[460e]
“True.” “Do you agree that
the period of the prime may be fairly estimated at twenty years for a woman
and thirty for a man?” “How do you reckon
it?”1 he
said. “The women,” I said, “beginning at the
age of twenty, shall bear for the state2 to the age of forty, and the
man shall beget for the state from the time he passes his prime in swiftness
in running to the age of fifty-five.”
1 Cf. on 458 C.
2 Half humorous legal language. Cf. Aristotle Politics 1335 b 28λειτουργεῖν . . . πρὸς τεκνοποιίαν, and Lucan's “urbi pater est, urbique maritus” (Phars. ii. 388). The dates for marriage are given a little differently in the Laws, 785 B, 833 C-D, men 30-35, women 16-20. On the whole question and Aristotle's opinion cf. Newman, Introduction to Aristotle Politics p. 183; cf. also Grube, Class. Quarterly 1927, pp. 95 ff., “The Marriage Laws in Plato's Republic.”
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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