Hence arose
the custom of common meals, but the separation of the citizens into
different families from Egypt: for the reign of Sesostris is of much
higher antiquity than that of Minos. As we ought to think that most
other things were found out in a long, nay, even in a boundless time
(reason teaching us that want would make us first invent that which
was necessary, and, when that was obtained, then those things which
were requisite for the conveniences and ornament of life), so should
we conclude the same with respect to a political state; now everything
in Egypt bears the marks of the most remote antiquity, for these
people seem to be the most ancient of all others, and to have acquired
laws and political order; we should therefore make a proper use of
what is told us of them, and endeavour to find out what they have
omitted. We have already said, that the landed property ought to
belong to the military and those who partake of the government of the
state; and that therefore the husbandmen should be a separate order of
people; and how large and of what nature the country ought to be: we
will first treat of the division of the land, and of the husbandmen,
how many and of what sort they ought to be; since we by no means hold
that property ought to be common, as some persons have said, only thus
far, in friendship, it [1330a] should be their custom to let no
citizen want subsistence. As to common meals, it is in general agreed
that they are proper in well-regulated cities; my reasons for
approving of them shall be mentioned hereafter: they are what all the:
citizens ought to partake of; but it will not be easy for the poor,
out of what is their own, to furnish as much as they are ordered to
do, and supply their own house besides.
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