 For all the advances that the Republic represents in some respects, Plato’s ideal city seems to us far from ideal. The system resembles a well-oiled machine where everyone has their appointed function and economic niche; but its machine-like character seems repellent, given that no deviations are permitted from the prescribed pattern. If innovations are forbidden, no room seems to be left for creativity and personal development. Plato seems to presuppose that the fulfillment of a person’s function is sufficient to secure her happiness, or at least that is suggested by the ‘functional’ argument that defeats Thrasymachus (352d–354a). It states that every object, animal, and person has a specific function or work (ergon). If it performs its function well, it does well: for a living thing, ‘doing well’ means ‘living well’ and living well is tantamount to living happily. Though Socrates’ refutation of Thrasymachus is found wanting as a proof of justice’s superiority, the ergon-argument is nowhere revoked. On the contrary, it is affirmed by the principle of ‘one person – one job’ that is the basis of Plato’s ideal city. But it seems rather inhumane to confine everyone’s activities to just one kind of work, even if such confinement may be most economical and efficient. These features suffice to make the ideal life in Plato’s city unpalatable to us, not to speak of certain other features that have not been explored here, such as the communal life envisaged for the upper classes, and the assignment of sexual partnerships by lotteries that are rigged for reasons of eugenics. The feature that must strike us as strangest about Plato’s depiction of his citizens’ lives is that he does not even emphasize the one factor that could throw a more favorable light on his social order – that each citizen will take pride and joy in their work and its products, given that these are to be regarded, each in their own way, as valuable contributions to the community’s well-being. This applies especially to the members of the third class – tailors, carpenters, doctors, architects, sailors, and all those who are summed up rather ungraciously under the epithet of ‘money-lovers’ — because they, after all, produce the city’s material goods, whithout which the city could not function or exist.