Oeconomicus

I once heard Socrates discuss household management as follows. Addressing Critobulus, he said, “Tell me, Critobulus, is ‘household management,’ like ‘medicine,’ ‘carpentry,’ ‘building,’ ‘blacksmithing,’ ‘metalworking,’ and so on, the name of a particular field of knowledge or science?”

Critobulus: Yes, I think so.

Socrates: And just as we can state the particular work or function of each of those arts, can we state the work and function of household management?

Critobulus: I would think a good household manager’s job, at any rate, is to manage his own house or estate well.

Socrates: And if another man entrusted his household to him, he could manage it as skillfully as his own, if he chose, couldn’t he? A skilled carpenter can work as well for another person as for himself. Shouldn’t the same be true of a good household manager?

Critobulus: Yes, I think so, Socrates.

Socrates: Then there is no reason why someone skilled in this art, even if he has no wealth of his own, shouldn’t earn a salary for managing a house, just as he might for building one?

Critobulus: None at all. And he would deserve a large salary if, after paying the necessary expenses of the estate entrusted to him, he could produce a surplus and improve the property.

Socrates: Well, what are we to understand by this word ‘house’? Just the building someone lives in? Or should we include all his possessions outside the actual dwelling?

Critobulus: In my opinion, certainly, everything a man has forms part of his estate, even if some of it is in a different part of the world from where he lives.

Socrates: ‘Has’? But he may have enemies?

Critobulus: Yes, I’m afraid some people have a great many.

Socrates: Then shall we say that a man’s enemies are part of his possessions?

Critobulus: What a funny idea! Someone would be kind enough to add to my stock of enemies, and then get paid for his kind services!

Socrates: Because, you know, we agreed that a man’s estate was the same as his possessions?

Critobulus: Yes, certainly, the good part of his possessions. But the bad part? No, thank you! I don’t count that among a man’s possessions.

Socrates: As I understand it, you would limit the term to what we might call a man’s useful or beneficial possessions?

Critobulus: Exactly. If he has things that harm him, I would consider them a loss rather than wealth.

Socrates: Apparently, then, if a man buys a horse but doesn’t know how to handle it, and is thrown and injured every time he mounts, the horse is not part of his wealth?

Critobulus: Certainly not, if wealth means well-being.

Socrates: By the same reasoning, even land is no wealth to a man who works it in a way that brings him nothing but losses?

Critobulus: True. Mother Earth herself is no source of wealth to us if, instead of helping us live, she helps us starve.

Socrates: And by the same reasoning, sheep and cattle may not be wealth if their owner loses money on them because he doesn’t know how to care for them. To him, at any rate, those sheep and cattle are not wealth?

Critobulus: That’s the conclusion I draw.

Socrates: It seems you maintain that wealth consists of things that benefit us, while things that harm us are not wealth?

Critobulus: Exactly.

Socrates: So the same things are wealth or not, depending on whether a man knows how to use them? For instance, a flute may be wealth to someone skilled enough to play it. But to someone without that skill, the same instrument is no better than the stones we walk on . . . unless he chooses to sell it?

Critobulus: That’s exactly the conclusion we should reach. For people who don’t know how to use them, flutes are wealth if they can be sold, but not if they are kept instead. And see, Socrates, how smoothly and consistently the argument proceeds, since we agree that things that benefit us are wealth. Unsold, these flutes are not wealth, because they are no use. To become wealth, they must be sold.

“Yes,” Socrates replied, “provided the owner knows how to sell them. Suppose he sells them for something else he doesn’t know how to use. According to your argument, merely selling them won’t turn them into wealth.”

Critobulus: You seem to be saying, Socrates, that even money in a man’s pocket is not wealth if he doesn’t know how to use it?

Socrates: And I understand you to agree with our proposition so far: wealth is whatever can benefit a man, and nothing else. Clearly, if a man uses his money to buy himself a mistress, to the serious harm of his body, soul, and entire estate, how will that money benefit him now? What good will he get from it?

Critobulus: None at all, unless we are prepared to admit that hyoscyamus, as they call it, is wealth: a poison that drives those who take it mad.

Socrates: Then, Critobulus, if a man doesn’t know how to use money properly, let it be banished to the far corners of the earth rather than counted as wealth. But now, what shall we say about friends? If a man knows how to benefit from his friends, what about them?

Critobulus: They are unquestionably wealth, and in a deeper sense than cattle, if, as we may suppose, they are likely to benefit a man more than a herd of cattle would.

Socrates: According to your argument, it seems that even the enemies of a man’s household may be wealth to him after all, if he knows how to turn them to good account?

Critobulus: That’s my opinion, at any rate.

Socrates: Then it seems a good household manager should know how to deal with his own enemies or his employer’s so as to profit from them?

Critobulus: Most certainly.

Socrates: In fact, you only have to look around to see how many private individuals, to say nothing of kings, owe the growth of their estates to war.

Critobulus: Well, Socrates, I don’t think the argument could be improved so far. But now there’s a puzzle. What about people who have the knowledge and capital to increase their fortunes, if only they would get to work? Yet, if we can believe our own eyes, that is the very thing they refuse to do, so their knowledge and abilities bring them no benefit. Surely in their case, too, we can draw only one conclusion: neither their knowledge nor their possessions are wealth.

Socrates: Ah, I see, Critobulus! You want to turn the discussion to slaves?

Critobulus: No, I have no such intention. Quite the opposite. I mean people of high rank, some of them, to give them their due, from very noble families. These are the people I have in mind. They may have military or civic abilities, but they refuse to exercise them, precisely because, as I see it, they have no masters over them.

Socrates: No masters over them! How can that be? Despite their prayers for prosperity and their desire to do what will benefit them, those who lord it over them still seriously obstruct them from doing what they want.

Critobulus: And who, please tell me, are these lords who rule them but remain unseen?

Socrates: They aren’t unseen. On the contrary, they are perfectly visible. What’s more, they are the lowest of the low, as you can hardly fail to notice, if you consider idleness, effeminacy, and reckless neglect to be base. Then there are other treacherous old hags who pass themselves off as innocent pleasures: gambling with dice and unprofitable gatherings of men. In time, even those they deceive see them stripped bare, revealing themselves as nothing but pains dressed up and decorated as pleasures. These are the rulers of the people you describe, and they completely prevent them from doing any good or useful work.

Critobulus: But there are others, Socrates, who aren’t held back by these forms of laziness. On the contrary, they are passionately eager to exert themselves and increase their income by every means. Yet despite all this, they exhaust their resources and get into endless difficulties.

Socrates: Yes, because they too are slaves, and their taskmasters are harsh enough. They are slaves to luxury and lust, excess and drinking, along with many a cherished but ruinous ambition. These passions rule the poor soul in their power so cruelly that, as long as he is in the prime of health and strong enough to work, they force him to fetch and carry. He must lay the fruits of his labor at their feet and spend them on whatever their hearts desire. But as soon as old age leaves him unable to work any longer, they abandon him to his gray hairs and misery and turn to seize other victims.

Ah, Critobulus, we must wage constant war against these enemies for the sake of freedom itself, just as we would against armed warriors trying to enslave us. Indeed, we must admit that enemies in war, especially those of a fair and noble character, have often proved benefactors to the people they enslaved. Through discipline, they have forced the defeated to become better men and lead more peaceful lives afterward. But these tyrannical queens never stop plaguing and tormenting their victims in body, soul, and property until their rule ends.

Critobulus resumed the conversation. He said, “I think I fully understand what you mean about these matters, Socrates. And after examining my own heart, I’m satisfied that I have enough restraint and self-control in those respects. So if you will only advise me what to do to improve my estate, I believe those tyrannical ladies, as you call them, won’t stand in my way. Come, don’t hesitate. Just give me whatever good advice you can, and trust me to follow it. But perhaps, Socrates, you’ve already passed judgment on us: we’re rich enough already and don’t need any more wealth?”

Socrates: If I may include myself in your plural ‘we,’ I would apply that remark to myself instead. I don’t need any more wealth, if you like. I certainly am rich enough already. But you, Critobulus, I consider exceptionally poor, and sometimes, I swear, I feel downright sorry for you.

At this view of his situation, Critobulus burst out laughing and retorted, “And what in fortune’s name, Socrates, do you suppose our respective properties would fetch on the market, yours and mine?”

“If I could find a good buyer,” he answered, “I suppose all my belongings, including the house I live in, might quite reasonably fetch five minae. Yours, I’m absolutely certain, would fetch more than a hundred times that amount at the very least.”

Critobulus: And with that estimate of our respective fortunes, can you still maintain that you don’t need any more wealth, but that I deserve pity for my poverty?

Socrates: Yes, because my property is more than enough to meet my needs. But considering all the display that surrounds you and the reputation you have to live up to, I think you would barely be comfortably off even if what you already have were multiplied by three.

“How can that be?” Critobulus asked.

“Well, first of all,” Socrates explained, “I see that you’re expected to offer many costly sacrifices. If you failed to do so, I take it neither gods nor men would tolerate you. Next, you’re obliged to welcome many foreigners as guests and entertain them generously. Third, you must give feasts for your fellow citizens and shower them with all sorts of kindness, or be abandoned by your supporters.

“Furthermore, I see that even now the state requires various large contributions from you, such as breeding horses, training choruses, supervising gymnastic schools, or performing consular duties as a patron of resident foreigners, and so on. If war breaks out, I know you’ll face further obligations: payments for the trierarchy, ship money, and war taxes so heavy that you’ll struggle to bear them. If you neglect any of these charges, the good citizens of Athens will punish you as severely as if they caught you stealing their own property.

“But worst of all, I see you cherishing the idea that you’re rich. Without a thought or care about increasing your income, you turn your fancy lightly toward love, as though you had some special license to amuse yourself. . . . That’s why I pity you and feel sorry for you. I’m afraid some irreparable disaster will overtake you and leave you in desperate trouble.

“As for me, if I ever needed anything, I’m sure you know I have friends who would help me. They would make some small contribution, small for them, I mean, and flood my modest household with plenty. But your friends, though far better off than you when you consider your respective ways of living, keep looking to you for help.”

Then Critobulus said, “I can’t deny what you’ve said, Socrates. It really is high time you became my patron, or I truly will become an object of pity.”

Socrates answered this appeal: “Surely you must be astonished at the part you’re playing now. Just a moment ago, when I said I was rich, you laughed at me as though I had no idea what riches were. You weren’t satisfied until you had cross-examined me and forced me to admit that I don’t possess a hundredth of what you have. And now you’re begging me to be your patron and spare no effort to save you from becoming an absolute pauper.”

Critobulus: Yes, Socrates, because I see that you’re skilled in at least one profitable activity: the art of producing a surplus. So I hope that a man who can make so much out of so little won’t have the slightest difficulty producing a generous surplus out of abundance.

Socrates: But don’t you remember how, just now in our discussion, you would hardly let me get a word out while you laid down the law? If a man didn’t know how to handle horses, horses weren’t wealth to him, at any rate. Nor were land, sheep, money, or anything else, if he didn’t know how to use them. Yet these are the very sources from which income comes. How do you expect me to know how to use any of them when I’ve never possessed a single one of them since I was born?

Critobulus: Yes, but we agreed that a science of household management exists, however little wealth a man may have himself. If that’s so, what prevents you from being an expert in it?

Socrates: Nothing, certainly, except what would prevent a man from knowing how to play the flute if he had never owned one and no one had made up for that by lending him one to practice on. That’s exactly my situation with household management. I’ve never possessed wealth myself, the instrument of this science, so I could learn by practicing. Nor has anyone until now offered to hand his wealth over to me to manage. In fact, you are the first person to make such a generous offer. I hope you’ll remember that someone learning the harp is likely to break and damage the instrument. So if I undertake to learn household management on your estate, I’ll probably ruin it completely.

Critobulus retorted, “I see, Socrates, you’re doing your very best to get out of a tiresome task. If you can help it, you’d rather not lift so much as your little finger to make my necessary burdens easier to bear.”

Socrates: No, I give you my word, I’m not trying to get out of it. On the contrary, I’ll gladly explain the matter to you as far as I can. . . . Still, it strikes me that if you came to me looking for fire and I had none in my house, you wouldn’t blame me for sending you somewhere you could get it. Or if you asked me for water, and I had none to give but led you elsewhere to find it, I’m sure you wouldn’t disapprove. Or suppose you wanted me to teach you music, and I pointed you to a much more skillful teacher than myself, who might even be grateful to you for becoming his pupil. What objection could you make to my behavior?

Critobulus: None that would be fair, Socrates.

Socrates: Well then, Critobulus, my task now is to point you toward people more skilled than I am in the matters you’re so eager to learn from me. I admit that I’ve long made it my study to discover which of our fellow citizens here are the most skilled in the various fields of knowledge.

I remember being amazed once to see that, among people engaged in exactly the same activities, half were utterly poor and the other half were rolling in wealth. I thought the reasons for this were worth investigating. So I began looking into it and found that it all happened quite naturally. I saw that those who conducted their affairs haphazardly were punished by their losses. Meanwhile, I soon realized that those who kept their wits sharp and paid attention were rewarded with greater ease and profit in their undertakings.

These are the people I would recommend you go to. What do you say? Learn from them, and unless the will of God prevents it, I venture to say you’ll become as capable a businessman as anyone could hope to see.

When Critobulus heard this, he exclaimed, “You can be sure, Socrates, I won't let you go now until you give me the proofs you just promised me in front of our friends.”

“Well then, Critobulus,” Socrates replied, “suppose I begin by showing you two kinds of people. Some spend large sums building useless houses, while others spend much less on homes that have everything they need. Will you admit that I've identified one of the essentials of household management?”

Critobulus: Certainly an essential point.

Socrates: And suppose, along the same lines, I next show you two other groups. The first have all kinds of household furnishings, but they can't find them when they need them. In fact, they hardly know whether everything is safe and sound. This causes them and their servants a great deal of anxiety. The others may have less, and certainly have no more, but everything is ready for immediate use.

Critobulus: Yes, Socrates. Isn't the reason simply that the first group leave everything wherever it happens to land, while the others arrange everything in its appointed place?

