Book I, 1252a–1255b

1252a1Since we see that every city is a kind of association, and that every association has been established for the sake of some good—for everyone does everything for the sake of what seems good—it is clear that all associations aim at some good, but above all,5 at the most authoritative good of all, the association that is most authoritative of all and embraces all the others. This is what is called the city, the political association. Those, then, who think that the statesman, the kingly ruler, the household manager, and the master are the same are mistaken. For they take the number, large or small,10 to distinguish each of these, not their kind: if he rules a few, he is a master; if more, a household manager; if still more, a statesman or a kingly ruler—as though there were no difference between a large household and a small city. And in distinguishing the statesman from the kingly ruler, they call him a kingly ruler when he himself stands at their head, but when,15 in accordance with the principles of this science, he rules and is ruled in turn, a statesman. But these claims are not true. What we mean will become clear to those who examine the matter by the method we have indicated. For just as in other matters we must divide what is composite into its uncompounded elements—these are the smallest20 parts of the whole—so, by examining the parts of which the city is composed, we shall also see more clearly how these differ from one another, and whether we can arrive at any skilled understanding of each of the things mentioned.

If, then, one were to observe these things growing from their beginning,1252a25 as in other matters, this would be the best way to study them here too. First, those who cannot exist without one another must come together in pairs: female and male for the sake of generation—not from deliberate choice, but because, as in other animals and plants, the desire is natural30 to leave behind another like oneself—and ruler and ruled by nature, for the sake of preservation. For what can foresee with its mind is by nature a ruler and by nature a master, while what can carry these things out through bodily labor is ruled and is by nature a slave. For this reason, the same thing is to the advantage of master and slave.

By nature, then,1252b1 the female and the slave are distinct. For nature makes nothing in the parsimonious manner in which the bronze workers make the Delphic knife, but one thing for one purpose. Each instrument would thus be made best, with not many tasks but one5 to serve. Among the barbarians, however, the female and the slave have the same position. The reason is that they have no ruler by nature; instead, their association is that of a female slave and a male slave. This is why the poets say, “It is fitting that Greeks should rule barbarians,” (Eur. IA 1400) as though barbarian and slave were the same by nature. From these10 two associations, then, the household first arises; and Hesiod was right when he wrote, “First of all a household, a woman, and an ox for plowing.” (Hes. WD 405) For the ox takes the place of a household servant for the poor. The association established by nature for everyday needs is therefore the household; its members Charondas calls companions of the same bread chest, and Epimenides15 of Crete, companions of the same table. The first association of several households for needs that are not merely daily is the village. By nature, the village seems above all to be a colony of a household, consisting of those whom some call companions of the same milk: children and children's children. For this reason cities were originally ruled by kings, and so even now are the20 nations: they came together from households ruled by kings. For every household is ruled as by a king by its eldest member, and so too its colonies, because of their kinship. This is also what Homer means when he says, “Each lays down the law for his children and wives.” (Hom. Od. 9.114) For they are scattered, and this is how people lived in ancient times. For this reason, too, everyone says that the gods25 are ruled by a king: some people are themselves still ruled by kings, while others were in ancient times. Just as human beings make the gods' forms resemble their own, so too they make the gods' ways of life resemble their own.

The complete association formed from several villages is a city, already reaching, one might say, the limit of full self-sufficiency. It comes into being for the sake of1252b30 living, but exists for the sake of living well. Therefore every city exists by nature, if indeed the first associations do too. For the city is their end, and nature is an end: what each thing is when its coming into being is complete, we call the nature of that thing—a human being, for example, a horse, or a household. Further, that for the sake of which a thing exists, its end, is best;

