To whom do you ascribe the authorship of your legal arrangements, Strangers? To a god or to some man?

To a god, Stranger, most rightfully to a god. We Cretans call Zeus our lawgiver; while in Lacedaemon, where our friend here has his home, I believe they claim Apollo as theirs. Is not that so, Megillus?

Yes.

Do you then, like Homer,

say that

Minos used to go every ninth year to hold converse with his father Zeus, and that he was guided by his divine oracles in laying down the laws for your cities?

So our people say. And they say also that his brother Rhadamanthys,—no doubt you have heard the name,—was exceedingly just. And certainly we Cretans

would maintain that he won this title owing to his righteous administration of justice in those days.

Yes, his renown is indeed glorious and well befitting a son of Zeus. And, since you and our friend Megillus were both brought up in legal institutions of so noble a kind, you would, I imagine, have no aversion to our occupying ourselves as we go along in discussion on the subject of government and laws. Certainly, as I am told, the road from Cnosus

to the cave

and temple of Zeus is a long one, and we are sure to find, in this sultry weather, shady resting-places among the high trees along the road: in them we can rest ofttimes, as befits our age, beguiling the time with discourse, and thus complete our journey in comfort.

True, Stranger; and as one proceeds further one finds in the groves cypress-trees of wonderful height and beauty,

and meadows too, where we may rest ourselves and talk.

You say well.

Yes, indeed: and when we set eyes on them we shall say so still more emphatically. So let us be going, and good luck attend us.

Amen! And tell me now, for what reason did your law ordain the common meals you have, and your gymnastic schools and military equipment?

Our Cretan customs, Stranger, are, as I think, such as anyone may grasp easily. As you may notice, Crete, as a whole,

is not a level country, like Thessaly: consequently, whereas the Thessalians mostly go on horseback, we Cretans are runners, since this land of ours is rugged and more suitable for the practice of foot-running. Under these conditions we are obliged to have light armour for running and to avoid heavy equipment; so bows and arrows are adopted as suitable because of their lightness. Thus all these customs of ours are adapted for war,

and, in my opinion, this was the object which the lawgiver had in view when he ordained them all. Probably this was his reason also for instituting common meals: he saw how soldiers, all the time they are on campaign, are obliged by force of circumstances to mess in common, for the sake of their own security. And herein, as I think, he condemned the stupidity of the mass of men in failing to perceive that all are involved ceaselessly in a lifelong war against all States. If, then, these practices are necessary in war,—namely, messing in common for safety's sake, and the appointment of relays of officers and privates to act as guards,—

they must be carried out equally in time of peace. For (as he would say) “peace,” as the term is commonly employed, is nothing more than a name, the truth being that every State is, by a law of nature, engaged perpetually in an informal war with every other State. And if you look at the matter from this point of view you will find it practically true that our Cretan lawgiver ordained all our legal usages, both public and private, with an eye to war, and that he therefore charged us with the task of guarding our laws safely,

in the conviction that without victory in war nothing else, whether possession or institution, is of the least value, but all the goods of the vanquished fall into the hands of the victors.

Your training, Stranger, has certainly, as it seems to me, given you an excellent understanding of the legal practices of Crete. But tell me this more clearly still: by the definition you have given of the well-constituted State

you appear to me to imply that it ought to be organized in such a way as to be victorious in war over all other States. Is that so?

Certainly it is; and I think that our friend here shares my opinion.

No Lacedaemonian, my good sir, could possibly say otherwise.

If this, then, is the right attitude for a State to adopt towards a State, is the right attitude for village towards village different?

By no means.

It is the same, you say?

Yes.

Well then, is the same attitude right also for one house in the village towards another, and for each man towards every other?

It is.

And must each individual man regard himself as his own enemy? Or what do we say when we come to this point?

O Stranger of Athens, for I should be loth to call you a man of Attica, since methinks you deserve rather to be named after the goddess Athena, seeing that you have made the argument more clear by taking it back again to its starting-point; whereby you will the more easily discover the justice of our recent statement that, in the mass, all men are both publicly and privately the enemies of all, and individually also each man is his own enemy.

