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Moreover, the much-admired Republic 1 of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle : that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field. This Zeno wrote, giving shape to a dream or, as it were, shadowy picture of a well-ordered and philosophic commonwealth ; but it was Alexander who gave effect to the idea. For Alexander did not follow Aristotle's2 advice to treat the Greeks as if he were their leader, and other peoples as if he were their master ; to have regard for the Greeks as for friends and kindred, but [p. 399] to conduct himself toward other peoples as though they were plants or animals; for to do so would have been to cumber his leadership with numerous battles and banishments and festering seditions. But, as he believed that he carne as a heaven-sent governor to all, and as a mediator for the whole world, those whom he could not persuade to unite with him, he conquered by force of arms, and he brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men's lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life.3 He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked ; they should not distinguish between Grecian and foreigner by Grecian cloak and targe, or scimitar and jacket; but the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue, and that of the foreigner in iniquity ; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children.
1 Cf. Cambridge Ancient History, vol. vii. p. 225; Moralia, 653 e; Life of Lycurgus, xxxi. (59 a); Cicero, De Legibus, i. 7-11 (21-32): De Officiis, i. 7 (22); Diogenes Laertius, vii. 32-34, 121, 129, 131.
2 Aristotle's name is not elsewhere linked with this advice; cf. Strabo, i. 4. 9 (p. 66), or Aristotle, Frag. 658 (ed. V. Rose).
3 Cf. Arrian, Anabasis, vii. 11. 8-9.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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