1253a1and self-sufficiency is both an end and best. From these considerations, then, it is evident that the city is among the things that exist by nature, and that a human being is by nature a political animal. Anyone who is without a city by nature, and not by chance, is either base or greater than a human being, like5 the man Homer denounces as “Without clan, without law, without hearth.” (Hom. Il. 9.63) For such a person is at once like this by nature and eager for war, being unpaired, like a piece in a board game. It is clear why a human being is a political animal more than any bee or any animal that lives in a herd. For nature, as we say, does nothing in vain; and speech10 belongs to human beings alone among the animals. Voice is a sign of pain and pleasure, and therefore belongs to the other animals too: their nature has reached this point, that they perceive pain and pleasure and signal them to one another. Speech, however, serves to reveal advantage and15 harm, and therefore also the just and the unjust. For this is peculiar to human beings in comparison with the other animals: they alone perceive good and bad, the just and the unjust, and the other things of this kind. Sharing in these things makes a household and a city. The city is also prior by nature to the household and to each of us.20 For the whole must be prior to the part. If the whole is destroyed, there will be neither foot nor hand, except in name, as one might speak of a stone hand—for a hand, once destroyed, will be like that. All things are defined by their function and capacity; hence, when they no longer have these, we should not say that they are the same things, but only that they have the same names.25 It is clear, then, that the city is also prior by nature to each individual. For if each individual, when separated, is not self-sufficient, he will stand in the same relation to the whole as the other parts do. Anyone who cannot share in an association, or who needs nothing because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city, and so is either a beast or a god.

By nature, then, there is in1253a30 everyone an impulse toward such an association; but the first person to establish it was responsible for the greatest goods. For just as a human being, when brought to completion, is the best of animals, so, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. Injustice is most dangerous when it has weapons. Human beings are born with weapons for practical wisdom and35 virtue, yet these can be used above all for their opposites. Hence, without virtue, a human being is most impious and savage, and worst in matters of sex and food. Justice is a political matter: for justice is the ordering of the political association, and justice is the judgment of the just.

1253b1Since it is evident what parts the city consists of, we must first speak about household management; for every city is composed of households. The parts of household management correspond in turn to the parts of which a household consists, and a complete household consists of slaves and free people. Since5 each thing must first be examined in its smallest elements, and the first and smallest parts of a household are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children, we should examine these three relations: what each is and what it ought to be. These are mastery, the marital relation—for between woman and man there is no name for their10 union—and, third, the relation of producing children—for this too has no name of its own. Let these, then, be the three we have mentioned. There is also a part that some think is household management itself, and others its greatest part; we must study how matters stand. I mean what is called wealth-getting. But first15 let us speak about master and slave, so that we may both consider what bears on necessary use and see whether we can arrive at a better understanding of them than the views now held. For some think that mastery is a kind of science, and that household management, mastery, statesmanship, and kingly rule are the same,20 as we said at the outset. Others think that being a master is contrary to nature: one person is a slave and another free by convention, while by nature they differ in no way. For this reason, they say, it is not just, since it rests on force.

Since property is a part of the household, and the art of acquiring property is a part of household management—for without necessities it is impossible1253b25 either to live or to live well—and since the particular arts must have their appropriate instruments if their work is to be accomplished, the household manager must have them too. Of instruments, some are lifeless and others living: for a ship's pilot, for example, the rudder is lifeless and the lookout living—for30 an assistant in the arts is a kind of instrument. So too a piece of property is an instrument for living, property is a collection of instruments, and a slave is a living piece of property; every assistant is, as it were, an instrument that comes before other instruments. For if each instrument could, at a command or by anticipating it, carry out35 its own work, like the works of Daedalus, as people say, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which the poet says “enter the divine assembly of their own accord”—if shuttles wove by themselves in this way, and plectrums played the lyre—then master craftsmen would have no need of1254a1 assistants, nor masters of slaves.

What we ordinarily call instruments are instruments of production, whereas a piece of property is an instrument of action. For from the shuttle something arises beyond its use, while from clothing and a bed there is only their use.1254a5 Further, since production and action differ in kind, and both require instruments, their instruments must also have the same distinction. Life is action, not production; therefore the slave too is an assistant in what serves action. A piece of property is spoken of in the same way as a part. For a part is not10 only a part of something else, but also belongs entirely to something else; and likewise a piece of property. Thus the master is only the slave's master, and does not belong to him; but the slave is not only the master's slave, but also belongs wholly to him.

What the nature and capacity of the slave are is therefore clear from these considerations. For someone who is by nature not his own1254a15 but another's, though a human being, is a slave by nature. A human being belongs to another if, though human, he is a piece of property; and a piece of property is a separable instrument of action.

