[1262a] so that all alike will regard them with indifference.
Again, each speaks of one of his fellow-citizens who is prospering or getting on badly as my son only in the sense of the fractional part which he forms of the whole number—that is, he says my son or so-and-so’s son, specifying as the father any individual of the thousand citizens or whatever the number be of which the state consists, and even this dubiously, for it is uncertain who has chanced to have had a son born to him and when born safely reared. [loeb_subsection_12] Yet which is the better way to use the word mine—this way, each of two thousand or ten thousand people applying it to the same thing, or rather the way in which they say mine in the actual states now? for the same person is called my son by one man and my brother by another, and another calls him nephew, or by some other relationship, whether of blood or by affinity and marriage, the speaker’s own in the first place, or that of his relations; and in addition someone else calls him fellow-clansman or fellow-tribesman. For it is better for a boy to be one’s own private nephew than one’s son in the way described. [loeb_subsection_13] Moreover it would also be impossible to avoid men’s supposing certain persons to be their real brothers and sons and fathers and mothers; for they would be bound to form their belief about each other by the resemblances which occur between children and parents. This indeed is said by some of those who write of travels round the worldBooks of geography, founded on travellers’ reports—a famous one by Hecataeus, scoffed at by Hdt. 4.36. actually to occur;they say that some of the people of Upper Libya have their wives in common, yet the children born are divided among them according to their personal resemblances. And there are some females both of the human race and of the other animals, for instance horses and cattle, who have a strong natural tendency to produce off-spring resembling the male parents, as was the case with the mare at Pharsalus named Honest Lady.Or possibly Docile ( Jackson), cf. Xen. Hunt. 7.4.
[loeb_subsection_14] Moreover it is not easy for those who institute this communism to guard against such objectionable occurrences as outrage, involuntary and in some cases voluntary homicide, fights, abusive language; all of which are violations of piety when committed against fathers, mothers and near relatives as if they were not relatives; but these are bound to occur more frequently when people do not know their relations than when they do, and also, when they do occur, if the offenders know their relationship it is possible for them to have the customary expiations performed, but for those who do not no expiation is possible. [loeb_subsection_15] Also it is curious that a theorist who makes the sons common property only debars lovers from intercourse and does not prohibit love, nor the other familiarities, which between father and son or brother and brother are most unseemly, since even the fact of love between them is unseemly. And it is also strange that he deprives them of intercourse for no other reason except because the pleasure is too violent; and that he thinks it makes no difference that the parties are in the one case father or son and in the other case brothers of one another. And it seems that this community of wives and sons is more serviceable for the Farmer class than for the Guardians;
[1262b] for there will be less friendship among them if their children and women are in common, and unfriendliness in the subject classes is a good thing with a view to their being submissive to authority and not making revolution.[loeb_subsection_16] But speaking generally such a law is bound to bring about the opposite state of things to that which rightly enacted laws ought properly to cause, and because of which Socrates thinks it necessary to make these regulations about the children and women. For we think that friendship is the greatest of blessings for the state, since it is the best safeguard against revolution, and the unity of the state, which Socrates praises most highly, both appears to be and is said by him to be the effect of friendship, just as we know that AristophanesThe comic poet, figuring as a character in Plato’s Symposium, see especially Plat. Sym. 192c ff.. in the discourses on love describes how the lovers owing to their extreme affection desire to grow together and both become one instead of being two.[loeb_subsection_17] In such a union it would be inevitable that both would be spoiled, or at least one, and in the state friendship would inevitably become watery in consequence of such association, and the expressions my father and my son would quite go out. For just as putting a little sugar into a quantity of water makes the mixture imperceptible, so it also must come about that the mutual relationship based on these names must become imperceptible,since in the republic described by Plato there will be the least possible necessity for people to care for one another as father for sons or as son for father or as brother for brother. For there are two things that most cause men to care for and to love each other, the sense of ownership and the sense of preciousness; and neither motive can be present with the citizens of a state so constituted.[loeb_subsection_18] Again, as to the transference of some of the children at birth from the Farmers and Artisans to the GuardiansThe three classes in Plato’s Republic. and of others from the Guardians to the Farmers and Artisans, there is much confusion as to how it is to be done; and the parents who give the children and the officials who transfer them are bound to know which they give to whom. And again, the things spoken of above are bound to occur even more with these transferred children, such as outrage, love-making and murder; for the children of the Guardians transferred to the other citizens will no longer speak of the Guardians as brothers and children and fathers and mothers, nor yet will those living among the Guardians so speak of the other classes, so as to be careful not to commit any such offence because of their relationship.
Such therefore may be our decision as to community of children and women.
[loeb_section_2] [loeb_subsection_1] In connection with this we have to consider the due regulation of property in a community that is to have the best political institutions: should property be owned in common or privately? This question might indeed be considered separately from the system laid down by law with regard to the children and the women: