The poor have recently written me complaining that you don’t let them share what you have, and, to be brief, they asked me to make the good things common to all and let everyone have his bit. It was right, they said, for there to be equality and not for one man to have too much of what is pleasing while another goes without altogether. I replied that Zeus would see to that better than I, but with regard to the present and the injustices they suppose they suffer at festival-time I saw that here judgment was in my hands. I promised to write to you.
Now these requests seem to me to be reasonable. “How,” they say, “can we, shivering in this extreme cold and in the grip of famine, keep festival as well?” So if I wanted them too to share in the festival, they bade me compel you to give them a share of any clothing you have above your needs or any too coarse for you, and to sprinkle on them a little of your gold. If you do that, they say, they will not even argue with you before Zeus any more about your possessions. Otherwise they threaten a summons for redistribution of property just as soon as Zeus begins his cases. These things are not at all difficult for you to grant out of all that you are rightly blessed with.