Whether anyone is by nature such a person or not, and whether it is better and just for anyone to be a slave, or whether, on the contrary, all slavery is contrary to nature, must next be1254a20 examined. It is not difficult either to study this through reason or to learn it from what occurs. For ruling and being ruled are not only necessary but also advantageous, and immediately from birth some things are set apart for being ruled and others for ruling. There are many kinds both of rulers and25 of the ruled; and rule over better subjects is always better, as over a human being rather than a beast, since the work accomplished by better agents is better. Where one rules and another is ruled, there is some work that belongs to them. For in everything composed of several parts and becoming a single common whole, whether its parts are continuous or30 separate, a ruler and a ruled element appear. This is present in living things as a feature of nature as a whole; for even in things that have no share in life there is a kind of rule, as in a harmony. But perhaps these matters belong to a more external inquiry. A living thing consists in the first place of soul35 and body, of which the one is by nature the ruler and the other the ruled. We should examine what is natural in things whose condition accords with nature rather than in things that are corrupted. Therefore we must study the human being whose body and soul are in the best condition, in whom this is evident;

for in people who are bad or1254b1 in a bad condition, the body might often seem to rule the soul because their condition is base and contrary to nature.

It is possible, then, as we say, to observe in a living thing, first of all, both the rule of a master and political rule. For the soul, in relation to the body,1254b5 exercises a master's rule, while the mind rules desire with political or kingly rule. In these cases it is evident that it is by nature and advantageous for the body to be ruled by the soul, and for the part subject to passions to be ruled by the mind and the part that possesses reason; whereas an equal or reversed relation is harmful to all.10 Again, the same holds between human beings and the other animals. For tame animals are better in nature than wild ones, and for all these it is better to be ruled by human beings, since they are preserved in this way. Further, in the relation of male to female, the one is by nature superior and the other inferior, the one ruling and the other ruled. The15 same must also hold among all human beings. Those who differ as much from others as soul from body and a human being from a beast—and this is the condition of those whose work consists in using their bodies, and for whom this is the best they can provide—are slaves by nature. For them it is better20 to be ruled with this sort of rule, if indeed it is so for those already mentioned. For a slave by nature is one who is capable of belonging to another—and therefore does belong to another—and who shares in reason to the extent of apprehending it, but not possessing it. The other animals assist not through apprehension of reason, but through their feelings. Their usefulness differs little:25 for both slaves and tame animals provide bodily assistance toward the necessities of life. Nature intends, then, to make the bodies of free people and slaves different too: those of slaves strong for necessary service, those of free people upright and useless for30 such labors, but useful for political life, which is divided into the requirements of war and those of peace. Yet the opposite often happens as well: some have the bodies of free people, others their souls. This much, at least, is evident: if people differed35 in body alone as much as the images of the gods differ, everyone would say that those who fell short deserved to be their slaves. And if this is true of the body, it is much more just that the distinction should be made in respect of the soul. But it is not equally easy to see1255a1 the beauty of the soul and that of the body.

It is evident, then, that some people are by nature free and others slaves, and that for the latter being a slave is both advantageous and just.

But it is not difficult to see that those who maintain the opposite are also right in a certain way. For being a slave is spoken of in two senses,1255a5 as is the slave himself. There is also someone who is a slave and serves as a slave by law. For the law is a kind of agreement by which people say that what is conquered in war belongs to the conquerors. Many versed in the laws indict this claim of justice as they would a speaker for an unlawful proposal: it is monstrous, they say, if whoever can use force10 and is superior in power should have the victim of force as his slave and subject. Some hold one view and others the other, even among the wise. The reason for this dispute, and what makes the arguments overlap, is that virtue, when supplied with resources, is in a sense also most capable of using force, and15 what prevails always has a superiority in some good. Thus force seems not to be without virtue, and the dispute seems to concern only the just. For this reason some think the just is folly, while others think this very thing is just: that the superior should rule. For once these arguments are set apart,20 the opposing arguments have neither strength nor persuasiveness in maintaining that what is better in virtue ought not to rule and be master. In general, some people, holding fast, as they think, to a kind of justice—for law is something just—declare slavery resulting from war to be just, yet at the same time deny it. For the origin may not25 be just in wars, and no one would ever say that someone who does not deserve to be a slave is a slave. Otherwise, it will follow that those considered the best born are slaves and descended from slaves, if they happen to be captured and sold. This is why they do not wish to call themselves slaves, but only barbarians. Yet when they say this,30 they are seeking nothing other than the slave by nature of whom we spoke at the outset; for they must say that some people are slaves everywhere and others nowhere. It is the same with noble birth: they consider themselves wellborn not only among their own people but everywhere, while barbarians are wellborn only at home,35 as though some nobility and freedom were unqualified, and others not unqualified. So too Helen in Theodectes says, “Born of divine roots on either side, who would presume to call me a servant?” When they say this, they distinguish by nothing but virtue and vice40 the slave and the free, the wellborn and the1255b1 lowborn.

