best women were compelled to
follow similar callings, then we should know how agreeable and pleasant
all these things are; and if all such occupations were managed on
incorrupt principles, they would be honoured as we honour a mother or a
nurse. But now that a man goes to desert places and builds houses which
can only be reached by long journeys, for the sake of retail trade, and
receives strangers who are in need at the welcome resting-place, and
gives them peace and calm when they are tossed by the storm, or cool
shade in the heat; and then instead of behaving to them as friends, and
showing the duties of hospitality to his guests, treats them as enemies
and captives who are at his mercy, and will not release them until they
have paid the most unjust, abominable, and extortionate ransom--these
are the sort of practises, and foul evils they are, which cast a
reproach upon the succour of adversity. And the legislator ought always
to be devising a remedy for evils of this nature. There is an ancient
saying, which is also a true one--'To fight against two opponents is a
difficult thing,' as is seen in diseases and in many other cases. And in
this case also the war is against two enemies--wealth and poverty; one
of whom corrupts the soul of man with luxury, while the other drives him
by pain into utter shamelessness. What remedy can a city of sense find
against this disease? In the first place, they must have as few retail
traders as possible; and in the second place, they must assign the
occupation to that class of men whose corruption will be the least
injury to the state; and in the third place, they must devise some way
whereby the followers of these occupations themselves will not readily
fall into habits of unbridled shamelessness and meanness.

After this preface let our law run as follows, and may fortune favour
us: No landowner among the Magnetes, whose city the God is restoring and
resettling--no one, that is, of the 5040 families, shall become a
retail trader either voluntarily or involuntarily; neither shall he be
a merchant, or do any service for private persons unless they equally
serve him, except for his father or his mother, and their fathers and
mothers; and in general for his elders who are freemen, and whom he
serves as a freeman. Now it is difficult to determine accurately the
things which are worthy or unworthy of a freeman, but let those who have
obtained the prize of virtue give judgment about them i