What is your meaning, my admirable sir?

It is just in this war, my friend, that the victory over self is of all victories the first and best while self-defeat is of all defeats at once the worst and the most shameful. For these phrases signify that a war against self exists within each of us.

Now let us take the argument back in the reverse direction. Seeing that individually each of us is partly superior to himself

and partly inferior, are we to affirm that the same condition of things exists in house and village and State, or are we to deny it?

Do you mean the condition of being partly self-superior and partly self-inferior?

Yes.

That, too, is a proper question; for such a condition does most certainly exist, and in States above all. Every State in which the better class is victorious over the populace and the lower classes would rightly be termed “self-superior,” and would be praised most justly for a victory of this kind; and conversely, when the reverse is the case.

Well then, leaving aside the question as to whether the worse element is ever superior to the better (a question which would demand a more lengthy discussion), what you assert, as I now perceive, is this,—that sometimes citizens of one stock and of one State who are unjust and numerous may combine together and try to enslave by force those who are just but fewer in number, and wherever they prevail such a State would rightly be termed “self-inferior” and bad, but “self-superior” and good wherever they are worsted.

This statement is indeed most extraordinary, Stranger; none the less we cannot possibly reject it.

Stay a moment: here too is a case we must further consider. Suppose there were a number of brothers, all sons of the same parents, it would not be at all surprising if most of them were unjust and but few just.

It would not.

And, moreover, it would ill beseem you and me to go a-chasing after this form of expression, that if the bad ones conquered the whole of this family and house should be called “self-inferior,”

but “self-superior” if they were defeated; for our present reference to the usage of ordinary speech is not concerned with the propriety or impropriety of verbal phrases but with the essential rightness or wrongness of laws.

Very true, Stranger.

And finely spoken, too, up to this point, as I agree.

Let us also look at this point: the brothers we have just described would have, I suppose, a judge?

Certainly.

Which of the two would be the better—a judge who destroyed

all the wicked among them and charged the good to govern themselves, or one who made the good members govern and, while allowing the bad to live, made them submit willingly to be governed? And there is a third judge we must mention (third and best in point of merit),—if indeed such a judge can be found,—

who in dealing with a single divided family will destroy none of them but reconcile them and succeed, by enacting laws for them, in securing amongst them thenceforward permanent friendliness.

A judge and lawgiver of that kind would be by far the best.

But mark this: his aim, in the laws he enacted for them, would be the opposite of war.

That is true.

And what of him who brings the State into harmony? In ordering its life would he have regard to external warfare

rather than to the internal war, whenever it occurs, which goes by the name of “civil” strife? For this is a war as to which it would be the desire of every man that, if possible, it should never occur in his own State, and that, if it did occur, it should come to as speedy an end as possible.

Evidently he would have regard to civil war.

And would anyone prefer that the citizens should be obliged to devote their attention to external enemies after internal concord had been secured by the destruction of one section and the victory of their opponents rather than after the establishment of friendship and peace

by terms of conciliation?

Everyone would prefer the latter alternative for his own State rather than the former.

And would not the lawgiver do the same?

Of course.

Would not every lawgiver in all his legislation aim at the highest good?

Assuredly.

The highest good, however, is neither war nor civil strife—which things we should pray rather to be saved from—but peace one with another and friendly feeling. Moreover, it would seem that the victory

we mentioned of a State over itself is not one of the best things but one of those which are necessary. For imagine a man supposing that a human body was best off when it was sick and aged with physic, while never giving a thought to the case of the body that needs no physic at all! Similarly, with regard to the well-being of a State or an individual, that man will never make genuine statesman who pays attention primarily solely to the needs of foreign warfare, nor will he make a finished lawgiver unless he designs his legislation for peace

rather than his peace legislation for war.

This statement, Stranger, is apparently true; yet, unless I am much mistaken, our legal usages in Crete, and in Lacedaemon too, are wholly acted towards war.

Very possibly; but we must not now attack them violently,

but mildly interrogate them, since both we and your legislators are earnestly interested in these matters. Pray follow the argument closely. Let us take the opinion of Tyrtaeus (an Athenian by birth and afterwards a citizen of Lacedaemon), above all men, was keenly interested in our subject. This is what he says:

“Though a man were the richest of men,”

“though a man possessed goods in plenty (and he specifies nearly every good there is), if he failed to prove himself at all times most valiant in war, no mention should I make of nor take account of him at all.” No doubt you also have heard these poems; while our friend Megillus is, I imagine, surfeited with them.

I certainly am.

And I can assure you they have reached Crete also, shipped over from Lacedaemon.

Come now, let us jointly interrogate this poet somehow on this wise:

“O Tyrtaeus, most inspired of poets (for assuredly you seem to us both wise and good in that you have eulogized excellently those who excel in war), concerning this matter we three Megillus, Clinias of Cnosus and myself are already in entire accord with you, as we suppose; but we wish to be assured that both we and you are alluding to the same persons. Tell us then: do you clearly recognize, as we do, two distinct kinds of war?” In reply to this I suppose that even a much less able man than Tyrtaeus would state the truth,

that there are two kinds, the one being that which we all call “civil,” which is of all wars the most bitter, as we said just now, while the other kind, as I suppose we shall all agree, is that which we engage in when we quarrel with foreigners and aliens—a kind much milder than the former.

Certainly.

Come, then, which kind of warriors, fighting in which kind of war, did you praise so highly, while blaming others? Warriors, apparently, who fight in war abroad.

At any rate, in your poems you have said that you cannot abide men who dare not “face the gory fray” “and smite the foe in close combat.” Then we should proceed to say, “It appears, O Tyrtaeus, that you are chiefly praising those who achieve distinction in foreign and external warfare.” To this, I presume, he would agree, and say “Yes”?

Of course.

Yet, brave though these men are, we still maintain that they are far surpassed in bravery by those who are conspicuously brave in the greatest of wars; and we also have a poet for witness,—Theognis (a citizen of Sicilian Megara), who says: “In the day of grievous feud, O Cyrnus, the loyal warrior is worth his weight in silver and gold.”

Such a man, in a war much more grievous, is, we say, ever so much better than the other—nearly as much better, in fact, as the union of justice, prudence and wisdom

with courage is better than courage by itself alone. For a man would never prove himself a loyal and sound in civil war if devoid of goodness in its entirety; whereas in the war of which Tyrtaeus speaks there are vast numbers of mercenaries ready to die fighting

“with well-planted feet apart,” of whom the majority, with but few exceptions, prove themselves reckless, unjust, violent, and pre-eminently foolish. What, then, is the conclusion to which our present discourse is tending, and what point is it trying to make clear by these statements? Plainly it is this: both the Heaven-taught legislator of Crete

and every legislator who is worth his salt will most assuredly legislate always with a single eye to the highest goodness and to that alone; and this (to quote Theognis) consists in “loyalty in danger,” and one might term it “complete righteousness.” But that goodness which Tyrtaeus specially praised,

fair though it be and fitly glorified by the poet, deserves nevertheless to be placed no higher than fourth in order and estimation.

We are degrading our own lawgiver, Stranger, to a very low level!

Nay, my good Sir, it is ourselves we are degrading, in so far as we imagine that it was with a special view to war that Lycurgus and Minos laid down all the legal usages here and in Lacedaemon.

How, then, ought we to have stated the matter?

In the way that is, as I think, true and proper

when talking of a divine hero. That is to say, we should state that he enacted laws with an eye not to some one fraction, and that the most paltry, of goodness, but to goodness as a whole, and that he devised the laws themselves according to classes, though not the classes which the present devisers propound. For everyone now brings forward and devises just the class which he needs: one man deals with inheritances and heiresses, another with cases of battery, and so on

in endless variety. But what we assert is that the devising of laws, when rightly conducted, follows the procedure which we have now commenced. Indeed, I greatly admire the way you opened your exposition of the laws; for to make a start with goodness and say that that was the aim of the lawgiver is the right way. But in your further statement that he legislated wholly with reference to a fraction of goodness, and that the smallest fraction, you seemed to me to be in error, and all this latter part of my discourse was because of that. What then is the manner of exposition I should have liked to have heard from you?