1252a1Every city, as we can see, is some kind of community. Every community is formed for some good, since everyone does everything for what they think is good. Clearly, then, all communities aim at some good. But most of all,5 the most authoritative community, which includes all the others, aims at the most authoritative good of all. This is what we call the city, or the political community. People who think that a statesman, a king, a household manager, and a master are the same are wrong. They take the number of people ruled10 to distinguish these roles, not their kind. Someone who rules a few is a master; someone who rules more is a household manager; someone who rules still more is a statesman or a king. On this view, a large household and a small city are no different. They also distinguish a statesman from a king this way: when someone rules on his own, he is a king. But when15 he takes turns ruling and being ruled, following the principles of this kind of knowledge, he is a statesman. These claims aren't true. This will become clear if we look into the matter using the method we have laid out. In other subjects, we have to break a composite thing down until we reach its simplest parts. These are the smallest20 parts of the whole. In the same way, looking at the parts that make up a city will help us understand these matters better. We will see how they differ from each other. We will also see whether we can gain any systematic knowledge about each role just mentioned.

If we look at how things develop from the beginning,1252a25 we will get the clearest view of these matters, just as we do in other subjects. First, those who can't exist without each other must form pairs. For example, female and male must pair up to reproduce. This isn't a matter of choice. As with other animals and plants, there is a natural desire30 to leave behind another being like oneself. The ruler and the ruled by nature must also pair up, for their survival. Someone who can use thought to plan ahead is a ruler and a master by nature. Someone who can carry out these plans with the body is ruled and is a slave by nature. So the same thing brings advantage to master and slave.

By nature, then,1252b1 the female and the slave are distinct. Nature doesn't make anything on the cheap, like the metalworkers' Delphic knife. Instead, it makes one thing for one task. Each tool would do its job best in this way, with not many tasks but one5 to serve. Among non-Greek peoples, though, the female and the slave have the same rank. The reason is that they have no ruler by nature. Instead, their community consists of a female slave and a male slave. That is why the poets say, "It is fitting for Greeks to rule non-Greeks," (Eur. IA 1400) as though a non-Greek and a slave were the same by nature. From these10 two communities, then, the household first emerges. Hesiod was right when he wrote, "First of all, a household, a wife, and an ox for plowing." (Hes. WD 405) For poor people, the ox takes the place of a household servant. So the community formed by nature to meet everyday needs is the household. Charondas calls its members people who share a bread bin; Epimenides15 of Crete calls them people who share a food trough. The first community formed from several households to meet needs beyond the everyday is a village. By nature, the village seems most of all to be an offshoot of a household. Its members are what some call people nourished on the same milk: children and their children's children. This is why cities were first ruled by kings, and even today20 nations are too. They came together out of groups ruled by kings. Every household is ruled by its oldest member, so its offshoots are too, because they are related. This is also what Homer means when he says, "Each gives laws for his children and wives." (Hom. Od. 9.114) They lived scattered apart, as people did in early times. This is also why everyone says the gods25 are ruled by a king. Some people still live under kings themselves; others did in early times. Just as people make the gods' appearance like their own, they also make the gods' lives like their own.

The complete community formed from several villages is a city. It has reached, so to speak, full self-sufficiency. It comes into being for the sake of1252b30 living, but it exists for the sake of living well. So every city exists by nature, if the first communities do too. The city is their end, and nature is an end. What each thing is when its development is complete is what we call its nature, whether it is a human, a horse, or a household. Also, the purpose and the end are what is best.

