REPUBLIC(BOOKIII) 81
any of them were unwilling to obey the laws, and defend against those outside it if any
enemy, like a wolf, were to attack the flock. And when they’ve set up the camp and
offered sacrifices to those whom they ought, let them make places to sleep. Or how
should it be?”
“That way,” he said.
“The sort of places that would be adequate to give shelter in both winter and
summer?”
“Of course,” he said, “because you seem to be talking about dwellings.”
“Yes,” I said, “dwellings for soldiers anyway, but not for moneymakers.”
“How do you mean the one differs from the other?” he said.
“I’ll try to tell you,” I said. “Because it’s surely the most dreadful and shameful
of all things for a shepherd to raise dogs as auxiliaries for the flock that are of the sort
and brought up in such a way that, from intemperance or hunger or some bad habit of
another kind, the dogs themselves try to do harm to the sheep, acting like wolves
instead of dogs.”
“It is dreadful,” he said; “how could it be anything else?”
“Then isn’t there a need to be on guard in every way so that our auxiliaries won’t
do that sort of thing to the citizens, since they’re the stronger, becoming like savage
masters instead of benevolent allies?”
“There’s a need to be on guard,” he said.
“And wouldn’t they have been provided with the most effective safeguard if
they’ve been beautifully educated in their very being?”
“But surely they have been,” he said.
And I said, “That’s not something that deserves to be asserted with certainty,
Glaucon my friend. What we were saying just now does deserve to be, though, that they
need to get the right education, whatever it is, if they’re going to what’s most important
for being tame, both toward themselves and toward those who are guarded by them.”
“That’s certainly right,” he said.
“Now in addition to this education, any sensible person would claim that they
need to be provided with dwellings and other property of that sort, whatever it takes for
them not to be stopped from being the best possible guardians and not to be tempted to
do harm to the citizens.”
“And he’ll be claiming something true.”
“Then see whether they need to live and be housed in some such way as this,”
I said, “if they’re going to be that sort of people. First, no private property that’s not
completely necessary is to be possessed by any of them. Next, there’s to be no house
or treasure room belonging to any of them except one that everyone who wants to
will enter. Provisions, of all things men need who are moderate and courageous
fighters in war, they’re to receive at fixed times from the other citizens as recom-
pense for guarding them, of such an amount that they have nothing over and nothing
lacking each year. Going regularly to public dining halls, they’re to live in common
like soldiers in a camp. About gold and silver, it’s to be said to them that they have
the divine sort from gods always in their souls, and have no further need of the
human sort, and that it’s not pious to defile their possession of the former by mixing
with it the possession of mortal gold, because many impious deeds have occurred
over the currency most people use, while the sort they have with them is uncor-
rupted. And for them alone of those in the city, it’s not lawful to handle or touch gold
and silver, or even to go under the same roof with them, or wear them as ornaments,
or drink out of silver or gold cups.
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