Aristotle now gives further details of the physical layout of the ideal state, before declining to go into further petty detail (cf. Plato’s similar disdain for the niceties of administration, Republic 425c ff.). On the duties of officials in charge of markets, streets, countryside etc., see VI viii. The meeting-place or square (agora) for free men is known in Persia also; according to Xenophon, Education of Cyrus, I 2, iii, its main purpose was to keep them from acquiring a taste for the degrading practice of trade. This agora therefore reinforces, like numerous other physical and administrative details in Aristotle’s ‘utopia’, the social and political structure of the state.
1331a19 Since the body of citizens should be distributed over a number of feeding-centres, and the walls should be furnished at suitable points with towers and garrison-posts, it is obviously required that some of the feeding-centres should be located in these posts. So much for how one might arrange that. Buildings devoted to the service of the gods, and the chief feeding-places of members of committees, should have a suitable position on the same site, unless the law or some pronouncement of the Pythian oracle requires any of the sacred buildings to be erected somewhere apart. Our purpose would be well served by a site which provides a suitable balance between conspicuousness and excellence of location, and is at the same time comparatively easy to defend in relation to the neighbouring parts of the city.
1331a30 Just below this is the proper place to lay out a square1 of the kind which in fact they keep up in Thessaly under the name of ‘free’ square. Here nothing may be bought or sold, and no mechanic or farmer or anyone else like that may be admitted unless summoned by the authorities. This area could be made attractive if the gymnasia of the older folk were also laid out there; for in this amenity also there should be separation of age-groups, the younger in one place, the older in another; the latter should follow this pursuit in the company of the officials, and some of the officials should mingle with the younger men, since the presence of authority’s watchful eye instils genuine deference – dread as felt by a free man.2 The market1 proper, where buying and selling are done, must be a different one, in a separate place, conveniently situated for all goods sent up from the sea and brought in from the country.
1331b4 The government, of the state being divided into officials and priests, it is right that the latter too should have their eating-places established round the sacred buildings. As for the boards concerned with contracts, with the registering of suits-at-law, with summonses, and with the ordering of such matters generally (also surveillance of markets1 and what is called ‘wardenship of the city’) – these should all be located near a market and general meeting-place. This will, of course, be the area intended for the market it is essential to have – the one for the transaction of essential business; the upper one that we mentioned is intended for leisure. A similar arrangement should be applied to the country districts, for there too the officials. Forest Wardens or Field-Wardens or whatever they may be called, must have eating-places and garrison-posts to enable them to carry out their work of protection; likewise shrines in honour of gods and heroes must be distributed over the countryside.
1331b18 But it is really not necessary now to go on describing all these matters in detail. It is not at all difficult to think what things are needed, though it is quite another matter to provide them. Our talk is the expression of our desires, but the outcome is in Fortune’s hands. Therefore we will say no more about such matters now.