Book V, 457–464

457a described, will bring that about?”

“How could they not?”

“So the law we laid down was not only possible, but the best for a city.”

“So it was.”

“The women of the guardians, then, must take off their clothes, since they will be clothed in virtue instead of cloaks; they must share in war and in the rest of the city's defense, and undertake no other work. Of these duties the lighter should be given to the women rather than the men, because of the weakness of their sex. The man 457b who laughs at naked women exercising for the sake of what is best plucks an unripe fruit from the tree of comic wisdom: he seems to know neither what he laughs at nor what he is doing. For it is and will remain the finest saying that what is beneficial is beautiful, and what is harmful, ugly.”

“Certainly.”

“Then let us say that in speaking of the law concerning women we have escaped one wave without being altogether swept away: we have ordained that our male and female 457c guardians must share in every pursuit, and our argument seems at least consistent with itself in calling this both possible and beneficial.”

“You have escaped no small wave,” he said.

“You will not call it large,” I said, “when you see the next one.”

“Speak, and let me see,” he said.

“The law following from this and the other laws that preceded it is, I believe, this.”

“What law?”

“All these women are to be held in common by all these men. No woman is to live privately with any one man; the children 457d too are to be held in common, and no parent shall know his own child nor any child its parent.”

“That,” he said, “is a much greater challenge to belief than the other, both as to whether it is possible and whether it is beneficial.”

“I do not think,” I said, “that anyone would dispute its benefit: that women and children should be held in common would be the greatest good, if only it could be done. But I think there would be a great deal of dispute about whether it is possible. 457e”

“Both questions,” he said, “would be thoroughly disputed.”

“You join two arguments against me,” I said. “I thought I might escape the first if you agreed it was beneficial, leaving me only the question of its possibility.”

“But your attempt to escape did not go unnoticed,” he said. “You must account for both.”

“I must submit to judgment,” I said. “But grant 458a me this much: let me enjoy a holiday, as idle minds are accustomed to feast themselves with fantasies when they walk alone. Before such people have discovered how they will attain what they desire, they pass over that question, so as to spare themselves the labor of considering whether it is possible. Assuming they have what they want, they at once arrange everything else and take delight in describing what they will do once they have it; so they make an already idle soul 458b idler still. Now I too am growing soft, and wish to postpone those questions and examine later how these things can be possible. For the present I will assume that they are possible and consider, if you permit me, how the rulers will arrange them when they come to pass, and how their practice would be most advantageous of all to the city and its guardians. Let me first examine these matters with you, and the other questions afterward, if you permit it.”

“I permit it,” he said. “Go on and examine them.”

“I think,” I said, “that if our rulers deserve 458c that name, and their assistants likewise, the latter will be willing to carry out their orders and the former to give them, obeying the laws themselves in some matters and following their pattern in the others left to their discretion.”

“That is likely,” he said.

“You, then, as their lawgiver, just as you selected the men, must select and present the women, so far as possible of like nature. Since they have common dwellings and common meals, and no one has any such thing in private possession, they will be together. Mingling in the gymnasiums and throughout their upbringing, they will be led, I think, by their inborn necessity to unite with one another. Does that not seem an inevitable outcome to you? 458d”

“Not by geometrical necessity,” he said, “but by the necessity of love, which is likely to be more compelling than geometry in persuading and drawing the multitude.”

“Very much so,” I said. “But after that, Glaucon, to mate without order or do anything else at random would be neither holy in a city of happy people, nor would the rulers allow it. 458e”

“No,” he said, “it would not be right.”

“Plainly, then, we must next make marriages as sacred as possible; and the most beneficial marriages would be sacred.”

“Certainly.”

459a “How will they be most beneficial? Tell me this, Glaucon: I see that you have a good number of hunting dogs and pedigreed birds at home. By Zeus, have you given any thought to their matings and breeding?”

“What about them?” he asked.

“First, even among those of fine stock, are not some individuals outstanding?”

“Yes.”

“Do you breed equally from all of them, or are you eager to breed chiefly from the best?”

“From the best. 459b”

“And from the youngest, or the oldest, or chiefly from those in their prime?”

