[423a]
and the city of the poor,1 and in each of these there are many. If you deal with them as
one you will altogether miss the mark, but if you treat them as a
multiplicity by offering to the one faction the property, the power, the
very persons of the other, you will continue always to have few enemies and
many allies. And so long as your city is governed soberly in the order just
laid down, it will be the greatest of cities. I do not mean greatest in
repute, but in reality, even though it have only a thousand2 defenders. For a city of
this size
1 Cf. Aristotle Politics 1316 b 7 and 1264 a 25.
2 Aristotle, Politics 1261 b 38, takes this as the actual number of the military class. Sparta, according to Xenephon, Rep. Lac. 1. 1, was τῶν ὀλιγανθρωποτάτων πόλεων, yet one of the strongest. Cf. also Aristotle Politics 1270 a 14 f. In the LawsPlato proposes the number 5040 which Aristotle thinks too large, Politics 1265 a 15.
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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