Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

The Republic

380-360 B.C.

"'All of you in the city are certainly brothers,' we shall say to them in telling the tale, 'but god, in fashioning those of you who are competent to rule, mixed gold in at their birth; this is why they are most honored; in auxiliaries, silver, and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen.'"

"It was indeed appropriate," I said. "All the same, hear out the rest of the tale. 'All of you in the city are certainly brothers,' we shall say to them in telling the tale, 'but god, in fashioning those of you who are competent to rule, mixed gold in at their birth; this is why they are most honored; in auxiliaries, silver, and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen. So, because you're all related, although for the most part you'll produce offspring like yourselves, it sometimes happens that a silver child will be born from a golden parent, a golden parent from a silver parent, and similarly all the others from each other. Hence the god commands the rulers first and foremost to be of nothing such good guardians and to keep over nothing so careful a watch as the children, seeing which of these metals is mixed in their souls. And, if a child of theirs should be born with an admixture of bronze or iron, by no manner of means are they to take pity on it, but shall assign the proper value to its nature and thrust it out among the craftsmen or the farmers; and, again, if from these men one should naturally grow who has an admixture of gold or silver, they will honor such ones and lead them up, some to the guardian group, others to the auxiliary, believing that there is an oracle that the city will be destroyed when an iron or bronze man is its guardian.' So, have you some device for persuading them of this tale?"
(p. 94, 415a-c)

Mineral::Gold Mineral::Silver Mineral::Iron Mineral::Bronze

Reading

Plato. The Republic of Plato. Second Edition. Trans. Allan Bloom. Basic Books, 1991.

06/06/2005