Similar
difficulties to those which I have mentioned may be raised and
answered about deprived citizens and about exiles. But the citizen
whom we are seeking to define is a citizen in the strictest sense,
against whom no such exception can be taken, and his special
characteristic is that he shares in the administration of justice, and
in offices. Now of offices some are discontinuous, and the same
persons are not allowed to hold them twice, or can only hold them
after a fixed interval; others have no limit of time- for example, the
office of a dicast or ecclesiast. It may, indeed, be argued that these
are not magistrates at all, and that their functions give them no
share in the government. But surely it is ridiculous to say that those
who have the power do not govern. Let us not dwell further upon
this, which is a purely verbal question; what we want is a common term
including both dicast and ecclesiast. Let us, for the sake of
distinction, call it 'indefinite office,' and we will assume that
those who share in such office are citizens. This is the most
comprehensive definition of a citizen, and best suits all those who
are generally so called.
But we must not forget that things of which the underlying
principles differ in kind, one of them being first, another second,
another third, have, when regarded in this relation, nothing, or
hardly anything, worth mentioning in common.
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