Shall I tell you?

Yes, by all means.

“O Stranger” (thus you ought to have said), “it is not for nothing that the laws of the Cretans are held in superlatively high repute among all the Hellenes. For they are true laws inasmuch as they effect the well-being of those who use them by supplying all that are good. Now goods are of two kinds, human and divine; and the human goods are dependent on the divine, and he who receives the greater acquires also the less, or else he is bereft of both.

The lesser goods are those of which health ranks first, beauty second; the third is strength, in running and all other bodily exercises; and the fourth is wealth—no blind god Plutus, but keen of sight, provided that he has wisdom for companion. And wisdom, in turn, has first place among the goods that are divine, and rational temperance of soul comes second; from these two, when united with courage, there issues justice, as the third;

and the fourth is courage. Now all these are by nature ranked before the human goods, and verily the law-giver also must so rank them. Next, it must be proclaimed to the citizens that all the other instructions they receive have these in view; and that, of these goods themselves, the human look up to the divine, and the divine to reason as their chief. And in regard to their marriage connections, and to their subsequent breeding and rearing of children, male and female, both during youth and in later life

up to old age, the lawgiver must supervise the citizens, duly apportioning honor and dishonor; and in regard to all their forms of intercourse he must observe and watch their pains and pleasures and desires and

all intense passions, and distribute praise and blame correctly by the means of the laws themselves. Moreover, in the matter of anger and of fear, and of all the disturbances which befall souls owing to misfortune, and of all the avoidances thereof which occur in good-fortune, and of all the experiences which confront men through disease or war or penury or their opposites,—

in regard to all these definite instruction must be given as to what is the right and what the wrong disposition in each case. It is necessary, in the next place, for the law-giver to keep a watch on the methods employed by the citizens in gaining and spending money, and to supervise the associations they form with one another, and the dissolutions thereof, whether they be voluntary or under compulsion; he must observe the manner in which they conduct each of these mutual transactions, and note where justice obtains and where it is lacking. To those that are obedient he must assign honors by law, but on the disobedient he must impose

duly appointed penalties. Then finally, when he arrives at the completion of the whole constitution, he has to consider in what manner in each case the burial of the dead should be carried out, and what honors should be assigned to them. This being settled, the framer of the laws will hand over all his statutes to the charge of Wardens—guided some by wisdom, others by true opinion—to the end that Reason, having bound all into one single system, may declare them to be ancillary neither to wealth nor ambition, but to temperance and justice.”

In this manner, Strangers, I could have wished (and I wish it still) that you had fully explained how all these regulations are inherent in the reputed laws of Zeus and in those of the Pythian Apollo which were ordained by Minos and Lycurgus, and how their systematic arrangement is quite evident to him who, whether by art or practice, is an expert in law, although it is by no means obvious to the rest of us.

What then, Stranger, should be the next step in our argument?

We ought, as I think, to do as we did at first—

start from the beginning to explain first the institutions which have to do with courage; and after that we shall, if you wish, deal with a second and a third form of goodness. And as soon as we have completed our treatment of the first theme, we shall take that as our model and by a discussion of the rest on similar lines beguile the way; and at the end of our treatment of goodness in all its forms we shall make it clear, if God will, that the rules we discussed just now had goodness for their aim.

A good suggestion! And begin with our friend here, the panegyrist of Zeus—try first to put him to the test.

Try I will, and to test you too and myself; for the argument concerns us all alike. Tell me then: do we assert that the common meals and the gymnasia were devised by the lawgiver with a view to war?

Yes.

