Athenians

The grace and cheerfulness of Athenian life have disappeared; and a spirit of moroseness and religious intolerance has taken their place.

The questions which have been thus indirectly suggested may be considered by us under five or six heads: I, the characters; II, the plan; III, the style; IV, the imitations of other writings of Plato; V; the more general relation of the Laws to the Republic and the other dialogues; and VI, to the existing Athenian and Spartan states.

The Athenian, as might be expected, is the protagonist or chief speaker, while the second place is assigned to the Cretan, who, as one of the leaders of a new colony, has a special interest in the conversation.

The Athenian talks to the two others, although they are his equals in age, in the style of a master discoursing to his scholars; he frequently praises himself; he entertains a very poor opinion of the understanding of his companions.

The typical Athenian apologizes for the tendency of his countrymen 'to spin a long discussion out of slender materials,' and in a similar spirit the Lacedaemonian Megillus apologizes for the Spartan brevity (compare Thucydid.), acknowledging at the same time that there may be occasions when long discourses are necessary.

The family of Megillus is the proxenus of Athens at Sparta; and he pays a beautiful compliment to the Athenian, significant of the character of the work, which, though borrowing many elements from Sparta, is also pervaded by an Athenian spirit.

A good Athenian, he says, is more than ordinarily good, because he is inspired by nature and not manufactured by law.

The Athenian on his side has a pleasure in speaking to the Lacedaemonian of the struggle in which their ancestors were jointly engaged against the Persians.

The Cretan and Lacedaemonian hardly contribute at all to the argument of which the Athenian is the expounder; they only supply information when asked about the institutions of their respective countries.

At first, they are dissatisfied with the free criticisms which the Athenian passes upon the laws of Minos and Lycurgus, but they acquiesce in his greater experience and knowledge of the world.

In Book vii., the Lacedaemonian expresses a momentary irritation at the accusation which the Athenian brings against the Spartan institutions, of encouraging licentiousness in their women, but he is reminded by the Cretan that the permission to criticize them freely has been given, and cannot be retracted.

His only criterion of truth is the authority of the Spartan lawgiver; he is 'interested,' in the novel speculations of the Athenian, but inclines to prefer the ordinances of Lycurgus.

Nothing in life seems to be of much importance to them; they are spectators rather than actors, and men in general appear to the Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the Gods and of circumstances.

To this the Athenian objects that the true lawgiver should frame his laws with a view to all the virtues and not to one only.

At the beginning of the fourth book, after enquiring into the circumstances and situation of the colony, the Athenian proceeds to make further reflections.

We can hardly suppose that an educated Athenian would have placed the visit of Epimenides to Athens ten years before the Persian war, or have imagined that a war with Messene prevented the Lacedaemonians from coming to the rescue of Hellas.

Some of the most amusing descriptions, as, for example, of children roaring for the first three years of life; or of the Athenians walking into the country with fighting-cocks under their arms; or of the slave doctor who knocks about his patients finely; and the gentleman doctor who courteously persuades them; or of the way of keeping order in the theatre, 'by a hint from a stick,' are narrated with a commonplace gravity; but where we find this sort of dry humour we shall not be far wrong in thinking that the writer intended to make us laugh.

In several passages the Athenian praises himself in the most unblushing manner, very unlike the irony of the earlier dialogues, as when he declares that 'the laws are a divine work given by some inspiration of the Gods,' and that 'youth should commit them to memory instead of the compositions of the poets.' The prosopopoeia which is adopted by Plato in the Protagoras and other dialogues is repeated until we grow weary of it.

The words of the Athenian are attributed to the Lacedaemonian and Cretan, who are supposed to have made them their own, after the manner of the earlier dialogues.

The long speeches or sermons of the Athenian, often extending over several pages, have never the grace and harmony which are exhibited in the earlier dialogues.

For example, the address to the poets: 'Best of strangers, we also are poets of the best and noblest tragedy; for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy.' Or again, the sight of young men and maidens in friendly intercourse with one another, suggesting the dangers to which youth is liable from the violence of passion; or the eloquent denunciation of unnatural lusts in the same passage; or the charming thought that the best legislator 'orders war for the sake of peace and not peace for the sake of war;' or the pleasant allusion, 'O Athenian—inhabitant of Attica, I will not say, for you seem to me worthy to be named after the Goddess Athene because you go back to first principles;' or the pithy saying, 'Many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors, but education is never suicidal;' or the fine expression that 'the walls of a city should be allowed to sleep in the earth, and that we should not attempt to disinter them;' or the remark that 'God is the measure of all things in a sense far higher than any man can be;' or that 'a man should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible;' or the principle repeatedly laid down, that 'the sins of the fathers are not to be visited on the children;' or the description of the funeral rites of those priestly sages who depart in innocence; or the noble sentiment, that we should do more justice to slaves than to equals; or the curious observation, founded, perhaps, on his own experience, that there are a few 'divine men in every state however corrupt, whose conversation is of inestimable value;' or the acute remark, that public opinion is to be respected, because the judgments of mankind about virtue are better than their practice; or the deep religious and also modern feeling which pervades the tenth book (whatever may be thought of the arguments); the sense of the duty of living as a part of a whole, and in dependence on the will of God, who takes care of the least things as well as the greatest; and the picture of parents praying for their children—not as we may say, slightly altering the words of Plato, as if there were no truth or reality in the Gentile religions, but as if there were the greatest—are very striking to us.

Though he is no longer fired with dialectical enthusiasm, he would compel the guardians to 'look at one idea gathered from many things,' and to 'perceive the principle which is the same in all the four virtues.' He still recognizes the enormous influence of music, in which every youth is to be trained for three years; and he seems to attribute the existing degeneracy of the Athenian state and the laxity of morals partly to musical innovation, manifested in the unnatural divorce of the instrument and the voice, of the rhythm from the words, and partly to the influence of the mob who ruled at the theatres.

But in the Laws an Athenian element is also introduced.

Many enactments are taken from the Athenian; the four classes are borrowed from the constitution of Cleisthenes, which Plato regards as the best form of Athenian government, and the guardians of the law bear a certain resemblance to the archons.

The Nocturnal Council, which is the highest body in the state, has several of the functions of the ancient Athenian Areopagus, after which it appears to be modelled.

The extravagant dislike which Plato shows both to a naval power and to extreme democracy is the reverse of Athenian.

'This was what Solon meant or said'—was the form in which the Athenian expressed his own conception of right and justice, or argued a disputed point of law.

The poet Tyrtaeus (you know his poems in Crete, and my Lacedaemonian friend is only too familiar with them)—he was an Athenian by birth, and a Spartan citizen:—'Well,' he says, 'I sing not, I care not about any man, however rich or happy, unless he is brave in war.' Now I should like, in the name of us all, to ask the poet a question.

For there is no drunken revelry in Sparta, and any one found in a state of intoxication is severely punished; he is not excused as an Athenian would be at Athens on account of a festival.

I myself have seen the Athenians drunk at the Dionysia—and at our colony, Tarentum, on a similar occasion, I have beheld the whole city in a state of intoxication.' I admit that these festivals should be properly regulated.

The stronger overcomes the weaker, as the Athenians have overcome the Ceans, or the Syracusans the Locrians, who are, perhaps, the best governed state in that part of the world.

We Athenians are always thought to be fond of talking, whereas the Lacedaemonian is celebrated for brevity, and the Cretan is considered to be sagacious and reserved.

'Are you aware, Athenian, that our family is your proxenus at Sparta, and that from my boyhood I have regarded Athens as a second country, and having often fought your battles in my youth, I have become attached to you, and love the sound of the Attic dialect?

The saying is true, that the best Athenians are more than ordinarily good, because they are good by nature; therefore, be assured that I shall be glad to hear you talk as much as you please.' 'I, too,' adds Cleinias, 'have a tie which binds me to you.

He told the Athenians that the Persian host would not come for ten years, and would go away again, having suffered more harm than they had inflicted.

For of the three cities one only fought on behalf of Hellas; and of the two others, Argos refused her aid; and Messenia was actually at war with Sparta: and if the Lacedaemonians and Athenians had not united, the Hellenes would have been absorbed in the Persian empire, and dispersed among the barbarians.

There are two mother forms of states—one monarchy, and the other democracy: the Persians have the first in the highest form, and the Athenians the second; and no government can be well administered which does not include both.

There was a time when both the Persians and Athenians had more the character of a constitutional state than they now have.

But enough of the Persians: a different lesson is taught by the Athenians, whose example shows that a limited freedom is far better than an unlimited.

For Darius had sent Datis and Artaphernes, commanding them under pain of death to subjugate the Eretrians and Athenians.

A report, whether true or not, came to Athens that all the Eretrians had been 'netted'; and the Athenians in terror sent all over Hellas for assistance.

In process of time Xerxes came to the throne, and the Athenians heard of nothing but the bridge over the Hellespont, and the canal of Athos, and the innumerable host and fleet.

'Your words, Athenian, are worthy of your country.' And you Megillus, who have inherited the virtues of your ancestors, are worthy to hear them.

In ancient times the Athenian people were not the masters, but the servants of the laws.

Minos, who was a great sea-king, imposed upon the Athenians a cruel tribute, for in those days they were not a maritime power; they had no timber for ship-building, and therefore they could not 'imitate their enemies'; and better far, as I maintain, would it have been for them to have lost many times over the lives which they devoted to the tribute than to have turned soldiers into sailors.

They have their natural divisions, too, answering to the kinds of virtue; very unlike the discordant enactments of an Athenian assembly or of an English Parliament.

The action of courts of law in making law seems to have escaped him, probably because the Athenian law-courts were popular assemblies; and, except in a mythical form, he can hardly be said to have had before his eyes the ideal of a judge.

The outburst of martial spirit in the Lacedaemonian, 'O best of men'; the protest which the Cretan makes against the supposed insult to his lawgiver; the cordial acknowledgment on the part of both of them that laws should not be discussed publicly by those who live under their rule; the difficulty which they alike experience in following the speculations of the Athenian, are highly characteristic.

The Athenians are fond of cock-fighting, and the people who keep cocks carry them about in their hands or under their arms, and take long walks, to improve, not their own health, but the health of the birds.

In our dances imitations of war should be practised, as in the dances of the Curetes in Crete and of the Dioscuri at Sparta, or as in the dances in complete armour which were taught us Athenians by the goddess Athene.

He had seen the Athenian empire, almost within the limits of his own life, wax and wane, but he never seems to have asked himself what would happen if, a century from the time at which he was writing, the Greek character should have as much changed as in the century which had preceded.

The 'chants of Isis' (Laws), we might think, would have been barbarous in an Athenian ear.

The whole number of 360, as in the Athenian constitution, is distributed among the months of the year according to the number of the tribes.

They are to exercise a general superintendence, and, like the Athenian counsellors, are to preside in monthly divisions over all assemblies.

Though the council is framed on the model of the Athenian Boule, the law courts of Plato do not equally conform to the pattern of the Athenian dicasteries.

He has evidently a sympathy with the soldier, as well as with the poet, and he is no mean master of the art, or at least of the theory, of war (compare Laws; Republic), though inclining rather to the Spartan than to the Athenian practice of it (Laws).

Plato has an evident dislike of the Athenian dicasteries; he prefers a few judges who take a leading part in the conduct of trials to a great number who only listen in silence.

Modern jurists would disapprove of the redress of injustice being purchased only at an increasing risk; though indirectly the burden of legal expenses, which seems to have been little felt among the Athenians, has a similar effect.

The love of litigation, which is a remnant of barbarism quite as much as a corruption of civilization, and was innate in the Athenian people, is diminished in the new state by the imposition of severe penalties.

They partake both of an Athenian and a Spartan character.

Some enactments are Plato's own, and were suggested by his experience of defects in the Athenian and other Greek states.

But although the Laws partake both of an Athenian and a Spartan character, the elements which are borrowed from either state are necessarily very different, because the character and origin of the two governments themselves differed so widely.

The relation of the two states to the Laws may be conceived in this manner:—The foundation and ground-plan of the work are more Spartan, while the superstructure and details are more Athenian.

Those of them which regulated daily life were familiarly known to the Athenians; for every citizen was his own lawyer, and also a judge, who decided the rights of his fellow-citizens according to the laws, often after hearing speeches from the parties interested or from their advocates.

The Athenians started on their great career some centuries later, but the Spartans would have been easily conquered by them, if Athens had not been deficient in the qualities which constituted the strength (and also the weakness) of her rival.

He contrasts the activity and freedom and pleasantness of Athenian life with the immobility and severe looks and incessant drill of the Spartans.

The Athenian was a nobler form of life than that of their rivals, a life of music as well as of gymnastic, the life of a citizen as well as of a soldier.

Such is the picture which Thucydides has drawn of the Athenians in their glory.

He had heard of Sparta at a distance and from common Hellenic fame: he was a citizen of Athens and an Athenian of noble birth.

Many of his enactments are recognized to be Athenian laws from the fragments preserved in the Orators and elsewhere: many more would be found to be so if we had better information.

The islanders before the inhabitants of the continent, the maritime cities before the inland, the Corinthians and Athenians before the Spartans, were compelled to fit out ships: last of all the Spartans, by the pressure of the Peloponnesian War, were driven to establish a naval force, which, after the battle of Aegospotami, for more than a generation commanded the Aegean.

We may now notice some points in which the commonwealth of the Laws approximates to the Athenian model.

The information which we possess about Athenian law, though comparatively fuller, is still fragmentary.

Nor can we hastily assume that enactments which occur in the Laws of Plato were also a part of Athenian law, however probable this may appear.

(i) The constitution of the Laws in its general character resembles much more nearly the Athenian constitution of Solon's time than that which succeeded it, or the extreme democracy which prevailed in Plato's own day.

It was a mean state which he hoped to create, equally unlike a Syracusan tyranny or the mob-government of the Athenian assembly.

Hence we are not surprised that the use of the lot prevailed, not only in the election of the Athenian Council, but also in many oligarchies, and even in Plato's colony.

The three courts were appointed in the following manner:—the arbiters were to be agreed upon by the parties to the cause; the judges of the tribes to be elected by lot; the highest tribunal to be chosen at the end of each year by the great officers of state out of their own number—they were to serve for a year, to undergo a scrutiny, and, unlike the Athenian judges, to vote openly.

The executive of Plato's Laws, like the Athenian, was different from that of a modern civilized state.

Every Athenian was at some time or on some occasion in his life a magistrate, judge, advocate, soldier, sailor, policeman.

The average ability of the Athenian and Magnesian councillors could not have been very high, considering there were so many of them.

(c) Athenian law enacted that when more than half the witnesses in a case had been convicted of perjury, there was to be a new trial (anadikos krisis—Telfy).

(a) Wilful murder was punished in Athenian law by death, perpetual exile, and confiscation of property (Telfy).

(a) The guilty person, according to the Athenian law, had to go into exile, and might not return, until the family of the man slain were conciliated.

(c) A still more singular law, occurring both in the Athenian and Magnesian code, enacts that a stone or other inanimate object which kills a man is to be tried, and cast over the border (Telfy).

Plato and Athenian law agree in making homicide justifiable or excusable in the following cases:—(1) at the games (Telfy); (2) in war (Telfy); (3) if the person slain was found doing violence to a free woman (Telfy); (4) if a doctor's patient dies; (5) in the case of a robber (Telfy); (6) in self-defence (Telfy).

Death or expulsion was the Athenian penalty for impiety (Telfy).

'If a man receives an exile, he shall be punished with death.' So, too, in Athenian law (Telfy.).

Athenian law compelled a man who had wounded another to go into exile; if he returned, he was to be put to death (Telfy).

Death was the punishment for taking a bribe, both at Athens (Telfy) and in the Laws; but Athenian law offered an alternative—the payment of a fine of ten times the amount of the bribe.

Plato, like Athenian law (Telfy), punishes the theft of public property by death; the theft of private property in both involves a fine of double the value of the stolen goods (Telfy).

He 'who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend,' is regarded in the same spirit by Plato and by Athenian law.

Plato would have him 'buried ingloriously on the borders of the twelve portions of the land, in such places as are uncultivated and nameless,' and 'no column or inscription is to mark the place of his interment.' Athenian law enacted that the hand which did the deed should be separated from the body and be buried apart (Telfy).

In cases of wilful injury, Athenian law compelled the guilty person to pay double the damage; in cases of involuntary injury, simple damages (Telfy).

Athenian law allowed any one to indict another for neglect or illtreatment of parents (Telfy).

Both Plato and Athenian law give to the winner of a suit power to seize the goods of the loser, if he does not pay within the appointed time (Telfy).

(b) Athenian law, as well as Plato, did not allow a father to disinherit his son without good reason and the consent of impartial persons (Telfy).

(c) Plato and Athenian law enacted that a tree should be planted at a fair distance from a neighbour's property (Telfy), and that when a man could not get water, his neighbour must supply him (Telfy).

This provision is common to Plato and to Athenian law (Telfy).

(b) Athenian law allowed an action of recovery against a man who sold an unsound slave as sound (Telfy).

(c) Plato diverges from Athenian practice in the disapproval of credit, and does not even allow the supply of goods on the deposit of a percentage of their value (Telfy).

(d) Athenian law forbad an extortionate rate of interest (Telfy); Plato allows interest in one case only—if a contractor does not receive the price of his work within a year of the time agreed—and at the rate of 200 per cent.

There remains the subject of family life, which in Plato's Laws partakes both of an Athenian and Spartan character.

This is a trait of Spartan character rather than of Athenian.

Their lot was to be neither like that of Spartan women, who were made hard and common by excessive practice of gymnastic and the want of all other education,—nor yet like that of Athenian women, who, at least among the upper classes, retired into a sort of oriental seclusion,—but something better than either.

In speaking of them as the companions of their husbands we must remember that it is an Athenian and not a Spartan way of life which they are invited to share, a life of gaiety and brightness, not of austerity and abstinence, which often by a reaction degenerated into licence and grossness.

Some privileges were granted to them by Athenian law of which there is no mention in Plato; they were allowed to purchase their freedom from their master, and if they despaired of being liberated by him they could demand to be sold, on the chance of falling into better hands.

But there is no suggestion in the Laws that a slave who tried to escape should be branded with the words—kateche me, pheugo, or that evidence should be extracted from him by torture, that the whole household was to be executed if the master was murdered and the perpetrator remained undetected: all these were provisions of Athenian law.

Plato is more consistent than either the Athenians or the Spartans; for at Sparta too the Helots were treated in a manner almost unintelligible to us.

Even those who were only on one side of Athenian parentage were at more than one period accounted citizens.

But there are also points which are peculiar, and in which ancient jurisprudence differs considerably from modern; some of them are of great importance...It could not be said at Athens, nor was it ever contemplated by Plato, that all men, including metics and slaves, should be equal 'in the eye of the law.' There was some law for the slave, but not much; no adequate protection was given him against the cruelty of his master...It was a singular privilege granted, both by the Athenian and Magnesian law, to a murdered man, that he might, before he died, pardon his murderer, in which case no legal steps were afterwards to be taken against him.

