Note 223 — DESCRIPTION OF THE EAST INDIES AND COUNTRIES ON THE SEABORD OF THE INDIAN OCEAN IN 1514. [3] (continued 3)
Henry Edward John Stanley Stanley translation
Plato perhaps got this idea as well as others from India:
"Consider, then, I continued, whether the following plan is the right one for their lives and their dwellings, if they are to be of the character I have described. In the first place no one should possess any private property, if it can possibly be avoided: secondly, no one should have a dwelling or storehouse into which all who please may not enter; whatever necessaries are required by temperate and courageous men who are trained to war, they should receive by regular appointment from their fellow-citizens, as wages for their services, and the amount should be such as to leave neither a surplus on the year's consumption nor a deficit...; but whenever they come to possess lands and houses and money of their own, they will be householders and cultivators instead of guardians, and will become hostile masters of their fellow-citizens rather than their allies." Republic, book iii, sect. 417. Davis and Vaughan's Translation, pp. 129, 130.
"Itaque Adiutores communes habere filios et uxores summopere expedit, quæ et consentiunt omnino iis quæ superius a nobis dicta sunt, diximus enim hos neque domos proprias habere debere; neque terram possidere, vel aliud quidpiam in bonis adnumerare: sed a cæteris enutritos hanc quasi custodiæ mercedem accipere, quam et in communi positam consumant, si re vera custodes futuri sunt; ut et quæ prius a nobis dicta sunt, et quæ nunc etiam dicuntur efficiant ipsos veros custodes, et ne Rempublicam in partes dividant; sed ut uno potius animo de propriis judicantes, et ad id tendantes omnes, uno eodemque et doloris et voluptatis sensu afficiantur." Platonis de Rebuspublicis, liber quintus. A Joanne Sozomeno, Venetiis, 1626.
"Etenim Plato cum multas Regiones lustrasset, et mores hominum varios inspexisset, ac sui temporis Respublicas contemplatus abundé fuisset, nec non antiquorum philosophorum ac legumlatorum monumenta studiosissime perquisivisset, senior tandem factus, politias quidem omnes nihil aliud esse intelligens, nisi concordem quandam in societate civili Regulam, ac ordinem quo eædem continerentur." Joannes Sozomenus Lectoribus.