Politics

​On the other hand, the marketplace for buying and selling must be different from this and separate, occupying a site easy of access both for goods sent from the sea and for all those sent from the country. Since the leading class of the city is divided into priests and magistrates, it is fitting that the common messes of the priests also should have their arrangement around the sacred buildings. And as for those offices of the magistrates which take charge of contracts, of indictments, summonses, and other such administration, and furthermore of market-regulation and what is called city-regulation, they must be established near a marketplace and some common meeting-place, and such is the site around the necessary marketplace. For we assign the upper marketplace for leisure, but this one for necessary business. And the same arrangement as has been described should also be imitated in the country. For there too, for the magistrates whom some call forest-wardens and others land-wardens, it is necessary that guard-posts and common messes for guarding should exist, and furthermore that temples should be distributed throughout the country, some dedicated to gods and others to heroes. But to spend time now in being precise and speaking about such matters is useless. For it is not difficult to conceive such things, but rather to execute them; for speaking is a matter of wish, but their happening is a matter of fortune. Therefore, let further discussion about such matters be dismissed for the present. Now, concerning the constitution itself, we must speak of what and what kind of persons the city that is to be happy and well-governed should consist of. And since there are two things in which well-being consists for everyone, and of these one is that the aim and end of actions be rightly proposed, and the other is to find the actions that lead to the end—for it is possible for these sometimes to disagree with each other and sometimes to agree; for sometimes the aim is well proposed, but they fail in action to achieve it, and at other times they succeed in all the means leading to the end, but they proposed a bad end, and at other times they fail in both, as in medicine, where sometimes they neither judge well what kind of body a healthy one should be, nor do they hit upon the productive means for the goal set before them; yet in arts and sciences both these must be mastered, namely the end and the actions leading to the end—that, then, everyone aims at living well and at happiness is clear, but of these, some have the power to attain them while others do not, owing to some fortune or nature.