“Exactly,” he answered. “And that means everything is arranged in order, not in some random place, but where it naturally belongs.”

Critobulus: Yes, I think that's relevant, and it does involve another principle of household management.

Socrates: What if I show you a third contrast, this time in the condition of household slaves? On one side, you'll see slaves kept, so to speak, tightly chained, yet constantly breaking their chains and running away. On the other, the slaves are unchained and free to move around, yet apparently choose to work and remain loyal to their masters. I think you'll admit that this points to another aspect of household management worth noticing.

Critobulus: I certainly do. It's very much worth noticing.

Socrates: Or take two farmers working farms as much alike as possible. One never stops saying that farming has ruined him, and he's in the depths of despair. The other has everything he needs, in abundance and of the best quality. And how did he get it? Through that same farming.

“Yes, certainly,” Critobulus answered. “Perhaps the first spends his effort and money not just on what he needs, but on things that harm both the estate and its owner.”

Socrates: That can certainly happen, but it isn't the case I mean. I'm talking about people who claim to be farmers, yet haven't a penny to spend on what their business actually needs.

Critobulus: And what might be the reason for that, Socrates?

Socrates: You'll come with me and see these people too. As you watch them, I expect you'll take the lesson to heart.

Critobulus: I promise I will, if I possibly can.

Socrates: Yes, and as you watch, you must test yourself to see whether you have the sense to understand. As things stand, I can testify that when there's a comedy to see, you'll get up at dawn, walk a long way, and pour out reasons why I should go to the play with you. But you've never once invited me to come and watch anything like the situations we've just been discussing.

Critobulus: So you think I'm ridiculous?

Socrates: You'll find yourself far more ridiculous, I assure you. But let me point out another contrast: some people have been brought to the edge of poverty by their dealings with horses, while others have found their way to wealth through the same pursuit, and have every right to take pride in their gains.

Critobulus: Well, I can tell you that I see and know both kinds as well as you do. But that hasn't brought me any closer to being one of those who make a profit.

Socrates: Because you watch them as you would the actors in a tragedy or comedy, and with the same purpose. You want to please your ears and eyes, rather than, I take it, become a poet yourself. And that's reasonable enough, since you have no wish to become a playwright. But when your circumstances require you to concern yourself with horses, doesn't it seem a little foolish not to consider how to become more than an amateur? Especially since the same animals that are useful are also profitable to sell?

Critobulus: So you want me to become a breeder of young horses, do you, Socrates?

Socrates: No, any more than I'd advise you to buy boys and train them from childhood as farm laborers. But I think there's a particularly favorable stage of growth to seize upon in both a man and a horse, when they offer valuable service now and promise for the future. As another example, I can show you men who treat their wives in ways that make them true partners in increasing their shared estate, while others treat them in ways that bring complete disaster on themselves.

Critobulus: Should the husband or the wife be blamed for that?

Socrates: If something goes wrong with a sheep, we usually blame the shepherd. If a horse develops bad habits, we generally blame the rider. With women, if a husband has taught his wife and she still takes pleasure in doing wrong, perhaps she can justly be blamed. But if he's never tried to teach her even the first principles of good and noble conduct, and finds that she knows nothing about them, surely the husband deserves the blame. But come now (he added), we're all friends here. Be frank, Critobulus, and tell us the plain truth. Is there anyone you more regularly trust with important matters than your wife?

Critobulus: No one.

Socrates: And is there anyone you talk with less often than your wife?

Critobulus: Not many, I have to admit.

Socrates: And when you married her, she was very young, just a girl, at an age when she'd seen and heard very little of the outside world?

Critobulus: Certainly.

Socrates: Then wouldn't it be more surprising if she really knew how to speak and act than if she went completely wrong?

Critobulus: But let me ask you something, Socrates. Those fortunate husbands you tell us about, who have good wives, did they teach their wives themselves?

Socrates: There's nothing like finding out. I'll introduce you to Aspasia, who will explain these matters to you far more systematically than I can. I believe that a good wife, as a partner in a shared estate, must match and balance her husband's contribution to its well-being. For although it's generally through the husband's dealings that goods of all kinds come into the house, it's through the wife's management and thrift that most spending is kept in check. Whether she handles this well or badly determines whether the whole estate grows or becomes poorer. And as for the other arts and fields of knowledge, I think I can point out the most capable practitioners in each, if you feel you need any more help.

“But why do you need to give examples from every field of knowledge, Socrates?” Critobulus asked. “It wouldn't be easy to find capable practitioners of all the arts, and it would be quite impossible to become skilled in all of them myself. So please confine yourself to the branches of knowledge people consider nobler, the ones it would most suit me to pursue seriously. Point these out to me, along with those who practice them. Above all, help me as much as you can through your own teaching.”

Socrates: A good suggestion, Critobulus. The so-called lowly manual trades have a bad name and are held in contempt by civilized communities, with good reason. They ruin the bodies of everyone involved, workers and supervisors alike. These people are forced to sit in the gloom, or spend whole days crouching before a furnace. As the body weakens, the spirit quickly weakens with it. These trades also take up so much time that those who work at them have no leisure for their friends or their city. How can such people be anything but poor friends and poor defenders of their homeland? In fact, in some states, especially those reputed to be warlike, no citizen is allowed to practice any manual trade at all.

Critobulus: Then which arts would you advise us to take up?

Socrates: Well, I hope we wouldn't be ashamed to imitate the king of Persia. That monarch, they say, considers two pursuits in particular among the noblest and most necessary: agriculture and warfare. He takes the keenest interest in both.

“What!” Critobulus exclaimed. “Do you really believe, Socrates, that with all his other concerns, the king of Persia takes a personal interest in agriculture?”

Socrates: We need only look into it, Critobulus, and I expect we'll discover whether he does. We agree that he takes a keen interest in military matters. However many nations pay him tribute, each has a governor, and every governor has orders from the king specifying how many cavalrymen, archers, slingers, and shield-bearing troops he must maintain. These must be enough to control the subject population or defend the country against an attack. In addition, the king keeps garrisons in all the citadels. The governor assigned that duty is responsible for their support.

Meanwhile, the king conducts an annual inspection and review of the troops, mercenaries and others, who have orders to remain under arms. Except for the citadel garrisons, they all assemble at the same time at what is called the mustering ground. The king personally reviews the part of the army within reach of the royal residence. He sends trusted representatives to inspect the rest, who live in the empire's more distant districts.

When garrison commanders, commanders of a thousand men, and satraps have their full assigned numbers, and present troops with horses and weapons in thoroughly serviceable condition, the king delights in honoring these officers and showers them with gifts. But officers he finds have neglected their garrisons or used their position for private profit receive severe punishment. He removes them from office and appoints other supervisors in their place. I think we can say this conduct proves beyond dispute that he takes an interest in military matters.

Furthermore, by traveling through the country, he can inspect some of his territory himself. As before, he sends trusted representatives to visit the rest. Wherever a governor presents him with a densely populated district, its soil actively cultivated and full of trees and the fruits it naturally produces, he gives that officer more territory. He also rewards him with gifts and seats of honor. But when he sees land lying idle, with few inhabitants because of a governor's harshness, arrogance, or neglect, he punishes that officer, removes him from office, and appoints another ruler in his place. . . . Doesn't this conduct show at least as much concern for having the inhabitants actively cultivate the land as for defending it with troops?

Moreover, the governors appointed over these two departments are different people. One group governs the population itself, including those who work the soil, and collects their tribute. Another commands the armed garrisons. If a commander fails to protect the country adequately, the civil governor, who is also responsible for its productive work, accuses him of preventing the inhabitants from working by failing to protect them. On the other hand, if the military governor has secured peace for the work on the land, but the civil authority still presents a territory with few inhabitants and little cultivation, the commander in turn accuses the civil ruler. For you can take it as a rule that a population which farms its land badly will fail to support its garrisons and will be quite unable to pay its tribute. Where a satrap is appointed, he is in charge of both departments.

Critobulus then said, “Well, Socrates, if that's how he acts, I admit that the great king gives as much attention to agriculture as to military affairs.”

And besides all this (Socrates continued), wherever he lives or visits, he makes it his first concern to have orchards and gardens, parks and so-called paradises, full of all the beautiful and noble things the earth produces. He spends most of his days in these places whenever the season allows.

Critobulus: Certainly, Socrates. It naturally and necessarily follows that if the king himself spends so much time there, his paradises must be perfectly stocked with trees and everything else beautiful that the earth produces.

Socrates: And some say, Critobulus, that when the king gives gifts, he first summons those who have proved themselves brave warriors. All the plowing in the world would bring little benefit without people to protect the fields. Next he summons those who have best stocked their countries and made them productive, on the principle that without those who till the soil, the warriors themselves could hardly live. There's also a story about Cyrus, the most famous prince ever to wear a crown, as I hardly need to tell you. Once, he said to those summoned to receive gifts, “it would be no injustice, if he himself received the gifts due to warriors and tillers of the soil alike,” for “did he not carry off the palm in stocking the country and also in protecting the goods with which it had been stocked?”

Critobulus: That clearly shows, Socrates, if the story is true, that this same Cyrus took as much pride in encouraging his country's productivity and stocking it with good things as in his reputation as a warrior.

Socrates: Yes, indeed. If Cyrus had lived, I have no doubt he would have proved the best of rulers. His life provides ample other evidence for that belief, but consider what happened when he marched against his brother to fight for the sovereignty of Persia. Not one man, they say, deserted Cyrus for the king, while tens of thousands deserted the king for Cyrus. I also consider it strong evidence of a ruler's worth that his followers follow him willingly and refuse to leave him when danger comes.

That was true of Cyrus. His friends not only fought beside him while he lived, but when he died, they too died fighting around his body. Every one of them did so except Ariaeus, who was away at his post on the army's left wing. But there's another story about this same Cyrus involving Lysander, who once told it himself to a friend in Megara.

Lysander, it seems, had gone to Cyrus with presents sent by the Allies. Cyrus entertained him and, among other courtesies, showed him his paradise at Sardis. Lysander was astonished by the beauty of the trees, all planted at equal intervals, the long straight rows of waving branches, the perfect regularity and rectangular symmetry of the whole, and the many sweet scents around them as they walked through the park. In admiration, he exclaimed to Cyrus, “All this beauty is marvelous enough, but what astonishes me still more is the talent of the craftsman who mapped out and arranged for you the several parts of this fair scene.”

Pleased by the remark, Cyrus said, “Know then, Lysander, it is I who measured and arranged it all. Some of the trees,” he added, “I planted with my own hands.”

Then Lysander looked closely at him. Seeing his beautiful clothing and noticing its fragrance, as well as the splendor of his necklaces, armlets, and other ornaments, he exclaimed, “What do you say, Cyrus? Did you with your own hands plant some of these trees?”

Cyrus replied, “Does that surprise you, Lysander? I swear to you by Mithres, when in ordinary health I never dream of sitting down to supper without first practicing some exercise of war or agriculture in the sweat of my brow, or venturing some contest of honor, as suits my mood.”

“On hearing this,” Lysander told his friend, “I could not help seizing him by the hand and exclaiming, ‘Cyrus, you have indeed good right to be a happy man, since you are happy in being a good man.’”

I'm telling you all this (Socrates continued) to show that even the highest and mightiest people find it hard to keep away from agriculture. Devotion to this art seems to bring a threefold blessing. It combines a measure of luxury with the satisfaction of improving an estate, and physical training that equips a man to play a free man's part. In the first place, the earth freely offers those who work everything necessary for human life. As if that weren't enough, she adds a thousand luxuries. She supplies everything with the sweetest scent and finest appearance for adorning the altars and statues of the gods, or decorating our own persons. We owe her our many delicacies of meat, poultry, and vegetables. For farming is closely linked with raising sheep and cattle, through which we mortals can offer sacrifices pleasing to the gods and meet our own needs as well.

Yet although this generous provider pours out her blessings in abundance, she doesn't allow us to receive her gifts in an unmanly way. She accustoms those she supports to bear summer's heat and winter's cold gladly. Those who work with their hands, actually digging the soil, she trains in her own wrestling school, making them stronger and stronger. Those whose work consists only of supervision and careful thought she makes more manly by rousing them at dawn and forcing them into action on many a long day's march. For in the city or the fields, as the seasons change, every necessary task has its proper time.

Or consider another side of it. Suppose a man wants to serve his city as a cavalryman, mounted on his own horse. Why not raise horses along with other livestock? A farmer has that opportunity. Or does he want to serve on foot? Agriculture will give him a sturdy body. Or consider the fascination of hunting, which makes hard work a pleasure. Here again the earth encourages us, both by readily supplying food for the dogs and by nurturing wild animals. And if horses and dogs benefit from agriculture, they repay it by serving the farm. The horse carries his best friend, his attentive master, early to the scene of his work and care, and allows him to leave late. The dog keeps wild animals from plundering the crops and flocks, and makes an isolated place secure.

In wartime, too, the earth urges those who till her to take up arms for their country. She does this by growing her fruits in the open fields, a prize for the strongest and bravest to win. Agriculture is also an athletic art, training men to run, throw a spear, and leap with the best.

It is also the kindest of arts, repaying the laborer's every effort tenfold in kind. She is the sweet mistress who greets her devoted follower with a welcoming smile and an outstretched hand, seeming to say, “Take from me everything your heart desires.” She is the generous hostess who welcomes the stranger. Where else could a man enjoy winter more contentedly, with a bubbling bath and a blazing fire, than in some pleasant country home of her making? Where else could he rest more sweetly in summer than in the countryside, lulled by murmuring streams, gentle breezes, and soft shade?

It is her special privilege to offer fitting first fruits to heaven and furnish the overflowing feast. She is a kindly presence in the household. The wife favors her, the children long for her, and she beckons invitingly to the master's friends.

For my part, I would be greatly surprised if any freeborn man had ever owned a finer possession or discovered a more appealing occupation, or one more widely useful in life.

