But leisure and cultivation may be
promoted, not only by those virtues which are practiced in leisure,
but also by some of those which are useful to business. For many
necessaries of life have to be supplied before we can have leisure.
Therefore a city must be temperate and brave, and able to endure:
for truly, as the proverb says, 'There is no leisure for slaves,'
and those who cannot face danger like men are the slaves of any
invader. Courage and endurance are required for business and
philosophy for leisure, temperance and justice for both, and more
especially in times of peace and leisure, for war compels men to be
just and temperate, whereas the enjoyment of good fortune and the
leisure which comes with peace tend to make them insolent. Those
then who seem to be the best-off and to be in the possession of
every good, have special need of justice and temperance- for
example, those (if such there be, as the poets say) who dwell in the
Islands of the Blest; they above all will need philosophy and
temperance and justice, and all the more the more leisure they have,
living in the midst of abundance. There is no difficulty in seeing why
the state that would be happy and good ought to have these virtues. If
it be disgraceful in men not to be able to use the goods of life, it
is peculiarly disgraceful not to be able to use them in time of
leisure- to show excellent qualities in action and war, and when
they have peace and leisure to be no better than slaves.
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