REPUBLIC(BOOKII) 73
“So our city will need more of the farmers and other craftsmen.”
“More indeed.”
“And in particular other couriers no doubt, who’ll bring in and carry away each
kind of thing, and these are commercial traders aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“So we’ll also need commercial traders.”
“Certainly.”
“And if the commerce is carried on by sea, there’ll be an additional need for many
other people gathered together who know the work connected with the sea.”
“Very many.”
“And how about in the city itself? How are they going to share out with each other
the things each sort makes by their work? It was for the sake of this that we even went
into partnership and founded the city.”
“It’s obvious,” he said: “by selling and buying.”
“So a marketplace will arise out of this for us, and a currency as a conventional
medium of exchange?”
“Certainly.”
“But if, when the farmer or any other workman has brought any of the things he
produces into the marketplace, he doesn’t arrive at the same time as those who need to
exchange things with him, is he going to stay unemployed at his craft sitting in the
marketplace?”
“Not at all,” he said, “but there are people who, seeing this, take this duty on
themselves; in rightly managed cities it’s pretty much for the people who are weakest in
body and useless for any other work to do. Because there’s a need for it, so they stay
around the marketplace to give money in exchange to those who need to sell something
and to exchange in turn for money with all those who need to buy something.”
“Therefore,” I said, “this useful service makes for the origin of retail tradesmen in
the city. Don’t we call people retail tradesmen who are set up in the marketplace pro-
viding the service of buying and selling, but call those who travel around to cities com-
mercial traders?”
“Certainly.”
“And as I imagine, there are still certain other serviceable people, who don’t
entirely merit sharing in the partnership for things that involve thinking but have suffi-
cient strength of body for labors, so since they sell the use of their strength and call this
payment wages, they are called, as I imagine, wage laborers, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And the wage laborers, as seems likely, are the component that fills up the city?”
“It seems that way to me.”
“Well then Adeimantus, has our city already grown to be complete?”
“Maybe.”
“Then where in it would the justice and the injustice be? And together with which
of the things we examined did they come to be present?”
“I have no idea, Socrates,” he said, “unless it’s somewhere in some usefulness of
these people themselves to each other.”
“And maybe you’re putting it beautifully,” I said. “We need to examine it though and
not be shy about it. So first, let’s consider what style of life people will lead who’ve been
provided for in this way. Will they do otherwise than produce grain and wine and cloaks and
shoes? And when they’ve built houses, by summer they’ll work at most things lightly clad
and barefoot, but in winter adequately clothed and in shoes. And they’ll nourish themselves
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