Furthermore, the earth herself willingly teaches justice and uprightness to anyone who can understand her meaning. The better the service given to her, the richer her reward. Perhaps one day these pupils of hers, whose former way of life was farming, will be driven from their work by the great number of invading armies. The work of their hands may indeed be taken from them, but they have been brought up to be strong and manly. Each stands ready in body and spirit. Unless God himself prevents them, they will march into the territory of the men who obstruct them and take the means to support their lives. For in war it is often more certain and safer to seek food with sword and shield than with all the tools of agriculture.

But agriculture teaches another lesson in its public school: mutual assistance. We must march “shoulder to shoulder” to meet an invader, and stand “shoulder to shoulder” to cultivate the soil. A farmer who means to succeed must therefore inspire enthusiasm and willing obedience in his workers. That is just what a general preparing to attack an enemy tries to achieve by giving gifts to the brave and punishing those who break discipline.

There will also be times for encouragement, when the general addresses his troops and the farmer his laborers. Being slaves doesn't make them any less in need than free men of the attraction of hope and happy expectations, so that they will willingly remain at their posts.

The man who called agriculture “the mother and nurse of all the arts” put it excellently. While agriculture prospers, all the other arts are vigorous and strong. But where the land is forced to remain deserted, the spring that feeds the other arts dries up. They dwindle, I almost said every one of them, on land and sea.

These remarks prompted a comment from Critobulus.

“Socrates,” he said, “for my part, I agree with everything you say. Still, we have to face the fact that in agriculture nine things out of ten are beyond human calculation. At one time hail and frost, at another drought, flooding rain, mildew, or some other blight will wipe out all the fine things people have made and planned. Or look at a man's woolly flocks, brought up with the greatest care: a disease comes, and it all ends in terrible destruction.”

Socrates replied, “But I thought, Critobulus, you certainly knew that the work of agriculture, no less than warfare, lies in the hands of the gods. I'm sure you've noticed how men behave in war. On the eve of military operations, they try to win the favor of the divine powers. How eagerly they appeal to heaven, seeking through sacrifices and omens to discover what they should and shouldn't do! Do you think it's any less necessary to win heaven's favor in farming? You can be sure,” he added, “that the wise and prudent will serve the gods on behalf of their fleshy fruits and dry crops, their cattle and horses, their sheep and goats, and indeed all their possessions, great and small, without exception.”

“I agree completely,” Critobulus answered, “when you urge us to begin every undertaking with heaven’s help, since the gods hold the outcomes of both peace and war in their hands. We will always try to act accordingly. But now will you try, for your part, to pick up our discussion of household management where you left off and bring it, point by point, to a conclusion? What you have said so far has not been wasted on me. I think I already see more clearly how we must behave to live anything like a real life.”

Socrates replied, “What do you say, then? Shall we first go over the ground we have covered and retrace the steps we agreed on? That way, if possible, we can reach the end of the remaining argument with the same agreement.”

Critobulus: Yes, certainly! If two business partners find it pleasant to go through their accounts without a dispute, it will be just as pleasant for us, as partners in an argument, to sum up the points we have discussed in agreement, as you suggest.

Socrates: Well, then, we agreed that household management was the proper name for a branch of knowledge. This knowledge appeared to enable people to increase the value of their houses or estates. By “house or estate” we meant everything a person possesses. We defined “possessions,” in turn, as things their owner finds useful for the purposes of life. Finally, useful things turned out to mean everything a person knows how to use and put to good account. We also thought it impossible for one person to learn every branch of knowledge. We thought we might reasonably follow the example of civic communities in rejecting the so-called base mechanical trades, because, as far as we can see, they ruin the workers’ bodies and crush their spirits.

We said the clearest proof would be to separate the farmers and the craftsmen into two groups during an enemy invasion and ask each group in turn, “Do you think it is better to defend our countryside, or to retreat from the fields and guard the walls?” We expected those who worked the land to vote to defend it. The craftsmen, on the other hand, would vote against fighting. Obedient to their training, they would sit with folded hands, neither exerting themselves nor risking their lives.

Next, we considered it established that there was no better occupation for a gentleman, whom we described as a man both beautiful and good, than farming, through which human beings obtain the necessities of life. We also agreed that this occupation was both the easiest to learn and the most pleasant to practice. It gives the body beauty and endurance while leaving the mind free to meet the demands of friendship and civic duty.

Again, farming seemed to us to encourage bravery in those who work the fields, since under its care the plants and animals that supply life’s necessities grow and are raised outside the city’s fortified defenses. For that reason, too, statesmen and communities held this way of life in the highest regard, because it produced the best citizens and those most devoted to the common good.

Critobulus: I think I am fully convinced that it is right to make agriculture the basis of life. I see that this is altogether the noblest, best, and most pleasant course. But I would like to return to your remark that you understood why one man’s farming brings him an abundance of everything he needs, while another man’s work fails to make farming profitable. I would gladly hear you explain both cases, so that I can follow the right course and avoid the harmful one.

Socrates: Well, Critobulus, suppose I tell you from the beginning how I came to know a man who seemed to me, of everyone I had ever met, most deserving of the name “gentleman.” He really was a “beautiful and good” man.

Critobulus: There is nothing I would rather hear, since that is the title I want most of all to deserve.

Socrates: Then I will tell you how I came to question him. It did not take me long to make the rounds of various good carpenters, bronze workers, painters, sculptors, and so on. A short time was enough to observe them and the works of art most admired among their creations. But when I came to examine those who bore the impressive title “beautiful and good,” to discover what conduct justified their claim to it, I found myself eager to talk with one of them. At first, since the word “beautiful” was joined to “good,” I felt I had to approach every beautiful person I saw. I hoped I might somewhere find goodness attached to beauty.

But things turned out otherwise. I soon seemed to discover that some people with beautiful bodies were thorough scoundrels at heart. So I decided to leave aside the beauty that appeals to the eye and approach one of the people actually called “beautiful and good.” Since I heard that everyone called Ischomachus this, men and women, foreigners and citizens alike, I set out to get to know him.

One day I happened to see him sitting in the portico of Zeus Eleutherios. Since he seemed to have some free time, I went over, sat down beside him, and addressed him. “What is this, Ischomachus? You sitting here, when you so rarely have any free time? Usually when I see you, you are doing something, or at least you are not sitting idle in the marketplace.”

“You would not see me sitting here now, Socrates,” he answered, “except that I promised to meet some friends from out of town here.”

“And when you have no such business,” I said, “where in heaven’s name do you spend your time, and what do you do? I will not hide how eager I am to hear from your own lips what conduct has earned you the title ‘beautiful and good.’ It certainly cannot be spending your days indoors at home. Your whole physical condition shows that you lead a different sort of life.”

Ischomachus smiled at my question. He also seemed a little pleased to be asked what he had done to earn the title “beautiful and good.” He answered, “Whether that is what people call me when they talk to you about me, I cannot say. All I know is that when they challenge me to exchange properties with them or else perform some public service in their place, fitting out a trireme or training a chorus, nobody thinks of asking for the beautiful and good gentleman. The summons is served on plain Ischomachus, son of So-and-so. But to answer your question, Socrates,” he continued, “I certainly do not spend my days indoors, if only because my wife is quite capable of managing our domestic affairs without my help.”

“Ah, Ischomachus,” I said, “that is exactly what I would particularly like to learn from you. Did you yourself teach your wife to be everything a wife should be? Or when her father and mother gave her to you, was she already an expert, well trained in a wife’s duties?”

“An expert!” he replied. “What skill was she likely to bring with her? She was not quite fifteen when she married me. Before that, she had been brought up with the greatest care to see and hear as little as possible and ask as few questions as possible. Don’t you think one should be satisfied if, when she married, her entire experience consisted of knowing how to take wool and make a dress, and having seen how her mother’s maidservants were assigned their daily spinning? As for controlling her appetite and self-indulgence,” he added, “she had received the soundest education. I consider that the most important part of bringing up either a man or a woman.”

“Then you taught your wife everything else yourself, Ischomachus,” I said, “until you had made her capable of attending carefully to her assigned duties?”

“Not until I had offered sacrifice,” he replied, “and prayed that I might teach, and she might learn, everything that could contribute to our happiness together.”

Socrates: And did your wife join in that sacrifice and prayer?

Ischomachus: Certainly. She made many vows to heaven to become everything she ought to be. Her whole manner showed that she would pay attention to what she was taught.

Socrates: Please tell me, Ischomachus, what you first tried to teach her. I would enjoy hearing that story more than any description you could give me of the most splendid athletic contest or horse race.

“Well, Socrates,” he answered, “after a while she grew accustomed to my handling, that is, she was tame enough to take part in a discussion. Then I asked her this question: ‘My dear wife, have you ever considered why I chose you out of all women to be my wife, and why your parents entrusted you to me out of all men? It certainly was not because either of us would have had trouble finding someone else to sleep with. I am sure that is clear to you. No, I deliberately sought you out to find the best partner I could in a home and children. Your parents sought the same for you and chose me to the best of their ability. If God grants us children in the future, we will discuss how best to bring them up. That too will be a shared concern, and a shared blessing if they live to fight our battles and we later find support and help in them when we are old.

“‘But for now there is this home, which belongs equally to us both. It is common property, since I put everything I possess into our common fund by my own choice, and you likewise put everything you brought into it. We need not stop to calculate which of us contributed more. Instead, let us take this to heart: whichever of us proves the better partner contributes what is most valuable.’

“That is what I said to her, Socrates, and my wife answered, ‘But how can I help you? What ability do I have? Everything depends on you. My mother told me that my job was to be sensible and self-controlled!’

“‘Quite right, my wife,’ I replied, ‘and that is what my father told me. But what shows that a man or woman is sensible and self-controlled? Isn’t it behaving so that the good things they have are always in the best possible condition, and that they add as much as possible to them from the same source of goodness and right conduct?’

“‘But what can I do,’ my wife asked, ‘to help increase our joint estate?’

“‘You can certainly try to do as well as possible what heaven has given you a natural ability for and what the law approves,’ I answered.

“‘And what might those things be?’ she asked.

“‘I do not think they are the least important things,’ I replied, ‘unless what the queen bee oversees in her hive is of little importance to the bee community.’”

Ischomachus went on to assure me that he had told her, “‘The gods, my wife, seem to have taken great care and used good judgment in putting together the pair we call male and female, to secure the greatest possible advantage for both. Surely the first and foremost purpose of their bond is to perpetuate the different kinds of living creatures through reproduction. Next, for human beings at least, this bond provides sons and daughters to support them in old age.

“‘Again, human beings do not live like cattle in the open air. Their way of life obviously requires homes with roofs. But if they are to have anything to bring under cover, they must have someone to do the work of the fields under the open sky. Plowing fallow ground, sowing seed, planting trees, and pasturing and herding flocks are all outdoor occupations on which the supply of life’s necessities depends.

“‘Once these products of the fields are safely stored under cover, new needs arise. Someone must guard the stores, and someone must do the work that requires shelter. Shelter is needed, for example, to raise infants, to turn the earth’s produce into food, and likewise to make clothing from wool.

“‘Since both indoor and outdoor occupations require further work and attention,’ I added, ‘God provided for this from the beginning by shaping, as it seems to me, woman’s nature for indoor occupations and man’s for outdoor ones. He gave man’s body and mind a greater capacity to endure heat and cold, journeys and military marches. In other words, he placed the outdoor work on his shoulders.

“‘But in creating woman’s body with less capacity for these things,’ I continued, ‘God seems to have assigned her the indoor work. Knowing that he had implanted in woman the care of newborn babies and made it her duty, he gave her a greater share of affection for the newborn child than he gave man. And since he had charged woman with guarding what is brought in from outside, God in his wisdom saw that a fearful spirit was no disadvantage to a guardian. So he gave woman a greater measure of timidity than man. Knowing also that the person responsible for outdoor work would need to defend it against hostile attack, he in turn gave man a greater share of courage.

“‘And seeing that both alike need to give and receive, he gave them memory and attentiveness for their common use. You would find it hard to determine which of the two, male or female, has the greater share of these. In the same way, God gave them self-control for their common use wherever it was needed. He added only that whichever of the two, man or woman, proved better could be rewarded with a greater share of this excellence. And precisely because their natures are not adapted to the same purposes, they have greater need of each other. The married couple becomes more useful to itself as each supplies what the other lacks.

“‘Now, my wife,’ I added, ‘since we understand this and know well what God himself has assigned to each of us, shouldn’t we each try to perform our respective duties as well as possible? Law too gives its consent, law and human custom, by sanctioning the marriage of man and wife. Just as God ordained them to be partners in their children, so the law establishes their common ownership of house and estate. Custom, moreover, proclaims as beautiful those excellences of man and woman with which God gifted them at birth. Thus for a woman to stay peacefully at home rather than roam abroad is no dishonor; but for a man to remain indoors, instead of devoting himself to outdoor pursuits, is discreditable. But if a man does things contrary to the nature God has given him, such disobedience probably does not escape heaven’s notice. He pays the penalty, whether for neglecting his own work or for doing the work appropriate to a woman.’

“I added, ‘If I am not mistaken, that queen bee we spoke of works hard at just such tasks as yours, my wife, assigned to her by God himself.’

“‘And what sort of tasks are these?’ she asked. ‘What does the queen bee have to do that makes her seem so much like me, or me like her in what I have to do?’

“‘Why,’ I answered, ‘she too stays in the hive and does not let the other bees be idle. She sends those whose duties lie outside out to work. She takes note of everything each brings in, receives it, and stores it for the time of need. When the time comes to use it, she distributes a fair share to each. Again, she oversees the construction of the finely woven cells within. She makes sure that warp and weft are worked quickly and beautifully. Under her watchful eye, the young are nursed and raised. But when their days of being raised are over and the young bees are ready for work, she sends them out as colonists with one of the royal offspring to lead them.’

“‘Will I have to do these things, then?’ my wife asked.

“‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘In the same way, you will need to stay indoors and send out to work those servants whose duties lie outside. You will be responsible for overseeing those whose assigned tasks are indoors. You must receive the supplies brought in, set aside a portion for daily use, and store and guard the rest for the future, so that provisions intended for a year are not used up in a month. When wool is brought in, you must see that clothing is made for those who need it. You must also see that the dried grain is made suitable and ready for food.

