ich helped
to save us. And in estimating the goodness of a state, we regard both
the situation of the country and the order of the laws, considering that
the mere preservation and continuance of life is not the most honourable
thing for men, as the vulgar think, but the continuance of the best
life, while we live; and that again, if I am not mistaken, is a remark
which has been made already.

CLEINIAS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: Then we have only to ask, whether we are taking the course
which we acknowledge to be the best for the settlement and legislation
of states.

CLEINIAS: The best by far.

ATHENIAN: And now let me proceed to another question: Who are to be the
colonists? May any one come out of all Crete; and is the idea that
the population in the several states is too numerous for the means of
subsistence? For I suppose that you are not going to send out a general
invitation to any Hellene who likes to come. And yet I observe that to
your country settlers have come from Argos and Aegina and other parts of
Hellas. Tell me, then, whence do you draw your recruits in the present
enterprise?

CLEINIAS: They will come from all Crete; and of other Hellenes,
Peloponnesians will be most acceptable. For, as you truly observe, there
are Cretans of Argive descent; and the race of Cretans which has the
highest character at the present day is the Gortynian, and this has come
from Gortys in the Peloponnesus.

ATHENIAN: Cities find colonization in some respects easier if the
colonists are one race, which like a swarm of bees is sent out from
a single country, either when friends leave friends, owing to some
pressure of population or other similar necessity, or when a portion
of a state is driven by factions to emigrate. And there have been whole
cities which have taken flight when utterly conquered by a superior
power in war. This, however, which is in one way an advantage to the
colonist or legislator, in another point of view creates a difficulty.
There is an element of friendship in the community of race, and
language, and laws, and in common temples and rites of worship; but
colonies which are of this homogeneous sort are apt to kick against any
laws or any form of constitution differing from that which they had at
home; and although the badness of their own laws may have been the cause
of the factions which prevailed among them, yet from the force of habit
they would fain preserve the very customs which were their ruin, and th