A History of Greek Economic Thought

by Albert Augustus Trever

[135]. Gorg. 517D-518E.

[136]. 292E, 289E-290A.

[137]. Ibid. 300E.

[138]. Cf. Rep. 371C for a contrast in his attitude toward the two; cf. Bonar, op. cit., pp. 21 f.

[139]. Laws 846D, 847A. Ruskin (Fors Clav., Letter 82, 34 [Vol. XXIX, 253 f.]) contrasts the fevered leisure that results from extreme money-making with the true leisure, citing Laws 831.

[140]. Laws 743D. The aristocratic Greek feeling of independence against selling one’s powers to another, and the fact of the frank acceptance of slavery, by most contemporary thinkers, as the natural order, also exerted some unconscious influence.

[141]. Cf. infra for citations from Zeller, and Poehlmann’s able, but somewhat extreme, defense of Plato (op. cit., II, 36 ff.). He cites Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, I, Pt. 2, art. 2, in similar vein to Plato, on the ill-effects of mechanical labor, despite his undoubted interest in the industrial arts.

[142]. Francotte, L’Industrie, I, 246, in reference to the Laws.

[143]. Op. cit., p. 26, n. 2.

[144]. Eisenhart (Geschichte der Nationalökonomie, p. 5) also says that Plato calls “Volkswirtschaft gerade zu den Staat der Schweine.” Dietzel (“Beiträge zur Geschichte des Socialismus und des Kommunismus,” Zeitschrift für Literatur und Geschichte der Staatswissenschaften, p. 397, n. 1) criticizes both the foregoing.