The distinction between civil and criminal courts or suits was not yet recognized...Possession gives a right of property after a certain time...The religious aspect under which certain offences were regarded greatly interfered with a just and natural estimate of their guilt...As among ourselves, the intent to murder was distinguished by Plato from actual murder...We note that both in Plato and the laws of Athens, libel in the market-place and personality in the theatre were forbidden...Both in Plato and Athenian law, as in modern times, the accomplice of a crime is to be punished as well as the principal...Plato does not allow a witness in a cause to act as a judge of it...Oaths are not to be taken by the parties to a suit...Both at Athens and in Plato's Laws capital punishment for murder was not to be inflicted, if the offender was willing to go into exile...Respect for the dead, duty towards parents, are to be enforced by the law as well as by public opinion...Plato proclaims the noble sentiment that the object of all punishment is the improvement of the offender...

In this respect he is nobly distinguished from the Oriental, and indeed from the spirit of Athenian law (compare Telfy,—dei kai autous kai tous ek touton atimous einai), as the Hebrew in the age of Ezekial is from the Jewish people of former ages.

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: An Athenian Stranger, Cleinias (a Cretan), Megillus (a Lacedaemonian).

ATHENIAN: Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the author of your laws?

ATHENIAN: And do you, Cleinias, believe, as Homer tells, that every ninth year Minos went to converse with his Olympian sire, and was inspired by him to make laws for your cities?

ATHENIAN: Yes, and a noble reputation it was, worthy of a son of Zeus.

ATHENIAN: Very good.

ATHENIAN: I am willing—And first, I want to know why the law has ordained that you shall have common meals and gymnastic exercises, and wear arms.

ATHENIAN: You appear to me, Stranger, to have been thoroughly trained in the Cretan institutions, and to be well informed about them; will you tell me a little more explicitly what is the principle of government which you would lay down?

ATHENIAN: And is what you say applicable only to states, or also to villages?

ATHENIAN: The case is the same?

ATHENIAN: And in the village will there be the same war of family against family, and of individual against individual?

ATHENIAN: And should each man conceive himself to be his own enemy:—what shall we say?

CLEINIAS: O Athenian Stranger—inhabitant of Attica I will not call you, for you seem to deserve rather to be named after the goddess herself, because you go back to first principles,—you have thrown a light upon the argument, and will now be better able to understand what I was just saying,—that all men are publicly one another's enemies, and each man privately his own.

(ATHENIAN: My good sir, what do you mean?)—

ATHENIAN: Let us now reverse the order of the argument: Seeing that every individual is either his own superior or his own inferior, may we say that there is the same principle in the house, the village, and the state?

ATHENIAN: Yes.

ATHENIAN: Whether the better is ever really conquered by the worse, is a question which requires more discussion, and may be therefore left for the present.

ATHENIAN: Here is another case for consideration;—in a family there may be several brothers, who are the offspring of a single pair; very possibly the majority of them may be unjust, and the just may be in a minority.

ATHENIAN: And you and I ought not to raise a question of words as to whether this family and household are rightly said to be superior when they conquer, and inferior when they are conquered; for we are not now considering what may or may not be the proper or customary way of speaking, but we are considering the natural principles of right and wrong in laws.

ATHENIAN: Again; might there not be a judge over these brethren, of whom we were speaking?

ATHENIAN: Now, which would be the better judge—one who destroyed the bad and appointed the good to govern themselves; or one who, while allowing the good to govern, let the bad live, and made them voluntarily submit?

ATHENIAN: And yet the aim of all the laws which he gave would be the reverse of war.

ATHENIAN: And will he who constitutes the state and orders the life of man have in view external war, or that kind of intestine war called civil, which no one, if he could prevent, would like to have occurring in his own state; and when occurring, every one would wish to be quit of as soon as possible?

ATHENIAN: And would he prefer that this civil war should be terminated by the destruction of one of the parties, and by the victory of the other, or that peace and friendship should be re-established, and that, being reconciled, they should give their attention to foreign enemies?

ATHENIAN: And would not that also be the desire of the legislator?

ATHENIAN: And would not every one always make laws for the sake of the best?

ATHENIAN: But war, whether external or civil, is not the best, and the need of either is to be deprecated; but peace with one another, and good will, are best.

ATHENIAN: I dare say; but there is no reason why we should rudely quarrel with one another about your legislators, instead of gently questioning them, seeing that both we and they are equally in earnest.

Please follow me and the argument closely:—And first I will put forward Tyrtaeus, an Athenian by birth, but also a Spartan citizen, who of all men was most eager about war: Well, he says,

ATHENIAN: Come now and let us all join in asking this question of Tyrtaeus: O most divine poet, we will say to him, the excellent praise which you have bestowed on those who excel in war sufficiently proves that you are wise and good, and I and Megillus and Cleinias of Cnosus do, as I believe, entirely agree with you.

ATHENIAN: Well, now, when you praise and blame war in this high-flown strain, whom are you praising or blaming, and to which kind of war are you referring?

ATHENIAN: They are good; but we say that there are still better men whose virtue is displayed in the greatest of all battles.

ATHENIAN: Nay, I think that we degrade not him but ourselves, if we imagine that Lycurgus and Minos laid down laws both in Lacedaemon and Crete mainly with a view to war.

ATHENIAN: What truth and what justice require of us, if I am not mistaken, when speaking in behalf of divine excellence;—that the legislator when making his laws had in view not a part only, and this the lowest part of virtue, but all virtue, and that he devised classes of laws answering to the kinds of virtue; not in the way in which modern inventors of laws make the classes, for they only investigate and offer laws whenever a want is felt, and one man has a class of laws about allotments and heiresses, another about assaults; others about ten thousand other such matters.

ATHENIAN: You ought to have said, Stranger—The Cretan laws are with reason famous among the Hellenes; for they fulfil the object of laws, which is to make those who use them happy; and they confer every sort of good.

ATHENIAN: I think that we must begin again as before, and first consider the habit of courage; and then we will go on and discuss another and then another form of virtue, if you please.

ATHENIAN: I will try to criticize you and myself, as well as him, for the argument is a common concern.

ATHENIAN: And what comes third, and what fourth?

ATHENIAN: Let us see if we can discover what comes fourth and fifth.

ATHENIAN: Excellent, O Lacedaemonian Stranger.

ATHENIAN: In what preceded, as you will remember, our Cnosian friend was speaking of a man or a city being inferior to themselves:—Were you not, Cleinias?

ATHENIAN: Now, which is in the truest sense inferior, the man who is overcome by pleasure or by pain?

ATHENIAN: But surely the lawgivers of Crete and Lacedaemon have not legislated for a courage which is lame of one leg, able only to meet attacks which come from the left, but impotent against the insidious flatteries which come from the right?

ATHENIAN: Then let me once more ask, what institutions have you in either of your states which give a taste of pleasures, and do not avoid them any more than they avoid pains; but which set a person in the midst of them, and compel or induce him by the prospect of reward to get the better of them?

ATHENIAN: No wonder, my dear friends; and if, as is very likely, in our search after the true and good, one of us may have to censure the laws of the others, we must not be offended, but take kindly what another says.

CLEINIAS: You are quite right, Athenian Stranger, and we will do as you say.

ATHENIAN: At our time of life, Cleinias, there should be no feeling of irritation.

ATHENIAN: I will not at present determine whether he who censures the Cretan or Lacedaemonian polities is right or wrong.

ATHENIAN: As there are no young men present, and the legislator has given old men free licence, there will be no impropriety in our discussing these very matters now that we are alone.

ATHENIAN: Very good; however, I am not going to say anything against your laws until to the best of my ability I have examined them, but I am going to raise doubts about them.

ATHENIAN: Suppose, Cleinias and Megillus, that we consider the virtue which follows next of those which we intended to discuss (for after courage comes temperance), what institutions shall we find relating to temperance, either in Crete or Lacedaemon, which, like your military institutions, differ from those of any ordinary state.

ATHENIAN: There seems to be a difficulty, Stranger, with regard to states, in making words and facts coincide so that there can be no dispute about them.

ATHENIAN: O Lacedaemonian Stranger, these festivities are praiseworthy where there is a spirit of endurance, but are very senseless when they are under no regulations.

In order to retaliate, an Athenian has only to point out the licence which exists among your women.

ATHENIAN: Nay, my good friend, do not say that; there have been, as there always will be, flights and pursuits of which no account can be given, and therefore we cannot say that victory or defeat in battle affords more than a doubtful proof of the goodness or badness of institutions.

For when the greater states conquer and enslave the lesser, as the Syracusans have done the Locrians, who appear to be the best-governed people in their part of the world, or as the Athenians have done the Ceans (and there are ten thousand other instances of the same sort of thing), all this is not to the point; let us endeavour rather to form a conclusion about each institution in itself and say nothing, at present, of victories and defeats.

ATHENIAN: All those who are ready at a moment's notice to praise or censure any practice which is matter of discussion, seem to me to proceed in a wrong way.

ATHENIAN: Let me put the matter thus:—Suppose a person to praise the keeping of goats, and the creatures themselves as capital things to have, and then some one who had seen goats feeding without a goatherd in cultivated spots, and doing mischief, were to censure a goat or any other animal who has no keeper, or a bad keeper, would there be any sense or justice in such censure?

ATHENIAN: Does a captain require only to have nautical knowledge in order to be a good captain, whether he is sea-sick or not?

ATHENIAN: And what would you say of the commander of an army?

ATHENIAN: And what if besides being a coward he has no skill?

ATHENIAN: And what would you say of some one who blames or praises any sort of meeting which is intended by nature to have a ruler, and is well enough when under his presidency?

ATHENIAN: Reflect; may not banqueters and banquets be said to constitute a kind of meeting?

ATHENIAN: And did any one ever see this sort of convivial meeting rightly ordered?

ATHENIAN: Likely enough; then let me try to be your instructor: You would acknowledge, would you not, that in all gatherings of mankind, of whatever sort, there ought to be a leader?

ATHENIAN: And we were saying just now, that when men are at war the leader ought to be a brave man?

ATHENIAN: The brave man is less likely than the coward to be disturbed by fears?

ATHENIAN: And if there were a possibility of having a general of an army who was absolutely fearless and imperturbable, should we not by all means appoint him?

ATHENIAN: Now, however, we are speaking not of a general who is to command an army, when foe meets foe in time of war, but of one who is to regulate meetings of another sort, when friend meets friend in time of peace.

ATHENIAN: And that sort of meeting, if attended with drunkenness, is apt to be unquiet.

ATHENIAN: In the first place, then, the revellers as well as the soldiers will require a ruler?

ATHENIAN: And we ought, if possible, to provide them with a quiet ruler?

ATHENIAN: And he should be a man who understands society; for his duty is to preserve the friendly feelings which exist among the company at the time, and to increase them for the future by his use of the occasion.

ATHENIAN: Must we not appoint a sober man and a wise to be our master of the revels?

ATHENIAN: Now suppose such associations to be framed in the best way possible in states, and that some one blames the very fact of their existence—he may very likely be right.

ATHENIAN: If you mean to ask what great good accrues to the state from the right training of a single youth, or of a single chorus—when the question is put in that form, we cannot deny that the good is not very great in any particular instance.

ATHENIAN: Certainly I do.

ATHENIAN: To be absolutely sure of the truth of matters concerning which there are many opinions, is an attribute of the Gods not given to man, Stranger; but I shall be very happy to tell you what I think, especially as we are now proposing to enter on a discussion concerning laws and constitutions.

ATHENIAN: Very good; I will try to find a way of explaining my meaning, and you shall try to have the gift of understanding me.

The Athenian citizen is reputed among all the Hellenes to be a great talker, whereas Sparta is renowned for brevity, and the Cretans have more wit than words.

MEGILLUS: O Athenian Stranger, let me tell you what perhaps you do not know, that our family is the proxenus of your state.

I can well remember from the days of my boyhood, how, when any Lacedaemonians praised or blamed the Athenians, they used to say to me,—'See, Megillus, how ill or how well,' as the case might be, 'has your state treated us'; and having always had to fight your battles against detractors when I heard you assailed, I became warmly attached to you.

And I always like to hear the Athenian tongue spoken; the common saying is quite true, that a good Athenian is more than ordinarily good, for he is the only man who is freely and genuinely good by the divine inspiration of his own nature, and is not manufactured.

The Athenians were at that time in dread of the Persian invasion; and he said that for ten years they would not come, and that when they came, they would go away again without accomplishing any of their objects, and would suffer more evil than they inflicted.

ATHENIAN: You seem to be quite ready to listen; and I am also ready to perform as much as I can of an almost impossible task, which I will nevertheless attempt.

ATHENIAN: Well, then, if I tell you what are my notions of education, will you consider whether they satisfy you?

ATHENIAN: According to my view, any one who would be good at anything must practise that thing from his youth upwards, both in sport and earnest, in its several branches: for example, he who is to be a good builder, should play at building children's houses; he who is to be a good husbandman, at tilling the ground; and those who have the care of their education should provide them when young with mimic tools.

ATHENIAN: Then let us not leave the meaning of education ambiguous or ill-defined.

ATHENIAN: And we agreed before that they are good men who are able to rule themselves, and bad men who are not.

ATHENIAN: Let me now proceed, if I can, to clear up the subject a little further by an illustration which I will offer you.

ATHENIAN: Do we not consider each of ourselves to be one?

ATHENIAN: And each one of us has in his bosom two counsellors, both foolish and also antagonistic; of which we call the one pleasure, and the other pain.

ATHENIAN: Also there are opinions about the future, which have the general name of expectations; and the specific name of fear, when the expectation is of pain; and of hope, when of pleasure; and further, there is reflection about the good or evil of them, and this, when embodied in a decree by the State, is called Law.

ATHENIAN: Let us look at the matter thus: May we not conceive each of us living beings to be a puppet of the Gods, either their plaything only, or created with a purpose—which of the two we cannot certainly know?

ATHENIAN: Very good; let us proceed with any enquiry which really bears on our present object.

ATHENIAN: Suppose that we give this puppet of ours drink,—what will be the effect on him?

ATHENIAN: Nothing as yet; but I ask generally, when the puppet is brought to the drink, what sort of result is likely to follow.

ATHENIAN: And are perception and memory, and opinion and prudence, heightened and increased?

ATHENIAN: Does he not return to the state of soul in which he was when a young child?

ATHENIAN: Then at that time he will have the least control over himself?

ATHENIAN: And will he not be in a most wretched plight?

ATHENIAN: Then not only an old man but also a drunkard becomes a second time a child?

ATHENIAN: Is there any argument which will prove to us that we ought to encourage the taste for drinking instead of doing all we can to avoid it?

ATHENIAN: True, I was; and I am ready still, seeing that you have both declared that you are anxious to hear me.

ATHENIAN: Are you speaking of the soul?

ATHENIAN: And what would you say about the body, my friend?

ATHENIAN: Yet when a man goes of his own accord to a doctor's shop, and takes medicine, is he not aware that soon, and for many days afterwards, he will be in a state of body which he would die rather than accept as the permanent condition of his life?

ATHENIAN: Also that they go of their own accord for the sake of the subsequent benefit?

ATHENIAN: And we may conceive this to be true in the same way of other practices?

ATHENIAN: And the same view may be taken of the pastime of drinking wine, if we are right in supposing that the same good effect follows?

ATHENIAN: If such convivialities should turn out to have any advantage equal in importance to that of gymnastic, they are in their very nature to be preferred to mere bodily exercise, inasmuch as they have no accompaniment of pain.

ATHENIAN: That is just what we must endeavour to show.

ATHENIAN: There is the fear of expected evil.

ATHENIAN: And there is the fear of an evil reputation; we are afraid of being thought evil, because we do or say some dishonourable thing, which fear we and all men term shame.

ATHENIAN: These are the two fears, as I called them; one of which is the opposite of pain and other fears, and the opposite also of the greatest and most numerous sort of pleasures.

ATHENIAN: And does not the legislator and every one who is good for anything, hold this fear in the greatest honour?

ATHENIAN: Does not this kind of fear preserve us in many important ways?

ATHENIAN: Then each of us should be fearless and also fearful; and why we should be either has now been determined.

ATHENIAN: And when we want to make any one fearless, we and the law bring him face to face with many fears.

ATHENIAN: And when we want to make him rightly fearful, must we not introduce him to shameless pleasures, and train him to take up arms against them, and to overcome them?

ATHENIAN: Suppose that some God had given a fear-potion to men, and that the more a man drank of this the more he regarded himself at every draught as a child of misfortune, and that he feared everything happening or about to happen to him; and that at last the most courageous of men utterly lost his presence of mind for a time, and only came to himself again when he had slept off the influence of the draught.

ATHENIAN: No; but, if there had been, might not such a draught have been of use to the legislator as a test of courage?

ATHENIAN: 'And you would rather have a touchstone in which there is no risk and no great danger than the reverse?'

ATHENIAN: 'And in order to make use of the draught, you would lead them amid these imaginary terrors, and prove them, when the affection of fear was working upon them, and compel them to be fearless, exhorting and admonishing them; and also honouring them, but dishonouring any one who will not be persuaded by you to be in all respects such as you command him; and if he underwent the trial well and manfully, you would let him go unscathed; but if ill, you would inflict a punishment upon him?

ATHENIAN: This would be a mode of testing and training which would be wonderfully easy in comparison with those now in use, and might be applied to a single person, or to a few, or indeed to any number; and he would do well who provided himself with the potion only, rather than with any number of other things, whether he preferred to be by himself in solitude, and there contend with his fears, because he was ashamed to be seen by the eye of man until he was perfect; or trusting to the force of his own nature and habits, and believing that he had been already disciplined sufficiently, he did not hesitate to train himself in company with any number of others, and display his power in conquering the irresistible change effected by the draught—his virtue being such, that he never in any instance fell into any great unseemliness, but was always himself, and left off before he arrived at the last cup, fearing that he, like all other men, might be overcome by the potion.

ATHENIAN: Let us return to the lawgiver, and say to him:—'Well, lawgiver, there is certainly no such fear-potion which man has either received from the Gods or himself discovered; for witchcraft has no place at our board.

ATHENIAN: Is not the effect of this quite the opposite of the effect of the other?

ATHENIAN: Now, let us remember, as we were saying, that there are two things which should be cultivated in the soul: first, the greatest courage; secondly, the greatest fear—

ATHENIAN: Thank you for reminding me.

ATHENIAN: There are times and seasons at which we are by nature more than commonly valiant and bold; now we ought to train ourselves on these occasions to be as free from impudence and shamelessness as possible, and to be afraid to say or suffer or do anything that is base.

ATHENIAN: Are not the moments in which we are apt to be bold and shameless such as these?—when we are under the influence of anger, love, pride, ignorance, avarice, cowardice?

ATHENIAN: And this knowledge of the natures and habits of men's souls will be of the greatest use in that art which has the management of them; and that art, if I am not mistaken, is politics.

ATHENIAN: And now we have to consider whether the insight into human nature is the only benefit derived from well-ordered potations, or whether there are not other advantages great and much to be desired.

ATHENIAN: Let me once more recall our doctrine of right education; which, if I am not mistaken, depends on the due regulation of convivial intercourse.

ATHENIAN: Pleasure and pain I maintain to be the first perceptions of children, and I say that they are the forms under which virtue and vice are originally present to them.

ATHENIAN: I am glad to hear that you agree with me; for, indeed, the discipline of pleasure and pain which, when rightly ordered, is a principle of education, has been often relaxed and corrupted in human life.