1253a1Self-sufficiency is both an end and what is best. From this it is clear that the city is one of the things that exist by nature, and that a human is a political animal by nature. Someone who has no city by nature, not by chance, is either a bad person or more than human. He is like5 the person Homer condemns: "Without clan, without law, without a home." (Hom. Il. 9.63) Someone who is like this by nature also wants war. He stands alone, like an isolated piece in a board game. It is clear why a human is a political animal more than any bee or any animal that lives in a herd. Nature, as we say, does nothing without a purpose. Speech,10 however, belongs to humans alone among animals. Voice is a sign of pain and pleasure, so other animals have it too. Their nature has developed far enough for them to feel pain and pleasure and to signal these to each other. But speech serves to show what brings advantage and15 what causes harm, and therefore the just and the unjust as well. This is what sets humans apart from other animals: they alone have a sense of good and bad, of the just and the unjust, and of the other things of this kind. Sharing these makes a household and a city. The city also comes before the household and each of us by nature.20 The whole must come before the part. If the whole is destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in name, as when we speak of a stone hand. A dead hand will be like that. Everything is defined by its work and its ability. When it no longer has these, we shouldn't call it the same thing, but only something with the same name.25 So it is clear that the city also comes before each individual by nature. For if an individual is not self-sufficient when separated, he will stand in the same relation to the whole as the other parts do. Someone who can't share in a community, or who needs nothing because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city. He must be either a beast or a god.

By nature, then, there is a drive in1253a30 everyone toward this kind of community. But the person who first set it up was responsible for the greatest goods. A human, when fully developed, is the best of animals. In the same way, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. Injustice is most dangerous when it has weapons. A human is born with weapons for practical wisdom and35 virtue, but can use them especially for the opposite ends. Without virtue, then, he is the most unholy and savage of beings, and the worst when it comes to sex and food. Justice belongs to the city. For justice gives order to the political community, and justice is the judgment of the just.

1253b1Now that it is clear what parts make up a city, we must first discuss household management. Every city is made up of households. The parts of household management are, in turn, the parts that make up a household. A complete household consists of slaves and free people. For5 we must first study each thing in its smallest parts. The first and smallest parts of a household are master and slave, husband and wife, and father and children. We should examine each of these three relationships: what it is and what it should be like. These are mastery, the marital relationship—a woman and a man have no special name for their10 union as a couple—and, third, producing children, which also has no special name of its own. Let these be the three we have mentioned. There is also a part that some people think is household management itself, while others think it is its most important part. We must examine how this stands. I mean what is called money-making. But first,15 let's discuss master and slave. We want to see what concerns their necessary use, and whether we can gain a better understanding of them than the views now held. Some people think mastery is a kind of knowledge, and that household management, mastery, statesmanship, and kingship are the same,20 as we said at the start. Others think being a master is against nature. On their view, one person is a slave and another free by convention, but they are no different by nature. So mastery isn't just either, because it rests on force.

Property is part of the household, and getting property is part of household management. Without necessities, it is impossible1253b25 either to live or to live well. Just as each particular craft must have its own tools if its work is to be done, so must the household manager. Some tools are lifeless and others living. For a ship's pilot, for example, the rudder is lifeless, but the lookout at the bow is living. An30 assistant is a kind of tool in the crafts. In the same way, a possession is a tool for living, property is a collection of tools, and a slave is a living possession. Every assistant is like a tool that comes before other tools. Suppose each tool could, when ordered or when it anticipated the order, carry out35 its own work. This is what people say of Daedalus's creations and Hephaestus's tripods, which the poet says enter the gathering of the gods on their own. If weaving shuttles wove on their own like this, and picks played the lyre, master craftsmen wouldn't need1254a1 assistants, and masters wouldn't need slaves.

What we usually call tools, then, are tools for making things, while a possession is a tool for acting. Using a shuttle produces something beyond its use. Using clothing or a bed gives only the use itself.1254a5 Also, making and acting differ in kind, and both need tools. Their tools must therefore differ in the same way. Life is action, not production. So a slave is an assistant in matters of action. A possession is spoken of in the same way as a part. A part is not10 just a part of something else; it also belongs entirely to something else. The same is true of a possession. So a master is only the slave's master; he doesn't belong to the slave. But a slave is not just the master's slave; he also belongs entirely to him.

This makes clear the slave's nature and function. Someone who by nature belongs not to himself1254a15 but to someone else, while being human, is a slave by nature. A human belongs to someone else if, while being human, he is a possession. A possession is a tool for action that is separate from its owner.

