Including in all classes the right numbers for the best administration of the commonwealth, he gave orders that the same individuals should always engage in the same pursuits, because he knew that those who continually change their occupations never achieve proficiency in even a single one of their tasks, whereas those who apply themselves constantly to the same activities perform each thing they do surpassingly well.

Hence we shall find that in the arts the Egyptians surpass those who work at the same skilled occupations elsewhere more than artisans in general excel the laymen; also with respect to the system which enables them to preserve royalty and their political institutions in general, they have been so successful that philosophersIt is natural to think that there is a reference here to Plato and his , but it is not certain. who undertake to discuss such topics and have won the greatest reputation prefer above all others the Egyptian form of government, and that the Lacedaemonians, on the other hand, govern their own city in admirable fashion because they imitate certain of the Egyptian customs.

For instance, the provision that no citizen fit for military service could leave the country without official authorization, the meals taken in common, and the training of their bodies; furthermore, the fact that lacking none of the necessities of life, they do not neglect the edicts of the State, and that none engage in any other crafts, but that all devote themselves to arms and warfare, all these practices they have taken from EgyptCf. Hdt. 2.80 and Hdt. 6.60.

But the Lacedaemonians have made so much worse use of these institutions that all of them, being professional soldiers, claim the right to seize by force the property of everybody else, whereas the Egyptians live as people should who neither neglect their own possessions, nor plot how they may acquire the property of others. The difference in the aims of the two polities may be seen from the following:

if we should all imitate the sloth and greed of the Lacedaemonians, we should straightway perish through both the lack of the necessities of daily life and civil war; but if we should wish to adopt the laws of the Egyptians which prescribe that some must work and that the rest must protect the property of the workers, we should all possess our own goods and pass our days in happiness.