ATHENIAN: And the uneducated is he who has not been trained in the chorus, and the educated is he who has been well trained?

ATHENIAN: And the chorus is made up of two parts, dance and song?

ATHENIAN: Then he who is well educated will be able to sing and dance well?

ATHENIAN: Let us see; what are we saying?

ATHENIAN: He sings well and dances well; now must we add that he sings what is good and dances what is good?

ATHENIAN: We will suppose that he knows the good to be good, and the bad to be bad, and makes use of them accordingly: which now is the better trained in dancing and music—he who is able to move his body and to use his voice in what is understood to be the right manner, but has no delight in good or hatred of evil; or he who is incorrect in gesture and voice, but is right in his sense of pleasure and pain, and welcomes what is good, and is offended at what is evil?

ATHENIAN: If we three know what is good in song and dance, then we truly know also who is educated and who is uneducated; but if not, then we certainly shall not know wherein lies the safeguard of education, and whether there is any or not.

ATHENIAN: Let us follow the scent like hounds, and go in pursuit of beauty of figure, and melody, and song, and dance; if these escape us, there will be no use in talking about true education, whether Hellenic or barbarian.

ATHENIAN: And what is beauty of figure, or beautiful melody?

ATHENIAN: Good, my friend; I may observe, however, in passing, that in music there certainly are figures and there are melodies: and music is concerned with harmony and rhythm, so that you may speak of a melody or figure having good rhythm or good harmony—the term is correct enough; but to speak metaphorically of a melody or figure having a 'good colour,' as the masters of choruses do, is not allowable, although you can speak of the melodies or figures of the brave and the coward, praising the one and censuring the other.

ATHENIAN: Once more, are all of us equally delighted with every sort of dance?

ATHENIAN: What, then, leads us astray?

ATHENIAN: The adaptation of art to the characters of men.

ATHENIAN: And is any harm done to the lover of vicious dances or songs, or any good done to the approver of the opposite sort of pleasure?

ATHENIAN: 'I think' is not the word, but I would say, rather, 'I am certain.' For must they not have the same effect as when a man associates with bad characters, whom he likes and approves rather than dislikes, and only censures playfully because he has a suspicion of his own badness?

ATHENIAN: Then in a city which has good laws, or in future ages is to have them, bearing in mind the instruction and amusement which are given by music, can we suppose that the poets are to be allowed to teach in the dance anything which they themselves like, in the way of rhythm, or melody, or words, to the young children of any well-conditioned parents?

ATHENIAN: And yet he may do this in almost any state with the exception of Egypt.

ATHENIAN: You will wonder when I tell you: Long ago they appear to have recognized the very principle of which we are now speaking—that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue.

ATHENIAN: I should rather say, How statesmanlike, how worthy of a legislator!

ATHENIAN: May we not confidently say that the true use of music and of choral festivities is as follows: We rejoice when we think that we prosper, and again we think that we prosper when we rejoice?

ATHENIAN: And when rejoicing in our good fortune, we are unable to be still?

ATHENIAN: Our young men break forth into dancing and singing, and we who are their elders deem that we are fulfilling our part in life when we look on at them.

ATHENIAN: Is it altogether unmeaning to say, as the common people do about festivals, that he should be adjudged the wisest of men, and the winner of the palm, who gives us the greatest amount of pleasure and mirth?

ATHENIAN: But, my dear friend, let us distinguish between different cases, and not be hasty in forming a judgment: One way of considering the question will be to imagine a festival at which there are entertainments of all sorts, including gymnastic, musical, and equestrian contests: the citizens are assembled; prizes are offered, and proclamation is made that any one who likes may enter the lists, and that he is to bear the palm who gives the most pleasure to the spectators—there is to be no regulation about the manner how; but he who is most successful in giving pleasure is to be crowned victor, and deemed to be the pleasantest of the candidates: What is likely to be the result of such a proclamation?

ATHENIAN: There would be various exhibitions: one man, like Homer, will exhibit a rhapsody, another a performance on the lute; one will have a tragedy, and another a comedy.

ATHENIAN: Well, then, if neither of you can answer, shall I answer this question which you deem so absurd?

ATHENIAN: If very small children are to determine the question, they will decide for the puppet show.

ATHENIAN: The older children will be advocates of comedy; educated women, and young men, and people in general, will favour tragedy.

ATHENIAN: And I believe that we old men would have the greatest pleasure in hearing a rhapsodist recite well the Iliad and Odyssey, or one of the Hesiodic poems, and would award the victory to him.

ATHENIAN: Clearly you and I will have to declare that those whom we old men adjudge victors ought to win; for our ways are far and away better than any which at present exist anywhere in the world.

ATHENIAN: Thus far I too should agree with the many, that the excellence of music is to be measured by pleasure.

ATHENIAN: The inference at which we arrive for the third or fourth time is, that education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the eldest and best has agreed to be truly right.

ATHENIAN: Most true, Cleinias; and I daresay that I may have expressed myself obscurely, and so led you to imagine that I was speaking of some really existing state of things, whereas I was only saying what regulations I would like to have about music; and hence there occurred a misapprehension on your part.

ATHENIAN: And if they were extended to the other Hellenes, would it be an improvement on the present state of things?

ATHENIAN: Let us see whether we understand one another:—Are not the principles of education and music which prevail among you as follows: you compel your poets to say that the good man, if he be temperate and just, is fortunate and happy; and this whether he be great and strong or small and weak, and whether he be rich or poor; and, on the other hand, if he have a wealth passing that of Cinyras or Midas, and be unjust, he is wretched and lives in misery?

ATHENIAN: When a man has health and wealth and a tyranny which lasts, and when he is pre-eminent in strength and courage, and has the gift of immortality, and none of the so-called evils which counter-balance these goods, but only the injustice and insolence of his own nature—of such an one you are, I suspect, unwilling to believe that he is miserable rather than happy.

ATHENIAN: Once more: Suppose that he be valiant and strong, and handsome and rich, and does throughout his whole life whatever he likes, still, if he be unrighteous and insolent, would not both of you agree that he will of necessity live basely?

ATHENIAN: And an evil life too?

ATHENIAN: Will he not live painfully and to his own disadvantage?

ATHENIAN: How!

ATHENIAN: The view which identifies the pleasant and the pleasant and the just and the good and the noble has an excellent moral and religious tendency.

ATHENIAN: And which may be supposed to be the truer judgment—that of the inferior or of the better soul?

ATHENIAN: Then the unjust life must not only be more base and depraved, but also more unpleasant than the just and holy life?

ATHENIAN: And even supposing this were otherwise, and not as the argument has proven, still the lawgiver, who is worth anything, if he ever ventures to tell a lie to the young for their good, could not invent a more useful lie than this, or one which will have a better effect in making them do what is right, not on compulsion but voluntarily.

ATHENIAN: And yet the story of the Sidonian Cadmus, which is so improbable, has been readily believed, and also innumerable other tales.

ATHENIAN: The story of armed men springing up after the sowing of teeth, which the legislator may take as a proof that he can persuade the minds of the young of anything; so that he has only to reflect and find out what belief will be of the greatest public advantage, and then use all his efforts to make the whole community utter one and the same word in their songs and tales and discourses all their life long.

ATHENIAN: The next suggestion which I have to offer is, that all our three choruses shall sing to the young and tender souls of children, reciting in their strains all the noble thoughts of which we have already spoken, or are about to speak; and the sum of them shall be, that the life which is by the Gods deemed to be the happiest is also the best;—we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth; and the minds of our young disciples will be more likely to receive these words of ours than any others which we might address to them.

ATHENIAN: First will enter in their natural order the sacred choir composed of children, which is to sing lustily the heaven-taught lay to the whole city.

ATHENIAN: And yet almost all that I have been saying has been said with a view to them.

ATHENIAN: I was speaking at the commencement of our discourse, as you will remember, of the fiery nature of young creatures: I said that they were unable to keep quiet either in limb or voice, and that they called out and jumped about in a disorderly manner; and that no other animal attained to any perception of order, but man only.

ATHENIAN: Thus far I have spoken of the chorus of Apollo and the Muses, and I have still to speak of the remaining chorus, which is that of Dionysus.

ATHENIAN: Very true; and therefore it must be shown that there is good reason for the proposal.

ATHENIAN: Are we agreed thus far?

ATHENIAN: That every man and boy, slave and free, both sexes, and the whole city, should never cease charming themselves with the strains of which we have spoken; and that there should be every sort of change and variation of them in order to take away the effect of sameness, so that the singers may always receive pleasure from their hymns, and may never weary of them?

ATHENIAN: Where, then, will that best part of our city which, by reason of age and intelligence, has the greatest influence, sing these fairest of strains, which are to do so much good?

ATHENIAN: Then how can we carry out our purpose with decorum?

ATHENIAN: When a man is advancing in years, he is afraid and reluctant to sing;—he has no pleasure in his own performances; and if compulsion is used, he will be more and more ashamed, the older and more discreet he grows;—is not this true?

ATHENIAN: Well, and will he not be yet more ashamed if he has to stand up and sing in the theatre to a mixed audience?—and if moreover when he is required to do so, like the other choirs who contend for prizes, and have been trained under a singing master, he is pinched and hungry, he will certainly have a feeling of shame and discomfort which will make him very unwilling to exhibit.

ATHENIAN: How, then, shall we reassure him, and get him to sing?

ATHENIAN: There will be no impropriety in our using such a method of persuading them to join with us in song.

ATHENIAN: And what strain will they sing, and what muse will they hymn?

ATHENIAN: And what strain is suitable for heroes?

ATHENIAN: I dare say; for you have never acquired the knowledge of the most beautiful kind of song, in your military way of life, which is modelled after the camp, and is not like that of dwellers in cities; and you have your young men herding and feeding together like young colts.

ATHENIAN: Not intentionally, if at all, my good friend; but whither the argument leads, thither let us follow; for if there be indeed some strain of song more beautiful than that of the choruses or the public theatres, I should like to impart it to those who, as we say, are ashamed of these, and want to have the best.

ATHENIAN: When things have an accompanying charm, either the best thing in them is this very charm, or there is some rightness or utility possessed by them;—for example, I should say that eating and drinking, and the use of food in general, have an accompanying charm which we call pleasure; but that this rightness and utility is just the healthfulness of the things served up to us, which is their true rightness.

ATHENIAN: Thus, too, I should say that learning has a certain accompanying charm which is the pleasure; but that the right and the profitable, the good and the noble, are qualities which the truth gives to it.

ATHENIAN: And so in the imitative arts—if they succeed in making likenesses, and are accompanied by pleasure, may not their works be said to have a charm?

ATHENIAN: But equal proportions, whether of quality or quantity, and not pleasure, speaking generally, would give them truth or rightness.

ATHENIAN: Then that only can be rightly judged by the standard of pleasure, which makes or furnishes no utility or truth or likeness, nor on the other hand is productive of any hurtful quality, but exists solely for the sake of the accompanying charm; and the term 'pleasure' is most appropriately applied to it when these other qualities are absent.

ATHENIAN: Yes; and this I term amusement, when doing neither harm nor good in any degree worth speaking of.

ATHENIAN: Then, if such be our principles, we must assert that imitation is not to be judged of by pleasure and false opinion; and this is true of all equality, for the equal is not equal or the symmetrical symmetrical, because somebody thinks or likes something, but they are to be judged of by the standard of truth, and by no other whatever.

ATHENIAN: Do we not regard all music as representative and imitative?

ATHENIAN: Then, when any one says that music is to be judged of by pleasure, his doctrine cannot be admitted; and if there be any music of which pleasure is the criterion, such music is not to be sought out or deemed to have any real excellence, but only that other kind of music which is an imitation of the good.

ATHENIAN: And those who seek for the best kind of song and music ought not to seek for that which is pleasant, but for that which is true; and the truth of imitation consists, as we were saying, in rendering the thing imitated according to quantity and quality.

ATHENIAN: And every one will admit that musical compositions are all imitative and representative.

ATHENIAN: Surely then he who would judge correctly must know what each composition is; for if he does not know what is the character and meaning of the piece, and what it represents, he will never discern whether the intention is true or false.

ATHENIAN: And will he who does not know what is true be able to distinguish what is good and bad?

ATHENIAN: There are ten thousand likenesses of objects of sight?

ATHENIAN: And can he who does not know what the exact object is which is imitated, ever know whether the resemblance is truthfully executed?

ATHENIAN: But even if we know that the thing pictured or sculptured is a man, who has received at the hand of the artist all his proper parts and colours and shapes, must we not also know whether the work is beautiful or in any respect deficient in beauty?

ATHENIAN: Very true; and may we not say that in everything imitated, whether in drawing, music, or any other art, he who is to be a competent judge must possess three things;—he must know, in the first place, of what the imitation is; secondly, he must know that it is true; and thirdly, that it has been well executed in words and melodies and rhythms?

ATHENIAN: Then let us not faint in discussing the peculiar difficulty of music.

ATHENIAN: The many are ridiculous in imagining that they know what is in proper harmony and rhythm, and what is not, when they can only be made to sing and step in rhythm by force; it never occurs to them that they are ignorant of what they are doing.

ATHENIAN: But can a man who does not know a thing, as we were saying, know that the thing is right?

ATHENIAN: Then now, as would appear, we are making the discovery that our newly-appointed choristers, whom we hereby invite and, although they are their own masters, compel to sing, must be educated to such an extent as to be able to follow the steps of the rhythm and the notes of the song, that they may know the harmonies and rhythms, and be able to select what are suitable for men of their age and character to sing; and may sing them, and have innocent pleasure from their own performance, and also lead younger men to welcome with dutiful delight good dispositions.

ATHENIAN: Every man has a more than natural elevation; his heart is glad within him, and he will say anything and will be restrained by nobody at such a time; he fancies that he is able to rule over himself and all mankind.

ATHENIAN: Were we not saying that on such occasions the souls of the drinkers become like iron heated in the fire, and grow softer and younger, and are easily moulded by him who knows how to educate and fashion them, just as when they were young, and that this fashioner of them is the same who prescribed for them in the days of their youth, viz., the good legislator; and that he ought to enact laws of the banquet, which, when a man is confident, bold, and impudent, and unwilling to wait his turn and have his share of silence and speech, and drinking and music, will change his character into the opposite—such laws as will infuse into him a just and noble fear, which will take up arms at the approach of insolence, being that divine fear which we have called reverence and shame?

ATHENIAN: And the guardians of these laws and fellow-workers with them are the calm and sober generals of the drinkers; and without their help there is greater difficulty in fighting against drink than in fighting against enemies when the commander of an army is not himself calm; and he who is unwilling to obey them and the commanders of Dionysiac feasts who are more than sixty years of age, shall suffer a disgrace as great as he who disobeys military leaders, or even greater.

ATHENIAN: If, then, drinking and amusement were regulated in this way, would not the companions of our revels be improved?

ATHENIAN: Let us not then simply censure the gift of Dionysus as bad and unfit to be received into the State.

ATHENIAN: There is a tradition or story, which has somehow crept about the world, that Dionysus was robbed of his wits by his stepmother Here, and that out of revenge he inspires Bacchic furies and dancing madnesses in others; for which reason he gave men wine.

ATHENIAN: And did we not say that the sense of harmony and rhythm sprang from this beginning among men, and that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus were the Gods whom we had to thank for them?

ATHENIAN: The other story implied that wine was given man out of revenge, and in order to make him mad; but our present doctrine, on the contrary, is, that wine was given him as a balm, and in order to implant modesty in the soul, and health and strength in the body.

ATHENIAN: Then half the subject may now be considered to have been discussed; shall we proceed to the consideration of the other half?

ATHENIAN: The whole choral art is also in our view the whole of education; and of this art, rhythms and harmonies form the part which has to do with the voice.

ATHENIAN: The movement of the body has rhythm in common with the movement of the voice, but gesture is peculiar to it, whereas song is simply the movement of the voice.

ATHENIAN: And the sound of the voice which reaches and educates the soul, we have ventured to term music.

ATHENIAN: And the movement of the body, when regarded as an amusement, we termed dancing; but when extended and pursued with a view to the excellence of the body, this scientific training may be called gymnastic.

ATHENIAN: Music, which was one half of the choral art, may be said to have been completely discussed.

ATHENIAN: An answer is contained in your question; and I understand and accept what you say not only as an answer, but also as a command to proceed with gymnastic.

ATHENIAN: I will; and there will not be any difficulty in speaking intelligibly to you about a subject with which both of you are far more familiar than with music.

ATHENIAN: Is not the origin of gymnastics, too, to be sought in the tendency to rapid motion which exists in all animals; man, as we were saying, having attained the sense of rhythm, created and invented dancing; and melody arousing and awakening rhythm, both united formed the choral art?

ATHENIAN: And one part of this subject has been already discussed by us, and there still remains another to be discussed?

ATHENIAN: I have first a final word to add to my discourse about drink, if you will allow me to do so.

ATHENIAN: I should say that if a city seriously means to adopt the practice of drinking under due regulation and with a view to the enforcement of temperance, and in like manner, and on the same principle, will allow of other pleasures, designing to gain the victory over them—in this way all of them may be used.

ATHENIAN: Enough of this.

ATHENIAN: I mean that he might watch them from the point of view of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite ages.

ATHENIAN: Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?

ATHENIAN: But are sure that it must be vast and incalculable?

ATHENIAN: And have not thousands and thousands of cities come into being during this period and as many perished?

ATHENIAN: Let us endeavour to ascertain the cause of these changes; for that will probably explain the first origin and development of forms of government.

ATHENIAN: Do you believe that there is any truth in ancient traditions?

ATHENIAN: The traditions about the many destructions of mankind which have been occasioned by deluges and pestilences, and in many other ways, and of the survival of a remnant?

ATHENIAN: Let us consider one of them, that which was caused by the famous deluge.

ATHENIAN: I mean to say that those who then escaped would only be hill shepherds,—small sparks of the human race preserved on the tops of mountains.

ATHENIAN: Such survivors would necessarily be unacquainted with the arts and the various devices which are suggested to the dwellers in cities by interest or ambition, and with all the wrongs which they contrive against one another.

ATHENIAN: Let us suppose, then, that the cities in the plain and on the sea-coast were utterly destroyed at that time.

ATHENIAN: Would not all implements have then perished and every other excellent invention of political or any other sort of wisdom have utterly disappeared?

ATHENIAN: Have you forgotten, Cleinias, the name of a friend who is really of yesterday?

ATHENIAN: The same, my friend; he does indeed far overleap the heads of all mankind by his invention; for he carried out in practice, as you declare, what of old Hesiod (Works and Days) only preached.

ATHENIAN: After the great destruction, may we not suppose that the state of man was something of this sort:—In the beginning of things there was a fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land; a herd or two of oxen would be the only survivors of the animal world; and there might be a few goats, these too hardly enough to maintain the shepherds who tended them?

ATHENIAN: And of cities or governments or legislation, about which we are now talking, do you suppose that they could have any recollection at all?

ATHENIAN: And out of this state of things has there not sprung all that we now are and have: cities and governments, and arts and laws, and a great deal of vice and a great deal of virtue?

ATHENIAN: Why, my good friend, how can we possibly suppose that those who knew nothing of all the good and evil of cities could have attained their full development, whether of virtue or of vice?

ATHENIAN: But, as time advanced and the race multiplied, the world came to be what the world is.