“‘There is just one of these duties,’ I added, ‘that you may not find entirely pleasant. If anyone in our household falls ill, you will be responsible for seeing to their care and nursing them back to health.’

“‘No,’ she answered, ‘that will be my most pleasant task, if careful nursing can stir their gratitude and leave them friendlier than before.’

“I admired her answer,” Ischomachus continued, “and replied, ‘Do you think, my wife, that it is because the bees see some such signs of thoughtful care in their mistress and leader that she wins their hearts? They are so loyal and affectionate toward her that if she ever leaves her hive, not one of them would think of staying behind. Every one of them must follow her.’

“My wife answered me, ‘I would be very surprised if these duties of a leader you describe did not point to you rather than me. A lot of good my guarding and distributing things indoors would do without your care in seeing that supplies were duly brought in from outside.’

“‘Exactly,’ I answered, ‘and a lot of good my bringing things in would do if there were no one to guard what I brought. Don’t you see,’ I added, ‘how pitiful is the fate of those unfortunate people who, as the story goes, pour water into their sieves forever and labor in vain?’

“‘Pitiful enough, poor souls,’ she answered, ‘if that is what they do.’

“‘But there are other responsibilities and occupations,’ I answered, ‘that properly belong to you, and you will find them pleasant. For instance, you can take a girl who knows nothing about carding wool and make her skilled at it, doubling her usefulness. Or you can take another who knows nothing about housekeeping or service and make her skilled, loyal, and useful, until she is worth her weight in gold. Again, when the occasion arises, you can reward with kindness those whose good behavior makes them a blessing to your house. Or you may punish someone of bad character, if such a person appears.

“‘But the greatest joy of all will be to prove yourself better than I am and make me your faithful follower. You need not fear that as the years pass you will be less honored in your household. Instead, you can trust that, even as your hair turns gray, the better a partner you become to me and the children, and the better a guardian of our home, the more you will be honored throughout the household as mistress, wife, and mother, more dearly valued every day. For,’ I added, ‘it is not excellence of outward form, but the radiance of virtues shining on human life, that brings increase to things beautiful and good.’

“That, Socrates, or something like it, as far as I can trust my memory, was my earliest conversation with her.”

“And did you happen to notice, Ischomachus,” I asked, “whether what you said prompted your wife to take greater care?”

“Yes, certainly,” Ischomachus answered. “I remember how upset she was once, and how deeply she blushed, when I happened to ask her for something that had been brought into the house and she couldn’t give it to me. When I saw her distress, I began to comfort her.

“‘Don’t be discouraged, my wife, because you can’t give me what I ask for. To need something and not have the use of it is certainly poverty. But among forms of need, looking for something I can’t lay my hands on is less painful than never thinking to look because I know perfectly well it doesn’t exist. In any case, you aren’t to blame for this,’ I added. ‘The fault was mine for putting things in your care without assigning them places. If I had done that, you would have known both where to put them and where to find them. After all, my wife, nothing in human life is so useful or so beautiful as order.

“‘For example, what is a chorus? A group of human beings who dance and sing. But suppose everyone performs however they happen to feel like it. Confusion follows, and the performance loses its charm. How different it is when everyone acts and recites together with orderly precision, their movements and voices keeping time and tune. Then those same performers are well worth seeing and hearing.

“‘An army is another example, my wife,’ I said. ‘An army without order is confusion piled on confusion. It offers enemies easy prey and invites attack; to friends, it is a painful sight of wasted strength. It is a mixed mob of donkeys, heavy infantry, baggage carriers, light infantry, cavalry, and wagons. Suppose they are marching. How can they get anywhere? Everyone will get in everyone else’s way: “slow march” alongside “double time,” “quick march” at odds with “stand at ease”; wagons blocking cavalry, donkeys getting tangled up with wagons, baggage carriers jostling heavy infantry. The whole thing is a hopeless jumble. And when it comes to fighting, such an army is hardly ready for battle. Troops forced to retreat before an enemy advance may well trample the heavy infantry held in reserve.

“‘How different an army looks when it is properly organized for battle: a splendid sight to its friends, though a hateful one to its enemies. What supporter could fail to feel a thrill of satisfaction at the sight of closely packed heavy infantry advancing in unbroken order? Who wouldn’t marvel at cavalry squadrons galloping past? And what about the enemy? Won’t his heart sink at the orderly arrangement of the different forces: heavy infantry and cavalry here, light infantry there, archers in another place, and slingers in another, each following their leaders with orderly precision? As they march forward in order, even if they number many tens of thousands, they advance quietly, stepping like one man. Each space opened in front is immediately filled from behind.

“‘Or picture a trireme crowded with sailors. Why does it strike such terror into enemies and give friends such pleasure to see? Isn’t it because the fine ship sails so fast? And why, crowded as they are, don’t the crew get in one another’s way? Simply because, as you can see, they sit in order, bend to their oars in order, recover their strokes in order, board in order, and disembark in order.

“‘Disorder, it seems to me, is exactly like a farmer storing wheat, barley, and beans and peas all together in one place. Later, when he needs barley meal, wheat flour, or something made from beans or peas to accompany his meal, he has to pick through the mixture instead of simply taking each thing from its separate place, ready for use.

“‘So with you too, my wife. If you want to avoid this confusion and know how to manage our goods, so that you can readily lay your hands on whatever you need, or graciously give me anything I ask for, let’s choose and assign a suitable place for each kind of thing. That will be where we put it. We’ll instruct the housekeeper to take things from there and make sure she puts them back there. Then we’ll know whether they are safe. If anything is missing, the empty space will cry out as though asking for it back. The appearance of things alone will show what needs repair. And knowing where each thing is will be like having it put straight into your hand, ready to use without further trouble or discussion.’

“I must tell you, Socrates, about the finest and most precise arrangement of goods and equipment I ever had the good fortune to see. I went sightseeing aboard the great Phoenician merchant ship and saw an immense quantity of goods and gear of every kind, all separately packed and stowed in the smallest possible space.

“I hardly need to remind you,” he said, continuing his account, “how many wooden spars and cables a ship depends on when coming to a mooring or putting out to sea. You know the host of sails and ropes, what they call rigging, that it needs for sailing; the quantity of engines and machinery of every kind it carries against an encounter with a hostile vessel; and the vast supply of weapons carried along with its fighting men. Then all the vessels and utensils needed for the different messes, such as people use at home on land, make up part of the load. Besides all this, the hold is heavily laden with merchandise, the actual cargo that the master carries for trade.

“Well, all these different things I have named were packed into a space little larger than a good-sized dining room. I also noticed how well the different kinds were arranged. Nothing could become tangled with anything else, and there was no need to send people searching. Everything was snugly stowed, yet everything was accessible, avoiding delay if anything was needed immediately.

“Then I found that the pilot’s mate, or ‘the lookout at the bow,’ to give him his proper title, knew the place for everything so well that even off the ship he could tell you where each set of things was stored and how many there were. He could do this as readily as anyone who knows the alphabet could tell you how many letters there are in Socrates and in what order they come.

“I saw this same man,” Ischomachus continued, “examining, at his leisure, everything that could possibly be needed for the ship’s service. His inspection surprised me so much that I asked what he was doing. He answered, ‘I am inspecting, stranger,’ and said, ‘just considering the way the things are lying aboard the ship; in case of accidents, you know, to see if anything is missing, or not lying snug and shipshape. There is no time left, you know,’ he added, ‘when God makes a tempest in the great deep, to set about searching for what you want, or to be giving out anything which is not snug and shipshape in its place. God threatens and chastises sluggards. If only He does not destroy the innocent with the guilty, a man may be content; or if He turns and saves all hands aboard that render very good service, thanks be to Heaven.’

“That was what the pilot’s mate said. With this careful stowage still before my eyes, I went on to press my point:

“‘It would be thoroughly stupid of us, my wife, if people sailing the sea in ships, small things as they are, can find room and a place for everything, yet we could not. They can keep order despite being violently tossed up and down, and find everything they need at hand even when their hearts are failing them with fear. If we, with ample storerooms arranged for different purposes in a house firmly founded on solid ground, were unable to find suitable, accessible places for our various goods, wouldn’t that show a great lack of understanding in both of us?

“‘Well, then, there’s no need to say more about how good it is to have a fixed, orderly arrangement for all our furnishings and equipment, or how easy it is in a house to find the most suitable storage place for each kind of thing. Instead, let me dwell on its beauty. Picture a lovely sight: boots, shoes, sandals, and the rest laid out in orderly rows; cloaks, mantles, and other clothing stored in their own places; blankets and bedding; copper kettles; and all the things used at table!

“‘Indeed, though saying so may raise a mocking smile, perhaps from some would-be wit rather than a serious person, even pots and pans neatly arranged have a beauty like the rhythm of sweet music. And in general, beautiful things always look more beautiful when arranged in order. The separate objects take their places like members of a chorus, and all the space they leave clear gains beauty too. In just the same way, a sacred chorus dancing in a circle in honor of Dionysus is beautiful in itself, while the open space left clear of dancers has a charm of its own.

“‘We can easily test the truth of what I’m saying, my wife,’ I added, ‘by trying it ourselves, without any expense or even much trouble. And you needn’t worry about how hard it will be to find someone clever enough to learn where the different things belong and remember to fetch them and put them back. The different kinds of goods in this whole city must outnumber ours many thousands of times. Yet you need only tell any one of your servants to go and buy this or that at the market and bring it to you, and none of them will hesitate. Everyone knows where to go and where to find each thing.

“‘Why is that?’ I asked. ‘Simply because things are kept in an assigned place. But when you’re looking for a person, even when he is looking for you too, time and again you give up the search in complete despair. And why is that? Simply because you haven’t fixed a place where one of you is to wait for the other.’

“That, as far as I can now recall, was our conversation about arranging our various possessions and putting them to use.”

“Well,” I replied, “did your wife seem willing to listen, Ischomachus, to what you were trying so earnestly to teach her?”

Ischomachus: Certainly. She promised to pay close attention. She was clearly delighted, like someone who has finally found a way out of her difficulties. To prove it, she begged me to waste no time in establishing the orderly arrangement I had described.

“And how did you establish the order she asked for, Ischomachus?” I asked.

Ischomachus: First, I thought I ought to show her what our house could accommodate. You should know, Socrates, that it isn’t decorated with ornaments and elaborate ceilings. The rooms were built expressly to provide the most suitable storage for whatever was intended to go in them. Their very appearance announced what suited each room best. Our own bedroom, for instance, secure in its position like a stronghold, claimed our finest carpets, blankets, and other furnishings. The warm, dry rooms seemed to ask for our grain supplies; the cool cellar for our wine; the bright, well-lit rooms for any work or furnishings that needed light, and so on.

Next, I pointed out the various living rooms, all beautifully equipped to be cool in summer and warm in winter. I showed her that the house faced south, so that it would plainly catch the sunlight in winter and lie in shade in summer. Then I showed her the women’s quarters, separated from the men’s by a bolted door. This prevented anything from being secretly carried outside from within, and prevented our servants from having and raising children without our knowledge and consent. That is no small matter: raising children tends to make good servants still more loyal, but living together only makes bad ones more inventive in wrongdoing.

“When we had gone through all the rooms,” he continued, “we immediately began sorting our furnishings and equipment into groups. We started by gathering everything we use in offering sacrifice. Next, we set apart the wife’s ornaments and holiday clothes, and the husband’s clothes for festivals and war; then the bedding used in the women’s quarters and the bedding used in the men’s; then the women’s shoes and sandals and the men’s.

“One group consisted of weapons and armor; another of tools for carding wool; another of equipment for making bread; another of utensils for preparing accompaniments to meals; another of bathing utensils; another of equipment used with the kneading trough; and another of things used at table. We assigned all these to separate places, distinguishing those for daily, regular use from the rest, which were for festivals and holidays. Next, we selected and set aside the supplies needed for the month’s expenses. Separately, we stored what we calculated would be needed for the year. This makes it less likely that we will fail to notice whether the supplies will last to the end.

“After sorting the different furnishings and equipment into groups, we carried them to their proper places. Then we turned to the various things our servants needed for daily use, such as tools or utensils for making bread, cooking accompaniments to meals, spinning wool, and other work of that kind. We placed these in the care of the people who would use them, first showing them where to store them and instructing them to put them back undamaged when they were finished.

“As for everything else, things we would use only on feast days, when entertaining guests, or on similar occasions at long intervals, we entrusted them all to our housekeeper. We showed her their proper places, counted and recorded the different sets of articles, and explained her duties. She was to give out each thing as needed, remember whom she gave it to, and, when she received it back, return it to the place she had taken it from.

“In appointing our housekeeper, we had made every effort to find someone whose self-control we could rely on, not only in food, wine, and sleep, but also in her relations with men. To satisfy us, she also had to have an unusually good memory. She needed enough foresight to avoid displeasing us by neglecting our interests. Her aim had to be to please us in one way or another and earn our esteem and respect in return.

“We set out to teach and train her to feel affection for us by allowing her to share our happiness on joyful occasions and inviting her to share our sorrow when misfortune struck. We tried to inspire her with zeal for our interests and eagerness to increase our estate by helping her understand its affairs and giving her a share in our successes. We instilled a sense of justice and honesty by honoring the just more highly than the unjust and pointing out that just people live richer lives, with less servitude, than unjust people. This was the position we established for her in our household.

“Now, Socrates,” he added, “after all we had done, I explained to my wife that none of it would be useful unless she personally took responsibility for maintaining order in every part. I taught her that in every well-governed city the citizens don’t merely pass good laws. They also choose guardians of the laws, whose duty as inspectors is to praise those who obey the law and fine those who break it. Accordingly, I told her to consider herself, as mistress of the house, the guardian of the laws for the whole household. Whenever she thought fit, she was to examine and review its possessions, just as a garrison commander musters and reviews his men. She was to inspect everything and see that it was in good condition, just as the Senate examines the condition of the Knights and their horses. Like a queen, she was to use her authority to give praise and honor to those who deserved it, and blame and punishment to anyone who needed them.