“From those in their prime.”

“And if they are not bred this way, do you think your stocks of birds and dogs will greatly deteriorate?”

“I do,” he said.

“What about horses,” I asked, “and the other animals? Is it somehow different with them?”

“That would be strange,” he said.

“Good heavens, dear friend,” I said, “how excellent our rulers will have to be, if matters stand the same way with the human race. 459c”

“They do stand that way,” he said. “But what do you mean?”

“That they will have to use many remedies,” I said. “When bodies do not need drugs, but are willing to obey a regimen, we think even a lesser physician adequate. But when drugs are necessary, we know that a bolder physician is needed.”

“True. But why do you say so?”

“Because,” I said, “our rulers will apparently have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit 459d of those they rule. And we said, I believe, that all such devices could be useful as a kind of medicine.”

“And rightly so,” he said.

“This right use appears to be especially important in marriages and the begetting of children.”

“How so?”

“By what we have agreed,” I said, “the best men must mate with the best women as often as possible, and the worst with the worst as seldom as possible. The children of the former must be raised, but not those of the latter, if the flock is to be as excellent as possible. 459e And all these arrangements must remain unknown to everyone except the rulers themselves, if the herd of guardians is to be as free from faction as possible.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Then we must institute festivals at which we will bring together brides and bridegrooms, with sacrifices, and our poets must compose 460a hymns fitting for the marriages performed. The number of marriages we shall leave to the rulers, so that they can maintain, as far as possible, a constant population, taking account of wars, diseases, and all such contingencies, and so keep our city from growing either too large or too small.”

“Right,” he said.

“And some ingenious drawing of lots must, I think, be devised, so that each time the inferior man is paired off he blames chance and not the rulers.”

“Certainly,” he said.

460b “And the young men who distinguish themselves in war or anywhere else must be given honors and prizes, including more abundant opportunities to lie with women, so that this too will provide a pretext for fathering as many children as possible from such men.”

“Right.”

“Then the children born at any time will be taken into the care of the officials appointed for this purpose, whether these are men or women or both—for surely offices, too, are shared by women and men.”

“Yes. 460c”

“I imagine they will take the children of the good to a nursery, entrusting them to nurses who live apart in a particular district of the city. But the children of the inferior, and any child of the others born with a disability, they will hide away in a place secret and unknown, as is fitting.”

“If,” he said, “the guardian stock is to remain pure.”

“Will they not also see to their feeding, bringing the mothers to the nursery when their breasts are full, and taking every measure to ensure that none recognizes her own child? 460d They will procure other women with milk if the mothers themselves are not enough, make sure these mothers nurse for a moderate time, and assign the sleepless nights and all the other labor to wet nurses and attendants.”

“You are making childbearing very easy for the guardians' women,” he said.

“As it should be,” I said. “But let us pursue our original subject. We said that children should be begotten by people in their prime.”

“True. 460e”

“Do you agree, then, that a moderate span of prime is twenty years for a woman, and thirty for a man?”

“Which years do you mean?” he asked.

“For a woman,” I said, “the period from the age of twenty until forty, when she may bear children for the city; and for a man, from the time he passes the peak of his speed in running until the age of fifty-five, when he may beget children for the city.”

461a “At least for both,” he said, “those are the years of prime in body and mind.”

“Then if anyone older or younger than these ages undertakes to beget children for the community, we shall declare his error unholy and unjust. He is planting a child in the city who, if born without detection, will not have been conceived under the sacrifices and prayers which priestesses, priests, and the whole city will offer at each marriage—that from good parents ever better children may be born, and from useful parents 461b still more useful ones. Rather, this child will have been begotten in darkness amid dreadful lack of restraint.”

“Right,” he said.

“The same law applies,” I said, “if a man still of begetting age approaches a woman of childbearing age without the ruler's having joined them. We shall say that he is giving the city a bastard child, without a pledged marriage and without consecration.”

“Exactly right,” he said.

“But once the women and men have passed beyond the age for having children, I think we shall leave them free to unite 461c with whom they wish, except that a man must not unite with his daughter or mother, his daughter's daughters or his mother's female ancestors; nor a woman with her son or father or their descendants or forebears. Even then we shall strictly command them above all to keep any conception from seeing the light, and, if a child does come to birth despite them, to arrange matters on the understanding that no upbringing is available for it.”

