Plato, Statesman, section 310b

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[310b]

Younger Socrates
How so? And what are the bonds?

Stranger
Those made between states concerning intermarriages and the sharing of children by adoption,¹ and those relating to portionings and marriages within the state. For most people make such bonds without proper regard to the procreation of children.

Younger Socrates
How is that?

Stranger
The pursuit of wealth or power in connection with matrimony—but why should anyone ever take the trouble to blame it, as though it were worth arguing about?

Younger Socrates
There is no reason for doing so.

Stranger
We have better cause, however, to speak our minds about those

1 More or less equivalent to naturalization. It apparently means the adoption into one state of children born to citizens of another. This was not, as a rule, practiced in the Greek city states, but Plato here seems to recommend it.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

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