“My lessons didn’t end there,” he added. “I taught her not to be annoyed if I seemed to be requiring more effort from her than from any of our servants in caring for our possessions. I pointed out that the servants’ share in their master’s goods extends only to fetching and carrying them, tending them, and keeping them safe. They have no right to use even one of them unless the master permits it. But the master may use everything as he thinks best. So I drew this conclusion: whoever gains most from preserving the property, or loses most from its destruction, is surely the one who ought to give it the most attention.”

“Well, then, Ischomachus,” I asked, “how did it go? Did your wife seem at all willing to listen to what you told her?”

“Why, Socrates,” he answered, “she immediately told me I was mistaken if I thought that teaching her to look after our property was imposing a painful task on her. It might have been painful, she added, if I had told her to neglect her own concerns! But being required to fulfill her duty of caring for her own household happiness was easy.

“After all, that seems only natural,” he added. “Just as any good woman finds it easier to care for her own children than to neglect them, I can readily believe that a good woman would find it more pleasant to care for possessions than to neglect them, when their very charm lies in their being her own.”

“So,” Socrates continued, “when I heard that his wife had answered this way, I exclaimed, ‘By Hera, Ischomachus, from your description the lady has a courageous, masculine mind.’

“Ischomachus replied, ‘Yes, Socrates, and I would like to tell you some other examples of her generous spirit, shown in how readily she listened to me and carried out my wishes.’

“‘What sort of examples?’ I answered. ‘Please tell me. I would much rather learn about a living woman’s virtues than have Zeuxis show me the portrait of the most beautiful woman he has painted.’

“Then Ischomachus gave the following account:

“‘I must tell you, Socrates, that one day I noticed she had put on a thick coating of white lead, no doubt to enhance her skin’s natural whiteness. She had generously rouged herself with alkanet, doubtless to give her cheeks more color than they really had. She was wearing high-heeled shoes to make herself seem taller than she naturally was.

“‘So I asked her, “Tell me, my wife, would you find me a less lovable partner in our wealth if I showed you exactly where our fortune stands, without boasting of possessions we don’t have or concealing what we do have? Or would you prefer me to try to deceive you with exaggerations, showing you counterfeit money or fake necklaces, or flaunting purple clothes that will lose their color while claiming they are genuine?”

“‘She interrupted me at once. “Stop, stop!” she said. “Don’t talk like that. Heaven forbid that you should ever be like that. I couldn’t love you with my whole heart if you really were that sort of man.”

“‘“And haven’t we come together in an even closer partnership,” I continued, “with each of us sharing in the other’s body?”

“‘“That, at any rate, is what people say,” she answered.

“‘“Then in this bodily relationship,” I went on, “would you find me more lovable or less if I came to you having made every effort to keep my body healthy and strong, and so give it a good complexion? Or would you rather I first anointed myself with pigments, smeared patches of ‘true flesh color’ around my eyes, and then sought your embrace? I would be like a cheating husband offering his wife vermilion paste to see and touch instead of his own flesh.”

“‘“Frankly,” she answered, “I wouldn’t prefer touching paste to touching the real you. I would rather see your own ‘true flesh color’ than any pigment by that name. I would rather look into your eyes and see them radiant with health than treated with any wash or colored with any ointment.”

“‘“Then believe the same of me, my wife,” I continued. “Believe that I too take no more pleasure in white coating or alkanet than in your own natural color. Just as the gods have made horses delight in horses, cattle in cattle, and sheep in other sheep, so human beings find the pure, undefiled human body sweetest. As for these deceptions, they may fool outsiders without being detected, but people who live closely together must eventually be caught if they try to deceive one another. They are caught getting out of bed before they have made themselves up; a drop of sweat gives them away; tears are a test they cannot pass; and the bath reveals them as they truly are.”’

“‘What answer did she make to what you said, for Heaven’s sake?’ I asked.

“‘What else could she do?’ her husband replied. ‘From then on, she never once did anything of the kind. Instead, she has tried to display her body’s natural beauty in its purity. She did, however, ask whether I could advise her how to become truly beautiful to look at, rather than merely seeming so.

“‘This was the advice I gave her, Socrates: she should not sit all day like a slave. Instead, with Heaven’s help, she should take her place as a true mistress of the house, standing at the loom. Where she knew more, she should confidently help by teaching; where her knowledge fell short, she should be just as willing to learn. I advised her to supervise the woman baking bread, stand beside the housekeeper as she measured out supplies, and make inspection rounds to see whether everything was in proper order. This seemed to me a way to combine walking exercise with supervision.

“‘As excellent physical exercise, I recommended kneading dough, rolling out pastry, shaking out blankets, and making beds. I added that if she trained herself through exercise of this kind, she would enjoy her food, become vigorous and healthy, and truly have a lovelier complexion. The very appearance of the wife, the mistress of the house, has an attractive charm when seen in comparison with her attendants, since she is both more beautiful and more becomingly dressed. Her charm is all the greater because her actions are freely given favors rather than compulsory services. But the ordinary grand lady, seated in solemn state, seems to invite comparison with painted imitations of women.

“‘And I want you to know, Socrates, that even today my wife lives as simply as I taught her then and have now described to you.’”

Our conversation resumed like this. I thanked Ischomachus for telling me about his wife’s occupations. “Perhaps that is enough on that subject for a start,” I said. “What you’ve told me does the greatest credit to both wife and husband. But would you now describe your own work and business? You’ll have the pleasure of explaining how you earned your reputation. And once I’ve heard the whole account of a fine and good man’s work, I’ll be deeply grateful, provided my wits are up to understanding it.”

“Indeed,” Ischomachus replied, “I’ll be delighted to tell you about my daily occupations. In return, I ask you to correct me wherever you find a fault in my conduct.”

“The idea of my correcting you!” I said. “How could I reasonably hope to correct you, the perfect model of a fine and good man? I’m just an empty chatterer, a measurer of the air, who also has to bear that most senseless accusation of being poor. I assure you, Ischomachus, that accusation would have driven me to utter despair if I hadn’t happened the other day to come across the horse belonging to Nicias, the foreigner. I saw a crowd gathered around, staring, and listened to someone telling a story about the animal. Then I boldly approached the groom and asked him, ‘Has the horse much wealth?’ The fellow looked at me as though the question showed I wasn’t quite sane, and answered, ‘How can a horse have wealth?’

“That gave me the courage to lift my eyes from the ground. I had learned that even a poor, penniless horse is allowed to be a noble animal, provided nature has given him a good spirit. So if even I am allowed to be a good man, please tell me about all your work, from beginning to end. I promise to listen as well as I can, try to understand, and imitate you as far as I’m able, starting tomorrow. Tomorrow is a good day to begin a virtuous life, isn’t it?”

“You’re joking, Socrates,” Ischomachus replied. “Still, I’ll tell you about the habits and pursuits by which I try to make my way through life. If I’ve understood life’s lesson correctly, it has taught me this: unless a man first discovers what he needs to do and seriously works out how to do it well, the gods have put prosperity beyond his reach. And even to the wise and diligent, they give or withhold good fortune as they think best. Since that is my belief, I begin by serving the gods. I try to conduct myself so that, in answer to my prayers, I may receive the favor of health and bodily strength, honor in my own city, goodwill among my friends, safety and renown in war, and an increase in wealth earned without disgrace.”

When I heard this, I replied, “Are you really so intent on growing rich, Ischomachus? Do you accumulate wealth just to give yourself endless trouble managing it?”

“Certainly,” Ischomachus replied, “and I must take the greatest care over the things you mention. I find it so sweet, Socrates, to honor God lavishly, to help my friends when they need it, and, as far as I can, to ensure that my city lacks none of the adornments wealth can provide.”

“The work you describe is fine indeed,” I answered, “and anyone who attempts it must be a capable man. How could it be otherwise? So many people need help from others merely to stay alive, and so many are satisfied if they can earn enough to meet their needs. What, then, should we think of those who can not only manage their own estates but also produce enough surplus to adorn their city and ease their friends’ burdens? We may well regard them as men of substance and ability.

“But wait,” I added. “Most of us can sing the praises of such heroes. What I want to hear from you, Ischomachus, in the order you gave, is first how you take care to preserve your health and bodily strength. Next, how do you manage to escape the dangers of war with your honor intact? After that, I’ll be very glad to hear from your own lips how you make money.”

“Yes,” he answered, “and in fact, Socrates, unless I’m mistaken, all these things are closely connected and depend on one another. If a man has a good meal to eat, he need only work it off with properly directed effort. In the process, I believe, his health will improve and his strength increase. If he practices the arts of war, he’ll preserve his life with honor on the day of battle. He need only direct his care properly and close his ears to temptations toward weakness and ease, and his estate will surely grow.”

“I follow you so far, Ischomachus,” I answered. “You’re telling me that by working to the full extent of his strength, taking care, practicing, and training, a man may hope to secure life’s blessings more fully. That’s how I understand you. But now I’d like to hear some details. What particular work do you set yourself to secure good health and strength? How exactly do you practice the arts of war? What efforts do you make to produce a surplus that lets you help your friends and benefit the state?”

“Well,” Ischomachus replied, “I usually get out of bed early, while I can still expect to find at home any friend I may want to see. Then, if I have something to do in town, I set out to handle the business and make that my walk. If there’s no business in town, my servant boy takes my horse ahead to the farm. I follow on foot and make the country road my walking ground. That serves my purpose just as well, Socrates, or perhaps better than walking up and down the colonnade.

“When I reach the farm, some of my men may be planting trees, breaking up fallow ground, sowing, or bringing in the crops. I inspect their different tasks, paying attention to every detail, and wherever I can improve the current method, I make a change. After that I generally mount my horse and take a canter. I put him through movements as close as possible to those he’ll inevitably have to make in war. In other words, I avoid neither steep slopes nor sharp inclines, neither trenches nor channels. All the while I take the greatest care not to lame my horse while exercising him.

“When that’s over, the boy lets the horse roll and leads him home, bringing along whatever we happen to need from the country in town. Meanwhile I head home myself, partly walking and partly running. Once home, I take a bath and rub myself down. Then I eat breakfast, a meal that leaves me neither hungry nor stuffed and will sustain me through the day.”

“By Hera, Ischomachus,” I replied, “I can’t tell you how much I like what you do. How neatly you’ve packed everything together for use: ways to stay healthy, means of building strength, exercises for war, and efforts to increase your wealth! I admire it at every turn. You yourself are living proof that you pursue each of these things properly. Our eyes can see your heaven-sent health and sturdy physique, while our ears have heard your reputation as a first-rate horseman and one of the wealthiest men.”

Ischomachus: Yes, Socrates, that’s how I conduct myself, and my reward is slander from half the world. You probably thought I was going to end that sentence differently and say that crowds of people have given me the enviable title of “fine and good.”

“I was just about to ask, Ischomachus,” I answered, “whether you also take care to acquire skill in argument, in the thrusts and parries of debate, should you ever need it.”

Ischomachus: Doesn’t it strike you, Socrates, that I’m constantly practicing that very skill? At one moment I’m defending myself, arguing that I do good to many people as far as I can and harm no one. At another, you must admit, I’m acting as prosecutor, accusing people I recognize as wrongdoers, those good-for-nothing fellows who generally commit offenses in private life, or sometimes against the state.

“But please explain one more thing, Ischomachus,” I answered. “Do you put your defenses and accusations into formal speeches?”

Ischomachus: “Formal speeches,” you say, Socrates? The fact is, I’m always practicing speaking, like this. Someone in my household has an accusation to bring against another, or a defense to offer. I have to listen, examine the case, and try to sift out the truth. Or I have to blame or praise someone in front of my friends. Or I must settle a dispute between people close to me and try to impress on them that it is in their own interest to be friends rather than enemies. . . . We appear in court to help a general. We’re called on to accuse someone, defend another who has been unjustly charged, or prosecute a third who has received an honor he doesn’t deserve. In our discussions, there’s often a course of action we strongly favor, so naturally we praise it. Or there’s another we disapprove of, and just as naturally we point out its faults.

He paused, then added, “Things have now reached the point, Socrates, where several times I’ve had to stand trial and hear a judgment formally pronounced on what I must pay or how I must make amends.”

“And whose court passes the sentence?” I asked. “I didn’t catch that point.”

“Whose but my own wife’s?” he answered.

“And how do you argue your own case?” I asked.

“Not badly,” he answered, “when truth and my interests agree. But when they conflict, Socrates, I have no skill at making the worse argument appear the better.”

“Perhaps you have no skill, Ischomachus,” I said, “at making black appear white, or falsehood truth.”

“But perhaps,” I continued after a moment, “I’m keeping you from leaving, Ischomachus, when you’ve wanted to go for some time.”

“Not at all, Socrates,” he answered. “I wouldn’t think of leaving until the gathering in the marketplace has dispersed.”

“Of course, of course,” I answered. “Naturally, you take the greatest care not to lose the title they’ve given you, ‘honest gentleman.’ I expect fifty things at home need your attention right now. But you agreed to meet your friends from abroad, and rather than let them down, you keep waiting.”

Ischomachus: Let me correct you on that point, Socrates. None of the things you mention will be neglected, since I have stewards and overseers on the farms.

Socrates: And what is your method when you need an overseer? Do you search until you find someone with a natural talent for estate management and then try to buy him? I’m sure that’s what happens when you want a carpenter: first you find someone with a talent for carpentry, and then you do everything you can to acquire him. Or do you train your overseers yourself?

Ischomachus: Certainly the latter, Socrates. As you say, I try to train them myself, and with good reason. The man who is to take my place properly and manage my affairs while I’m away, my “other self,” needs only to have my knowledge. And if I’m fit to run my own business, I assume I should be able to pass that knowledge on to someone else.

Socrates: Then the first thing a man needs, if he is to take your place properly while you’re away, is goodwill toward you and yours. Without goodwill, what use would any knowledge your overseer possesses be?

Ischomachus: None, Socrates. And I can tell you that goodwill toward me and mine is precisely what I first try to instill.

Socrates: And in the name of all that’s holy, how do you take someone you’ve chosen and teach him goodwill toward yourself and yours?

Ischomachus: By treating him kindly, of course, whenever the gods grant us an abundance of good things.