“That is fairly put,” he said. “But how 461d are they to recognize their fathers and daughters, and the other relations you mentioned just now?”

“In no way,” I said. “From the day a man becomes a bridegroom, he will call all the children born in the tenth or seventh month afterward his sons if male and daughters if female, and they will call him father. He will call their children his grandchildren, and they in turn will call those of his generation grandfathers and grandmothers. Those born during the period when their mothers and fathers were having children 461e will call each other brothers and sisters, and so, as we just said, they will not unite with one another. Yet the law will allow brothers and sisters to live together if the lot falls that way and the Pythia gives her sanction.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“That, Glaucon, is the nature of the community of women and children for your city's guardians. What remains is to establish by argument that it follows from the rest of the constitution and is by far the best arrangement. Shall we proceed in that way?”

462a “By Zeus, we shall,” he said.

“Would this not be the beginning of our agreement: let us ask ourselves what is the greatest good we can name in the founding of a city, the end at which the lawgiver should aim in making its laws, and what is the greatest evil. Then we can examine whether the arrangements just discussed fit the pattern of good, and not that of evil.”

“Above all else,” he said.

“Have we any greater evil for a city than what tears it apart and makes it many cities 462b instead of one? Or any greater good than what binds it together and makes it one?”

“No.”

“Does not sharing pleasure and pain bind it together, when, so far as possible, all the citizens rejoice and grieve alike at the same things coming into being and passing away?”

“Indeed it does,” he said.

“And does not private feeling about such things dissolve it, when some are overwhelmed with grief and others 462c with joy at the same events affecting the city and its people?”

“Of course.”

“Does this not happen when the people in the city do not say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things at the same time? And likewise of what belongs to others?”

“Exactly.”

“Then the city in which the greatest number say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things in the same way is the best governed?”

“By far.”

“And it comes closest to being like one human being? When, for instance, one of us injures a finger, the entire community of body and soul, bound into one order under the governing principle within it, feels the injury, and the whole shares the pain of the part that suffers. That is why we say the person has pain in his finger. 462d The same holds for every other part of a human being, both when a part suffers pain and when it enjoys relief.”

“The same holds,” he said. “And to answer your question, the best-governed city comes closest to such a person.”

“When one of its citizens suffers some good or evil, then, such a city will surely say, more than any other, that the one affected is part of itself, and the whole city will share either the joy or the grief. 462e”

“It must, if it has good laws,” he said.

“It is time,” I said, “to return to our own city and examine whether the conclusions of our argument apply most fully to it, or to some other city instead.”

“We should,” he said.

463a “Well, then, are there rulers and people in other cities, and in this one too?”

“There are.”

“Will all of them call one another citizens?”

“How could they not?”

“But besides citizens, what does the populace in other cities call its rulers?”

“In most cities, masters. In democracies, by that very name—rulers.”

“What of the populace in ours? Besides citizens, what does it call its rulers? 463b”

“Saviors and defenders,” he said.

“And what do the rulers call the populace?”

“Those who pay their wages and provide their food.”

“And what do rulers in other cities call their peoples?”

“Slaves,” he said.

“What do rulers call one another?”

“Fellow rulers,” he said.

“And ours?”

“Fellow guardians.”

“Can you name a ruler in another city who might call one fellow ruler a member of his family and another a stranger?”

“Many of them.”

“And does he not consider and speak of the family member as his own, 463c and the stranger as not his own?”

“Yes.”

“What about your guardians? Could any one of them regard or address a fellow guardian as a stranger?”

“Not at all,” he said. “For everyone he meets he will regard as a brother or sister, a father or mother, a son or daughter, or a descendant or ancestor of these.”

“Excellent,” I said. “But tell me one thing more. Will your laws give them only the names of kinship, 463d or require that they act in all things according to those names? With regard to fathers, for instance, will they observe everything custom requires: respect, care, and obedience to parents, knowing that otherwise neither gods nor men will favor them, since they would be acting neither piously nor justly? Will these, or different teachings, be sounded in children's ears by all the citizens from the beginning, concerning those designated as their fathers and all their other relations? 463e”

“These,” he said. “It would be absurd if they spoke the names of kinship with their lips alone, without the deeds.”

