First of all, then, let us consider what will be the manner of life of men thus provided. Will they not make bread and wine and garments and shoes? And they will build themselves houses and carry on their work in summer for the most part unclad and unshod and in winter clothed and shod sufficiently? And for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves, and, reclined on rustic beds strewn with bryony and myrtle, they will feast with their children, drinking of their wine thereto, garlanded and singing hymns to the gods in pleasant fellowship, not begetting offspring beyond their means lest they fall into poverty or war?
What is Glaucon’s interjection?
No relishes apparently, for the men you describe as feasting.
Socrates recovers from the silliness of this and responds, gamely:
True, I forgot that they will also have relishes—salt, of course, and olives and cheese and onions and greens, the sort of things they boil in the country, they will boil up together. But for dessert we will serve them figs and chickpeas and beans, and they will toast myrtle-berries and acorns before the fire, washing them down with moderate potations and so, living in peace and health, they will probably die in old age and hand on a like life to their offspring.
Glaucon’s response:
If you were founding a city of pigs, Socrates, what other fodder than this would you provide?
The ever-polite Socrates responds:
Why, what would you have, Glaucon?
The real ‘pig’ in all of this, Glaucon, respond:
What is customary; they must recline on couches, I presume, if they are not to be uncomfortable.
Waddaprick. The basic polis sounds pretty nice, especially when you consider that the kind of polis envisaged by Glaucon requires–as he admits a little later in the dialogue (373 (d-e)–the introduction of the doctor and the soldier. (Healthcare and the Military! Sound like budgetary problems to me.) The first occupation addresses the rash of diseases that will be caused by the ‘richer’ lifestyle of the more advanced polis–Socrates’ argument for the need for doctors in the advanced polis is an interesting anticipation of modern thinking about diseases of affluence. More perniciously, the advanced polis results inevitably in a desire for territorial expansion: the standing army with its budgetary demands and its endless conscriptions, its creation of wars, the scourge of human history, is a function of the mode of organization of the state it defends.
Glaucon disdains the frugal nature of the basic polis, seemingly unaware that the richer polis he has in mind is the one that will actually encourage porcine behavior.
Excerpted from: Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969. Available online at the Perseus Digital Library.
Samir Chopra 
I think Glaucon’s comment is actually quite perceptive and poignant. The elementary polis as described makes man nothing more than animals, merely satisfying their primary needs (like pigs) and never developing any culture whatsoever (one might argue culture is what makes us human). Yes a richer polis has some downsides, but it’s ultimately not worth living. Unless you’re a pig, that is.
Hi, Anon, thanks for your comment. I’d say your response was precisely the one I was trying to resist in my two posts on this topic!