|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: A. Kirchhoff (MDCCCLXXIV), whose text I have chiefly followed.
[2] Lit. "I do not praise their choice of the (particular) type, in so
far as . . ."
In the first place, I maintain, it is only just that the poorer
classes[3] and the People of Athens should be better off than the men
of birth and wealth, seeing that it is the people who man the
fleet,[4] and put round the city her girdle of power. The
steersman,[5] the boatswain, the lieutenant,[6] the look-out-man at
the prow, the shipright--these are the people who engird the city with
power far rather than her heavy infantry[7] and men of birth of
quality. This being the case, it seems only just that offices of state
|