ATHENIAN: Doubtless the change was not made all in a moment, but little by little, during a very long period of time.

ATHENIAN: At first, they would have a natural fear ringing in their ears which would prevent their descending from the heights into the plain.

ATHENIAN: The fewness of the survivors at that time would have made them all the more desirous of seeing one another; but then the means of travelling either by land or sea had been almost entirely lost, as I may say, with the loss of the arts, and there was great difficulty in getting at one another; for iron and brass and all metals were jumbled together and had disappeared in the chaos; nor was there any possibility of extracting ore from them; and they had scarcely any means of felling timber.

ATHENIAN: In how many generations would this be attained?

ATHENIAN: During this period, and for some time afterwards, all the arts which require iron and brass and the like would disappear.

ATHENIAN: Faction and war would also have died out in those days, and for many reasons.

ATHENIAN: In the first place, the desolation of these primitive men would create in them a feeling of affection and goodwill towards one another; and, secondly, they would have no occasion to quarrel about their subsistence, for they would have pasture in abundance, except just at first, and in some particular cases; and from their pasture-land they would obtain the greater part of their food in a primitive age, having plenty of milk and flesh; moreover they would procure other food by the chase, not to be despised either in quantity or quality.

ATHENIAN: Would not many generations living on in a simple manner, although ruder, perhaps, and more ignorant of the arts generally, and in particular of those of land or naval warfare, and likewise of other arts, termed in cities legal practices and party conflicts, and including all conceivable ways of hurting one another in word and deed;—although inferior to those who lived before the deluge, or to the men of our day in these respects, would they not, I say, be simpler and more manly, and also more temperate and altogether more just?

ATHENIAN: I should wish you to understand that what has preceded and what is about to follow, has been, and will be said, with the intention of explaining what need the men of that time had of laws, and who was their lawgiver.

ATHENIAN: They could hardly have wanted lawgivers as yet; nothing of that sort was likely to have existed in their days, for they had no letters at this early period; they lived by habit and the customs of their ancestors, as they are called.

ATHENIAN: But there was already existing a form of government which, if I am not mistaken, is generally termed a lordship, and this still remains in many places, both among Hellenes and barbarians (compare Arist.

ATHENIAN: Yes, he does confirm it; and we may accept his witness to the fact that such forms of government sometimes arise.

ATHENIAN: And were not such states composed of men who had been dispersed in single habitations and families by the poverty which attended the devastations; and did not the eldest then rule among them, because with them government originated in the authority of a father and a mother, whom, like a flock of birds, they followed, forming one troop under the patriarchal rule and sovereignty of their parents, which of all sovereignties is the most just?

ATHENIAN: After this they came together in greater numbers, and increased the size of their cities, and betook themselves to husbandry, first of all at the foot of the mountains, and made enclosures of loose walls and works of defence, in order to keep off wild beasts; thus creating a single large and common habitation.

ATHENIAN: There is another thing which would probably happen.

ATHENIAN: When these larger habitations grew up out of the lesser original ones, each of the lesser ones would survive in the larger; every family would be under the rule of the eldest, and, owing to their separation from one another, would have peculiar customs in things divine and human, which they would have received from their several parents who had educated them; and these customs would incline them to order, when the parents had the element of order in their nature, and to courage, when they had the element of courage.

ATHENIAN: And every man surely likes his own laws best, and the laws of others not so well.

ATHENIAN: Then now we seem to have stumbled upon the beginnings of legislation.

ATHENIAN: The next step will be that these persons who have met together, will select some arbiters, who will review the laws of all of them, and will publicly present such as they approve to the chiefs who lead the tribes, and who are in a manner their kings, allowing them to choose those which they think best.

ATHENIAN: Then, now let us speak of a third form of government, in which all other forms and conditions of polities and cities concur.

ATHENIAN: The form which in fact Homer indicates as following the second.

ATHENIAN: Then now let us proceed with the rest of our tale, which will probably be found to illustrate in some degree our proposed design:—Shall we do so?

ATHENIAN: Ilium was built, when they descended from the mountain, in a large and fair plain, on a sort of low hill, watered by many rivers descending from Ida.

ATHENIAN: And we must suppose this event to have taken place many ages after the deluge?

ATHENIAN: A marvellous forgetfulness of the former destruction would appear to have come over them, when they placed their town right under numerous streams flowing from the heights, trusting for their security to not very high hills, either.

ATHENIAN: And, as population increased, many other cities would begin to be inhabited.

ATHENIAN: Those cities made war against Troy—by sea as well as land—for at that time men were ceasing to be afraid of the sea.

ATHENIAN: The Achaeans remained ten years, and overthrew Troy.

ATHENIAN: And during the ten years in which the Achaeans were besieging Ilium, the homes of the besiegers were falling into an evil plight.

ATHENIAN: Thus, after digressing from the original subject of laws into music and drinking-bouts, the argument has, providentially, come back to the same point, and presents to us another handle.

ATHENIAN: Then I suppose that we must consider this subject?

ATHENIAN: Let us place ourselves in thought at the moment when Lacedaemon and Argos and Messene and the rest of the Peloponnesus were all in complete subjection, Megillus, to your ancestors; for afterwards, as the legend informs us, they divided their army into three portions, and settled three cities, Argos, Messene, Lacedaemon.

ATHENIAN: Temenus was the king of Argos, Cresphontes of Messene, Procles and Eurysthenes of Lacedaemon.

ATHENIAN: To these kings all the men of that day made oath that they would assist them, if any one subverted their kingdom.

ATHENIAN: But can a kingship be destroyed, or was any other form of government ever destroyed, by any but the rulers themselves?

ATHENIAN: And may we not now further confirm what was then mentioned?

ATHENIAN: And the three states to whom these laws were given, whether their kings or any others were the authors of them, had therefore the greatest security for the maintenance of their constitutions?

ATHENIAN: That the other two states were always to come to the rescue against a rebellious third.

ATHENIAN: Many persons say that legislators ought to impose such laws as the mass of the people will be ready to receive; but this is just as if one were to command gymnastic masters or physicians to treat or cure their pupils or patients in an agreeable manner.

ATHENIAN: Whereas the physician may often be too happy if he can restore health, and make the body whole, without any very great infliction of pain.

ATHENIAN: There was also another advantage possessed by the men of that day, which greatly lightened the task of passing laws.

ATHENIAN: The legislators of that day, when they equalized property, escaped the great accusation which generally arises in legislation, if a person attempts to disturb the possession of land, or to abolish debts, because he sees that without this reform there can never be any real equality.

ATHENIAN: But then, my good friends, why did the settlement and legislation of their country turn out so badly?

ATHENIAN: There were three kingdoms, and of these, two quickly corrupted their original constitution and laws, and the only one which remained was the Spartan.

ATHENIAN: And yet must be answered when we are enquiring about laws, this being our old man's sober game of play, whereby we beguile the way, as I was saying when we first set out on our journey.

ATHENIAN: What laws are more worthy of our attention than those which have regulated such cities?

ATHENIAN: Can we doubt that your ancestors intended these institutions not only for the protection of Peloponnesus, but of all the Hellenes, in case they were attacked by the barbarian?

ATHENIAN: And would not men who had shared with one another many dangers, and were governed by a single race of royal brothers, and had taken the advice of oracles, and in particular of the Delphian Apollo, be likely to think that such states would be firmly and lastingly established?

ATHENIAN: Yet these institutions, of which such great expectations were entertained, seem to have all rapidly vanished away; with the exception, as I was saying, of that small part of them which existed in your land.

ATHENIAN: But what was the ruin of this glorious confederacy?

ATHENIAN: Then now we seem to have happily arrived at a real and important question.

ATHENIAN: Did you never remark, sage friend, that all men, and we ourselves at this moment, often fancy that they see some beautiful thing which might have effected wonders if any one had only known how to make a right use of it in some way; and yet this mode of looking at things may turn out after all to be a mistake, and not according to nature, either in our own case or in any other?

ATHENIAN: I was thinking of my own admiration of the aforesaid Heracleid expedition, which was so noble, and might have had such wonderful results for the Hellenes, if only rightly used; and I was just laughing at myself.

ATHENIAN: Perhaps; and yet I cannot help observing that any one who sees anything great or powerful, immediately has the feeling that—'If the owner only knew how to use his great and noble possession, how happy would he be, and what great results would he achieve!'

ATHENIAN: Reflect; in what point of view does this sort of praise appear just: First, in reference to the question in hand:—If the then commanders had known how to arrange their army properly, how would they have attained success?

ATHENIAN: Suppose any one were in the same way to express his admiration at the sight of great wealth or family honour, or the like, he would praise them under the idea that through them he would attain either all or the greater and chief part of what he desires.

ATHENIAN: Well, now, and does not the argument show that there is one common desire of all mankind?

ATHENIAN: The desire which a man has, that all things, if possible,—at any rate, things human,—may come to pass in accordance with his soul's desire.

ATHENIAN: And having this desire always, and at every time of life, in youth, in manhood, in age, he cannot help always praying for the fulfilment of it.

ATHENIAN: And we join in the prayers of our friends, and ask for them what they ask for themselves.

ATHENIAN: Dear is the son to the father—the younger to the elder.

ATHENIAN: And yet the son often prays to obtain things which the father prays that he may not obtain.

ATHENIAN: Yes; or when the father, in the dotage of age or the heat of youth, having no sense of right and justice, prays with fervour, under the influence of feelings akin to those of Theseus when he cursed the unfortunate Hippolytus, do you imagine that the son, having a sense of right and justice, will join in his father's prayers?

ATHENIAN: Yes; and I remember, and you will remember, what I said at first, that a statesman and legislator ought to ordain laws with a view to wisdom; while you were arguing that the good lawgiver ought to order all with a view to war.

ATHENIAN: Well, then, proceeding in the same train of thought, I say that the greatest ignorance was the ruin of the Dorian power, and that now, as then, ignorance is ruin.

ATHENIAN: Then now consider what is really the greatest ignorance.

ATHENIAN: That the greatest ignorance is when a man hates that which he nevertheless thinks to be good and noble, and loves and embraces that which he knows to be unrighteous and evil.

ATHENIAN: Let us, then, in the first place declare and affirm that the citizen who does not know these things ought never to have any kind of authority entrusted to him: he must be stigmatized as ignorant, even though he be versed in calculation and skilled in all sorts of accomplishments, and feats of mental dexterity; and the opposite are to be called wise, even although, in the words of the proverb, they know neither how to read nor how to swim; and to them, as to men of sense, authority is to be committed.

ATHENIAN: I suppose that there must be rulers and subjects in states?

ATHENIAN: And what are the principles on which men rule and obey in cities, whether great or small; and similarly in families?

ATHENIAN: Next follows the principle that the noble should rule over the ignoble; and, thirdly, that the elder should rule and the younger obey?

ATHENIAN: And, fourthly, that slaves should be ruled, and their masters rule?

ATHENIAN: Fifthly, if I am not mistaken, comes the principle that the stronger shall rule, and the weaker be ruled?

ATHENIAN: Yes, and a rule which prevails very widely among all creatures, and is according to nature, as the Theban poet Pindar once said; and the sixth principle, and the greatest of all, is, that the wise should lead and command, and the ignorant follow and obey; and yet, O thou most wise Pindar, as I should reply him, this surely is not contrary to nature, but according to nature, being the rule of law over willing subjects, and not a rule of compulsion.

ATHENIAN: There is a seventh kind of rule which is awarded by lot, and is dear to the Gods and a token of good fortune: he on whom the lot falls is a ruler, and he who fails in obtaining the lot goes away and is the subject; and this we affirm to be quite just.

ATHENIAN: 'Then now,' as we say playfully to any of those who lightly undertake the making of laws, 'you see, legislator, the principles of government, how many they are, and that they are naturally opposed to each other.

ATHENIAN: And may we suppose this immoderate spirit to be more fatal when found among kings than when among peoples?

ATHENIAN: Is it not palpable that the chief aim of the kings of that time was to get the better of the established laws, and that they were not in harmony with the principles which they had agreed to observe by word and oath?

ATHENIAN: Good; and what measures ought the legislator to have then taken in order to avert this calamity?

ATHENIAN: Any one who looks at what has occurred with you Lacedaemonians, Megillus, may easily know and may easily say what ought to have been done at that time.

ATHENIAN: Nothing can be clearer than the observation which I am about to make.

ATHENIAN: That if any one gives too great a power to anything, too large a sail to a vessel, too much food to the body, too much authority to the mind, and does not observe the mean, everything is overthrown, and, in the wantonness of excess, runs in the one case to disorders, and in the other to injustice, which is the child of excess.

ATHENIAN: A God, who watched over Sparta, seeing into the future, gave you two families of kings instead of one; and thus brought you more within the limits of moderation.

ATHENIAN: There was small credit to us, Cleinias, in defeating them; and the discredit was, not that the conquerors did not win glorious victories both by land and sea, but what, in my opinion, brought discredit was, first of all, the circumstance that of the three cities one only fought on behalf of Hellas, and the two others were so utterly good for nothing that the one was waging a mighty war against Lacedaemon, and was thus preventing her from rendering assistance, while the city of Argos, which had the precedence at the time of the distribution, when asked to aid in repelling the barbarian, would not answer to the call, or give aid.

Many things might be told about Hellas in connexion with that war which are far from honourable; nor, indeed, can we rightly say that Hellas repelled the invader; for the truth is, that unless the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, acting in concert, had warded off the impending yoke, all the tribes of Hellas would have been fused in a chaos of Hellenes mingling with one another, of barbarians mingling with Hellenes, and Hellenes with barbarians; just as nations who are now subject to the Persian power, owing to unnatural separations and combinations of them, are dispersed and scattered, and live miserably.

ATHENIAN: Hear me, then: there are two mother forms of states from which the rest may be truly said to be derived; and one of them may be called monarchy and the other democracy: the Persians have the highest form of the one, and we of the other; almost all the rest, as I was saying, are variations of these.

ATHENIAN: Neither the one, if it be exclusively and excessively attached to monarchy, nor the other, if it be similarly attached to freedom, observes moderation; but your states, the Laconian and Cretan, have more of it; and the same was the case with the Athenians and Persians of old time, but now they have less.

ATHENIAN: Hear, then:—There was a time when the Persians had more of the state which is a mean between slavery and freedom.

ATHENIAN: How, then, was this advantage lost under Cambyses, and again recovered under Darius?

ATHENIAN: I imagine that Cyrus, though a great and patriotic general, had never given his mind to education, and never attended to the order of his household.

ATHENIAN: I think that from his youth upwards he was a soldier, and entrusted the education of his children to the women; and they brought them up from their childhood as the favourites of fortune, who were blessed already, and needed no more blessings.

ATHENIAN: Such an one as women were likely to give them, and especially princesses who had recently grown rich, and in the absence of the men, too, who were occupied in wars and dangers, and had no time to look after them.

ATHENIAN: Their father had possessions of cattle and sheep, and many herds of men and other animals, but he did not consider that those to whom he was about to make them over were not trained in his own calling, which was Persian; for the Persians are shepherds—sons of a rugged land, which is a stern mother, and well fitted to produce a sturdy race able to live in the open air and go without sleep, and also to fight, if fighting is required (compare Arist.

ATHENIAN: Yes; and the tradition says, that the empire came back to the Persians, through Darius and the seven chiefs.

ATHENIAN: Let us note the rest of the story.

ATHENIAN: I suppose that courage is a part of virtue?

ATHENIAN: Then, now hear and judge for yourself:—Would you like to have for a fellow-lodger or neighbour a very courageous man, who had no control over himself?

ATHENIAN: Or an artist, who was clever in his profession, but a rogue?

ATHENIAN: And surely justice does not grow apart from temperance?

ATHENIAN: Any more than our pattern wise man, whom we exhibited as having his pleasures and pains in accordance with and corresponding to true reason, can be intemperate?

ATHENIAN: There is a further consideration relating to the due and undue award of honours in states.

ATHENIAN: I should like to know whether temperance without the other virtues, existing alone in the soul of man, is rightly to be praised or blamed?

ATHENIAN: And that is the best answer; for whichever alternative you had chosen, I think that you would have gone wrong.

ATHENIAN: Very good; a quality, which is a mere appendage of things which can be praised or blamed, does not deserve an expression of opinion, but is best passed over in silence.

ATHENIAN: Yes; but of the other virtues, that which having this appendage is also most beneficial, will be most deserving of honour, and next that which is beneficial in the next degree; and so each of them will be rightly honoured according to a regular order.

ATHENIAN: And ought not the legislator to determine these classes?

ATHENIAN: Suppose that we leave to him the arrangement of details.

ATHENIAN: We maintain, then, that a State which would be safe and happy, as far as the nature of man allows, must and ought to distribute honour and dishonour in the right way.

ATHENIAN: The consideration of the Persian governments led us thus far to enlarge.

ATHENIAN: And now enough of the Persians, and their present mal-administration of their government, which is owing to the excess of slavery and despotism among them.

ATHENIAN: Next, we must pass in review the government of Attica in like manner, and from this show that entire freedom and the absence of all superior authority is not by any means so good as government by others when properly limited, which was our ancient Athenian constitution at the time when the Persians made their attack on Hellas, or, speaking more correctly, on the whole continent of Europe.

About ten years before the naval engagement at Salamis, Datis came, leading a Persian host by command of Darius, which was expressly directed against the Athenians and Eretrians, having orders to carry them away captive; and these orders he was to execute under pain of death.

And this report, whether well or ill founded, was terrible to all the Hellenes, and above all to the Athenians, and they dispatched embassies in all directions, but no one was willing to come to their relief, with the exception of the Lacedaemonians; and they, either because they were detained by the Messenian war, which was then going on, or for some other reason of which we are not told, came a day too late for the battle of Marathon.

The Athenians were under the impression that the whole expedition was directed against them, in consequence of the battle of Marathon; and hearing of the bridge over the Hellespont, and the canal of Athos, and the host of ships, considering that there was no salvation for them either by land or by sea, for there was no one to help them, and remembering that in the first expedition, when the Persians destroyed Eretria, no one came to their help, or would risk the danger of an alliance with them, they thought that this would happen again, at least on land; nor, when they looked to the sea, could they descry any hope of salvation; for they were attacked by a thousand vessels and more.

MEGILLUS: Your words, Athenian, are quite true, and worthy of yourself and of your country.

ATHENIAN: They are true, Megillus; and to you, who have inherited the virtues of your ancestors, I may properly speak of the actions of that day.

ATHENIAN: I will.

ATHENIAN: In the first place, let us speak of the laws about music,—that is to say, such music as then existed—in order that we may trace the growth of the excess of freedom from the beginning.

ATHENIAN: Consequent upon this freedom comes the other freedom, of disobedience to rulers (compare Republic); and then the attempt to escape the control and exhortation of father, mother, elders, and when near the end, the control of the laws also; and at the very end there is the contempt of oaths and pledges, and no regard at all for the Gods,—herein they exhibit and imitate the old so-called Titanic nature, and come to the same point as the Titans when they rebelled against God, leading a life of endless evils.

ATHENIAN: This, then, has been said for the sake—

ATHENIAN: We were maintaining that the lawgiver ought to have three things in view: first, that the city for which he legislates should be free; and secondly, be at unity with herself; and thirdly, should have understanding;—these were our principles, were they not?