Socrates: If I understand you correctly, you mean that people who share in your good things become well disposed toward you and try to do you some good?

Ischomachus: Yes. Of all the means of creating goodwill, I find this the best.

Socrates: Well, suppose the man is well disposed toward you. Does that make him fit to be your overseer, Ischomachus? You can’t have failed to notice that although people generally wish themselves well, many don’t put in the attention needed to secure the good things they want for themselves.

Ischomachus: Yes, Socrates, but believe me, when I look to appoint such men as overseers, I also teach them care and diligence.

Socrates: Now, in Heaven’s name, how can that be? I always thought these virtues were beyond any teacher’s power to teach.

Ischomachus: You’re right this far: it isn’t possible to teach these qualities to every person, one after another, as easily as counting off your fingers.

Socrates: Then what sort of people can be taught? Would you mind identifying them a little more clearly?

Ischomachus: Well, to begin with, you would have some difficulty making people diligent if they lack self-control. I mean self-control over wine, since drunkenness makes people forget everything that needs doing.

Socrates: Are people who lack self-control in that respect the only ones incapable of care and diligence? Or are there others in the same position?

Ischomachus: Certainly there are people who have no control over their sleeping. A lazy man with his eyes shut can neither do what’s right himself nor see that others do it.

Socrates: Well, then, are these the only people who can’t be taught attentiveness, or are there others in the same condition?

Ischomachus: Surely we must include the man enslaved by romantic passion. The lovesick man can’t be taught to pay attention to anything but one object. It’s no easy task, I think, to find a hope or occupation sweeter to him than what already occupies him: his concern for his beloved. Nor, when it’s time for action, will it be easy to devise a punishment worse than the one he already suffers in being separated from the object of his passion. So I’m in no hurry to put someone like that in charge of my affairs. I regard even the attempt as futile.

Socrates: And what about people addicted to another passion, the love of gain? Are they also incapable of being trained to pay attention to the land and farm work?

Ischomachus: On the contrary, no one is easier to train or more willing to take care over these matters. You only need to show them that the work is profitable, and you’ve aroused their interest.

Socrates: But what about ordinary people? Suppose they have enough self-control to do as you ask and a healthy appetite for gain. How do you teach them attentiveness? How do you train them to become as diligent as you want?

Ischomachus: By a simple method, Socrates. When I see a man taking care over his work, I praise him and do my best to honor him. When I see a man neglecting his duties, I don’t spare him. I try in every way, by word and deed, to make him feel the sting.

Socrates: Now, Ischomachus, please let us turn from the people being trained in attentiveness, whom we’ve been discussing so far, to a point about the training itself. Can a man who is careless himself make others attentive?

“No more than a man who knows no music can make others musical,” he answered. “If the teacher sets a bad example, the pupil can hardly learn to do the thing properly. And if the master’s conduct encourages slackness, how difficult it will be for his followers to become attentive! To put it briefly, ‘like master, like man.’ I don’t think I’ve ever known or heard of a bad master blessed with good servants. I have certainly seen the reverse, a good master with bad servants. But they suffered for it, not he.

“No, anyone who wants to create a spirit of attentiveness in others must himself know how to supervise the work: how to test, examine, and scrutinize. He must be ready to repay a service well performed and must not hesitate to impose the deserved punishment on those who neglect their duties.

“Indeed,” he added, “the foreigner’s answer to the king seems appropriate here. You know the story. The king had come across a good horse but wanted to put flesh on him without delay. So he asked someone reputed to know about horses, ‘What will give him flesh most quickly?’ The man answered, ‘The master’s eye.’ In the same way, Socrates, I think there’s nothing like ‘the master’s eye’ to bring out hidden abilities and put them to fine and good use.”

“But now,” I ventured, “suppose you’ve firmly impressed on someone the need to take care in carrying out your wishes. Does that make him fit to be your overseer at once? Or must he learn something else to perform the job effectively?”

“Certainly he must,” he answered. “He still has to learn the details: what he must do, and when and how to do it. Otherwise, if he doesn’t know these things, this overseer in the abstract may be no more useful than a doctor who pays the closest attention to a sick man, visiting early and late, but has no idea what will relieve his patient’s pain.”

Socrates: But suppose he has learned the whole business routine. Will he need anything else, or have we at last found your complete overseer?

Ischomachus: At the very least, I think, he must learn to direct his fellow workers.

“What!” I exclaimed. “You mean you train your overseers that far? You actually make them capable of ruling?”

“At least I try to,” he replied.

“And how, in Heaven’s name,” I asked, “do you manage to teach someone else the skill of governing human beings?”

Ischomachus: I have a very simple method, Socrates. So simple, I expect, that you’ll laugh at me.

Socrates: I insist, this is hardly a laughing matter. A man who can make someone else capable of ruling can clearly teach him to be a master. And if he can make him a master, he can make him something grander still, a kingly man. So I insist again: a man with that kind of creative power deserves the highest praise, far from any ridicule.

“This is how I reason, Socrates,” he answered. “The lower animals are taught obedience chiefly in two ways. They are punished when they try to disobey, and they receive some kindness when they willingly comply. That, at least, is the principle used in training young horses. The animal obeys its trainer, and something sweet is sure to follow. Or it disobeys, and instead of something sweet, it gets a heap of trouble. This goes on until it finally obeys the trainer’s every wish.

“Or take another example. Young dogs, however much below humans in thought and language, can still be taught to run errands, turn somersaults, and do many other clever things by exactly the same training principle. Whenever the animal obeys, it gets something it wants, and whenever it misbehaves, it gets a whipping.

“But when we come to human beings, we have a creature still more open to persuasion through appeals to reason. You need only make it clear to a man that it is in his interest to obey. Or if they happen to be slaves, the less noble method of training wild animals with bait will serve to teach obedience. Just satisfy their appetite for food, and you’ll get a great deal out of them. But ambitious, competitive people are spurred on by praise. Some people hunger for praise as much as others crave food and drink.

“My practice, then, is to teach the men I want to appoint as overseers the various methods I’ve found successful in gaining obedience from other people. For example, there are clothes, shoes, and other things I must provide for my workers. I make sure these are not all of the same quality. Some are better and some less good. My aim is to have these useful articles vary according to the wearer’s service. The worse worker receives the worse things, while the better worker receives the better things as a mark of honor.

“For I ask you, Socrates, how can the good workers avoid discouragement when they alone do the work, yet those villains who will neither work nor face danger when the occasion calls are to receive the same reward? Just as I can’t bring myself to consider the better sort deserving of no more honor than the worse, I praise my overseers when I know they’ve distributed the best things among the most deserving. And if I see someone being favored because of flattery or some equally unworthy means, I don’t let it pass. I reprimand my overseer sharply and so teach him that such conduct isn’t even in his own interest.”

Socrates: Well then, Ischomachus, suppose the man is now so capable of command that he can compel obedience. Let me ask again: is he now a fully qualified estate manager? Or does he still lack something, even with all the qualifications you have named?

Certainly (Ischomachus replied). One thing is still required: he must keep his hands off his master’s property and goods. He must not steal. Think of it: this is the very person through whose hands the crops and produce pass. If he has the audacity to make away with them, perhaps he won’t even leave enough to cover the farm’s operating expenses! What use would there be in farming the land with an overseer like that?

What! (I exclaimed). Can I believe my ears? You actually undertake to teach them virtue? Justice itself?

Ischomachus: Certainly I do. But that doesn’t mean I find them all equally willing to listen to my teaching. Here is what I do. I take a page from the laws of Draco, then another from the laws of Solon, and try to set my household on the path of honesty. Indeed, unless I’m mistaken (he continued), both lawmakers framed many of their laws expressly to teach this branch of justice. It is written, “Let a man be punished for a deed of theft”; “Let whoever is detected in the act be bound and thrown in prison”; “If he offers violence, let him be put to death.” Clearly, the lawmakers intended these provisions to make the sordid love of gain unprofitable for the unjust.

So I select some of their precepts and supplement them, where applicable, with others from the royal code. In this way I do my best to make the members of my household just in handling whatever passes through their hands. Notice this difference: the laws I mentioned first impose penalties and only deter wrongdoers. The royal code goes further: it both punishes the wrongdoer and rewards the righteous and just person. As a result, many a man who sees the just becoming wealthier than the unjust remains faithful to virtue, even though he harbors some covetous desires. Refraining from dishonest dealings becomes ingrained in him.

Those members of my household whom I find persistently bent on wrongdoing despite kind treatment (he continued), I eventually regard as hopeless cases. As incurable seekers of their own gain, I cut off all contact with them. Others plainly have aspirations that lift them above the earth. They are eager to be considered just, not merely for the profit justice brings, but from a passionate desire to deserve my praise. These I eventually treat as freeborn men. I enrich them with wealth and with honor, as their noble manliness deserves. For if there is one respect, Socrates, in which the man who thirsts for honor differs from the man who thirsts for gain, I think it is his willingness to work hard, face danger, and refrain from shameful profits solely for honor and a good reputation.

Socrates: Now suppose, Ischomachus, that you have instilled in someone a desire for your welfare, inspiring him with more than a passive interest: a deep concern to help you prosper. You have also taught him the methods needed to give the work of the farm some measure of success, and made him capable of command. To crown all your efforts, this trustworthy man takes at least as much pleasure as you might yourself in laying the earth’s produce at your feet, richly harvested in its proper season. I hardly need to ask whether he lacks anything else. Clearly, an overseer like that would be worth his weight in gold. But now, Ischomachus, I don’t want you to pass over a subject we treated rather lightly in our earlier discussion.

What subject was that? (he asked).

Socrates: Unless I’m mistaken, you said it was most important to learn how to carry out the different farming operations. You added that unless a man knows what he has to do and how to do it, all the care and diligence in the world will do him no good.

Here he interrupted me: So now you are telling me to teach you the actual art of working the land, Socrates?

Yes (I replied). For it now seems that this art makes its knowledgeable, skilled practitioner wealthy, while the unskilled man must live in poverty, however hard he works.

Ischomachus: Then you will now hear, Socrates, about the generous nature of this humane art. Isn’t there something noble about it? Supremely useful, delightful to practice, rich in beauty, and pleasing to gods and men alike, farming can also fairly claim to be the easiest of all the arts to learn. Noble, I call it! That, at least, is the word we use for animals that are beautiful, large, and useful, and also gentle toward the human race.

Let me explain, Ischomachus (I interrupted). Up to a point, I followed everything you said. I understand your account of how an estate manager must be taught. I follow your descriptions of how you make him well disposed toward you, and how you make him diligent, capable of command, and honest. But then you said that to apply his diligence properly to farming, the diligent farmer must also learn the different things he has to do. He must learn not only what to do, but how and when to do it. Those are the subjects I think our discussion has treated rather lightly so far.

Let me make my meaning clearer with an example. Suppose you told me that to write down a speech or read a written statement, a man must know his letters. Unless I were stone deaf, I would of course understand that knowing my letters was important for a particular purpose. But simply recognizing that fact would not, I’m afraid, give me any actual knowledge of my letters. In the same way, I’m readily persuaded that to direct my efforts properly in farming, I must know the art of farming. But recognizing that fact does nothing at all to teach me how to farm. If I decided to begin farming straightaway, I imagine I would soon resemble that doctor of yours, making his rounds and visiting patients without knowing what to prescribe or how to relieve their suffering. To save me from a similar predicament, please teach me the actual work and processes of farming.

Ischomachus: But really, Socrates, farming is unlike the other arts. In those, the learner must be almost crushed under a load of study before his apprentice hands can produce work worth enough merely to support him. Farming, I tell you, is neither so difficult to learn nor so uncooperative. Watch the workers in the fields and listen to what they say, and you will soon know enough to teach someone else, if you feel like it. I imagine, Socrates (he added), that you already know a great deal about the subject without realizing it.

The fact is that other craftspeople, practitioners of the arts in general, are all inclined to conceal the most important features of their particular arts. Farming is different. The most skillful planter takes the greatest pleasure in being watched, and so does the most skillful sower. Ask any question you like about work so beautifully done, and the person doing it will not try to conceal a single detail. To such heights of nobility, Socrates (he added), does farming, like a beautiful mistress, seem to shape the souls and characters of those who practice it.

At any rate, the introduction to your speech is beautiful (I answered), but it hardly distracts your listener from the earlier question. You say it is so easy to learn? Then you should be all the more willing to explain its details to me. There is no shame in your teaching these easy things. But for me to remain ignorant of them, especially if they are highly useful to the learner, would be worse than shameful: a scandal.

Ischomachus: First, Socrates, I want to show you that what people call “the intricate variety in husbandry” presents no difficulty. I am borrowing a phrase from people who, however precisely they discuss the art in theory, have barely any practical experience of working the land. They assert that “he who would rightly till the soil must first be made acquainted with the nature of the earth.”

Surely they are right about that (I replied). A man who doesn’t know what the soil can bear can hardly know, I imagine, what to plant or sow.

But he only has to look at his neighbor’s land (he answered), at its crops and trees, to learn what the soil can bear and what it cannot. Once he has discovered that, it is a poor business to fight against heaven. He certainly won’t meet life’s needs more fully by sowing and planting whatever he wants than by planting and sowing what the earth herself delights to bear and nourish at her breast.

Or suppose, as may well happen, that the land cannot show its natural capabilities because its occupants are idle. Often a neighboring district can give you a more accurate idea than you could ever get from your neighbor’s own words. Even land lying waste and barren may still reveal its nature. Soil that produces beautiful wild fruits can, with careful tending, be made to yield equally beautiful cultivated fruits. In this way, even someone with the barest knowledge of farming can recognize the nature of the soil.

Thank you, Ischomachus (I said). My courage needs no more encouragement on that point. I now feel bold enough to believe that no one need avoid farming for fear of being unable to recognize the nature of the soil. In fact, I now remember something about fishermen. As they go about their business at sea, these brave mariners don’t creep lazily along or stop to inspect the view. They speed past the farmsteads, which seem to fly by. Yet they need only glance at the crops on shore to pronounce confidently on whether the soil itself is good or bad, criticizing one patch and praising another. And I notice that their opinions on the quality of the soil usually agree with the skilled farmer’s judgment.

