Politics

​But offices are different for each of them, and the ones do not care what sort of character the others should have, nor how no one under the treaties will be unjust or have any wickedness, but only how they will not wrong one another. But all who care for good order examine political virtue and vice. Whence it is also manifest that a city truly so called, and not merely for the sake of speech, must be concerned with virtue. For otherwise the association becomes an alliance, differing only in place from other alliances of those who are far away. And the law becomes a treaty and, as the sophist Lycophron said, a guarantor of rights to one another, but not such as to make the citizens good and just. And that this is the case is manifest. For if one were even to bring the sites together into one, so that the city of the Megarians and that of the Corinthians touched with their walls, yet it is not one city; nor if they made intermarriage with one another, although this is one of the associations characteristic of cities. Similarly, if some were to dwell apart, yet not so far away as not to associate, but they had laws against wronging one another in their exchanges—for example, if one were a carpenter, another a farmer, another a shoemaker, and another some other such thing, and they were ten thousand in number, yet they associated in nothing else than such things as exchange and alliance, not even so would there yet be a city. For what cause, indeed? Surely not because of the lack of proximity of association. For even if they came together while associating in this way (each, however, using his own household as if it were a city) and helping one another against those who wrong them only, as if there were a defensive alliance, not even so would it seem to be a city to those who examine the matter accurately, if indeed they associated similarly when coming together as when apart. It is manifest, therefore, that the city is not an association in a place, nor for the sake of not wronging one another and of exchange; though these things must necessarily exist if there is to be a city, yet not even when all these exist is it yet a city, but it is the association in living well, both of households and of families, for the sake of a complete and self-sufficient life. This, however, will not be possible unless they inhabit the same and single place and use intermarriage. Which is why marriage connections arose in cities, and phratries, and sacrifices, and pastimes of living together. And this sort of thing is the work of friendship; for the choice of living together is friendship. Therefore, the end of the city is living well, and these things are for the sake of the end. And a city is the association of families and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life,