Plato: The Origin of Conflict

Socrates: On the other hand, if you prefer, let us contemplate a polity during inflamed mania; nothing prohibits it. Some people, it appears, will not be satisfied with that other polity or way of existence itself [which is based on verities]. However, this one includes couches, feasting tables, and other family objects, as well as culinary flavours, applying spices, incense, female companions, confections, and all varieties of these things. Then we must no longer consider as necessary only those things found in the first polity: residences, vestments, and sandals. Must we also set in motion the process of acquiring: paintings of figures, variegated and elaborate vestments, gold, ivory, and all such things?

Glaucon: Yes

Socrates: Therefore, must we not make the polity larger? For the polity that practices the technique of hygiene is no longer sufficient; on the contrary, it now experiences inflammation, containing plenty of things not in any way essential for reasons of necessity. Such as, the venatical who are omnifarious, a multitude of imitators, on the one hand, those concerned with schemes, figures and colours, and on the other hand, those concerned with the technique of the muses, those who compose verse and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, choriographers, conductors of labour, artisans, and a multitude of domestic assistants who provide for the adornment of females. We shall require innumerable assistants. It also appears that we shall need masters for education, nutrient-nurses, tutors, coiffeuses, tonsors, creators of delicacies, and preparers of meat.  We shall also need swineherds, for these were none in our other polity because they were not necessary. In this one, we shall also need a multitude of other beasts for pasture, necessary for anyone to eat these things. Or something else?

Glaucon: How indeed not?

Socrates: Then surely we shall need many more physicians than previously with this conduct of existence?

Glaucon: Many more indeed.

Socrates: And suppose the territory sufficient to nourish them at that time becomes insufficient, and is too small this time. Or how do we say?

Glaucon: In this way.

Socrates: Shall we not section off adjoining territory with the intention of possessing sufficient pasture for ploughing, and that population thereupon act similarly with ours, and whenever those yonder absolve the boundary of the necessary, themselves shall transgress upon infinite acquisition of opulence?

Glaucon: There is considerable necessity for this, O Socrates.

Socrates:  With this, there shall be conflict, O Glaucon, or how else?

Glaucon: This is so.

Socrates: Let us say nothing yet, neither if conflict discharges injury, nor if it discharges a noble agent. We have only discovered, so far, the origin of conflict. For it is especially injurious to the polity when it occurs, and for the private person and for the population, whenever it occurs.

Glaucon: Yes, entirely so.

Plato, On Polity II (The Republic, extract from Book II),

New English Recensional Translation by The Editor of ClassicalPhilosophy.org, Chichester, England, 2025.