[554b]
and a hoarder, the type the multitude
approves.1 Would not this be the character of the man who corresponds
to such a polity?” “I certainly think so,” he
said. “Property, at any rate, is the thing most esteemed by that
state and that kind of man.” “That, I take
it,” said I, “is because he has never turned his
thoughts to true culture.” “I think not,” he
said, “else he would not have made the blind2 one leader of his choir and first in honor.3”
“Well said,” I replied. “But consider this.
Shall we not say that owing to this lack of culture the appetites of the
drone spring up in him,
1 Cf. Phaedr. 256 E, Meno 90 A-B by implication. Numenius (ed. Mullach iii. 159) relates of Lacydes that he was “a bit greedy (ὑπογλισχρότερος) and after a fashion a thrifty manager (οἰκονομικός） —as the expression is—the sort approved by most people.” Emerson, The Young American,“they recommend conventional virtues, whatever will earn and preserve property.” But this is not always true in an envious democracy: cf. Isoc. xv. 159-160 and America today.
2 Plato distinctly refers to the blind god Wealth. Cf. Aristoph.Plutus,Eurip. fr. 773, Laws 631 C πλοῦτος οὐ τυφλός which was often quoted. Cf. What Plato Said, p. 624, Otto, p. 60.
3 Cf. Herod. iii. 34, vii. 107.
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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