Seite - 1436 - in The Complete Plato
Bild der Seite - 1436 -
Text der Seite - 1436 -
Thus, O my friends, and for the reasons given, should a state act which
would endure and be saved. But as a ship sailing on the sea has to be watched
night and day, in like manner a city also is sailing on a sea of politics, and is
liable to all sorts of insidious assaults; and therefore from morning to night,
and from night to morning, rulers must join hands with rulers, and watchers
with watchers, receiving and giving up their trust in a perpetual succession.
Now a multitude can never fulfil a duty of this sort with anything like energy.
Moreover, the greater number of the senators will have to be left during the
greater part of the year to order their concerns at their own homes. They will
therefore have to be arranged in twelve portions, answering to the twelve
months, and furnish guardians of the state, each portion for a single month.
Their business is to be at hand and receive any foreigner or citizen who comes
to them, whether to give information, or to put one of those questions, to
which, when asked by other cities, a city should give an answer, and to which,
if she ask them herself, she should receive an answer; or again, when there is
a likelihood of internal commotions, which are always liable to happen in
some form or other, they will, if they can, prevent their occurring; or if they
have already occurred, will lose time in making them known to the city, and
healing the evil. Wherefore, also, this which is the presiding body of the state
ought always to have the control of their assemblies, and of the dissolutions
of them, ordinary as well as extraordinary. All this is to be ordered by the
twelfth part of the council, which is always to keep watch together with the
other officers of the state during one portion of the year, and to rest during the
remaining eleven portions.
Thus will the city be fairly ordered. And now, who is to have, the
superintendence of the country, and what shall be the arrangement? Seeing
that the whole city and the entire country have been both of them divided into
twelve portions, ought there not to be appointed superintendents of the streets
of the city, and of the houses, and buildings, and harbours, and the agora, and
fountains, and sacred domains, and temples, and the like?
Cleinias. To be sure there ought.
Athenian. Let us assume, then, that there ought to be servants of the
temples, and priests and priestesses. There must also be superintendents of
roads and buddings, who will have a care of men, that they may do no harm,
and also of beasts, both within the enclosure and in the suburbs. Three kinds
of officers will thus have to be appointed, in order that the city may be
suitably provided according to her needs. Those who have the care of the city
shall be called wardens of the city; and those who have the care of the agora
shall be called wardens of the agora; and those who have the care of the
temples shall be called priests. Those who hold hereditary offices as priests or
1436
zurück zum
Buch The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Titel
- The Complete Plato
- Autor
- Plato
- Datum
- ~347 B.C.
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 1612
- Schlagwörter
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Kategorien
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International