Ischomachus: Where should I begin, then, Socrates, to refresh your memory of farming? Explaining its processes to you means telling you a hundred details you already know perfectly well.

Socrates: The first thing I would like to learn, Ischomachus, if only because it is a fitting question for a philosopher, is how to go about working the soil if I wanted to get the largest crops of wheat and barley.

Ischomachus: Good! You know that fallow land must be broken up to prepare it for sowing?

Socrates: Yes, I know that.

Ischomachus: Well then, suppose we begin plowing our land in winter?

Socrates: That wouldn’t do. There would be too much mud.

Ischomachus: What would you say to summer, then?

Socrates: In summer the soil will be too hard for a plow and a pair of oxen to break up.

Ischomachus: It seems, then, that spring is the season to begin this work. What do you say?

Socrates: I would expect soil broken up at that time of year to crumble best.

Ischomachus: Yes, and grasses turned under at that season, Socrates, already supply manure to the soil. Since they haven’t yet shed their seed, they cannot sprout again. I assume you also recognize this: to make good land, a fallow field must be clear of undergrowth and weeds, and baked as thoroughly as possible by exposure to the sun.

Socrates: Yes, I would think that is just the right condition for it.

Ischomachus: And to bring it into that condition, can you suggest any better method than turning the soil over as often as possible in summer?

Socrates: On the contrary, I know perfectly well that nothing is better for either purpose than plowing the soil with a pair of oxen at midday in midsummer. Whether you want to bring weeds and quackgrass to the surface to wither in the scorching heat, or expose the earth itself to the sun’s baking rays, that is the best method.

Ischomachus: And if a crew of men sets to work breaking up and preparing this fallow land with mattocks, their task is plainly to separate the quackgrass from the soil and keep them apart?

Socrates: Exactly! To leave the quackgrass on the surface to wither, and turn up the soil so that the unbaked earth can have its turn baking.

You see, Socrates (he continued), we both hold the same opinion about fallow land.

So it seems (I said). The same opinion.

Ischomachus: But what is your opinion about sowing? Can you suggest a better time than the one recognized as best by the long experience of past generations together with that of people living now? As soon as autumn arrives, people everywhere turn their faces toward high heaven with a longing gaze. “When will God moisten the earth,” they ask, “and let men sow their seed?”

Yes, Ischomachus (I answered). Everyone must recognize the rule, “Do not sow on dry soil,” if it can be avoided. No doubt they learn wisdom from the heavy losses that people who sow before God gives the signal have to struggle with.

Ischomachus: Then you and I and everyone else seem to agree on these matters?

Socrates: Yes. When God himself is the teacher, agreement tends to follow. Everyone agrees, for instance, that it is better to wear thick clothes in winter, if they can get them. We all agree on lighting fires, provided we have logs to burn.

Yet even within this sowing season (he answered), Socrates, we immediately find the widest disagreement on one point: whether early, late, or middle sowing is best.

Socrates: Exactly. God doesn’t guide the year in one fixed pattern, either. He varies it, making it best suited now to early sowing, now to middle sowing, and now to late sowing.

Ischomachus: But what is your opinion, Socrates? Whether a man has much to sow or little, would it be better for him to choose just one part of the sowing season and make use of that alone? Or would you have him begin at the earliest time and keep sowing right through to the latest?

I answered in turn: I would think it best, Ischomachus, to use the whole sowing season without favoring one part. It is far better to have enough grain and meal at any time, year after year, than to have a surplus at first and perhaps a shortage afterward.

Ischomachus: Then on this point too, Socrates, you agree with me, the pupil with the teacher. What’s more, the pupil was the first to express it.

So far, so good! (I answered). Is there some subtle art to scattering the seed?

Ischomachus: By all means, let’s investigate that. I assume you know yourself that the seed must be scattered by hand?

Socrates: Yes, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

Ischomachus: But when it comes to scattering it, some people can spread it evenly and others cannot.

Socrates: Doesn’t it come down to this: the hand needs practice, like a harp player’s fingers, to obey the will?

Ischomachus: Exactly. But now suppose the soil is light in one part and heavy in another?

Socrates: I don’t follow. By “light,” do you mean weak, and by “heavy,” strong?

Ischomachus: Yes, that is what I mean. My question is this: would you give both kinds of soil an equal share of seed? Or which would you give more?

Socrates: The stronger the wine, the more water we should add, I believe. And the stronger the man, the heavier the load we put on his back to carry. Even if he has people to support rather than loads to carry, my principle still holds: the broader and stronger the great man’s shoulders, the more mouths I would assign him to feed. But perhaps weak soil, like a lean packhorse, grows stronger the more grain you pour into it. I’m looking to you to teach me that.

He laughed and answered: Once again, you choose to make a joke. But you can be sure of one thing, Socrates. After putting seed into the ground, wait until the earth is being richly fed from heaven and the fresh green shoots first spring from the hidden seed. Then turn them back into the soil. Those sprouts will feed the earth, adding strength to the soil from within, just as manure does. But if you let the earth feed the grain sown in it and produce crops in an endless round, the weakened soil will eventually struggle to yield large grain crops, just as a weak sow can hardly raise a large litter of fat pigs.

Socrates: I understand you to mean, Ischomachus, that weaker soil must receive less seed?

Ischomachus: Most certainly. And I understand that you agree, Socrates, when you say you believe that weaker shoulders should bear lighter burdens.

Socrates: But those workers with their hoes, Ischomachus: tell me why you let them loose on the grain.

Ischomachus: You know, I suppose, that there are heavy rains in winter?

Socrates: Certainly I do.

Ischomachus: Then we can suppose that these floods bury some of the grain under a layer of mud and silt, while elsewhere the torrent leaves its roots completely bare. I take it that this same drenching often makes weeds spring up among the grain and choke it.

Socrates: Yes, all those troubles are likely enough.

Ischomachus: Don’t you agree that the grainfields badly need relief at such a time?

Socrates: Certainly.

Ischomachus: Then what do you think should be done? How can we help the afflicted plants lying covered in mud?

Socrates: What better way than lifting and loosening the soil?

Ischomachus: Yes! And how can we help the others, lying exposed and defenseless down to their roots?

Socrates: Perhaps by mounding fresh earth around them.

Ischomachus: And what if weeds spring up among the grain and choke it? Or if they rob it, ruthlessly devouring its proper nourishment, like useless drones robbing the working bees of honey, stealing the good food they have labored to make and store? What must we do?

Socrates: Really, there is nothing to do but cut out the harmful weeds, just as drones are cleared out of the hive.

Ischomachus: Then you agree there is some reason for sending in these crews with their hoes?

Socrates: Absolutely. And now I’m thinking, Ischomachus, what a splendid thing it is to introduce a simile or some other figure of speech at just the right moment. No sooner had you mentioned “drones” than I was filled with rage against those miserable weeds, far more than when you merely spoke of weeds and undergrowth.

“But I won’t interrupt you any further,” I continued. “After sowing, we naturally hope to come to reaping. So if you have anything to say about that too, please go on teaching me.”

Ischomachus: Certainly, unless it turns out that on this subject too you already know as much as your teacher. To begin, you know that grain needs cutting?

Socrates: Yes, I know that much, at least.

Ischomachus: Then here is the next question. When cutting grain, which way would you choose to face? In the direction the wind is blowing, or into the wind?

Socrates: I certainly wouldn’t face into the wind. I imagine your eyes and hands would suffer if you stood reaping with husks and bits of straw blowing straight at you.

Ischomachus: And should you just cut off the heads at the top, or reap close to the ground?

“If the stalks were short,” I answered, “I would cut close to the ground to get enough straw to be useful. But if the stalks were tall, I think you would do well to cut them halfway down. That would save the thresher and the winnower some extra work, which they could both do without. The stalks left standing in the field, when burned down, as I assume they will be, would benefit the soil. And if added to the manure, they would increase its bulk.”

Ischomachus: There, Socrates, you’ve been caught “in the very act”! You know as much about reaping as I do.

“It looks that way,” I replied. “But I would like to find out whether I also have a sound knowledge of threshing.”

Ischomachus: Well, I suppose you know this much: grain is threshed by beasts of burden?

Socrates: Yes, I know that much. And “beasts of burden” is a general term that includes oxen, horses, mules, and so on.

Ischomachus: Do you think these animals know anything more than how to tread on the grain when driven with a goad?

Socrates: What more could they know, being beasts of burden?

Ischomachus: Then someone must make sure the animals tread only on what still needs threshing, and that the threshing itself is done evenly. Whose job do you think that is, Socrates?

Socrates: Clearly, it belongs to the threshers in charge. They must turn the sheaves and keep pushing the untrodden grain under the animals’ feet. That way, of course, they keep the threshing floor as smooth as possible and finish the work as quickly as possible.

Ischomachus: So far, it seems, your understanding keeps pace with mine.

Socrates: Well, after that, Ischomachus, we will go on to clean the grain by winnowing.

Ischomachus: Yes, but tell me, Socrates: do you know that if you begin on the windward side of the threshing floor, your chaff will be carried over the whole area?

Socrates: It must be.

Ischomachus: Then the chaff is very likely to fall on the grain.

Socrates: Yes. Given the distance, the chaff will hardly be carried all the way across the grain into the empty part of the threshing floor.

Ischomachus: But suppose you begin winnowing on the side sheltered from the wind?

Socrates: Clearly, the chaff will fall straight into the place that receives it.

Ischomachus: And when you have cleaned the grain over half the floor, will you immediately winnow the rest, with the grain spread out in front of you like that? Or will you first gather the clean grain into the smallest possible space against the central pillar?

Socrates: Yes, of course! First gather the clean grain together, then go on. Now my chaff will be carried into the empty part of the floor, and I won’t have to winnow twice.

Ischomachus: Really, Socrates, you seem perfectly capable of teaching everyone who doesn’t know the quickest way to winnow.

Socrates: Then it seems, as you say, that I must have known about these things without realizing it. And here I am, racking my brains over whether I might also know other things without realizing it: how to refine gold, play the flute, or paint pictures. Certainly no one ever taught me those things, any more than anyone taught me farming. And as for using my own eyes, I have watched people practicing those other crafts just as much as I have watched them till the soil.

Ischomachus: Didn’t I tell you long ago that farming was the noblest and most generous of all the arts, precisely because it is the easiest to learn?

Socrates: It certainly is, Ischomachus. It seems I must have known the processes of sowing without realizing that I knew them.

Socrates: (Continuing.) But may I ask, is planting trees part of the art of farming?

Ischomachus: Certainly it is.

Socrates: Then how can I know the processes of sowing and at the same time know nothing about planting?

Ischomachus: Are you so sure you know nothing about it?

Socrates: How can you ask? I don’t know what sort of soil to plant in, how deep the hole needs to be, or how wide or long the space needs to be for the plant. And finally, I don’t know how to lay the plant in the earth with any hope of helping it grow.

Ischomachus: Come, then, pupil, and learn whatever you don’t know already! I know you have seen the sort of trenches people dig for plants?

Socrates: Hundreds of times.

Ischomachus: Have you ever seen one more than three feet deep?

Socrates: No, I don’t think I have ever seen one more than two and a half feet deep.

Ischomachus: Now, what about the width? Have you ever seen a trench more than three feet wide?

Socrates: No, honestly, not even more than two feet wide.

Ischomachus: Good! Now answer this: have you ever seen a trench less than one foot deep?

Socrates: Certainly not! Not even less than a foot and a half. Why, the plants would be dug up again as soon as they were buried if they were planted so close to the surface.

Ischomachus: Then here is one thing, Socrates, that you know as well as anyone. The trench should be no deeper than two and a half feet and no shallower than a foot and a half.

Socrates: Obviously. Something so plain is clear to the eye at once.

Ischomachus: Can you tell dry soil from moist soil by looking at it?

Socrates: I would certainly pick the soil around Lycabettus, and any soil like it, as dry. For moist soil, I would choose the marsh meadows of Phalerum, or something similar.

Ischomachus: When planting, would you dig what I might call deep trenches in dry soil or moist soil?

Socrates: In dry soil, certainly. At any rate, if you start digging deep trenches in moist soil, you will reach water, and that will put an immediate end to any further planting.

Ischomachus: You couldn’t put it better. Then let’s suppose the trenches have been dug. Have your eyes taught you anything further? Have you noticed in what season the plants must be put in the ground in either case?

Socrates: Certainly.

. . . . .

Ischomachus: Now suppose you want the plants to grow as fast as possible. How do you think the cutting will take root and sprout most readily? If you first lay a layer of worked soil beneath it, so that it only has to penetrate soft earth? Or if it has to force its way through unworked soil into solid ground?

Socrates: Clearly, it will grow through worked soil more quickly than through unworked soil.

Ischomachus: Then a bed of earth must be laid beneath the plant?

Socrates: I quite agree. Let’s do that.

Ischomachus: And how would you expect your cutting to take root best? If it stands straight up from end to end, pointing toward the sky? Or if you set it at an angle beneath its covering of earth, so that it lies like an inverted gamma?

Socrates: Like an inverted gamma, certainly, because that way the plant must have more eyes underground. Now, if I can trust my own eyes, plants put out their shoots aboveground from these same eyes of theirs. So I imagine the eyes still underground will do exactly the same. And with so many buds all springing up beneath the earth, I reason that the whole plant will sprout, shoot, and push its way forward quickly and vigorously.

Ischomachus: I can tell you that on these points too your judgment agrees with mine. But now, should you be content merely to heap up the earth, or will you press it firmly around your plant?

Socrates: I would certainly press the earth down. If it isn’t pressed down, I know very well that rain will sometimes turn the loose soil into clay or mud. At other times the sun will turn it into sand or dust all the way to the bottom. So the poor plant risks first rotting from the rain’s moisture, then shriveling from drought as its roots overheat.

Ischomachus: As far as planting vines goes, Socrates, it seems that once again you and I hold exactly the same views.

“And does this method of planting also apply to the fig tree?” I asked.

Ischomachus: Certainly, and not just to the fig tree, but to all the other fruit trees. Why would we reject for other plants what works so well for the vine?

