and good habits. For in such an order
of things there will not be much opportunity for making money; no
man either ought, or indeed will be allowed, to exercise any ignoble
occupation, of which the vulgarity is a matter of reproach to a freeman,
and should never want to acquire riches by any such means.

Further, the law enjoins that no private man shall be allowed to possess
gold and silver, but only coin for daily use, which is almost necessary
in dealing with artisans, and for payment of hirelings, whether slaves
or immigrants, by all those persons who require the use of them.
Wherefore our citizens, as we say, should have a coin passing current
among themselves, but not accepted among the rest of mankind; with
a view, however, to expeditions and journeys to other lands,--for
embassies, or for any other occasion which may arise of sending out a
herald, the state must also possess a common Hellenic currency. If a
private person is ever obliged to go abroad, let him have the consent of
the magistrates and go; and if when he returns he has any foreign money
remaining, let him give the surplus back to the treasury, and receive
a corresponding sum in the local currency. And if he is discovered to
appropriate it, let it be confiscated, and let him who knows and does
not inform be subject to curse and dishonour equally him who brought
the money, and also to a fine not less in amount than the foreign money
which has been brought back. In marrying and giving in marriage, no one
shall give or receive any dowry at all; and no one shall deposit money
with another whom he does not trust as a friend, nor shall he lend money
upon interest; and the borrower should be under no obligation to repay
either capital or interest. That these principles are best, any one may
see who compares them with the first principle and intention of a state.
The intention, as we affirm, of a reasonable statesman, is not what the
many declare to be the object of a good legislator, namely, that the
state for the true interests of which he is advising should be as great
and as rich as possible, and should possess gold and silver, and have
the greatest empire by sea and land;--this they imagine to be the real
object of legislation, at the same time adding, inconsistently, that the
true legislator desires to have the city the best and happiest possible.
But they do not see that some of these things are possible, and some
of them are impossible; and he who or