uity and indulgence are infractions of the perfect and strict rule of
justice. And this is the reason why we are obliged to use the equality
of the lot, in order to avoid the discontent of the people; and so we
invoke God and fortune in our prayers, and beg that they themselves will
direct the lot with a view to supreme justice. And therefore, although
we are compelled to use both equalities, we should use that into which
the element of chance enters as seldom as possible.

Thus, O my friends, and for the reasons given, should a state act which
would endure and be saved. But as a ship sailing on the sea has to be
watched night and day, in like manner a city also is sailing on a sea
of politics, and is liable to all sorts of insidious assaults; and
therefore from morning to night, and from night to morning, rulers must
join hands with rulers, and watchers with watchers, receiving and giving
up their trust in a perpetual succession. Now a multitude can never
fulfil a duty of this sort with anything like energy. Moreover, the
greater number of the senators will have to be left during the greater
part of the year to order their concerns at their own homes. They will
therefore have to be arranged in twelve portions, answering to the
twelve months, and furnish guardians of the state, each portion for a
single month. Their business is to be at hand and receive any foreigner
or citizen who comes to them, whether to give information, or to put one
of those questions, to which, when asked by other cities, a city should
give an answer, and to which, if she ask them herself, she should
receive an answer; or again, when there is a likelihood of internal
commotions, which are always liable to happen in some form or other,
they will, if they can, prevent their occurring; or if they have already
occurred, will lose no time in making them known to the city, and
healing the evil. Wherefore, also, this which is the presiding body of
the state ought always to have the control of their assemblies, and of
the dissolutions of them, ordinary as well as extraordinary. All this
is to be ordered by the twelfth part of the council, which is always
to keep watch together with the other officers of the state during one
portion of the year, and to rest during the remaining eleven portions.

Thus will the city be fairly ordered. And now, who is to have the
superintendence of the country, and what shall be the arrangement?
Seeing that the whole city an