The Republic — Plato
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guardians may be more properly designated auxiliaries and supporters of the principles of the rulers. I agree with you, he said. How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke — just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city? What sort of lie? he said.
Nothing new, I replied ; only an old Phoenician ^ tale of what has often occurred before now in other places (as the poets say, and have made the world believe), though not in our time, and I do not know whether such an event could ever happen again, or could now even be made probable, if it did. How your words seem to hesitate on your lips ! You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you have heard. Speak, he said, and fear not.
Well, then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people.
They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only ; in reality during all that time they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured ; when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up ; and so, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers.
You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were going to tell. True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have only told you half. Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently.
Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor ; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries ; others »Cp. "Laws," 663 E.
again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron ; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son.
And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity of the race.
They should observe what elements mingle in their offspring; for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful toward the child because he has to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are raised to honor, and become guardians or auxiliaries.
For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale ; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it ? Not in the present generation, he replied ; there is no way of accomplishing this ; but their sons may be made to believe in the tale, and their sons' sons, and posterity after them.
I see the difficulty, I replied ; yet the fostering of such a belief will make them care more for the city and for one another. Enough, however, of the fiction, which may now fly abroad upon the wings of rumor, while we arm our earth-born heroes, and lead them forth under the command of their rulers.
Let them look round and select a spot whence they can best suppress insurrection, if any prove refractory within, and also defend themselves against enemies, who, like wolves, may come down on the fold from without; there let them encamp, and when they have encamped, let them sacrifice to the proper gods and prepare their dwellings. Just so, he said.
And their dwellings must be such as will shield them against the cold of winter and the heat of summer. I suppose that you mean houses, he replied. Yes, I said ; but they must be the houses of soldiers, and not of shopkeepers. What is the difiference? he said. That I will endeavor to explain, I replied. To keep watchdogs, who, from want of discipline or hunger, or some evil habit or other, would turn upon the sheep and worry them, and behave not like dogs, but wolves, would be a foul and monstrous thing in a shepherd ? Truly monstrous, he said. And therefore every care must be taken that our auxiliaries, being stronger than our citizens, may not grow to be too much for them and become savage tyrants instead of friends and allies?
Yes, great care should be taken. And would not a really good education furnish the best safeguard ? But they are well-educated already, he replied. I cannot be so confident, my dear Glaucon, I said ; I am much more certain that they ought to be, and that true education, whatever that may be, will have the greatest tendency to civilize and humanize them in their relations to one another, and to those who are under their protection.
Very true, he replied. And not only their education, but their habitations, and all that belongs to them, should be such as will neither impair their virtue as guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon the other citizens. Any man of sense must acknowledge that. He must. Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize our idea of them.
In the first place, none of them should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary ; neither should they have a private house or store closed against anyone who has a mind to enter ; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage ; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more ; and they will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp.
Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God ; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture ; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or
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