And is there a third institution of the kind, and a fourth? For probably one ought to employ this method of enumeration also in dealing with the subdivisions (or whatever we ought to call them) of the other forms of goodness, if only one makes one's meaning clear.

The third thing he devised was hunting: so I and every Lacedaemonian would say.

Let us attempt also to state what comes fourth,—and fifth too, if possible.

The fourth also I may attempt to state: it is the training, widely prevalent amongst us, in hardy endurance of pain, by means both of manual contests and of robberies carried out every time at the risk of a sound drubbing; moreover, the “Crypteia,”

as it is called, affords a wonderfully severe training

in hardihood, as the men go bare-foot in winter and sleep without coverlets and have no attendants, but wait on themselves and rove through the whole countryside both by night and by day. Moreover in our games,

we have severe tests of endurance, when men unclad do battle with the violence of the heat,—and there are other instances so numerous that the recital of them would be well-nigh endless.

Splendid, O Stranger of Lacedaemon! But come now, as to courage, how shall we define it? Shall we define it quite simply as battling against fears and pains only,

or as against desires also and pleasures, with their dangerous enticements and flatteries, which melt men's hearts like wax—even men most reverenced in their own conceit.

The latter definition is, I think, the right one: courage is battling against them all.

Earlier in our discourse (if I am not mistaken) Clinias here used the expression “self-inferior” of a State or an individual: did you not do so, O Stranger of Cnosus?

Most certainly.

At present do we apply the term “bad” to the man who is inferior to pains, or to him also who is inferior to pleasures?

To the man who is inferior to pleasures more than to the other, in my opinion. All of us, indeed, when we speak of a man who is shamefully self-inferior, mean one who is mastered by pleasures rather than one who is mastered by pains.

Then surely the lawgiver of Zeus and he of Apollo did not enact by law a lame kind of courage, able only to defend itself on the left and unable to resist attractions and allurements on the right, but rather one able to resist on both sides?

On both sides, as I would maintain.

Let us, then, mention once more the State institutions in both your countries which give men a taste of pleasures instead of shunning them,—just as they did not shun pains but plunged their citizens into the midst of them and so compelled them,

or induced them by rewards, to master them. Where, pray, in your laws is the same policy adopted in regard to pleasures? Let us declare what regulation of yours there is which causes the same men to be courageous toward pains and pleasures alike, conquering where they ought to conquer and in no wise worsted by their nearest and most dangerous enemies.

Although, Stranger, I was able to mention a number of laws that dealt with mastery over pains, in the case of pleasures I may not find it equally easy to produce important and conspicuous examples;

but I might perhaps furnish some minor instances.

Neither could I in like manner give myself clear examples from the Cretan laws.

And no wonder, my most excellent friends. If then, in his desire to discover what is true and superlatively good, any one of us should find fault with any domestic law of his neighbors, let us take one another's remarks in good part and without resentment.

You are right, Stranger: that is what we must do.

Yes, for resentment would ill become men of our years.

Ill indeed.

Whether men are right or wrong in their censures of the Laconian polity and the Cretan—that is another story; anyhow, what is actually said by most men I, probably, am in a better position to state than either of you. For in your case (your laws being wisely framed) one of the best of your laws will be that which enjoins that none of the youth shall inquire which laws are wrong

and which right, but all shall declare in unison, with one mouth and one voice, that all are rightly established by divine enactment, and shall turn a deaf ear to anyone who says otherwise; and further, that if any old man has any stricture to pass on any of your laws, he must not utter such views in the presence of any young man, but before a magistrate or one of his own age.

A very sound observation, Stranger; and just like a diviner,

far away though you are from the original lawgiver, you have fairly spotted, as I think, his intention, and described it with perfect truth.

Well, there are no young people with us now; so we may be permitted by the lawgiver, old as we are, to discuss these matters among ourselves privately without offence.

That is so. Do you, then, have no scruple in censuring our laws; for there is nothing discreditable in being told of some flaw; rather it is just this which leads to a remedy, if the criticism be accepted not peevishly

but in a friendly spirit.

