Now he is not to be pitied who is hungry, or who suffers any bodily pain, but
he who is temperate, or has some other virtue, or part of a virtue, and at the
same time suffers from misfortune; it would be an extraordinary thing if such
an one, whether slave or freeman, were utterly forsaken and fell into the
extremes of poverty in any tolerably well - ordered city or government.
Wherefore the legislator may safely make a law applicable to such cases in the
following terms: - Let there be no beggars in our state; and if anybody begs,
seeking to pick up a livelihood by unavailing prayers, let the wardens of the
agora turn him out of the agora, and the wardens of the city out of the city,
and the wardens of the country send him out of any other parts of the land
across the border, in order that the land may be cleared of this sort of
animal.