ATHENIAN: With a view to this we selected two kinds of government, the one the most despotic, and the other the most free; and now we are considering which of them is the right form: we took a mean in both cases, of despotism in the one, and of liberty in the other, and we saw that in a mean they attained their perfection; but that when they were carried to the extreme of either, slavery or licence, neither party were the gainers.

ATHENIAN: And that was our reason for considering the settlement of the Dorian army, and of the city built by Dardanus at the foot of the mountains, and the removal of cities to the seashore, and of our mention of the first men, who were the survivors of the deluge.

ATHENIAN: Good news, Cleinias; if Megillus has no objection, you may be sure that I will do all in my power to please you.

ATHENIAN: And now, what will this city be?

ATHENIAN: And are there harbours on the seaboard?

ATHENIAN: Alas!

ATHENIAN: And is there any neighbouring State?

ATHENIAN: And has the place a fair proportion of hill, and plain, and wood?

ATHENIAN: You mean to say that there is more rock than plain?

ATHENIAN: Then there is some hope that your citizens may be virtuous: had you been on the sea, and well provided with harbours, and an importing rather than a producing country, some mighty saviour would have been needed, and lawgivers more than mortal, if you were ever to have a chance of preserving your state from degeneracy and discordance of manners (compare Ar.

ATHENIAN: Well, but let me ask, how is the country supplied with timber for ship-building?

ATHENIAN: These are also natural advantages.

ATHENIAN: Because no city ought to be easily able to imitate its enemies in what is mischievous.

ATHENIAN: Remember, my good friend, what I said at first about the Cretan laws, that they looked to one thing only, and this, as you both agreed, was war; and I replied that such laws, in so far as they tended to promote virtue, were good; but in that they regarded a part only, and not the whole of virtue, I disapproved of them.

I was saying that the imitation of enemies was a bad thing; and I was thinking of a case in which a maritime people are harassed by enemies, as the Athenians were by Minos (I do not speak from any desire to recall past grievances); but he, as we know, was a great naval potentate, who compelled the inhabitants of Attica to pay him a cruel tribute; and in those days they had no ships of war as they now have, nor was the country filled with ship-timber, and therefore they could not readily build them.

ATHENIAN: Why, yes; and that is an opinion which is widely spread both among Hellenes and barbarians.

ATHENIAN: Then we have only to ask, whether we are taking the course which we acknowledge to be the best for the settlement and legislation of states.

ATHENIAN: And now let me proceed to another question: Who are to be the colonists?

ATHENIAN: Cities find colonization in some respects easier if the colonists are one race, which like a swarm of bees is sent out from a single country, either when friends leave friends, owing to some pressure of population or other similar necessity, or when a portion of a state is driven by factions to emigrate.

ATHENIAN: My good friend, I am afraid that the course of my speculations is leading me to say something depreciatory of legislators; but if the word be to the purpose, there can be no harm.

ATHENIAN: I was going to say that man never legislates, but accidents of all sorts, which legislate for us in all sorts of ways.

ATHENIAN: That God governs all things, and that chance and opportunity co-operate with Him in the government of human affairs.

ATHENIAN: And does not a like principle apply to legislation as well as to other things: even supposing all the conditions to be favourable which are needed for the happiness of the state, yet the true legislator must from time to time appear on the scene?

ATHENIAN: In each case the artist would be able to pray rightly for certain conditions, and if these were granted by fortune, he would then only require to exercise his art?

ATHENIAN: And all the other artists just now mentioned, if they were bidden to offer up each their special prayer, would do so?

ATHENIAN: And the legislator would do likewise?

ATHENIAN: 'Come, legislator,' we will say to him; 'what are the conditions which you require in a state before you can organize it?' How ought he to answer this question?

ATHENIAN: He will say—'Give me a state which is governed by a tyrant, and let the tyrant be young and have a good memory; let him be quick at learning, and of a courageous and noble nature; let him have that quality which, as I said before, is the inseparable companion of all the other parts of virtue, if there is to be any good in them.'

ATHENIAN: Yes, Cleinias, temperance in the vulgar sense; not that which in the forced and exaggerated language of some philosophers is called prudence, but that which is the natural gift of children and animals, of whom some live continently and others incontinently, but when isolated, was, as we said, hardly worth reckoning in the catalogue of goods.

ATHENIAN: Then our tyrant must have this as well as the other qualities, if the state is to acquire in the best manner and in the shortest time the form of government which is most conducive to happiness; for there neither is nor ever will be a better or speedier way of establishing a polity than by a tyranny.

ATHENIAN: There is surely no difficulty in seeing, Cleinias, what is in accordance with the order of nature?

ATHENIAN: Yes; and you must add fortunate; and his good fortune must be that he is the contemporary of a great legislator, and that some happy chance brings them together.

ATHENIAN: Not so; I mean rather to say that the change is best made out of a tyranny; and secondly, out of a monarchy; and thirdly, out of some sort of democracy: fourth, in the capacity for improvement, comes oligarchy, which has the greatest difficulty in admitting of such a change, because the government is in the hands of a number of potentates.

ATHENIAN: And yet I have repeated what I am saying a good many times; but I suppose that you have never seen a city which is under a tyranny?

ATHENIAN: And yet, where there is a tyranny, you might certainly see that of which I am now speaking.

ATHENIAN: I mean that you might see how, without trouble and in no very long period of time, the tyrant, if he wishes, can change the manners of a state: he has only to go in the direction of virtue or of vice, whichever he prefers, he himself indicating by his example the lines of conduct, praising and rewarding some actions and reproving others, and degrading those who disobey.

ATHENIAN: Let no one, my friends, persuade us that there is any quicker and easier way in which states change their laws than when the rulers lead: such changes never have, nor ever will, come to pass in any other way.

ATHENIAN: The difficulty is to find the divine love of temperate and just institutions existing in any powerful forms of government, whether in a monarchy or oligarchy of wealth or of birth.

ATHENIAN: Let us try to amuse ourselves, old boys as we are, by moulding in words the laws which are suitable to your state.

ATHENIAN: Then let us invoke God at the settlement of our state; may He hear and be propitious to us, and come and set in order the State and the laws!

ATHENIAN: But what form of polity are we going to give the city?

ATHENIAN: Which of you will first tell me to which of these classes his own government is to be referred?

ATHENIAN: The reason is, my excellent friends, that you really have polities, but the states of which we were just now speaking are merely aggregations of men dwelling in cities who are the subjects and servants of a part of their own state, and each of them is named after the dominant power; they are not polities at all.

ATHENIAN: May I still make use of fable to some extent, in the hope that I may be better able to answer your question: shall I?

ATHENIAN: In the primeval world, and a long while before the cities came into being whose settlements we have described, there is said to have been in the time of Cronos a blessed rule and life, of which the best-ordered of existing states is a copy (compare Statesman).

ATHENIAN: I quite agree with you; and therefore I have introduced the subject.

ATHENIAN: I will do as you suggest.

ATHENIAN: You are aware,—are you not?—that there are often said to be as many forms of laws as there are of governments, and of the latter we have already mentioned all those which are commonly recognized.

ATHENIAN: Justice is said by them to be the interest of the stronger (Republic).

ATHENIAN: I will:—'Surely,' they say, 'the governing power makes whatever laws have authority in any state'?

ATHENIAN: 'Well,' they would add, 'and do you suppose that tyranny or democracy, or any other conquering power, does not make the continuance of the power which is possessed by them the first or principal object of their laws'?

ATHENIAN: 'And whoever transgresses these laws is punished as an evil-doer by the legislator, who calls the laws just'?

ATHENIAN: 'This, then, is always the mode and fashion in which justice exists.'

ATHENIAN: Why, yes, this is one of those false principles of government to which we were referring.

ATHENIAN: Those which we were examining when we spoke of who ought to govern whom.

ATHENIAN: Consider, then, to whom our state is to be entrusted.

ATHENIAN: That when there has been a contest for power, those who gain the upper hand so entirely monopolize the government, as to refuse all share to the defeated party and their descendants—they live watching one another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that some one who has a recollection of former wrongs will come into power and rise up against them.

ATHENIAN: Why, yes; every man when he is young has that sort of vision dullest, and when he is old keenest.

ATHENIAN: And now, what is to be the next step?

ATHENIAN: 'Friends,' we say to them,—'God, as the old tradition declares, holding in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is, travels according to His nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end.

ATHENIAN: Then what life is agreeable to God, and becoming in His followers?

ATHENIAN: I should wish the citizens to be as readily persuaded to virtue as possible; this will surely be the aim of the legislator in all his laws.

ATHENIAN: The proposal appears to me to be of some value; and I think that a person will listen with more gentleness and good-will to the precepts addressed to him by the legislator, when his soul is not altogether unprepared to receive them.

ATHENIAN: Very true: and now let me tell you the effect which the preceding discourse has had upon me.

ATHENIAN: Suppose that we have a little conversation with the legislator, and say to him—'O, legislator, speak; if you know what we ought to say and do, you can surely tell.'

ATHENIAN: 'Did we not hear you just now saying, that the legislator ought not to allow the poets to do what they liked?

ATHENIAN: May we not fairly make answer to him on behalf of the poets?

ATHENIAN: That the poet, according to the tradition which has ever prevailed among us, and is accepted of all men, when he sits down on the tripod of the muse, is not in his right mind; like a fountain, he allows to flow out freely whatever comes in, and his art being imitative, he is often compelled to represent men of opposite dispositions, and thus to contradict himself; neither can he tell whether there is more truth in one thing that he has said than in another.

ATHENIAN: And is our legislator to have no preface to his laws, but to say at once Do this, avoid that—and then holding the penalty in terrorem, to go on to another law; offering never a word of advice or exhortation to those for whom he is legislating, after the manner of some doctors?

ATHENIAN: And whether they are slaves or freemen makes no difference; they acquire their knowledge of medicine by obeying and observing their masters; empirically and not according to the natural way of learning, as the manner of freemen is, who have learned scientifically themselves the art which they impart scientifically to their pupils.

ATHENIAN: And did you ever observe that there are two classes of patients in states, slaves and freemen; and the slave doctors run about and cure the slaves, or wait for them in the dispensaries—practitioners of this sort never talk to their patients individually, or let them talk about their own individual complaints?

ATHENIAN: Should you like to see an example of the double and single method in legislation?

ATHENIAN: What will be our first law?

ATHENIAN: In all states the birth of children goes back to the connexion of marriage?

ATHENIAN: And, according to the true order, the laws relating to marriage should be those which are first determined in every state?

ATHENIAN: Then let me first give the law of marriage in a simple form; it may run as follows:—A man shall marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, or, if he does not, he shall pay such and such a fine, or shall suffer the loss of such and such privileges.

ATHENIAN: Whether, in the abstract, words are to be many or few, is a very foolish question; the best form, and not the shortest, is to be approved; nor is length at all to be regarded.

ATHENIAN: A point arising out of our previous discussion, which comes into my mind in some mysterious way.

ATHENIAN: I think that you are right, Cleinias, in affirming that all laws have preambles, and that throughout the whole of this work of legislation every single law should have a suitable preamble at the beginning; for that which is to follow is most important, and it makes all the difference whether we clearly remember the preambles or not.

ATHENIAN: I understand you to mean that we have made a sufficient preamble about Gods and demigods, and about parents living or dead; and now you would have us bring the rest of the subject into the light of day?

ATHENIAN: After this, as is meet and for the interest of us all, I the speaker, and you the listeners, will try to estimate all that relates to the souls and bodies and properties of the citizens, as regards both their occupations and amusements, and thus arrive, as far as in us lies, at the nature of education.

ATHENIAN: Listen, all ye who have just now heard the laws about Gods, and about our dear forefathers:—Of all the things which a man has, next to the Gods, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own.

CLEINIAS: Your words, Athenian Stranger, are excellent, and I will do as you say.

ATHENIAN: And now having made an end of the preliminaries we will proceed to the appointment of magistracies.

ATHENIAN: In the ordering of a state there are two parts: first, the number of the magistracies, and the mode of establishing them; and, secondly, when they have been established, laws again will have to be provided for each of them, suitable in nature and number.

ATHENIAN: This is what I have to say;—every one can see, that although the work of legislation is a most important matter, yet if a well-ordered city superadd to good laws unsuitable offices, not only will there be no use in having the good laws,—not only will they be ridiculous and useless, but the greatest political injury and evil will accrue from them.

ATHENIAN: Then now, my friend, let us observe what will happen in the constitution of out intended state.

ATHENIAN: The matter is serious, and excuses will not serve the turn.

ATHENIAN: Yes; and I will be as good as my word.

ATHENIAN: That we will, by the grace of God, if old age will only permit us.

ATHENIAN: Yes; and under his guidance let us consider a further point.

ATHENIAN: Let us remember what a courageously mad and daring creation this our city is.

ATHENIAN: I had in my mind the free and easy manner in which we are ordaining that the inexperienced colonists shall receive our laws.

ATHENIAN: Then let us consider if we can find any way out of the difficulty; for I maintain, Cleinias, that the Cnosians, above all the other Cretans, should not be satisfied with barely discharging their duty to the colony, but they ought to take the utmost pains to establish the offices which are first created by them in the best and surest manner.

ATHENIAN: This will be the method:—Sons of the Cretans, I shall say to them, inasmuch as the Cnosians have precedence over the other states, they should, in common with those who join this settlement, choose a body of thirty-seven in all, nineteen of them being taken from the settlers, and the remainder from the citizens of Cnosus.

ATHENIAN: O, Cleinias, Athens is proud, and Sparta too; and they are both a long way off.

ATHENIAN: Then let us recognize the difficulty, and make clear to our own minds how the beginning is to be accomplished.

ATHENIAN: I maintain that this colony of ours has a father and mother, who are no other than the colonizing state.

ATHENIAN: Let us assume, then, that there ought to be servants of the temples, and priests and priestesses.

ATHENIAN: Thus far, then, the old men's rational pastime has gone off well.

ATHENIAN: Perhaps; but I should like to know whether you and I are agreed about a certain thing.

ATHENIAN: You know the endless labour which painters expend upon their pictures—they are always putting in or taking out colours, or whatever be the term which artists employ; they seem as if they would never cease touching up their works, which are always being made brighter and more beautiful.

ATHENIAN: No matter; we may make use of the illustration notwithstanding:—Suppose that some one had a mind to paint a figure in the most beautiful manner, in the hope that his work instead of losing would always improve as time went on—do you not see that being a mortal, unless he leaves some one to succeed him who will correct the flaws which time may introduce, and be able to add what is left imperfect through the defect of the artist, and who will further brighten up and improve the picture, all his great labour will last but a short time?

ATHENIAN: And is not the aim of the legislator similar?

ATHENIAN: And if any one possesses any means of accomplishing this by word or deed, or has any way great or small by which he can teach a person to understand how he can maintain and amend the laws, he should finish what he has to say, and not leave the work incomplete.

ATHENIAN: And is not this what you and I have to do at the present moment?

ATHENIAN: As we are about to legislate and have chosen our guardians of the law, and are ourselves in the evening of life, and they as compared with us are young men, we ought not only to legislate for them, but to endeavour to make them not only guardians of the law but legislators themselves, as far as this is possible.

ATHENIAN: At any rate, we must do our best.

ATHENIAN: We will say to them—O friends and saviours of our laws, in laying down any law, there are many particulars which we shall omit, and this cannot be helped; at the same time, we will do our utmost to describe what is important, and will give an outline which you shall fill up.

ATHENIAN: I thank you.

ATHENIAN: I am not surprised, Megillus, for the state of the Helots among the Lacedaemonians is of all Hellenic forms of slavery the most controverted and disputed about, some approving and some condemning it; there is less dispute about the slavery which exists among the Heracleots, who have subjugated the Mariandynians, and about the Thessalian Penestae.

ATHENIAN: But may we not also say that the soul of the slave is utterly corrupt, and that no man of sense ought to trust them?

ATHENIAN: Well, Cleinias, there can be no doubt that man is a troublesome animal, and therefore he is not very manageable, nor likely to become so, when you attempt to introduce the necessary division of slave, and freeman, and master.

ATHENIAN: He is a troublesome piece of goods, as has been often shown by the frequent revolts of the Messenians, and the great mischiefs which happen in states having many slaves who speak the same language, and the numerous robberies and lawless life of the Italian banditti, as they are called.

ATHENIAN: Now that each of the citizens is provided, as far as possible, with a sufficient number of suitable slaves who can help him in what he has to do, we may next proceed to describe their dwellings.

ATHENIAN: The city being new and hitherto uninhabited, care ought to be taken of all the buildings, and the manner of building each of them, and also of the temples and walls.

ATHENIAN: The temples are to be placed all round the agora, and the whole city built on the heights in a circle (compare Arist.

ATHENIAN: Assuming that marriages exist already, Cleinias, the mode of life during the year after marriage, before children are born, will follow next in order.

ATHENIAN: He who imagines that he can give laws for the public conduct of states, while he leaves the private life of citizens wholly to take care of itself; who thinks that individuals may pass the day as they please, and that there is no necessity of order in all things; he, I say, who gives up the control of their private lives, and supposes that they will conform to law in their common and public life, is making a great mistake.

ATHENIAN: I said that there may have been singularity and danger in imposing such a custom at first, but that now there is not the same difficulty.

ATHENIAN: You shall hear without any fruitless loss of time.

ATHENIAN: Very good; and you must not be surprised if I go back a little, for we have plenty of leisure, and there is nothing to prevent us from considering in every point of view the subject of law.

ATHENIAN: Then let us return once more to what we were saying at first.

ATHENIAN: Well, and have there not been constitutions and destructions of states, and all sorts of pursuits both orderly and disorderly, and diverse desires of meats and drinks always, and in all the world, and all sorts of changes of the seasons in which animals may be expected to have undergone innumerable transformations of themselves?

ATHENIAN: And may we not suppose that vines appeared, which had previously no existence, and also olives, and the gifts of Demeter and her daughter, of which one Triptolemus was the minister, and that, before these existed, animals took to devouring each other as they do still?

ATHENIAN: Again, the practice of men sacrificing one another still exists among many nations; while, on the other hand, we hear of other human beings who did not even venture to taste the flesh of a cow and had no animal sacrifices, but only cakes and fruits dipped in honey, and similar pure offerings, but no flesh of animals; from these they abstained under the idea that they ought not to eat them, and might not stain the altars of the Gods with blood.

ATHENIAN: Some one might say to us, What is the drift of all this?

ATHENIAN: And therefore I will endeavour, Cleinias, if I can, to draw the natural inference.

ATHENIAN: I see that among men all things depend upon three wants and desires, of which the end is virtue, if they are rightly led by them, or the opposite if wrongly.

ATHENIAN: Let us keep in mind the words which have now been spoken; for hereafter there may be need of them.

ATHENIAN: That which we comprehended under the three words—first, eating, secondly, drinking, thirdly, the excitement of love.

ATHENIAN: Very good.

ATHENIAN: The bride and bridegroom should consider that they are to produce for the state the best and fairest specimens of children which they can.

ATHENIAN.

ATHENIAN: And nothing can be plainer than that the fairest bodies are those which grow up from infancy in the best and straightest manner?

ATHENIAN: And do we not further observe that the first shoot of every living thing is by far the greatest and fullest?

