22.
They do not pay much attention to agriculture, and a large portion of their food
consists in milk, cheese, and flesh; nor has any one a fixed quantity of land or
his own individual limits; but the magistrates and the leading men each year
apportion to the tribes and families, who have united together, as much land as,
and in the place in which, they think proper, and the year after compel them to
remove elsewhere. For this enactment they advance many reasons-lest seduced by
long-continued custom, they may exchange their ardor in the waging of war for
agriculture; lest they may be anxious to acquire extensive estates, and the more
powerful drive the weaker from their possessions; lest they construct their
houses with too great a desire to avoid cold and heat; lest the desire of wealth
spring up, from which cause divisions and discords arise; and that they may keep
the common people in a contented state of mind, when each sees his own means
placed on an equality with [those of] the most powerful.
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