[458c]
if they are to deserve that name, and their helpers
likewise, will, the one, be willing to accept orders,1 and the other, to give them, in some
things obeying our laws, and imitating2 them in others which we leave to their
discretion.” “Presumably.” “You,
then, the lawgiver,” I said, “have picked these men and
similarly will select to give over to them women as nearly as possible of
the same nature.3 And they, having houses and meals in common, and no private
possessions of that kind,
1 Cf. on 340 A-B.
2 That is to say, they are to imitate or conform to our principles in the details which we leave to them. So in the Laws, 770 B, 846 C, 876 E, and the secondary divinities in the Timaeus, 69 C. Cf. Politicus 301 A, and Aristotle Politics 1261 b 2μιμεῖται.
3 Cf. 456 B. Plato has already explained that he means “of like nature in respect to capacity for government.” There is no contradiction of the doctrine of the Politicus, 310 A (Cf. Laws 773 A-B) that the mating should blend opposite temperaments. Those elements are already mixed in the selection of the guardians. Cf. 375 B-C, 410 D-E and Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 62, n. 481.
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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