ATHENIAN: Well, and is not rapid growth without proper and abundant exercise the source endless evils in the body?

ATHENIAN: And the body should have the most exercise when it receives most nourishment?

ATHENIAN: Nay, rather on the bodies of infants still unborn.

ATHENIAN: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: The practice is more easy for us to understand than for you, by reason of certain amusements which are carried to excess by us at Athens.

ATHENIAN: Ridicule, and the difficulty of getting the feminine and servant-like dispositions of the nurses to comply.

ATHENIAN: The reason is, that masters and freemen in states, when they hear of it, are very likely to arrive at a true conviction that without due regulation of private life in cities, stability in the laying down of laws is hardly to be expected (compare Republic); and he who makes this reflection may himself adopt the laws just now mentioned, and, adopting them, may order his house and state well and be happy.

ATHENIAN: And therefore let us proceed with our legislation until we have determined the exercises which are suited to the souls of young children, in the same manner in which we have begun to go through the rules relating to their bodies.

ATHENIAN: Let us assume, then, as a first principle in relation both to the body and soul of very young creatures, that nursing and moving about by day and night is good for them all, and that the younger they are, the more they will need it (compare Arist.

ATHENIAN: The reason is obvious.

ATHENIAN: The affection both of the Bacchantes and of the children is an emotion of fear, which springs out of an evil habit of the soul.

ATHENIAN: But if fear has such a power we ought to infer from these facts, that every soul which from youth upward has been familiar with fears, will be made more liable to fear (compare Republic), and every one will allow that this is the way to form a habit of cowardice and not of courage.

ATHENIAN: And, on the other hand, the habit of overcoming, from our youth upwards, the fears and terrors which beset us, may be said to be an exercise of courage.

ATHENIAN: And we may say that the use of exercise and motion in the earliest years of life greatly contributes to create a part of virtue in the soul.

ATHENIAN: Further, a cheerful temper, or the reverse, may be regarded as having much to do with high spirit on the one hand, or with cowardice on the other.

ATHENIAN: Then now we must endeavour to show how and to what extent we may, if we please, without difficulty implant either character in the young.

ATHENIAN: There is a common opinion, that luxury makes the disposition of youth discontented and irascible and vehemently excited by trifles; that on the other hand excessive and savage servitude makes men mean and abject, and haters of their kind, and therefore makes them undesirable associates.

ATHENIAN: I will tell you how:—Every animal that is born is wont to utter some cry, and this is especially the case with man, and he is also affected with the inclination to weep more than any other animal.

ATHENIAN: Do not nurses, when they want to know what an infant desires, judge by these signs?—when anything is brought to the infant and he is silent, then he is supposed to be pleased, but, when he weeps and cries out, then he is not pleased.

ATHENIAN: Does not the discontented and ungracious nature appear to you to be full of lamentations and sorrows more than a good man ought to be?

ATHENIAN: Well, but if during these three years every possible care were taken that our nursling should have as little of sorrow and fear, and in general of pain as was possible, might we not expect in early childhood to make his soul more gentle and cheerful?

ATHENIAN: There I can no longer agree, Cleinias: you amaze me.

ATHENIAN: The point about which you and I differ is of great importance, and I hope that you, Megillus, will help to decide between us.

ATHENIAN: Very good, Cleinias; and now let us all three consider a further point.

ATHENIAN: That all the matters which we are now describing are commonly called by the general name of unwritten customs, and what are termed the laws of our ancestors are all of similar nature.

ATHENIAN: Up to the age of three years, whether of boy or girl, if a person strictly carries out our previous regulations and makes them a principal aim, he will do much for the advantage of the young creatures.

ATHENIAN: In that the right and left hand are supposed to be by nature differently suited for our various uses of them; whereas no difference is found in the use of the feet and the lower limbs; but in the use of the hands we are, as it were, maimed by the folly of nurses and mothers; for although our several limbs are by nature balanced, we create a difference in them by bad habit.

ATHENIAN: Now we must say what has yet to be said about the gifts of the Muses and of Apollo: before, we fancied that we had said all, and that gymnastic alone remained; but now we see clearly what points have been omitted, and should be first proclaimed; of these, then, let us proceed to speak.

ATHENIAN: Let me tell you once more—although you have heard me say the same before—that caution must be always exercised, both by the speaker and by the hearer, about anything that is very singular and unusual.

ATHENIAN: I say that in states generally no one has observed that the plays of childhood have a great deal to do with the permanence or want of permanence in legislation.

ATHENIAN: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: I should expect so.

ATHENIAN: Well, then, let us give all the greater heed to one another's words.

ATHENIAN: And now do we still hold to our former assertion, that rhythms and music in general are imitations of good and evil characters in men?

ATHENIAN: Must we not, then, try in every possible way to prevent our youth from even desiring to imitate new modes either in dance or song?

ATHENIAN: Can any of us imagine a better mode of effecting this object than that of the Egyptians?

ATHENIAN: To consecrate every sort of dance or melody.

ATHENIAN: In the consideration of this subject, let us remember what is due to ourselves.

ATHENIAN: I mean that any young man, and much more any old one, when he sees or hears anything strange or unaccustomed, does not at once run to embrace the paradox, but he stands considering, like a person who is at a place where three paths meet, and does not very well know his way—he may be alone or he may be walking with others, and he will say to himself and them, 'Which is the way?' and will not move forward until he is satisfied that he is going right.

ATHENIAN: Then we will allow time for reflection, and decide when we have given the subject sufficient consideration.

ATHENIAN: Let us then affirm the paradox that strains of music are our laws (nomoi), and this latter being the name which the ancients gave to lyric songs, they probably would not have very much objected to our proposed application of the word.

ATHENIAN: Can any one who makes such laws escape ridicule?

ATHENIAN: And this is just what takes place in almost all our cities.

ATHENIAN: That we should avoid every word of evil omen; let that kind of song which is of good omen be heard everywhere and always in our state.

ATHENIAN: But what shall be our next musical law or type?

ATHENIAN: And our third law, if I am not mistaken, will be to the effect that our poets, understanding prayers to be requests which we make to the Gods, will take especial heed that they do not by mistake ask for evil instead of good.

ATHENIAN: Were we not a little while ago quite convinced that no silver or golden Plutus should dwell in our state?

ATHENIAN: And what has it been the object of our argument to show?

ATHENIAN: Shall we make a law that the poet shall compose nothing contrary to the ideas of the lawful, or just, or beautiful, or good, which are allowed in the state?

ATHENIAN: Then it will be proper to have hymns and praises of the Gods, intermingled with prayers; and after the Gods prayers and praises should be offered in like manner to demigods and heroes, suitable to their several characters.

ATHENIAN: In the next place there will be no objection to a law, that citizens who are departed and have done good and energetic deeds, either with their souls or with their bodies, and have been obedient to the laws, should receive eulogies; this will be very fitting.

ATHENIAN: But to honour with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course, and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

ATHENIAN: Again, we must distinguish and determine on some general principle what songs are suitable to women, and what to men, and must assign to them their proper melodies and rhythms.

ATHENIAN: I say that about serious matters a man should be serious, and about a matter which is not serious he should not be serious; and that God is the natural and worthy object of our most serious and blessed endeavours, for man, as I said before, is made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the best of him; wherefore also every man and woman should walk seriously, and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and be of another mind from what they are at present.

ATHENIAN: At present they think that their serious pursuits should be for the sake of their sports, for they deem war a serious pursuit, which must be managed well for the sake of peace; but the truth is, that there neither is, nor has been, nor ever will be, either amusement or instruction in any degree worth speaking of in war, which is nevertheless deemed by us to be the most serious of our pursuits.

ATHENIAN: Nay, Megillus, be not amazed, but forgive me: I was comparing them with the Gods; and under that feeling I spoke.

ATHENIAN: I should wish to say, Cleinias, as I said before, that if the possibility of these things were not sufficiently proven in fact, then there might be an objection to the argument, but the fact being as I have said, he who rejects the law must find some other ground of objection; and, failing this, our exhortation will still hold good, nor will any one deny that women ought to share as far as possible in education and in other ways with men.

ATHENIAN: And what arrangement of life to be found anywhere is preferable to this community which we are now assigning to them?

ATHENIAN: Then now I may proceed?

ATHENIAN: What will be the manner of life among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts to others, and whose husbandry committed to slaves paying a part of the produce, brings them a return sufficient for men living temperately; who, moreover, have common tables in which the men are placed apart, and near them are the common tables of their families, of their daughters and mothers, which day by day, the officers, male and female, are to inspect—they shall see to the behaviour of the company, and so dismiss them; after which the presiding magistrate and his attendants shall honour with libations those Gods to whom that day and night are dedicated, and then go home?

ATHENIAN: You naturally ask, Cleinias, and to you and Megillus, who are my partners in the work of legislation, I must state the more difficult as well as the easier parts of the task.

ATHENIAN: I will tell you.

ATHENIAN: That is quite true; and you mean to imply that the road which we are taking may be disagreeable to some but is agreeable to as many others, or if not to as many, at any rate to persons not inferior to the others, and in company with them you bid me, at whatever risk, to proceed along the path of legislation which has opened out of our present discourse, and to be of good cheer, and not to faint.

ATHENIAN: And I do not faint; I say, indeed, that we have a great many poets writing in hexameter, trimeter, and all sorts of measures—some who are serious, others who aim only at raising a laugh—and all mankind declare that the youth who are rightly educated should be brought up in them and saturated with them; some insist that they should be constantly hearing them read aloud, and always learning them, so as to get by heart entire poets; while others select choice passages and long speeches, and make compendiums of them, saying that these ought to be committed to memory, if a man is to be made good and wise by experience and learning of many things.

ATHENIAN: But how can I in one word rightly comprehend all of them?

ATHENIAN: In what respect?

ATHENIAN: My good Cleinias, I rather think that I am fortunate.

ATHENIAN: I think that I am not wholly in want of a pattern, for when I consider the words which we have spoken from early dawn until now, and which, as I believe, have been inspired by Heaven, they appear to me to be quite like a poem.

ATHENIAN: The truth, Cleinias, may be expected to become clearer when, as we have often said, we arrive at the end of the whole discussion about laws.

ATHENIAN: And now that we have done with the teacher of letters, the teacher of the lyre has to receive orders from us.

ATHENIAN: I think that we have only to recollect our previous discussions, and we shall be able to give suitable regulations touching all this part of instruction and education to the teachers of the lyre.

ATHENIAN: We were saying, if I remember rightly, that the sixty years old choristers of Dionysus were to be specially quick in their perceptions of rhythm and musical composition, that they might be able to distinguish good and bad imitation, that is to say, the imitation of the good or bad soul when under the influence of passion, rejecting the one and displaying the other in hymns and songs, charming the souls of youth, and inviting them to follow and attain virtue by the way of imitation.

ATHENIAN: And with this view the teacher and the learner ought to use the sounds of the lyre, because its notes are pure, the player who teaches and his pupil rendering note for note in unison; but complexity, and variation of notes, when the strings give one sound and the poet or composer of the melody gives another—also when they make concords and harmonies in which lesser and greater intervals, slow and quick, or high and low notes, are combined—or, again, when they make complex variations of rhythms, which they adapt to the notes of the lyre—all that sort of thing is not suited to those who have to acquire speedy and useful knowledge of music in three years; for opposite principles are confusing, and create a difficulty in learning, and our young men should learn quickly, and their mere necessary acquirements are not few or trifling, as will be shown in due course.

ATHENIAN: Then let him who has been elected a director of music receive these rules from us as containing the very truth; and may he prosper in his office!

ATHENIAN: Then the boys ought to have dancing masters, and the girls dancing mistresses to exercise them.

ATHENIAN: Then once more let us summon him who has the chief concern in the business, the superintendent of youth [i.e.

ATHENIAN: O my friend, there will be no difficulty, for the law has already given and will give him permission to select as his assistants in this charge any citizens, male or female, whom he desires; and he will know whom he ought to choose, and will be anxious not to make a mistake, from a due sense of responsibility, and from a consciousness of the importance of his office, and also because he will consider that if young men have been and are well brought up, then all things go swimmingly, but if not, it is not meet to say, nor do we say, what will follow, lest the regarders of omens should take alarm about our infant state.

ATHENIAN: Suppose that we carry our law to the extent of saying that women ought not to neglect military matters, but that all citizens, male and female alike, shall attend to them?

ATHENIAN: Of wrestling we have spoken in part, but of what I should call the most important part we have not spoken, and cannot easily speak without showing at the same time by gesture as well as in word what we mean; when word and action combine, and not till then, we shall explain clearly what has been said, pointing out that of all movements wrestling is most akin to the military art, and is to be pursued for the sake of this, and not this for the sake of wrestling.

ATHENIAN: Enough of wrestling; we will now proceed to speak of other movements of the body.

ATHENIAN: There still remain three studies suitable for freemen.

ATHENIAN: I conceive them to be those of which he who has no use nor any knowledge at all cannot be a God, or demi-god, or hero to mankind, or able to take any serious thought or charge of them.

ATHENIAN: Yes, Cleinias, that is so.

ATHENIAN: I certainly am afraid of the difficulties to which you allude, but I am still more afraid of those who apply themselves to this sort of knowledge, and apply themselves badly.

ATHENIAN: All freemen I conceive, should learn as much of these branches of knowledge as every child in Egypt is taught when he learns the alphabet.

ATHENIAN: O my dear Cleinias, I, like yourself, have late in life heard with amazement of our ignorance in these matters; to me we appear to be more like pigs than men, and I am quite ashamed, not only of myself, but of all Hellenes.

ATHENIAN: I will; or rather I will show you my meaning by a question, and do you please to answer me: You know, I suppose, what length is?

ATHENIAN: And what breadth is?

ATHENIAN: And you know that these are two distinct things, and that there is a third thing called depth?

ATHENIAN: And do not all these seem to you to be commensurable with themselves?

ATHENIAN: That is to say, length is naturally commensurable with length, and breadth with breadth, and depth in like manner with depth?

ATHENIAN: But if some things are commensurable and others wholly incommensurable, and you think that all things are commensurable, what is your position in regard to them?

ATHENIAN: Concerning length and breadth when compared with depth, or breadth and length when compared with one another, are not all the Hellenes agreed that these are commensurable with one another in some way?

ATHENIAN: But if they are absolutely incommensurable, and yet all of us regard them as commensurable, have we not reason to be ashamed of our compatriots; and might we not say to them: O ye best of Hellenes, is not this one of the things of which we were saying that not to know them is disgraceful, and of which to have a bare knowledge only is no great distinction?

ATHENIAN: And there are other things akin to these, in which there spring up other errors of the same family.

ATHENIAN: The natures of commensurable and incommensurable quantities in their relation to one another.

ATHENIAN: And these, as I maintain, Cleinias, are the studies which our youth ought to learn, for they are innocent and not difficult; the learning of them will be an amusement, and they will benefit the state.

ATHENIAN: Then if these studies are such as we maintain, we will include them; if not, they shall be excluded.

ATHENIAN: They shall be regarded as pledges which may be hereafter redeemed and removed from our state, if they do not please either us who give them, or you who accept them.

ATHENIAN: Next let us see whether we are or are not willing that the study of astronomy shall be proposed for our youth.

ATHENIAN: Here occurs a strange phenomenon, which certainly cannot in any point of view be tolerated.

ATHENIAN: Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth.

ATHENIAN: Perhaps what I am saying may seem paradoxical, and at variance with the usual language of age.

ATHENIAN: My good friends, at this hour all of us Hellenes tell lies, if I may use such an expression, about those great Gods, the Sun and the Moon.

ATHENIAN: We say that they and divers other stars do not keep the same path, and we call them planets or wanderers.

ATHENIAN: Just so, Megillus and Cleinias; and I maintain that our citizens and our youth ought to learn about the nature of the Gods in heaven, so far as to be able to offer sacrifices and pray to them in pious language, and not to blaspheme about them.

ATHENIAN: There is some difficulty in understanding my meaning, but not a very great one, nor will any great length of time be required.

ATHENIAN: I will.

ATHENIAN: At all events, the Gods cannot like us to be spreading a false report of them.

ATHENIAN: And if we can show that such is really the fact, then all these matters ought to be learned so far as is necessary for the avoidance of impiety; but if we cannot, they may be let alone, and let this be our decision.

ATHENIAN: Enough of laws relating to education and learning.

ATHENIAN: Next, with the help of the Delphian oracle, we have to institute festivals and make laws about them, and to determine what sacrifices will be for the good of the city, and to what Gods they shall be offered; but when they shall be offered, and how often, may be partly regulated by us.

ATHENIAN: Then we will first determine the number; and let the whole number be 365—one for every day—so that one magistrate at least will sacrifice daily to some God or demi-god on behalf of the city, and the citizens, and their possessions.

ATHENIAN: And shall the warriors of our city, who are destined when occasion calls to enter the greatest of all contests, and to fight for their lives, and their children, and their property, and the whole city, be worse prepared than boxers?

ATHENIAN: And what is the reason that dances and contests of this sort hardly ever exist in states, at least not to any extent worth speaking of?

ATHENIAN: Certainly not, sweet Cleinias; there are two causes, which are quite enough to account for the deficiency.

ATHENIAN: One cause is the love of wealth, which wholly absorbs men, and never for a moment allows them to think of anything but their own private possessions; on this the soul of every citizen hangs suspended, and can attend to nothing but his daily gain; mankind are ready to learn any branch of knowledge, and to follow any pursuit which tends to this end, and they laugh at every other: that is one reason why a city will not be in earnest about such contests or any other good and honourable pursuit.

ATHENIAN: Let this, then, be deemed one of the causes which prevent states from pursuing in an efficient manner the art of war, or any other noble aim, but makes the orderly and temperate part of mankind into merchants, and captains of ships, and servants, and converts the valiant sort into thieves and burglars, and robbers of temples, and violent, tyrannical persons; many of whom are not without ability, but they are unfortunate.

ATHENIAN: Must not they be truly unfortunate whose souls are compelled to pass through life always hungering?

ATHENIAN: Thank you for reminding me.

ATHENIAN: Do you imagine that I delay because I am in a perplexity?

ATHENIAN: That is a very fair rebuke, Cleinias; and I will now proceed to the second cause.

ATHENIAN: I say that governments are a cause—democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, concerning which I have often spoken in the previous discourse; or rather governments they are not, for none of them exercises a voluntary rule over voluntary subjects; but they may be truly called states of discord, in which while the government is voluntary, the subjects always obey against their will, and have to be coerced; and the ruler fears the subject, and will not, if he can help, allow him to become either noble, or rich, or strong, or valiant, or warlike at all.

ATHENIAN: Then next we must remember, about all gymnastic contests, that only the warlike sort of them are to be practised and to have prizes of victory; and those which are not military are to be given up.

ATHENIAN: Certainly the most military of all qualities is general activity of body, whether of foot or hand.

ATHENIAN: Neither of them can attain their greatest efficiency without arms.

ATHENIAN: Then our herald, in accordance with the prevailing practice, will first summon the runner—he will appear armed, for to an unarmed competitor we will not give a prize.

ATHENIAN: Let us suppose that there are three kinds of contests—one of boys, another of beardless youths, and a third of men.

ATHENIAN: Very likely; I will endeavour to explain myself more clearly.