Good! But until I have investigated your laws as carefully as I can I shall not censure them but rather express the doubts I feel. You alone of Greeks and barbarians, so far as I can discover, possess a lawgiver who charged you to abstain from the greatest of pleasures and amusements and taste them not; but concerning pains and fears, as we said before, he held the view that anyone who shuns them continuously from childhood onward, when confronted with

unavoidable hardships and fears and pains, will be put to flight by the men who are trained in such things, and will become their slave. Now I presume that this same lawgiver should have held the same view about pleasures as well, and should have argued with himself that, if our citizens grow up from their youth unpracticed in the greatest pleasures, the consequence must be that, when they find themselves amongst pleasures without being trained in the duty of resisting them and of refusing to commit any disgraceful act,

because of the natural attraction of pleasures, they will suffer the same fate as those who are worsted by fears: they will, that is to say, in another and still more shameful fashion be enslaved by those who are able to hold out amidst pleasures and those who are versed in the art of pleasure,—people who are sometimes wholly vicious: thus their condition of soul will be partly enslaved and partly free, and they will not deserve to be called, without qualification, free men and men of courage. Consider, then, whether you at all approve these remarks of mine.

On the face of them, we are inclined to approve; but to yield quick and easy credence in matters of such importance would, I fear, be rash and thoughtless.

Well then, O Clinias, and thou, Stranger of Lacedaemon, suppose we discuss the second of the subjects we proposed, and take temperance next after courage: shall we discover any point in which these polities are superior to those framed at random,

as we found just now in regard to their military organization?

Hardly an easy matter! Yet probably the common meals and the gymnasia are well devised to foster both these virtues.

In truth, Strangers, it seems a difficult thing for State institutions to be equally beyond criticism both in theory and in practice. Their case resembles that of the human body, where it seems impossible to prescribe any given treatment for each case without finding that this same prescription is partly beneficial and partly injurious to the body.

So these common meals, for example, and these gymnasia, while they are at present beneficial to the States in many other respects, yet in the event of civil strife they prove dangerous (as is shown by the case of the youth of Miletus, Bocotia and Thurii);

and, moreover, this institution, when of old standing, is thought to have corrupted the pleasures of love which are natural not to men only but also natural to beasts. For this your States are held primarily responsible, and along with them all others

that especially encourage the use of gymnasia. And whether one makes the observation in earnest or in jest, one certainly should not fail to observe that when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature, but contrary to nature when male mates with male or female with female, and that those first guilty of such enormities were impelled by their slavery to pleasure. And we all accuse the Cretans of concocting the story about Ganymede.

Because it was the belief that they derived their laws from Zeus, they added on this story about Zeus in order that they might be following his example in enjoying this pleasure as well. Now with the story itself we have no more concern; but when men are investigating the subject of laws their investigation deals almost entirely with pleasures and pains, whether in States or in individuals. These are the two fountains which gush out by nature's impulse; and whoever draws from them a due supply at the due place and time is blessed—be it a State

or an individual or any kind of creature; but whosoever does so without understanding and out of due season will fare contrariwise.

What you say, Stranger, is excellent, I suppose; nonetheless I am at a loss to know what reply I should make to it. Still, in my opinion, the Lacedaemonian lawgiver was right in ordaining the avoidance of pleasures, while as to the laws of Cnosus—our friend Clinias,

if he thinks fit, will defend them. The rules about pleasures at Sparta seem to me the best in the world. For our law banished entirely from the land that institution which gives the most occasion for men to fall into excessive pleasures and riotous and follies of every description; neither in the country nor in the cities controlled by Spartiates is a drinking-club to be seen nor any of the practices which belong to such and foster to the utmost all kinds of pleasure. Indeed there is not a man who would not punish at once and most severely any drunken reveller he chanced to meet with,

nor would even the feast of Dionysus serve as an excuse to save him—a revel such as I once upon a time witnessed “on the wagons”

in your country; and at our colony of Tarentum, too, saw the whole city drunk at the Dionysia. But with us no such thing is possible.

