Regulations about artisans — Distribution of the annual landed produce.
Next, Plato passes to the Demiurgi or Artisans. These are all non-citizens or metics: for it is a peremptory law, that no citizen shall be an artisan in any branch. Nor is any artisan permitted to carry on two crafts trades at once.[279] If any article be imperatively required from abroad, either for implements of war or for religious purposes, the magistrates shall cause it to be imported. But there shall be no retailing, nor reselling with profit, of any article.[280]
[279] Plato, Legg. viii. p. 846 D-E.
[280] Plato, Legg. viii. p. 847.
The distribution of the produce of land shall be made on a principle approaching to that which prevails in Krete.[281] The total produce raised will be distributed into twelve portions, each equivalent to one month’s consumption. Each twelfth portion will then be divided into equal thirds. Two of these thirds will be consumed by the citizens, their families, their slaves, and their agricultural animals: the other third will be sold in the market for the consumption of artisans and strangers, who alone are permitted to buy it, all citizens being forbidden to do so. Each citizen will make the apportionment of his own two-thirds among freemen and slaves: a measured quantity shall then be given to each of the working animals.[282] On the first of each month, the sale of barley and wheat will be made in the market-place, and every artisan or stranger will then purchase enough for his monthly consumption: the like on the twelfth of each month, for wine and other liquids — and on the twentieth of each month, for animals and animal products, such as wool and hides. Firewood may be purchased daily by any stranger or artisan, from the proprietors on whose lands the trees grow, and may be resold by him to other artisans: other articles can only be sold at the monthly market-days. The Agoranomi, or regulators of the market, will preside on those days, and will fix the spots on which the different goods shall be exposed for sale. They will also take account of the quantity which each man has for sale, fixing a certain price for each article. They will then adjust the entries of each man’s property in the public registers according to these new transactions. But if the actual purchases and sales be made at any rate different from what is thus fixed, the Agoranomi will modify their entries in the register according to the actual rate, either in plus or in minus. These entries of individual property in the public register will be made both for citizens and resident strangers alike.[283]
[281] Plato, Legg. viii. p. 847 E. ἐγγὺς τῆ τοῦ Κρητικοῦ νόμου.
[282] Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 847-848.
[283] Plato, Legg. viii. pp. 849-850.
These regulations are given both briefly and obscurely.