ATHENIAN: Dear is the like in virtue to the like, and the equal to the equal; dear also, though unlike, is he who has abundance to him who is in want.

ATHENIAN: The friendship which arises from contraries is horrible and coarse, and has often no tie of communion; but that which arises from likeness is gentle, and has a tie of communion which lasts through life.

Athenian: I knew well, my friend, that I should obtain your assent, which I accept, and therefore have no need to analyze your custom any further.

ATHENIAN: Upon reflection I see a way of imposing the law, which, in one respect, is easy, but, in another, is of the utmost difficulty.

ATHENIAN: We are all aware that most men, in spite of their lawless natures, are very strictly and precisely restrained from intercourse with the fair, and this is not at all against their will, but entirely with their will.

ATHENIAN: When any one has a brother or sister who is fair; and about a son or daughter the same unwritten law holds, and is a most perfect safeguard, so that no open or secret connexion ever takes place between them.

ATHENIAN: Does not a little word extinguish all pleasures of that sort?

ATHENIAN: The declaration that they are unholy, hated of God, and most infamous; and is not the reason of this that no one has ever said the opposite, but every one from his earliest childhood has heard men speaking in the same manner about them always and everywhere, whether in comedy or in the graver language of tragedy?

ATHENIAN: Am I not also right in saying that the legislator who wants to master any of the passions which master man may easily know how to subdue them?

ATHENIAN: A good objection; but was I not just now saying that I had a way to make men use natural love and abstain from unnatural, not intentionally destroying the seeds of human increase, or sowing them in stony places, in which they will take no root; and that I would command them to abstain too from any female field of increase in which that which is sown is not likely to grow?

ATHENIAN: Shall I try and find some sort of persuasive argument which will prove to you that such enactments are possible, and not beyond human nature?

ATHENIAN: Is a man more likely to abstain from the pleasures of love and to do what he is bidden about them, when his body is in a good condition, or when he is in an ill condition, and out of training?

ATHENIAN: And have we not heard of Iccus of Tarentum, who, with a view to the Olympic and other contests, in his zeal for his art, and also because he was of a manly and temperate disposition, never had any connexion with a woman or a youth during the whole time of his training?

ATHENIAN: And had they the courage to abstain from what is ordinarily deemed a pleasure for the sake of a victory in wrestling, running, and the like; and shall our young men be incapable of a similar endurance for the sake of a much nobler victory, which is the noblest of all, as from their youth upwards we will tell them, charming them, as we hope, into the belief of this by tales and sayings and songs?

ATHENIAN: Of the victory over pleasure, which if they win, they will live happily; or if they are conquered, the reverse of happily.

ATHENIAN: And since we have reached this point in our legislation, and have fallen into a difficulty by reason of the vices of mankind, I affirm that our ordinance should simply run in the following terms: Our citizens ought not to fall below the nature of birds and beasts in general, who are born in great multitudes, and yet remain until the age for procreation virgin and unmarried, but when they have reached the proper time of life are coupled, male and female, and lovingly pair together, and live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original compact: surely, we will say to them, you should be better than the animals.

ATHENIAN: Clearly, Cleinias, the one which would naturally follow.

ATHENIAN: Our citizens should not allow pleasures to strengthen with indulgence, but should by toil divert the aliment and exuberance of them into other parts of the body; and this will happen if no immodesty be allowed in the practice of love.

ATHENIAN: The principle of piety, the love of honour, and the desire of beauty, not in the body but in the soul.

ATHENIAN: We had got about as far as the establishment of the common tables, which in most places would be difficult, but in Crete no one would think of introducing any other custom.

ATHENIAN: I mean that the earth of necessity produces and nourishes the various articles of food, sometimes better and sometimes worse.

ATHENIAN: Such being the case, let no one of the three portions be greater than either of the other two—neither that which is assigned to masters or to slaves, nor again that of the stranger; but let the distribution to all be equal and alike, and let every citizen take his two portions and distribute them among slaves and freemen, he having power to determine the quantity and quality.

ATHENIAN: There is a sense of disgrace in legislating, as we are about to do, for all the details of crime in a state which, as we say, is to be well regulated and will be perfectly adapted to the practice of virtue.

ATHENIAN: Once more let there be a third general law respecting the judges who are to give judgment, and the manner of conducting suits against those who are tried on an accusation of treason; and as concerning the remaining or departure of their descendants—there shall be one law for all three, for the traitor, and the robber of temples, and the subverter by violence of the laws of the state.

ATHENIAN: Excellent.

ATHENIAN: Perhaps he would; and he might remark upon us, that he who discourses about laws, as we are now doing, is giving the citizens education and not laws; that would be rather a telling observation.

ATHENIAN: But we are fortunate.

ATHENIAN: Inasmuch as we are not compelled to give laws, but we may take into consideration every form of government, and ascertain what is best and what is most needful, and how they may both be carried into execution; and we may also, if we please, at this very moment choose what is best, or, if we prefer, what is most necessary—which shall we do?

ATHENIAN: Certainly, in that case, Cleinias, our view of law will be more in accordance with nature.

ATHENIAN: There are many writings to be found in cities, and among them there are discourses composed by legislators as well as by other persons.

ATHENIAN: Shall we give heed rather to the writings of those others—poets and the like, who either in metre or out of metre have recorded their advice about the conduct of life, and not to the writings of legislators?

ATHENIAN: And ought the legislator alone among writers to withhold his opinion about the beautiful, the good, and the just, and not to teach what they are, and how they are to be pursued by those who intend to be happy?

ATHENIAN: And is it disgraceful for Homer and Tyrtaeus and other poets to lay down evil precepts in their writings respecting life and the pursuits of men, but not so disgraceful for Lycurgus and Solon and others who were legislators as well as writers?

ATHENIAN: Then we will now consider accurately, as we proposed, what relates to robbers of temples, and all kinds of thefts, and offences in general; and we must not be annoyed if, in the course of legislation, we have enacted some things, and have not made up our minds about some others; for as yet we are not legislators, but we may soon be.

ATHENIAN: Concerning all things honourable and just, let us then endeavour to ascertain how far we are consistent with ourselves, and how far we are inconsistent, and how far the many, from whom at any rate we should profess a desire to differ, agree and disagree among themselves.

ATHENIAN: I will endeavour to explain.

ATHENIAN: Perhaps; but let us consider further, that if all things which are just are fair and honourable, in the term 'all' we must include just sufferings which are the correlatives of just actions.

ATHENIAN: The inference is, that a just action in partaking of the just partakes also in the same degree of the fair and honourable.

ATHENIAN: And must not a suffering which partakes of the just principle be admitted to be in the same degree fair and honourable, if the argument is consistently carried out?

ATHENIAN: But then if we admit suffering to be just and yet dishonourable, and the term 'dishonourable' is applied to justice, will not the just and the honourable disagree?

ATHENIAN: A thing not difficult to understand; the laws which have been already enacted would seem to announce principles directly opposed to what we are saying.

ATHENIAN: We had enacted, if I am not mistaken, that the robber of temples, and he who was the enemy of law and order, might justly be put to death, and we were proceeding to make divers other enactments of a similar nature.

ATHENIAN: In this discordant and inconsistent fashion does the language of the many rend asunder the honourable and just.

ATHENIAN: Then now, Cleinias, let us see how far we ourselves are consistent about these matters.

ATHENIAN: I think that I have clearly stated in the former part of the discussion, but if I did not, let me now state—

ATHENIAN: That all bad men are always involuntarily bad; and from this I must proceed to draw a further inference.

ATHENIAN: That the unjust man may be bad, but that he is bad against his will.

ATHENIAN: That is a very fair question.

ATHENIAN: Let us remember what has been well said by us already, that our ideas of justice are in the highest degree confused and contradictory.

ATHENIAN: Of these two alternatives, the one is quite intolerable—not to speak what I believe to be the truth would be to me unlawful and unholy.

ATHENIAN: Reflect, then; there are hurts of various kinds done by the citizens to one another in the intercourse of life, affording plentiful examples both of the voluntary and involuntary.

ATHENIAN: I would not have any one suppose that all these hurts are injuries, and that these injuries are of two kinds—one, voluntary, and the other, involuntary; for the involuntary hurts of all men are quite as many and as great as the voluntary.

ATHENIAN: Then as to unjust hurts (and gains also, supposing the injustice to bring gain), of these we may heal as many as are capable of being healed, regarding them as diseases of the soul; and the cure of injustice will take the following direction.

ATHENIAN: When any one commits any injustice, small or great, the law will admonish and compel him either never at all to do the like again, or never voluntarily, or at any rate in a far less degree; and he must in addition pay for the hurt.

ATHENIAN: I will endeavour to do as you wish: Concerning the soul, thus much would be generally said and allowed, that one element in her nature is passion, which may be described either as a state or a part of her, and is hard to be striven against and contended with, and by irrational force overturns many things.

ATHENIAN: And pleasure is not the same with passion, but has an opposite power, working her will by persuasion and by the force of deceit in all things.

ATHENIAN: A man may truly say that ignorance is a third cause of crimes.

ATHENIAN: We all of us remark of one man that he is superior to pleasure and passion, and of another that he is inferior to them; and this is true.

ATHENIAN: But no one was ever yet heard to say that one of us is superior and another inferior to ignorance.

ATHENIAN: We are speaking of motives which incite men to the fulfilment of their will; although an individual may be often drawn by them in opposite directions at the same time.

ATHENIAN: And now I can define to you clearly, and without ambiguity, what I mean by the just and unjust, according to my notion of them: When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies and desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not—I call all this injustice.

ATHENIAN: There was a second consisting of pleasures and desires, and a third of hopes, which aimed at true opinion about the best.

ATHENIAN: There is one kind of actions done by violence and in the light of day, and another kind of actions which are done in darkness and with secret deceit, or sometimes both with violence and deceit; the laws concerning these last ought to have a character of severity.

ATHENIAN: And now let us return from this digression and complete the work of legislation.

ATHENIAN: Let us proceed: If any one slays a freeman with his own hand, and the deed be done in a moment of anger, and without premeditation, let the offender suffer in other respects as the involuntary homicide would have suffered, and also undergo an exile of two years, that he may learn to school his passions.

ATHENIAN: Let us first speak, as far as we are able, of their various kinds.

ATHENIAN: The inference is, that some things should be left to courts of law; others the legislator must decide for himself.

ATHENIAN: I may reply, that in a state in which the courts are bad and mute, because the judges conceal their opinions and decide causes clandestinely; or what is worse, when they are disorderly and noisy, as in a theatre, clapping or hooting in turn this or that orator—I say that then there is a very serious evil, which affects the whole state.

ATHENIAN: My good friend, let us first hear the jests which I suspect that they in their superiority will utter against us.

ATHENIAN: They will make some irreverent speech of this sort: 'O inhabitants of Athens, and Sparta, and Cnosus,' they will reply, 'in that you speak truly; for some of us deny the very existence of the Gods, while others, as you say, are of opinion that they do not care about us; and others that they are turned from their course by gifts.

ATHENIAN: How would you prove it?

ATHENIAN: I fear, my sweet friend, though I will not say that I much regard, the contempt with which the profane will be likely to assail us.

ATHENIAN: One which you who live in a different atmosphere would never guess.

ATHENIAN: A very grievous sort of ignorance which is imagined to be the greatest wisdom.

ATHENIAN: At Athens there are tales preserved in writing which the virtue of your state, as I am informed, refuses to admit.

ATHENIAN: Well, then; what shall we say or do?

ATHENIAN: Seeing you thus in earnest, I would fain offer up a prayer that I may succeed: but I must proceed at once.

ATHENIAN: Quite true, Megillus and Cleinias, but I am afraid that we have unconsciously lighted on a strange doctrine.

ATHENIAN: The wisest of all doctrines, in the opinion of many.

ATHENIAN: The doctrine that all things do become, have become, and will become, some by nature, some by art, and some by chance.

ATHENIAN: Well, philosophers are probably right; at any rate we may as well follow in their track, and examine what is the meaning of them and their disciples.

ATHENIAN: They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial.

ATHENIAN: I will explain my meaning still more clearly.

ATHENIAN: In the first place, my dear friend, these people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.

ATHENIAN: True, Cleinias; but then what should the lawgiver do when this evil is of long standing?

ATHENIAN: Yes, my enthusiastic Cleinias; but are not these things when spoken to a multitude hard to be understood, not to mention that they take up a dismal length of time?

ATHENIAN: Yes, Megillus, and we should do as he proposes; for if impious discourses were not scattered, as I may say, throughout the world, there would have been no need for any vindication of the existence of the Gods—but seeing that they are spread far and wide, such arguments are needed; and who should come to the rescue of the greatest laws, when they are being undermined by bad men, but the legislator himself?

ATHENIAN: Well, then, tell me, Cleinias—for I must ask you to be my partner—does not he who talks in this way conceive fire and water and earth and air to be the first elements of all things?

ATHENIAN: Then, by Heaven, we have discovered the source of this vain opinion of all those physical investigators; and I would have you examine their arguments with the utmost care, for their impiety is a very serious matter; they not only make a bad and mistaken use of argument, but they lead away the minds of others: that is my opinion of them.

ATHENIAN: I fear that the argument may seem singular.

ATHENIAN: Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument of those who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions; they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation and destruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that which is last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about the true nature of the Gods.

ATHENIAN: Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be ignorant of the nature and power of the soul, especially in what relates to her origin: they do not know that she is among the first of things, and before all bodies, and is the chief author of their changes and transpositions.

ATHENIAN: Then thought and attention and mind and art and law will be prior to that which is hard and soft and heavy and light; and the great and primitive works and actions will be works of art; they will be the first, and after them will come nature and works of nature, which however is a wrong term for men to apply to them; these will follow, and will be under the government of art and mind.

ATHENIAN: Because those who use the term mean to say that nature is the first creative power; but if the soul turn out to be the primeval element, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyond other things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this would be true if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but not otherwise.

ATHENIAN: Shall we, then, take this as the next point to which our attention should be directed?

ATHENIAN: Let us be on our guard lest this most deceptive argument with its youthful looks, beguiling us old men, give us the slip and make a laughing-stock of us.

ATHENIAN: Come, then, and if ever we are to call upon the Gods, let us call upon them now in all seriousness to come to the demonstration of their own existence.

ATHENIAN: Just the two, with which our present enquiry is concerned.

ATHENIAN: I suppose that our enquiry has reference to the soul?

ATHENIAN: Let us assume that there is a motion able to move other things, but not to move itself; that is one kind; and there is another kind which can move itself as well as other things, working in composition and decomposition, by increase and diminution and generation and destruction—that is also one of the many kinds of motion.

ATHENIAN: And we will assume that which moves other, and is changed by other, to be the ninth, and that which changes itself and others, and is coincident with every action and every passion, and is the true principle of change and motion in all that is—that we shall be inclined to call the tenth.

ATHENIAN: And which of these ten motions ought we to prefer as being the mightiest and most efficient?

ATHENIAN: Very good; but may I make one or two corrections in what I have been saying?

ATHENIAN: When I spoke of the tenth sort of motion, that was not quite correct.

ATHENIAN: According to the true order, the tenth was really the first in generation and power; then follows the second, which was strangely enough termed the ninth by us.

ATHENIAN: I mean this: when one thing changes another, and that another, of such will there be any primary changing element?

ATHENIAN: Or, to put the question in another way, making answer to ourselves: If, as most of these philosophers have the audacity to affirm, all things were at rest in one mass, which of the above-mentioned principles of motion would first spring up among them?

ATHENIAN: Then we must say that self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second.

ATHENIAN: At this stage of the argument let us put a question.

ATHENIAN: If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound—how should we describe it?

ATHENIAN: I do.

ATHENIAN: And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the same—must we not admit that this is life?

ATHENIAN: And now, I beseech you, reflect—you would admit that we have a threefold knowledge of things?

ATHENIAN: I mean that we know the essence, and that we know the definition of the essence, and the name—these are the three; and there are two questions which may be raised about anything.

ATHENIAN: Sometimes a person may give the name and ask the definition; or he may give the definition and ask the name.

ATHENIAN: Number like some other things is capable of being divided into equal parts; when thus divided, number is named 'even,' and the definition of the name 'even' is 'number divisible into two equal parts'?

ATHENIAN: I mean, that when we are asked about the definition and give the name, or when we are asked about the name and give the definition—in either case, whether we give name or definition, we speak of the same thing, calling 'even' the number which is divided into two equal parts.

ATHENIAN: And what is the definition of that which is named 'soul'?

ATHENIAN: Yes; and if this is true, do we still maintain that there is anything wanting in the proof that the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has become, or will be, and their contraries, when she has been clearly shown to be the source of change and motion in all things?

ATHENIAN: And is not that motion which is produced in another, by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number which you may prefer?

ATHENIAN: Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to the body, and that the body is second and comes afterwards, and is born to obey the soul, which is the ruler?

ATHENIAN: Do you remember our old admission, that if the soul was prior to the body the things of the soul were also prior to those of the body?

ATHENIAN: Then characters and manners, and wishes and reasonings, and true opinions, and reflections, and recollections are prior to length and breadth and depth and strength of bodies, if the soul is prior to the body.

ATHENIAN: In the next place, we must not of necessity admit that the soul is the cause of good and evil, base and honourable, just and unjust, and of all other opposites, if we suppose her to be the cause of all things?

ATHENIAN: And as the soul orders and inhabits all things that move, however moving, must we not say that she orders also the heavens?

ATHENIAN: One soul or more?

ATHENIAN: Yes, very true; the soul then directs all things in heaven, and earth, and sea by her movements, and these are described by the terms—will, consideration, attention, deliberation, opinion true and false, joy and sorrow, confidence, fear, hatred, love, and other primary motions akin to these; which again receive the secondary motions of corporeal substances, and guide all things to growth and decay, to composition and decomposition, and to the qualities which accompany them, such as heat and cold, heaviness and lightness, hardness and softness, blackness and whiteness, bitterness and sweetness, and all those other qualities which the soul uses, herself a goddess, when truly receiving the divine mind she disciplines all things rightly to their happiness; but when she is the companion of folly, she does the very contrary of all this.

ATHENIAN: Shall we say then that it is the soul which controls heaven and earth, and the whole world?

ATHENIAN: If, my friend, we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is therein, is by nature akin to the movement and revolution and calculation of mind, and proceeds by kindred laws, then, as is plain, we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the good path.

ATHENIAN: But if the world moves wildly and irregularly, then the evil soul guides it.

ATHENIAN: Of what nature is the movement of mind?

ATHENIAN: Then let us not answer as if we would look straight at the sun, making ourselves darkness at midday—I mean as if we were under the impression that we could see with mortal eyes, or know adequately the nature of mind—it will be safer to look at the image only.

ATHENIAN: Let us select of the ten motions the one which mind chiefly resembles; this I will bring to your recollection, and will then make the answer on behalf of us all.

ATHENIAN: You will surely remember our saying that all things were either at rest or in motion?

ATHENIAN: And that of things in motion some were moving in one place, and others in more than one?

ATHENIAN: Of these two kinds of motion, that which moves in one place must move about a centre like globes made in a lathe, and is most entirely akin and similar to the circular movement of mind.

