. . . Politics begins, as it were, to expand its realm downward to the necessities of life themselves, so that to the philosophers’ scorn for the perishable affairs of mortals was added the specifically Greek contempt for everything that is necessary for mere life and survival. As Cicero, in his futile attempt to disavow Greek philosophy on this one point -- its attitude to politics -- succinctly pointed out, if only “all that is essential to our wants and comforts were supplied by some magic wand, as in the legends, then every man of first-rate ability could drop all other responsibility and devote himself exclusively to knowledge and science.” In brief, when the philosophers began to concern themselves with politics in a systematic way, politics at once became for them a necessary evil.