A husband and father,
we saw, rules over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs,
the rule over his children being a royal, over his wife a
constitutional rule. For although there may be exceptions to the order
of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command than the female,
just as the elder and full-grown is superior to the younger and more
immature. But in most constitutional states the citizens rule and
are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies
that the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at
all. Nevertheless, when one rules and the other is ruled we endeavor
to create a difference of outward forms and names and titles of
respect, which may be illustrated by the saying of Amasis about his
foot-pan. The relation of the male to the female is of this kind,
but there the inequality is permanent. The rule of a father over his
children is royal, for he rules by virtue both of love and of the
respect due to age, exercising a kind of royal power. And therefore
Homer has appropriately called Zeus 'father of Gods and men,'
because he is the king of them all. For a king is the natural superior
of his subjects, but he should be of the same kin or kind with them,
and such is the relation of elder and younger, of father and son.
XIII
Thus it is clear that household management attends more to men
than to the acquisition of inanimate things, and to human excellence
more than to the excellence of property which we call wealth, and to
the virtue of freemen more than to the virtue of slaves.
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