, they are unable to do the various9The word “happy” (eudaimōn) is not used at 519e, but rather a synonym: the law is concerned withmaking the city as a whole “fare exceptionally well” (diapherontōs eu praxei).