CHAPTER X
It seems neither now nor very lately to have been known [1329b] to
those philosophers who have made politics their study, that a city
ought to be divided by families into different orders of men; and that
the husbandmen and soldiers should be kept separate from each other;
which custom is even to this day preserved in Egypt and in Crete; also
Sesostris having founded it in Egypt, Minos in Crete. Common meals
seem also to have been an ancient regulation, and to have been
established in Crete during the reign of Minos, and in a still more
remote period in Italy; for those who are the best judges in that
country say that one Italus being king of AEnotria., from whom the
people, changing their names, were called Italians instead of
AEnotrians, and that part of Europe was called Italy which is bounded
by the Scylletic Gulf on the one side and the Lametic on the other,
the distance between which is about half a day's journey. This Italus,
they relate, made the AEnotrians, who were formerly shepherds,
husbandmen, and gave them different laws from what they had before,
and to have been the first who established common meals, for which
reason some of his descendants still use them, and observe some of his
laws. The Opici inhabit that part which lies towards the Tyrrhenian
Sea, who both now are and formerly were called Ausonians. The Chones
inhabited the part toward Iapigia and the Ionian Sea which is called
Syrtis. These Chones were descended from the AEnotrians.
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