O Stranger of Lacedaemon, all such indulgences are praiseworthy where there exists a strain of firm moral fiber,

but where this is relaxed they are quite stupid. An Athenian in self-defence might at once retaliate by pointing to the looseness of the women in your country. Regarding all such practices, whether in Tarentum, Athens or Sparta, there is one answer that is held to vindicate their propriety. The universal answer to the stranger who is surprised at seeing in a State some unwonted practice is this: “Be not surprised, O Stranger: such is the custom with us: with you, perhaps, the custom in these matters is different.”

But, my dear Sirs, our argument now is not concerned with the rest of mankind but with the goodness or badness of the lawgivers themselves. So let us deal more fully with the subject of drunkenness in general for it is a practice of no slight importance, and it requires no mean legislator to understand it. I am now referring not to the drinking or non-drinking of wine generally, but to drunkenness pure and simple, and the question is—ought we to deal with it as the Scythians and Persians do and the Carthaginians also, and Celts,

Iberians and Thracians, who are all warlike races, or as you Spartans do; for you, as you say, abstain from it altogether, whereas the Scythians and Thracians, both men and women, take their wine neat and let it pour down over their clothes, and regard this practice of theirs as a noble and splendid practice; and the Persians indulge greatly in these and other luxurious habits which you reject, albeit in a more orderly fashion than the others.

But we, my good Sir, when we take arms in our hands, put all these people to rout.

Say not so, my dear Sir; for there have been, in fact, in the past and there will be in the future many a flight and many a pursuit which are past explaining, so that victory or defeat in battle could never be called a decisive, but rather a questionable, test of the goodness or badness of an institution. Larger States, for example, are victorious in battle over smaller States,

and we find the Syracusans subjugating the Locrians, who are reputed to have been the best-governed of the peoples in that part of the world: and the Athenians the Ceians,—and we could find countless other instances of the same kind. So let us leave victories and defeats out of account for the present, and discuss each several institution on its own merits in the endeavor to convince ourselves, and explain in what way one kind is good and another had. And to begin with, listen to my account of the right method of inquiring into the merits and demerits of institutions.

What is your account of it?

In my opinion all those who take up an institution for discussion and propose, at its first mention, to censure it or commend it, are proceeding in quite the wrong way. Their action is like that of a man who, when he hears somebody praising cheese as a good food, at once starts to disparage it, without having learnt either its effects or its mode of administration—in what form it should be administered and by whom and with what accompaniments, and in what condition and to people in what condition.

This, as it seems to me, is exactly what we are now doing in our discourse. At the first mention of the mere name of drunkenness, straightway we fall, some of us to blaming it, others to praising it; which is most absurd. Each party relies on the aid of witnesses, and while the one party claims that its statement is convincing on the ground of the large number of witnesses produced, the other does so on the ground that those who abstain from wine are seen to be victorious in battle; and then this point also gives rise to a dispute. Now it would not be at all to my taste to go through all the rest of the legal arrangements in this fashion;

and about our present subject, drunkenness, I desire to speak in quite another fashion (in my opinion, the right fashion), and I shall endeavor, if possible, to exhibit the correct method for dealing with all such subjects for indeed the view of them adopted by your two States would be assailed and controverted by thousands upon thousands of nations.

Assuredly, if we know of a right method of investigating these matters,

we are bound to give it a ready hearing.

Let us adopt some such method as this. Suppose that a man were to praise the rearing of goats, and the goat itself as a fine thing to own, and suppose also that another man, who had seen goats grazing without a herd and doing damage on cultivated land, were to run them down, and find fault equally with every animal he saw that was without a master or under a bad master,—would such a man's censure, about any object whatsoever, be of the smallest value?

Certainly not.

Do we call the man who possesses only nautical science, whether or not he suffers from sea-sickness, a good commander on a ship—or what?

By no means good, if along with his skill he suffers in the way you say.

And how about the army commander? