Note 213 — Chapter XXXIX · LEGES AND EPINOMIS. (continued 2)

Aristotle (Polit. vii. p. 1330, a. 27; Œconom. i. p. 1344, b. 18) agrees with Plato as to the danger of having slaves who speak the same language and are of the same tribes, with common lineage and sympathies. He disapproves of anything which tends to impart spirit and independence to the slave’s character; and he takes occasion from hence to deduce some objections against various arrangements of the Platonic Republic (Politic. ii. p. 1264, a. 35). These are precautions — πρὸς τὸ μηδὲν νεωτερίζειν. But Aristotle dissents from Plato on another point — where Plato enjoins that the master shall not exhort or admonish his slave, but shall address to him no word except the word of command (Aristot. Politic. i. p. 1260, b. 5). Aristotle says that there is a certain special and inferior kind of ἀρετὴ which the slave can possess and ought to possess; that this ought to be communicated to him by the admonition and exhortation of the master; and that the master ought to admonish his slaves even more than he admonishes his children. The slave requires a certain ἠθικὴν ἀρετήν, so that he may not be hindered from his duty by ἀκολασία or δειλία: but it is an ἀρετὴ μικρά: the courage required for the slave is ὑπηρετική, that for the master ἀρχική (ib. p. 1260, a. 22-35). This measure of virtue the master must impart to the slave by exhortation, over and above the orders which he gives as to the performance of work. It would appear, however, that in Aristotle’s time there were various persons who denied that there was any ἀρετὴ belonging to a slave — παρὰ τὰς ὀργανικὰς καὶ διακονικάς (p. 1259, b. 23). Upon this last theory is founded the injunction of Plato which Aristotle here controverts.

What Aristotle says about slaves in the fifth chapter of the first book of his Œconomica, is superior to what he says in the Politica, and superior to anything which we read in the Platonic Treatise De Legibus.