[420e]
For in like manner we could1 clothe the farmers in robes of state and
deck them with gold and bid them cultivate the soil at their pleasure, and
we could make the potters recline on couches from left to right2 before the
fire drinking toasts and feasting with their wheel alongside to potter with
when they are so disposed, and we can make all the others happy in the same
fashion, so that thus the entire city may be happy. But urge us not to this,
1 “We know how to.” For the satire of the Socialist millenium which follows cf. Introduction p. xxix, and Ruskin, Fors Clavigera. Plato may have been thinking of the scene on the shield of Achilles, Iliad xviii. 541-560.
2 i.e. so that the guest on the right hand occupied a lower place and the wine circulated in the same direction. Many write ἐπὶ δεξιά, but Aἐπιδέξια. “Forever, 'tis a single word. Our rude forefathers thought it two.”
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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