PLATO WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION LAWS by R.G.Bury VOL.II -LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY 192- 1926

LAWS, BOOK VII
enough for their modest needs ? Let us further
suppose that they had public mess-rooms—separate
rooms for men^ and others close by for their households,
including the girls and their mothers—and
that each of these rooms was in charge of a master
or mistress, to dismiss the company and to watch over
their behaviour daily ; and, at the close of the meal,
that the master and all the company poured a libation
in honour of those gods to whom that night and
day were dedicated, and so finally retired home.
Supposing them to be thus organised, is there no
necessary work, of a really appropriate kind, left for
them, but must every one of them continue
fattening
himself like a beast ? ^ That, we assert, is
neither right nor good ; nor is it possible for one
who lives thus to miss his due reward ; and the due
reward of an idle beast, fattened in sloth, is, as a
rule, to fall a prey to another beast—one of those
which are worn to skin and bone through toil
hardily endured. Now it is probable that if we
look to find this state of leisure fully realised exactly
as described, we shall be disappointed, so long as
women and children and houses remain private, and
all these things are established as the private property
of individuals ; but if the second-best State,- as now
described, could exist, we might be well content
with it. And, we assert, there does remain for men
living this life a task that is by no means small or
trivial, but rather one that a just law imposes upon
them as the weightiest task of all. For as compared
with the life that aims at a Pythian or
1 Cp. Ar. Pol. 1334* 13 ff.
* i.e. the (Magnesian) State described in the Laws, in contrast
to the Ideal (communistic) State of the Republic.
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VOL. II.
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PLATO
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