“Then in this city, more than in any other, all will join in saying what we spoke of just now whenever anyone fares well or badly: ‘One of my own fares well,’ or ‘One of my own fares badly.’”

“Perfectly true,” he said.

464a “Did we not say that this conviction and expression bring with them a shared experience of pleasure and pain?”

“And rightly so.”

“Then our citizens will share most fully in what they call their own, and by sharing in that they will share most fully in pain and pleasure?”

“By far.”

“And is it not their community of women and children, along with the rest of our arrangements, that brings this about for the guardians?”

“More than anything else,” he said. 464b

“Yet we agreed that this was the greatest good for a city, likening a well-governed city to a body in its response to the pleasures and pains of one of its parts.”

“And rightly we agreed,” he said.

“Then the community of children and women among the city's defenders has proved to be the cause of its greatest good.”

“Most certainly,” he said.

“And we are consistent with our earlier conclusions as well. For we said, I think, that these people must have no private houses, no land, 464c and no property, but should receive their sustenance from the others as payment for guarding them and spend it all in common, if they are to be guardians in truth.”

“Right,” he said.

“Do not those earlier provisions, as I say, and the ones we are discussing now make them still more truly guardians? Do they not prevent them from tearing the city apart by calling different things ‘mine,’ each dragging into his own house what he can acquire apart from the others, another into another house, and each having different wives and children, which produce private pleasures and pains because they belong to each alone? 464d Instead, holding one conviction about what belongs to them, they will all strive for the same end, sharing, so far as possible, one experience of pain and pleasure.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“And will lawsuits and accusations against one another not all but vanish among them, because they own nothing private but their bodies and hold everything else in common? Thus they will be free from the factional disputes that arise when people struggle over wealth or possession of children and relations. 464e”

“They must be wholly free of those,” he said.

“Nor would lawsuits over violent assault or abuse be justified among them. We shall say that it is honorable and just for contemporaries to defend themselves against contemporaries, since this makes care of the body necessary.”

“Right,” he said.

457a we have described them, produce this result?”

“How could they not?”

“So the law we set down is not only possible but best for the city.”

“Yes.”

“Then the guardians' women must take off their clothes for exercise. They'll wear excellence instead of clothing. They must join in war and in the rest of the work of guarding the city, and do no other work. In these duties, we should give the women lighter tasks than the men because their sex is weaker. 457b But a man who laughs at women exercising naked for the best purpose is picking an unripe fruit from his cleverness about what is ridiculous. Apparently, he doesn't know what he's laughing at or what he's doing. For the finest saying is, and always will be, that what is useful is beautiful, and what is harmful is ugly.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“So, in discussing the law about women, we might say we've escaped one wave without being completely overwhelmed. We established that our male and female guardians must do all their work together. 457c And the argument itself agrees, at least to some extent, that this is possible and useful.”

“It's no small wave you've escaped,” he said.

“You'll say it isn't large,” I said, “when you see the next one.”

“Tell me about it so I can see,” he said.

“I think this next law follows from that one and the other laws we established earlier,” I said.

“What law?”

“All these women must be shared among all these men. None must live privately with any one man. 457d The children must be shared too. No parent must know their own child, and no child their parent.”

“That's much harder to believe than the other law,” he said, “both as to whether it's possible and whether it's useful.”

“I don't think anyone would dispute its usefulness,” I said. “If it can be done, sharing women and children would be an enormous good. But I think there would be a great deal of dispute about whether it can be done.” 457e

“People could easily dispute both,” he said.

“So I've got two arguments to fight,” I said. “I thought I could escape one of them if you agreed it was useful. Then only the question of whether it was possible would remain.”

“You didn't slip away unnoticed,” he said. “Give an account of both.”