Socrates: How should we plant the olive, then, Ischomachus?

Ischomachus: I see what you’re trying to do. You’re asking that question to test me, when you know the answer perfectly well yourself. You can see with your own eyes that a deeper trench is dug for the olive, since it is so often planted beside roads. You can see that all the young plants in the nursery are attached to stumps. And finally, you can see that a lump of clay is placed on the top of every plant, and that the part above the soil is protected by a wrapping.

Socrates: Yes, I see all those things.

Ischomachus: Granted, you see them. What is there about the matter that you don’t understand? Perhaps you don’t know how to lay the piece of broken pottery on top of the clay?

Socrates: No, honestly, Ischomachus, I know that, and everything else you mentioned. That is just what puzzles me, and again I’m racking my brains to discover why I answered “No” when you asked me a little while ago, in short, whether I knew how to plant. Until then, it would never have occurred to me that I could say anything at all about how planting should be done. But as soon as you start asking me about each particular point, I can answer. What’s more, you tell me that my answers agree with the views of an authority as skilled and celebrated as you are.

Really, Ischomachus, I’m tempted to ask, “Does teaching consist of asking questions?” In fact, the secret of your method has just dawned on me. I think I see the principle behind your questions. You lead me through what I already know. Then, by pointing out similarities to what I know, you persuade me that I really do know some things I previously thought I knew nothing about.

Ischomachus: Do you suppose that if I started asking you about money and its quality, I could possibly persuade you that you know how to distinguish good coins from false ones? Or could a string of questions about flute players, painters, and the like make you believe that you yourself know how to play the flute, paint, and so on?

Socrates: Perhaps you could. Haven’t you persuaded me that I have a perfect knowledge of this art of farming, even though I know no one ever taught it to me?

Ischomachus: Ah, that isn’t the explanation, Socrates. The truth is what I told you long ago and have kept telling you. Farming is so gentle and humane a mistress that she immediately gives everyone who looks at her or listens to her voice an understanding of herself. She herself teaches many lessons about how best to put her to the test.

Look, for example, at the vine. By making a ladder of the nearest tree and climbing it, the vine tells us it needs support. Then it spreads out its leaves, seeming to say, “My grapes are young, my clusters tender.” In this way it teaches us, during that season, to shelter and shade the parts exposed to the sun’s rays. But when the appointed moment comes, when it is time for the swelling clusters to be sweetened by the sun, look: it drops one leaf after another. So it teaches us to strip off its leaves ourselves and let the grapes ripen.

Look how this fertile mother, teeming with abundance, displays her ripe clusters while nursing a new brood, still completely immature. So the vine teaches us how best to gather the grapes, just as people gather figs: the juiciest first.

At this point in the conversation I remarked: Tell me, Ischomachus, if the details of farming are so easy to learn, and everyone knows equally well what needs to be done, how does it happen that farmers fare so differently? Some live in prosperity, owning more than they can possibly enjoy, while others fail to obtain even the bare necessities and actually fall into debt.

I’ll tell you, Socrates, Ischomachus replied. Neither knowledge nor its absence explains why some of these farmers are well off while others struggle. You never hear stories about an estate going to ruin because the sower failed to scatter the seed evenly, or the planter failed to plant straight rows. Nor do you hear that someone, not knowing what soil was best for vines, planted them in barren ground; that another didn’t know fallow ground must be broken up for sowing; or that a third didn’t know it was good to mix manure into the soil.

No, you’re much more likely to hear people say of someone: No wonder the man gets no wheat from his farm, when he takes no trouble to have it sown or properly manured. Or of another who produces no wine: Of course not, when he takes no trouble either to plant new vines or to make the ones he has bear fruit. A third has neither figs nor olives, and again the reason is the same: He too is careless and does nothing at all to succeed in growing either. These differences matter far more to prosperity in farming than the supposed discovery of some clever agricultural method or machine.

You’ll find the same principle applies elsewhere. In certain aspects of military strategy, generals differ for better or worse because of the care they take, rather than any difference in intelligence or judgment. I mean things every general knows, and indeed almost every ordinary soldier, but which some commanders take care to do and others don’t. Who doesn’t know, for instance, that an army marching through enemy territory ought to move in the formation best suited to fighting effectively if the need arises? Yet some faithfully follow this golden rule, while others ignore it.

Again, everyone knows it’s better to post guards in front of a camp by day and night. Yet even this procedure is sometimes carefully followed and sometimes carelessly neglected. And I suppose scarcely one man in ten thousand fails to know that when a force is marching through a narrow pass, the safer course is to occupy the commanding positions beforehand. Yet this precaution too has been neglected.

Similarly, everyone will tell you that manure is the best thing in the world for farming, and everyone can see how naturally it is produced. Still, although the method of producing it is well known, and there is every opportunity to obtain it in abundance, one man takes care to have it collected while another neglects it entirely. Yet God sends us rain from heaven, and every hollow becomes a standing pool, while the earth supplies material of every kind. The sower, too, must clear the soil before sowing. He only needs to throw the refuse into water, and time itself will do the rest, turning it all into something to delight the earth. For material of every kind, even earth itself, turns into fine manure in stagnant water.

Then there are the different treatments the earth itself needs when it is too wet for sowing or too salty for planting. Everyone knows these conditions and their remedies: in one case, draining off the excess water through trenches; in the other, correcting the saltiness by mixing in various materials without salt, wet or dry. Yet here again, despite knowing what to do, some take care of these matters and others neglect them.

But suppose someone knew absolutely nothing about what the earth can yield. Suppose he were kept from seeing any fruit or plant, and from hearing anyone tell the truth about the earth. Even then, I put it to you, anyone would find it far easier to experiment on a piece of land than on a horse, for instance, or another human being. For the earth displays nothing with the intention of deceiving us. In clear, simple language, bearing the stamp of truth, she tells us what she can and cannot do.

That is why I have always thought the earth the best revealer of true honesty. She offers her whole store of knowledge in a form so accessible to the learner that anyone can read it at a glance. Here, unlike in other occupations, the lazy man cannot plead ignorance or lack of knowledge. Everyone knows that the earth, kindly treated, will repay kindness. No witness exposes a cowardly soul more clearly than farming does. No one has ever convinced himself that he can live without the food that sustains life. So a man who has no skill in other ways of making money and refuses to dig makes it plain that he intends to live by petty theft, stealing, or begging. Otherwise, he shows himself to be a complete fool.

After a little while Ischomachus continued: Now, one thing is crucial to whether farming makes a profit or a loss, even on a large estate with many workers. Does the owner take any trouble to see that his laborers devote themselves to the work at hand throughout their appointed hours, or does he neglect that duty? One man can easily outstrip ten simply by working when he should, while another can just as easily fall behind by stopping before his time is up. In fact, letting the men take things easy all day can easily cut the total work in half.

On a walking trip, one traveler may gain half the distance on another over, say, twenty-five miles, even though both are young and physically fit. One is determined to finish what he set out to do, and strides along cheerfully without faltering. The other, less determined, stops to rest and admire the view beside a spring or in a shady corner, as though his aim were to enjoy every gentle breeze.

It’s the same with farmwork. There’s a vast difference in performance between people who do their assigned work and those who don’t, but look for excuses to be idle and are allowed to dawdle. The difference between good, honest work and shameful neglect is as great as the difference between, what shall I say? Why, work and idleness. Look at those gardeners hoeing the vines to keep them clean and free of weeds. They hoe so badly that the weeds grow thicker and more plentiful. Can you call that anything but idleness?

These are the troubles, Socrates, that bring a household to ruin far more than a lack of technical knowledge, however rudimentary that knowledge may be. Consider it: on one side there is a steady flow of expenses out of the house; on the other, too little profitable work outside to meet them. Need you wonder any longer if the farmwork produces a deficit instead of a surplus?

But to show that a man who gives the necessary attention and puts all his energy into farming has a quick and effective way of making money, I can cite my father, who practiced what he preached.

My father would never let me buy an estate already under cultivation. But if he happened upon a piece of land that had been neither tilled nor planted because of its owner’s neglect or inability, nothing would satisfy him but that I should buy it. He used to say that estates already under cultivation cost a great deal of money and allowed no room for improvement. Where there is no prospect of improvement, more than half the pleasure of ownership disappears. The height of happiness, he maintained, was to see your purchase, whether an inanimate possession or a living animal, go on improving daily before your own eyes.

Now, nothing shows a greater increase than a piece of land reclaimed from barren waste and bearing fruit a hundredfold. I assure you, Socrates, my father and I have made many a farm worth I don’t know how many times its original value. And this valuable discovery, Socrates, is so easy to learn that you, who have only just heard it, know and understand it as well as I do. You can go away and teach it to someone else if you choose.

Yet my father neither learned it from someone else nor discovered it through a difficult process of reasoning. As he often told me, his sheer love of farming and fondness for hard work would make him fall in love with a place like the one I’ve described. Then nothing would satisfy him but owning it, so that he would have something to do and get pleasure as well as profit from the purchase. You must understand, Socrates, that of all the Athenians I have ever heard of, my father seems to me to have had the greatest love of farming.

When I heard this, I couldn’t resist asking a question: Ischomachus, I said, did your father keep all the farms he brought under cultivation, or did he sell them whenever someone offered a good price?

He certainly sold them, Ischomachus replied. But he immediately bought another to replace the one he sold, always an untilled farm, to satisfy his love of work.

From your description, I continued, your father must truly have had a natural passion for farming, rather like the hunger for grain that merchants suffer from. You know their habits. Their craving for grain sends them sailing wherever they hear it can be found, even if they must cross the Aegean, the Euxine, or the Sicilian seas. Once they have acquired as much as they possibly can, they won’t let it out of their sight. They store it aboard the ship on which they themselves sail, and off they go across the seas again.

Whenever they need money, they won’t unload their precious cargo just anywhere they happen to be. First they find out where grain commands the highest price and where the inhabitants will value it most. Then they take their dear commodity there and deliver it. Your father’s fondness for farming seems to bear a certain family resemblance to this passion.

Ischomachus replied to these remarks: You’re joking, Socrates. But I still maintain that a man is fond of bricks and mortar if, as soon as he has built one house, he has to sell it and go on to build another.

Certainly, Ischomachus, I answered. And for my part, I assure you on oath that I, Socrates, really and truly do believe you: everyone naturally loves, or thinks he ought to love, whatever he believes will benefit him.

After a pause, I added: I’m thinking over how skillfully you’ve presented the whole argument in support of your claim that farming is the easiest of all occupations to learn. And now, after everything that has been said, I’m entirely convinced that it is.

Ischomachus: Yes, Socrates, it certainly is. But I, in turn, must admit something about the ability common to every kind of activity, whether farming, politics, household management, or warfare: the power to command. Here I agree with you that people differ greatly in both intelligence and judgment.

Take a warship, for instance. The ship is on the open sea, and the crew must row for whole days at a time to reach a mooring. Now notice the difference. One captain can, through his words and conduct, fire his men’s spirits and spur them to work willingly. Another is so dull and unfeeling that his crew takes twice as long to complete the same voyage. Watch them come ashore. The first crew is drenched in sweat, but listen: captain and cheerful crew alike are praising one another. And the others? They have finally arrived without breaking a sweat, the lazy fellows, but all the same they hate their officer, and he hates them.

Generals too, he continued, differ from one another in this very quality. One leader cannot inspire enthusiasm for hard work and a love of narrow escapes. Instead, he tends to breed in his followers a contemptible spirit that will neither stoop nor consent to obey except under compulsion. These cowards even take pride in opposing their leader. In the end, that same leader will make his men incapable of feeling shame even in the face of the most disgraceful disaster.

Put a different kind of general at their head, however: a leader by divine right, good and brave, with expert knowledge. Let him take charge of those malcontents, or others of even worse character, and he will soon make them ashamed to do anything disgraceful. “It is nobler to obey” will be their maxim. They will take pride in their own obedience and in cheerfully sharing the work whenever work is needed. We know that individual soldiers sometimes feel a spontaneous enthusiasm for willing service. In the same way, good officers can instill in whole armies a love of hard work and an eager rivalry to perform great deeds of courage under their commander’s eyes.

Happy indeed must be the leader whose followers are so attached to him. He will prove a strong and powerful commander beyond all others. By strong, I don’t mean a man whose physical strength towers above that of his strongest soldiers. Nor do I mean one whose skill at throwing a javelin or shooting an arrow surpasses that of the most skillful. Nor do I mean one who, mounted on the fastest horse, faces danger in the front rank among the finest cavalry and the nimblest light infantry. I mean the man who can firmly convince all his soldiers that they must and will follow him through fire, if need be, or into the jaws of death.

A man followed by a multitude moved by his single purpose may rightly be called great in spirit and judgment. We may reasonably say that he marches “with a mighty arm” when a thousand willing hands stand ready to carry out his wishes. A man who can achieve great ends through resolve rather than brute force is great indeed.

So too in private business, anyone in authority, whether an estate manager or an overseer, who can inspire tireless energy and intense eagerness for the work belongs among those who hurry to secure good things and reap abundance. Suppose the master suddenly appears, he continued, a man with so much power, Socrates, to punish a bad worker and reward an eager one. If his arrival in the fields has no visible effect on his workers, I can’t say I envy or admire him.

But if the sight of him brings a stir of activity, if every laborer gains fresh spirit, and rivalry and keen ambition bring out the best in each, I would say: Here is a man with the qualities of a king. Unless I’m mistaken, this is the most important quality in every undertaking that depends on human effort, and perhaps most of all in farming.

I don’t mean that it can easily be learned by a glance or by hearing about it as one hears a story. Far from it. I maintain that anyone who is to have this power needs education. He must have a good natural disposition to begin with, and, most important of all, he must himself be godlike. For if I rightly understand this blessed gift, this ability to command willing followers, it is by no means an entirely human quality. It is partly divine. It is plainly a gift given to those truly initiated into the mystery of self-command. But tyranny over unwilling slaves is given by the gods, so it seems to me, to those they consider worthy to live the life of Tantalus in Hades, of whom it is written, “he consumes unending days in apprehension of a second death.”