book v

. Translation of John Sozomenus, Venice, 1626.

[223] Plato perhaps got this idea as well as others from India:

"Consider, then, I continued, whether the following plan is the right one for their lives and their dwellings, if they are to be of the character I have described. In the first place no one should _possess any private property_, if it can possibly be avoided: secondly, _no one should have a dwelling or storehouse into which all who please may not enter_; whatever necessaries are required by temperate and courageous men who are trained to war, they should receive by regular appointment from their fellow-citizens, as wages for their services, and the amount should be such as to leave neither a surplus on the year's consumption nor a deficit...; but whenever they come to possess lands and houses and money of their own, they will be householders and cultivators instead of guardians, and will become hostile masters of their fellow-citizens rather than their allies." Republic,