“I must accept the penalty,” I said. “But grant me this much: let me enjoy a little holiday. Idle people often treat themselves to daydreams when they're walking alone. 458a Before they find a way to get what they want, they put that question aside so they won't have to work out whether it's possible. They assume they have it already, plan everything else, and happily rehearse what they'll do once they get it. That makes an already idle mind even idler. I'm growing soft myself now. 458b I want to put off the question of whether these proposals are possible and look into it later. For now I'll assume they are possible. If you'll permit me, I'll examine how the rulers would arrange things if they could. I'll also show that the arrangement, if carried out, would benefit the city and the guardians more than anything else. I'll try to examine these points with you first and the other question later, if you'll allow it.”

“I'll allow it,” he said. “Go on.”

“Well,” I said, “if the rulers are worthy 458c of the name, and their assistants are too, I think the assistants will be willing to do as they're told. The rulers will give orders, sometimes obeying the laws themselves, and sometimes following their example in matters we leave to them.”

“That's likely,” he said.

“Then you, as their lawgiver,” I said, “will select women as you've selected men, and give them partners whose natures are as similar as possible. They will have common homes and common dining halls, and no one will own anything of that sort privately. 458d They'll live together. As they mix in the training grounds and in all the rest of their upbringing, I think their inborn urges will necessarily draw them into sexual relations with each other. Doesn't that seem inevitable to you?”

“Not by the rules of geometry,” he said, “but by the force of desire, which is likely to be stronger at persuading and drawing most people.”

“Yes,” I said. “But after that, Glaucon, the rulers will not permit them to have sex without rules, or do anything else at random. That would not be right 458e in a happy city.”

“It wouldn't be just,” he said.

“Clearly, then, we must make marriages as sacred as we can. The most useful marriages would be sacred ones.”

“Certainly.”

459a “How will they be most useful? Tell me, Glaucon. I see quite a few hunting dogs and fine-bred birds at your home. By Zeus, have you paid any attention to their mating and breeding?”

“What about it?” he asked.

“First, even though they're all well-bred, aren't some better than the others?”

“Yes.”

“Do you breed equally from all of them, or do you make every effort to breed from the best?”

“From the best.” 459b

“And from the youngest, the oldest, or those in their prime?”

“Those in their prime.”

“And if you don't breed them this way, you expect the birds and dogs to get much worse?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What about horses and other animals?” I asked. “Is it different with them?”

“That would be strange,” he said.

“Good heavens, my dear friend,” I said, “our rulers will need to be exceptionally skilled, if the same holds true of the human race.” 459c

“It does,” he said. “But what are you getting at?”

“They'll have to use a lot of remedies,” I said. “We think an ordinary doctor will do when a body needs no medicine and the patient is willing to follow a healthy diet. But when medicine is needed, we know it calls for a bolder doctor.”

“True. But why do you say that?”

“Because,” I said, “our rulers will probably have to use a good deal of falsehood and deception for the benefit 459d of the people they rule. We said, I believe, that all such things were useful as a kind of medicine.”

“And rightly so,” he said.

“Then that principle seems especially relevant to marriage and having children.”

“How?”

“On the basis of what we've agreed,” I said, “the best men must mate with the best women as often as possible, and the worst men with the worst women as seldom as possible. The children of the first group must be raised, 459e and those of the second must not, if our herd is to be as good as possible. And all this must be kept secret from everyone except the rulers, if the group of guardians is to remain as free of conflict as possible.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“So we must establish festivals at which we bring brides and bridegrooms together, with sacrifices too. Our poets must compose hymns 460a appropriate to the marriages being celebrated. We'll leave the number of marriages to the rulers. They must keep the population as steady as possible, taking account of wars, disease, and everything of that sort. As far as possible, our city must grow neither too large nor too small.”

“Right,” he said.

“And we must arrange some clever lotteries, I think. Then each man who doesn't do well can blame chance for his pairing, rather than the rulers.”

“Certainly,” he said. 460b

“And young men who perform well in war or elsewhere should receive honors and other prizes, including more frequent opportunities to sleep with the women. That also gives us a reason to have as many children as possible fathered by such men.”

“Right.”

“Then the officials appointed for this task, whether they're men, women, or both—for surely women and men will both hold office—must take charge of every child that's born.”

“Yes.” 460c

“They'll take the children of the better parents, I think, to a nursery where nurses live separately in a part of the city. But they'll hide away the children of the worse parents, and any children of the others born with a disability, in a secret and unseen place, as is fitting.”

“Yes,” he said, “if the guardians' stock is to stay pure.”

“They'll also look after feeding the infants. When the mothers' breasts are full, they'll bring them to the nursery and make every effort to ensure that no mother knows her own child. 460d They'll find other women with milk if the mothers can't provide enough, and make sure that no mother nurses for too long. They'll give the night watches and the rest of the work to wet nurses and caregivers.”

“You're making childbirth very easy for the guardians' women,” he said.

“As it should be,” I said. “Let's turn to the next question we set ourselves. We said children should be born to parents in their prime.”

“True.” 460e

“Do you agree that a suitable span for a woman's prime is twenty years and for a man's thirty?”

“What years do you mean?” he asked.

“A woman should bear children for the city from the age of twenty until forty,” I said. “A man should father children for the city after his fastest running years are behind him, from then until the age of fifty-five.”

461a “Those are the years when both are at their best in body and judgment,” he said.

“Then if anyone older or younger than these ages takes part in breeding for the community, we'll call it an offense against both religion and justice. Such a person is fathering a child for the city who, if born without anyone knowing, will come into the world without the sacrifices or prayers offered at every marriage by priestesses, priests, and the whole city. They pray that the children born of good parents will be better, and those born of useful parents 461b more useful still. Instead, the child will have been conceived in secrecy and without restraint.”

“Right,” he said.

“The same law applies,” I said, “if a man still of breeding age has sex with a woman of the right age without a ruler bringing them together. We'll say he's giving the city an illegitimate, unapproved, and unhallowed child.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“But once the women and men have passed the age for having children, I suppose we'll leave them free to have sex 461c with anyone they wish, except a man may not do so with a daughter, a mother, a daughter's daughter, or a female ancestor above his mother. A woman may not do so with a son, a father, or their descendants and ancestors. Even then we'll instruct them all, above all, not to bring any pregnancy to birth, if they can help it. If a child is born despite their efforts, they must understand that it cannot be raised.”

“That sounds reasonable,” he said. “But how will fathers 461d and daughters, and the other relatives you just mentioned, recognize each other?”

“They won't,” I said. “Starting from the day a man becomes a bridegroom, he'll call every male child born between the seventh and tenth months afterward his son and every female child his daughter. They'll call him father. Likewise, he'll call their children grandchildren, and they'll call the older generation grandfathers and grandmothers. All those born during the period when their mothers and fathers were producing children 461e will call each other brothers and sisters, so they won't have sex with each other, as we said. But the law will allow brothers and sisters to live together as partners if the lottery chooses them and the Pythian priestess approves.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“So that, Glaucon, is the way the guardians of your city will share women and children. Next we must use argument to establish that this arrangement fits the rest of our constitution and is by far the best. Shall we proceed that way?”

462a “By Zeus, yes,” he said.

“Then shouldn't we begin by asking ourselves what the greatest good for a city is? That's what a lawgiver should aim at in making laws. We should also ask what its greatest evil is. Then we can consider whether the arrangement we've just described leads toward the good and away from the evil.”

“That's exactly right,” he said.

“Can anything be a greater evil for a city than what pulls it apart and makes it many cities instead of one? Can anything be a greater good than what binds it together and makes it one?” 462b

“No.”

“Doesn't shared pleasure and pain bind it together, when all the citizens feel joy and sorrow in much the same way over the same things being gained and lost?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“And doesn't keeping these feelings private pull it apart, when some people are overcome by grief and others by joy over the very same events in the city and among its people?” 462c

“Of course.”

“Doesn't that happen when the people of a city don't say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ about the same things at the same time? And the same goes for what belongs to others.”

“Exactly.”

“So the best-run city is the one where the largest number of people agree about what they call ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’?”

“By far.”

“And isn't it most like a single human being? When one of us hurts a finger, for instance, the whole body is organized with the soul under one governing power. It all senses the hurt 462d and shares in the pain of the one injured part. That's why we say the person has a sore finger. The same applies to every other part of the person, whether a part suffers pain or gets relief and feels pleasure.”

