Volume 11

Plato : with an English translation.

  • Plato.
Date:
1914-1935
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Plato : with an English translation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    81/608 (page 67)
    Olympian victory and is wholly lacking in leisure for other tasks, that life we speak of—which most truly deserves the name of ‘^Oife ”—is doubly (nay, far more than doubly) lacking in leisure, seeing that it is occupied with the care of bodily and spiritual excellence in general. For there ought to be no other secondary task to hinder the work of sup{)lying the body with its proper exercise and nourishment, or the soul with learning and moral training : nay, every night and day is not sufficient for the man who is occupied therein to win from them their fruit in full and ample measure. So this being nature’s law, a programme must be framed for all the freeborn men, prescribing how they shall pass their time continuously, from dawn to dawn and sunrise on each successive day. It would be undignified for a lawgiver to mention a host of petty matters connected with the domestic arrangements—such as, in particular, the rules about that wakefulness at night which is proper for men who propose to guard a whole State adequately and continuously. That any citizen, indeed, should spend the whole of any night in sleep, instead of setting an example to his household by being himself always the first to awaken and rise—such a practice must be counted by all a shameful one, unw'orthy of a free man, whether it be called a custom or a law. More- over, that the mistress of a house should be awakened by maids, instead of being herself the first to wake up all the others—this is a shameful practice; and that it is so all the servants must declare to one another — bondman and bondmaid and boy, yea, even (were it possible) every stone in the house. And, when awake by night, they must certainly transact a large