Note 174 — BOOK IV JUDEA, GREECE, AND INDIA

“For them the state did not exist.” This needs qualification. Cephalus, at whose house the conversation of Plato’s Republic is placed, was a resident alien. He was a wealthy man in the best society, and taken as a type of the “happy man.” His son, Lysias, was a leading orator. Even in the matter of the slaves: the Old Oligarch, in the “Constitution of Athens,” complains that the Athenian slaves had no distinctive dress or manners, and so a gentleman could not even push one of them! In the Republic itself there is a description of the Democratic State, in which the slaves push you off the pavement. Moreover, even during the Peloponnesian War, there was no persecution of aliens and no expulsion of aliens from Athens. They were evidently a loyal and contented class. True, in time of food shortage, the claims of everybody to true citizenship were scrutinized more and more closely; but that was unavoidable.—G. M.