Is anyone like this by nature or not? Is it better and just for anyone to be a slave, or not? Or is all slavery against nature? These are the questions we must next1254a20 examine. It isn't hard to see the answer through reasoning and to learn it from what happens. Ruling and being ruled are not only necessary but also bring advantage. Right from birth, some things are set apart to be ruled and others to rule. There are also many kinds of rulers and25 ruled. Rule is always better when those being ruled are better: rule over a human, for example, is better than rule over a beast. Work done by better beings is better work. Where one rules and another is ruled, there is some work they do. Whenever several parts make up one common whole, whether the parts are connected or30 separate, a ruling element and a ruled element appear in all such cases. This is present in living things as a feature of nature as a whole. Even in things that have no share in life, there is a kind of rule, as in a musical harmony. But these matters may belong to a discussion outside our subject. An animal is made up first of soul35 and body. Of these, one rules by nature and the other is ruled. We should look for what is natural in things that are in their natural condition, rather than in damaged things. So we must look at the human who is in the best condition in both body and soul. In him this is clear.

In people who are bad or1254b1 in a bad condition, the body may often seem to rule the soul, because their condition is poor and against nature.

As we say, then, we can first see both a master's rule and political rule in an animal. The soul, in relation to the body,1254b5 rules as a master, while the mind rules desire with political rule or a king's rule. In these cases, the body is naturally ruled by the soul, and this brings advantage. The same holds for the part that feels emotions. It is ruled by the mind and the part that has reason. Equal rule, or the reverse arrangement, harms them all.10 The same applies to humans and other animals. Tame animals have a better nature than wild ones. It is better for all tame animals to be ruled by humans, since this keeps them alive. Also, the male is superior to the female by nature, and the female inferior. One rules and the other is ruled. The15 same pattern must apply among all humans too. People who are as different from others as soul is from body and a human from a beast are slaves by nature. This is the condition of people whose work is the use of their bodies and for whom this is the best they can offer. It is better for them20 to be ruled in this way, if it is also better for the things already mentioned. A slave by nature is someone who can belong to someone else, and therefore does belong to someone else. He shares in reason enough to recognize it, but not to have it himself. Other animals serve not by recognizing reason but by their feelings. Their use also differs little:25 both slaves and tame animals give bodily help with life's necessities. Nature also intends to make the bodies of free people and slaves different. Slaves' bodies are strong for necessary work; free people's bodies stand upright and are unsuited to30 work of this kind, but suited to political life. Political life itself is divided between activities in war and in peace. But the opposite often happens too: some have free people's bodies, others their souls. At least this is clear: if people differed35 in body alone as much as statues of the gods do, everyone would say that those who fell short deserved to be their slaves. If this is true of the body, it is much more just to make this distinction in the case of the soul. But it isn't equally easy to see1255a1 the beauty of the soul and the beauty of the body.

Clearly, then, some people are free by nature and others are slaves. For the latter, being slaves both brings advantage and is just.

It isn't hard to see that those who make the opposite claims are also right in a way. Being a slave has two meanings,1255a5 and so does the word "slave". Someone can also be a slave and serve as a slave under law. This law is a kind of agreement under which people say that what is captured in war belongs to the victors. Many people versed in law challenge this claim to justice, just as they bring an indictment against a speaker for an illegal proposal. They think it is terrible if someone who can use force10 and is stronger in power will have the person he overpowers as his slave and subject. Some think one way and some the other, even among the wise. The cause of this disagreement, and what makes the arguments overlap, is that virtue, when supplied with resources, is in a way especially able to use force. Also,15 the victor always has a greater share of some good. So force seems not to be without virtue, and the disagreement seems to concern only the just. For this reason, some think the just is nonsense; others think that this very thing is just: that the stronger should rule. Once these arguments are separated,20 the opposing arguments have nothing strong or convincing in them, when they claim that whoever is better in virtue shouldn't rule and be master. In general, some people hold to what they think is a kind of justice—for law is something just—and say that slavery arising from war is just. But at the same time they deny it. For the cause of a war need not25 be just, and no one would ever say that someone who doesn't deserve to be a slave is a slave. Otherwise, people thought to be of the noblest birth would turn out to be slaves and descended from slaves, if they happened to be captured and sold. So these people aren't willing to call them slaves, but only non-Greeks. Yet when they say this,30 they are looking for nothing other than the slave by nature we spoke of at the start. They must say that some people are slaves everywhere and others nowhere. They take the same approach to noble birth. They think they themselves are noble not only in their own country but everywhere, while non-Greeks are noble only at home.35 This assumes that one kind of noble birth and freedom is unqualified, while another is not. Helen in Theodectes's play says the same: "Born from divine roots on both sides, who would think it right to call me a servant?" But when they say this, they use nothing but virtue and vice to distinguish40 slave from free, and people of noble birth from those1255b1 of low birth.