Chapter XLVIII. In What Kind of Place Plato Enacts That the City Should Be Founded : He Describes Certain Features Like the Site of Jerusalem

As the royal metropolis established long before among the Hebrews was far from the sea, and situated among the mountains, and possessed of very fruitful land; so Plato says that the metropolis to be founded by him in his Lawsought to be something of this kind. His words are as follows:

[P] [1] ‘But what I am more desirous of asking concerning it is this, whether it will be a city on the sea-coast or inland.

‘The city of which we spake just now, Stranger, is about eighty stadia distant from the sea.

‘How then? Are there harbours on this side of it, or is it altogether without harbours?

‘Nay, on this side, O Stranger, it is as well provided with harbours as possible.

‘Wonderful! You don’t say so! Further, then, does the country about it produce everything, or does it need anything besides?

‘It hardly needs anything more.

‘And will it have any neighbouring city close to it?

‘None at all, and that is why it is to be founded there: for some emigration that occurred in the place in old times has left this region uninhabited for an immense time.

‘Well, again? As to hills, and plains, and forest, what proportion has it of each?

‘It is like the general character of the rest of Crete.

‘Should you call it rocky rather than level?

‘Yes, certainly.

‘It cannot then be hopelessly bad for the attainment of virtue. For if it was to have been on the coast, and with good harbours, and in need of many things more than it could produce, it would have needed some mighty saviour and lawgivers more than mortal, if, under such natural conditions, its moral tendencies were not to be very promiscuous and evil; but as it is there is some consolation in the eighty stadia. It lies indeed nearer to the sea than it should, considering how very well you say it is provided with harbours; nevertheless we may be content even with this. For when the sea is close to a country, its daily neighbourhood is pleasant, but in reality it is very brackish and bitter: for by filling the city with commerce and retail trade, it engenders shifty and faithless habits in men’s souls, and makes the city unfaithful and unfriendly both to herself, and likewise to all other nations. Against this, however, it possesses a consolation in producing all things; yet being rocky it evidently cannot be at the same time productive in abundance and in variety. For if it had both, it would provide large exports, and in return be filled with gold and silver coin; than which, I may say, there could be no greater evil, taken singly, for a city in regard to the attainment of just and noble sentiments.’

But now after so many proofs as we have hitherto given, let us observe how, after approving the mode of education among the Hebrews in the passages which we have mentioned, he deprecates the Greek method, writing as follows in the tenth Book of the Republic: