Chapter XXXV. Of Riches and Poverty

As Solomon had said in Proverbs:’Give me neither poverty nor riches,’ [1] so Plato says in the fourth Book of the Republic:

[P] [2] ‘But we have found, it seems, some other things for the guardians, against which they must watch in every way, that they may not creep in unobserved into the state.

‘What kind of things?

‘Riches, said I, and poverty; as the one engenders luxury, and idleness, and revolution, and the other meanness and mischievousness, as well as revolution.’

By mischievousness is meant every disgraceful action.