“Yes,” he said. “And to answer your question, the best-governed city is the one most like that.”

“So when anything good or bad happens to one citizen, that city will above all say that the experience is its own. The whole city will share either the pleasure or the pain.” 462e

“A well-governed city must do so,” he said.

“It's time for us to go back to our own city,” I said, “and see whether the points we've agreed on apply most of all to it, or more to some other city.”

“Yes, we must,” he said.

463a “Well, aren't there rulers and ordinary people in other cities, just as there are in ours?”

“Yes.”

“And all of them will call each other citizens?”

“Of course.”

“But apart from ‘citizens,’ what do ordinary people in other cities call their rulers?”

“In most cities, ‘masters.’ In democracies, they call them by that very name, ‘rulers.’”

“What about ordinary people in our city? Besides ‘citizens,’ what do they call their rulers?” 463b

“Protectors and defenders,” he said.

“And what do the rulers call the ordinary people?”

“Those who pay their wages and provide their food.”

“And what do rulers in other cities call the ordinary people?”

“Servants,” he said.

“What do rulers there call one another?”

“Fellow rulers,” he said.

“And ours?”

“Fellow guardians.”

“Can you tell me whether a ruler in another city might think of one fellow ruler as family and another as a stranger, and address them accordingly?”

“Many do.”

“And doesn't such a ruler regard and describe one of them as belonging to him, and the other as not belonging to him?” 463c

“Yes.”

“What about your guardians? Could any of them regard a fellow guardian as a stranger, or address one that way?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Whoever a guardian meets, he'll think of that person as a brother, sister, father, mother, son, daughter, or one of their descendants or ancestors.”

“That's an excellent answer,” I said. “But tell me this too: will you give them only family names, 463d or will you require them to act in every way those names call for? With fathers, for example, custom requires respect, care, and obedience to parents. They'll be taught that doing otherwise isn't good in the sight of gods or human beings, since it would be neither holy nor just. Will all the citizens keep telling children these things about the people identified as their fathers and their other relatives? Or will they teach them something different?” 463e

“These things,” he said. “It would be absurd if they used family names without acting on them.”

“So in this city, more than in any other, everyone will say together, when one person does well or badly, the words we used a moment ago: ‘What is mine is doing well,’ or ‘What is mine is doing badly.’”

“That's entirely true,” he said.

464a “And didn't we say that sharing this belief and these words brings pleasure and pain shared by all?”

“We were right to say it.”

“So our citizens will share most fully in what each calls ‘mine.’ And by sharing this, they'll have the fullest possible sharing of pain and pleasure.”

“Yes, by far.”

“Does this come about, along with the rest of our arrangements, because the guardians share women and children?”

“More than anything else,” he said. 464b

“But we agreed that this was the greatest good for a city. We compared a well-run city to a body in the way it feels pleasure and pain when one part is affected.”

“And we were right to agree,” he said.

“So we've found that sharing children and women among the city's defenders is the source of its greatest good.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said.

“And this agrees with our earlier conclusions. We said they must have no private houses, land, 464c or other property. They must get their food from the other citizens as pay for guarding them, and they must all use it in common, if they're to be true guardians.”

“Right,” he said.

“So isn't this what I'm saying? What we said earlier, together with what we're saying now, makes them even more truly guardians. It stops them from splitting the city apart by calling different things ‘mine.’ Otherwise, one would take everything he could get for his own household, apart from the others, 464d while another did the same for a different household. Each would have his own wife and children, giving rise to private pleasures and pains because they were his alone. Instead, all our guardians will agree on what's theirs. They'll aim at the same thing and share pain and pleasure as much as possible.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“And won't lawsuits and accusations against each other almost disappear? They own nothing privately but their bodies, while everything else is shared. 464e That leaves them free of the conflicts that people have over money, children, and relatives.”

“They're bound to be free of those,” he said.

“And there's no good reason for lawsuits among them over violence or assault, either. We'll say it's fine and right for people of the same age to defend themselves against each other, making it necessary for them to keep their bodies fit.”

“Right,” he said.