ATHENIAN: In saying that both mind and the motion which is in one place move in the same and like manner, in and about the same, and in relation to the same, and according to one proportion and order, and are like the motion of a globe, we invented a fair image, which does no discredit to our ingenuity.

ATHENIAN: And the motion of the other sort which is not after the same manner, nor in the same, nor about the same, nor in relation to the same, nor in one place, nor in order, nor according to any rule or proportion, may be said to be akin to senselessness and folly?

ATHENIAN: Then, after what has been said, there is no difficulty in distinctly stating, that since soul carries all things round, either the best soul or the contrary must of necessity carry round and order and arrange the revolution of the heaven.

ATHENIAN: You have understood my meaning right well, Cleinias, and now let me ask you another question.

ATHENIAN: If the soul carries round the sun and moon, and the other stars, does she not carry round each individual of them?

ATHENIAN: Then of one of them let us speak, and the same argument will apply to all.

ATHENIAN: Every one sees the body of the sun, but no one sees his soul, nor the soul of any other body living or dead; and yet there is great reason to believe that this nature, unperceived by any of our senses, is circumfused around them all, but is perceived by mind; and therefore by mind and reflection only let us apprehend the following point.

ATHENIAN: If the soul carries round the sun, we shall not be far wrong in supposing one of three alternatives.

ATHENIAN: Either the soul which moves the sun this way and that, resides within the circular and visible body, like the soul which carries us about every way; or the soul provides herself with an external body of fire or air, as some affirm, and violently propels body by body; or thirdly, she is without such a body, but guides the sun by some extraordinary and wonderful power.

ATHENIAN: And this soul of the sun, which is therefore better than the sun, whether taking the sun about in a chariot to give light to men, or acting from without, or in whatever way, ought by every man to be deemed a God.

ATHENIAN: And of the stars too, and of the moon, and of the years and months and seasons, must we not say in like manner, that since a soul or souls having every sort of excellence are the causes of all of them, those souls are Gods, whether they are living beings and reside in bodies, and in this way order the whole heaven, or whatever be the place and mode of their existence—and will any one who admits all this venture to deny that all things are full of Gods?

ATHENIAN: And now, Megillus and Cleinias, let us offer terms to him who has hitherto denied the existence of the Gods, and leave him.

ATHENIAN: Either he shall teach us that we were wrong in saying that the soul is the original of all things, and arguing accordingly; or, if he be not able to say anything better, then he must yield to us and live for the remainder of his life in the belief that there are Gods.

ATHENIAN: Then to them we will say no more.

ATHENIAN: There will probably be no difficulty in proving to him that the Gods care about the small as well as about the great.

ATHENIAN: Let us consider together in the next place what we mean by this virtue which we ascribe to them.

ATHENIAN: Yes; and courage is a part of virtue, and cowardice of vice?

ATHENIAN: And the one is honourable, and the other dishonourable?

ATHENIAN: And the one, like other meaner things, is a human quality, but the Gods have no part in anything of the sort?

ATHENIAN: But do we imagine carelessness and idleness and luxury to be virtues?

ATHENIAN: They rank under the opposite class?

ATHENIAN: And their opposites, therefore, would fall under the opposite class?

ATHENIAN: But are we to suppose that one who possesses all these good qualities will be luxurious and heedless and idle, like those whom the poet compares to stingless drones?

ATHENIAN: Surely God must not be supposed to have a nature which He Himself hates?

ATHENIAN: Should we not on any principle be entirely mistaken in praising any one who has some special business entrusted to him, if he have a mind which takes care of great matters and no care of small ones?

ATHENIAN: Either he must think that the neglect of the small matters is of no consequence to the whole, or if he knows that they are of consequence, and he neglects them, his neglect must be attributed to carelessness and indolence.

ATHENIAN: Now, then, let us examine the offenders, who both alike confess that there are Gods, but with a difference—the one saying that they may be appeased, and the other that they have no care of small matters: there are three of us and two of them, and we will say to them—In the first place, you both acknowledge that the Gods hear and see and know all things, and that nothing can escape them which is matter of sense and knowledge: do you admit this?

ATHENIAN: And do you admit also that they have all power which mortals and immortals can have?

ATHENIAN: And surely we three and they two—five in all—have acknowledged that they are good and perfect?

ATHENIAN: But, if they are such as we conceive them to be, can we possibly suppose that they ever act in the spirit of carelessness and indolence?

ATHENIAN: Then not from inactivity and carelessness is any God ever negligent; for there is no cowardice in them.

ATHENIAN: Then the alternative which remains is, that if the Gods neglect the lighter and lesser concerns of the universe, they neglect them because they know that they ought not to care about such matters—what other alternative is there but the opposite of their knowing?

ATHENIAN: And, O most excellent and best of men, do I understand you to mean that they are careless because they are ignorant, and do not know that they ought to take care, or that they know, and yet like the meanest sort of men, knowing the better, choose the worse because they are overcome by pleasures and pains?

ATHENIAN: Do not all human things partake of the nature of soul?

ATHENIAN: And we acknowledge that all mortal creatures are the property of the Gods, to whom also the whole of heaven belongs?

ATHENIAN: And, therefore, whether a person says that these things are to the Gods great or small—in either case it would not be natural for the Gods who own us, and who are the most careful and the best of owners, to neglect us.

ATHENIAN: Sensation and power are in an inverse ratio to each other in respect to their ease and difficulty.

ATHENIAN: I mean that there is greater difficulty in seeing and hearing the small than the great, but more facility in moving and controlling and taking care of small and unimportant things than of their opposites.

ATHENIAN: Suppose the case of a physician who is willing and able to cure some living thing as a whole—how will the whole fare at his hands if he takes care only of the greater and neglects the parts which are lesser?

ATHENIAN: No better would be the result with pilots or generals, or householders or statesmen, or any other such class, if they neglected the small and regarded only the great—as the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

ATHENIAN: Let us not, then, deem God inferior to human workmen, who, in proportion to their skill, finish and perfect their works, small as well as great, by one and the same art; or that God, the wisest of beings, who is both willing and able to take care, is like a lazy good-for-nothing, or a coward, who turns his back upon labour and gives no thought to smaller and easier matters, but to the greater only.

ATHENIAN: I think that we have now argued enough with him who delights to accuse the Gods of neglect.

ATHENIAN: He has been forced to acknowledge that he is in error, but he still seems to me to need some words of consolation.

ATHENIAN: Let us say to the youth: The ruler of the universe has ordered all things with a view to the excellence and preservation of the whole, and each part, as far as may be, has an action and passion appropriate to it.

ATHENIAN: In a way which may be supposed to make the care of all things easy to the Gods.

ATHENIAN: I will explain: When the king saw that our actions had life, and that there was much virtue in them and much vice, and that the soul and body, although not, like the Gods of popular opinion, eternal, yet having once come into existence, were indestructible (for if either of them had been destroyed, there would have been no generation of living beings); and when he observed that the good of the soul was ever by nature designed to profit men, and the evil to harm them—he, seeing all this, contrived so to place each of the parts that their position might in the easiest and best manner procure the victory of good and the defeat of evil in the whole.

ATHENIAN: Then all things which have a soul change, and possess in themselves a principle of change, and in changing move according to law and to the order of destiny: natures which have undergone a lesser change move less and on the earth's surface, but those which have suffered more change and have become more criminal sink into the abyss, that is to say, into Hades and other places in the world below, of which the very names terrify men, and which they picture to themselves as in a dream, both while alive and when released from the body.

ATHENIAN: Well, then, by the Gods themselves I conjure you to tell me—if they are to be propitiated, how are they to be propitiated?

ATHENIAN: And to what earthly rulers can they be compared, or who to them?

ATHENIAN: What else can he say who declares that the Gods are always lenient to the doers of unjust acts, if they divide the spoil with them?

ATHENIAN: And to which of the above-mentioned classes of guardians would any man compare the Gods without absurdity?

ATHENIAN: And surely they are not like charioteers who are bribed to give up the victory to other chariots?

ATHENIAN: Nor are they like generals, or physicians, or husbandmen, or shepherds; and no one would compare them to dogs who have been silenced by wolves.

ATHENIAN: And are not all the Gods the chiefest of all guardians, and do they not guard our highest interests?

ATHENIAN: And shall we say that those who guard our noblest interests, and are the best of guardians, are inferior in virtue to dogs, and to men even of moderate excellence, who would never betray justice for the sake of gifts which unjust men impiously offer them?

ATHENIAN: Then are the three assertions—that the Gods exist, and that they take care of men, and that they can never be persuaded to do injustice, now sufficiently demonstrated?

ATHENIAN: I have spoken with vehemence because I am zealous against evil men; and I will tell you, dear Cleinias, why I am so.

ATHENIAN: After the prelude shall follow a discourse, which will be the interpreter of the law; this shall proclaim to all impious persons that they must depart from their ways and go over to the pious.

ATHENIAN: Dear Cleinias, the class of men is small—they must have been rarely gifted by nature, and trained by education—who, when assailed by wants and desires, are able to hold out and observe moderation, and when they might make a great deal of money are sober in their wishes, and prefer a moderate to a large gain.

ATHENIAN: O Cleinias, a man when he is about to die is an intractable creature, and is apt to use language which causes a great deal of anxiety and trouble to the legislator.

ATHENIAN: He wants to have the entire control of all his property, and will use angry words.

ATHENIAN: O ye Gods, he will say, how monstrous that I am not allowed to give, or not to give, my own to whom I will—less to him who has been bad to me, and more to him who has been good to me, and whose badness and goodness have been tested by me in time of sickness or in old age and in every other sort of fortune!

ATHENIAN: In my opinion, Cleinias, the ancient legislators were too good-natured, and made laws without sufficient observation or consideration of human things.

ATHENIAN: I mean, my friend, that they were afraid of the testator's reproaches, and so they passed a law to the effect that a man should be allowed to dispose of his property in all respects as he liked; but you and I, if I am not mistaken, will have something better to say to our departing citizens.

ATHENIAN: O my friends, we will say to them, hard is it for you, who are creatures of a day, to know what is yours—hard too, as the Delphic oracle says, to know yourselves at this hour.

ATHENIAN: There must be arbiters chosen to deal with such laws and the subjects of them.

ATHENIAN: I mean to say, that a case may occur in which the nephew, having a rich father, will be unwilling to marry the daughter of his uncle; he will have a feeling of pride, and he will wish to look higher.

ATHENIAN: I will tell you, O my friend, for such things are worth listening to.

ATHENIAN: Oedipus, as tradition says, when dishonoured by his sons, invoked on them curses which every one declares to have been heard and ratified by the Gods, and Amyntor in his wrath invoked curses on his son Phoenix, and Theseus upon Hippolytus, and innumerable others have also called down wrath upon their children, whence it is clear that the Gods listen to the imprecations of parents; for the curses of parents are, as they ought to be, mighty against their children as no others are.

ATHENIAN: May we not think, as I was saying just now, that we can possess no image which is more honoured by the Gods, than that of a father or grandfather, or of a mother stricken in years?

ATHENIAN: Every man of any understanding fears and respects the prayers of parents, knowing well that many times and to many persons they have been accomplished.

ATHENIAN: In this way: In the first place, our spectator shall be of not less than fifty years of age; he must be a man of reputation, especially in war, if he is to exhibit to other cities a model of the guardians of the law, but when he is more than sixty years of age he shall no longer continue in his office of spectator.

ATHENIAN: O Cleinias, many things of old time were well said and sung; and the saying about the Fates was one of them.

ATHENIAN: The saying that Lachesis or the giver of the lots is the first of them, and that Clotho or the spinster is the second of them, and that Atropos or the unchanging one is the third of them; and that she is the preserver of the things which we have spoken, and which have been compared in a figure to things woven by fire, they both (i.e.

ATHENIAN: But it certainly can be; so much I clearly see.

ATHENIAN: I approve of your suggestion, and am quite of the same mind with you.

ATHENIAN: Were we not saying that there must be in our city a council which was to be of this sort: The ten oldest guardians of the law, and all those who have obtained prizes of virtue, were to meet in the same assembly, and the council was also to include those who had visited foreign countries in the hope of hearing something that might be of use in the preservation of the laws, and who, having come safely home, and having been tested in these same matters, had proved themselves to be worthy to take part in the assembly—each of the members was to select some young man of not less than thirty years of age, he himself judging in the first instance whether the young man was worthy by nature and education, and then suggesting him to the others, and if he seemed to them also to be worthy they were to adopt him; but if not, the decision at which they arrived was to be kept a secret from the citizens at large, and, more especially, from the rejected candidate.

ATHENIAN: Then, returning to the council, I would say further, that if we let it down to be the anchor of the state, our city, having everything which is suitable to her, will preserve all that we wish to preserve.

ATHENIAN: Now is the time for me to speak the truth in all earnestness.

ATHENIAN: Know, Cleinias, that everything, in all that it does, has a natural saviour, as of an animal the soul and the head are the chief saviours.

ATHENIAN: The well-being of those two is obviously the preservation of every living thing.

ATHENIAN: The soul, besides other things, contains mind, and the head, besides other things, contains sight and hearing; and the mind, mingling with the noblest of the senses, and becoming one with them, may be truly called the salvation of all.

ATHENIAN: Yes, indeed; but with what is that intellect concerned which, mingling with the senses, is the salvation of ships in storms as well as in fair weather?

ATHENIAN: We do not want many illustrations about such matters: What aim would the general of an army, or what aim would a physician propose to himself, if he were seeking to attain salvation?

ATHENIAN: Does not the general aim at victory and superiority in war, and do not the physician and his assistants aim at producing health in the body?

ATHENIAN: And a physician who is ignorant about the body, that is to say, who knows not that which we just now called health, or a general who knows not victory, or any others who are ignorant of the particulars of the arts which we mentioned, cannot be said to have understanding about any of these matters.

ATHENIAN: And what would you say of the state?

ATHENIAN: And therefore, if our settlement of the country is to be perfect, we ought to have some institution, which, as I was saying, will tell what is the aim of the state, and will inform us how we are to attain this, and what law or what man will advise us to that end.

ATHENIAN: In which, then, of the parts or institutions of the state is any such guardian power to be found?

ATHENIAN: You understand me perfectly, Cleinias; and we must assume, as the argument implies, that this council possesses all virtue; and the beginning of virtue is not to make mistakes by guessing many things, but to look steadily at one thing, and on this to fix all our aims.

ATHENIAN: Then now we shall see why there is nothing wonderful in states going astray—the reason is that their legislators have such different aims; nor is there anything wonderful in some laying down as their rule of justice, that certain individuals should bear rule in the state, whether they be good or bad, and others that the citizens should be rich, not caring whether they are the slaves of other men or not.

ATHENIAN: Yes.

ATHENIAN: Quite true.

ATHENIAN: You follow me capitally, Cleinias, and I would ask you to follow me to the end, for we have already said that the mind of the pilot, the mind of the physician and of the general look to that one thing to which they ought to look; and now we may turn to mind political, of which, as of a human creature, we will ask a question: O wonderful being, and to what are you looking?

ATHENIAN: Well, but ought we not to desire to see it, and to see where it is to be found?

ATHENIAN: For example, we were saying that there are four kinds of virtue, and as there are four of them, each of them must be one.

ATHENIAN: And further, all four of them we call one; for we say that courage is virtue, and that prudence is virtue, and the same of the two others, as if they were in reality not many but one, that is, virtue.

ATHENIAN: There is no difficulty in seeing in what way the two differ from one another, and have received two names, and so of the rest.

ATHENIAN: I have no difficulty in explaining what I mean.

ATHENIAN: Ask me what is that one thing which I call virtue, and then again speak of as two, one part being courage and the other wisdom.

ATHENIAN: I have now told you in what way the two are different, and do you in return tell me in what way they are one and the same.

ATHENIAN: And is there anything greater to the legislator and the guardian of the law, and to him who thinks that he excels all other men in virtue, and has won the palm of excellence, than these very qualities of which we are now speaking—courage, temperance, wisdom, justice?

ATHENIAN: And ought not the interpreters, the teachers, the lawgivers, the guardians of the other citizens, to excel the rest of mankind, and perfectly to show him who desires to learn and know or whose evil actions require to be punished and reproved, what is the nature of virtue and vice?

ATHENIAN: Well, then, must we do as we said?

ATHENIAN: Do we not see that the city is the trunk, and are not the younger guardians, who are chosen for their natural gifts, placed in the head of the state, having their souls all full of eyes, with which they look about the whole city?

ATHENIAN: Then we ought to proceed to some more exact training than any which has preceded.

ATHENIAN: And must not that of which we are in need be the one to which we were just now alluding?

ATHENIAN: Did we not say that the workman or guardian, if he be perfect in every respect, ought not only to be able to see the many aims, but he should press onward to the one?

ATHENIAN: And can any one have a more exact way of considering or contemplating anything, than the being able to look at one idea gathered from many different things?

ATHENIAN: Not 'Perhaps not,' but 'Certainly not,' my good sir, is the right answer.

ATHENIAN: Then, as would appear, we must compel the guardians of our divine state to perceive, in the first place, what that principle is which is the same in all the four—the same, as we affirm, in courage and in temperance, and in justice and in prudence, and which, being one, we call as we ought, by the single name of virtue.

ATHENIAN: Wait a little before you ask; and let us, first of all, be quite agreed with one another that the purpose has to be accomplished.

ATHENIAN: Well, and about the good and the honourable, are we to take the same view?

ATHENIAN: And are they to consider only, and to be unable to set forth what they think?

ATHENIAN: And may not the same be said of all good things—that the true guardians of the laws ought to know the truth about them, and to be able to interpret them in words, and carry them out in action, judging of what is and of what is not well, according to nature?

ATHENIAN: Is not the knowledge of the Gods which we have set forth with so much zeal one of the noblest sorts of knowledge—to know that they are, and know how great is their power, as far as in man lies?

ATHENIAN: Are we assured that there are two things which lead men to believe in the Gods, as we have already stated?

ATHENIAN: One is the argument about the soul, which has been already mentioned—that it is the eldest and most divine of all things, to which motion attaining generation gives perpetual existence; the other was an argument from the order of the motion of the stars, and of all things under the dominion of the mind which ordered the universe.

ATHENIAN: Just the opposite, as I said, of the opinion which once prevailed among men, that the sun and stars are without soul.

ATHENIAN: No man can be a true worshipper of the Gods who does not know these two principles—that the soul is the eldest of all things which are born, and is immortal and rules over all bodies; moreover, as I have now said several times, he who has not contemplated the mind of nature which is said to exist in the stars, and gone through the previous training, and seen the connexion of music with these things, and harmonized them all with laws and institutions, is not able to give a reason of such things as have a reason.

ATHENIAN: Let us make a common effort to gain such an object; for I too will gladly share in the attempt.

ATHENIAN: O Megillus and Cleinias, about these matters we cannot legislate further until the council is constituted; when that is done, then we will determine what authority they shall have of their own; but the explanation of how this is all to be ordered would only be given rightly in a long discourse.

ATHENIAN: In the first place, a list would have to be made out of those who by their ages and studies and dispositions and habits are well fitted for the duty of a guardian.

ATHENIAN: As the proverb says, the answer is no secret, but open to all of us: We must risk the whole on the chance of throwing, as they say, thrice six or thrice ace, and I am willing to share with you the danger by stating and explaining to you my views about education and nurture, which is the question coming to the surface again.