ences of magistrates, in any particular case,
before the public courts. There are innumerable little matters relating
to the modes of punishment, and applications for suits, and summonses
and the witnesses to summonses--for example, whether two witnesses
should be required for a summons, or how many--and all such details,
which cannot be omitted in legislation, but are beneath the wisdom of an
aged legislator. These lesser matters, as they indeed are in comparison
with the greater ones, let a younger generation regulate by law, after
the patterns which have preceded, and according to their own experience
of the usefulness and necessity of such laws; and when they are duly
regulated let there be no alteration, but let the citizens live in the
observance of them.

Now of artisans, let the regulations be as follows: In the first place,
let no citizen or servant of a citizen be occupied in handicraft arts;
for he who is to secure and preserve the public order of the state, has
an art which requires much study and many kinds of knowledge, and does
not admit of being made a secondary occupation; and hardly any human
being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly, or
of practising one art himself, and superintending some one else who is
practising another. Let this, then, be our first principle in the
state: No one who is a smith shall also be a carpenter, and if he be a
carpenter, he shall not superintend the smith's art rather than his own,
under the pretext that in superintending many servants who are working
for him, he is likely to superintend them better, because more revenue
will accrue to him from them than from his own art; but let every man in
the state have one art, and get his living by that. Let the wardens of
the city labour to maintain this law, and if any citizen incline to
any other art rather than the study of virtue, let them punish him
with disgrace and infamy, until they bring him back into his own right
course; and if any stranger profess two arts, let them chastise him
with bonds and money penalties, and expulsion from the state, until they
compel him to be one only and not many.

But as touching payments for hire, and contracts of work, or in case any
one does wrong to any of the citizens, or they do wrong to any other, up
to fifty drachmae, let the wardens of the city decide the case; but if a
greater amount be involved, then let the public courts decide according
to law. Let no one