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[1278a] [1] for slaves also are not in one of the classes mentioned, nor are freedmen. For it is true that not all the persons indispensable for the existence of a state are to be deemed citizens, since even the sons of citizens are not citizens in the same sense as the adults: the latter are citizens in the full sense, the former only by presumption1—they are citizens, but incomplete ones. In ancient times in fact the artisan class in some states consisted of slaves or aliens, owing to which the great mass of artisans are so even now; and the best-ordered state will not make an artisan a citizen. While if even the artisan is a citizen, then what we said to be the citizen's virtue must not be said to belong to every citizen, nor merely be defined as the virtue of a free man, but will only belong to those who are released from menial occupations. Among menial occupations those who render such services to an individual are slaves, and those who do so for the community are artisans and hired laborers. The state of the case about them will be manifest from what follows when we consider it a little further[, for what has been said when made known itself makes it clear].2 As there are several forms of constitution, it follows that there are several kinds of citizen, and especially of the citizen in a subject position; hence under one form of constitution citizenship will necessarily extend to the artisan and the hired laborer, while under other forms this is impossible, for instance in any constitution that is of the form entitled aristocratic and in which [20] the honors are bestowed according to goodness and to merit, since a person living a life of manual toil or as a hired laborer cannot practise the pursuits in which goodness is exercised. In oligarchies on the other hand, though it is impossible for a hired laborer to be a citizen (since admission to office of various grades is based on high property-assessments), it is possible for an artisan; for even the general mass of the craftsmen are rich. At Thebes there was a law that no one who had not kept out of trade for the last ten years might be admitted to office. But under many constitutions the law draws recruits even from foreigners; for in some democracies the son of a citizen-mother is a citizen, and the same rule holds good as to base-born sons in many places. Nevertheless, inasmuch as such persons are adopted as citizens owing to a lack of citizens of legitimate birth (for legislation of this kind is resorted to because of under-population), when a state becomes well off for numbers it gradually divests itself first of the sons of a slave father or mother, then of those whose mothers only were citizens, and finally only allows citizenship to the children of citizens on both sides. These facts then show that there are various kinds of citizen, and that a citizen in the fullest sense means the man who shares in the honors of the state, as is implied in the verse of Homer3: “ Like to some alien settler without honor,—
” since a native not admitted to a share in the public honors is like an alien domiciled in the land. But in some places this exclusion is disguised, for the purpose of deceiving those who are a part of the population.4

The answer therefore to the question,

1 Or, with Casaubon's probable correction of the Greek, ‘only with a qualification.’

2 The ill-expressed clause ‘for what—clear’ seems almost certainly to be an interpolation.

3 Hom. Il. 9.648, Hom. Il. 16.59

4 The MSS. give ‘But where such exclusion is disguised, it (this concealment) is for the purpose of deceiving’ etc.

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    • W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, 6.130
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