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BOOK III, CHAPTER V Ts

of whom one was of good birth, the other not at all so. He ordered that, without regard to this difference, the one who had the most merit should be chosen; but if their worth were exactly the same, then the point of birth should be re- garded; this was giving it its just rank. Antigonus, when an untried youth ' asked him for the post of his father, a man of worth who had recently died, “My friend,” he said, “in such favours I do not so much consider the rank of my soldiers as I do their prowess.” (c) In truth, it should not be as with the officials of the kings of Sparta, — trumpeters, minstrels, cooks, — who were succeeded by their children in their offices, however ignorant they might be, in prefer- ence to the most experienced in the occupation.* The people of Calicut treat their nobles as more than human. Marriage is forbidden them and all other vocations than war. Of con- cubines they can have their fill, and the women as many lovers, without jealousy of one another; but it is a capital and irremissible crime to mate with a person of another rank than their own, and they deem themselves polluted if they are merely touched by such a one in passing; and as their nobility is wondrously wronged and dishonoured by this, they kill those who have merely come a little too near them; so that those of low birth * are required to cry aloud as they walk,— as the gondoliers in Venice do at street corners, — in order not to hit against one another; and the nobles order them to turn to this side or that, as they 4 choose. Thus they avoid the ignominy which they regard as lasting; the others, certain death. No length of time, no princely favour, no office or virtue or wealth can transform a plebeian into a noble. These conditions are favoured by this custom, that marriages between persons of different trades are forbidden: a woman of a shoemaking family may not marry a carpenter; and parents are compelled to train their children to the father’s precise occupation and to no other, whereby the distinction and continuance of their lot is maintained.*

1 He was the son of a well-born centurion, but was idle and a cow- ard. See Plutarch, Of false Shame.

• See Herodotus, VI, 60. * Les ignobles. ‘ The nobles.

§ See Goulard, Histoire du Portugal, 11, 3.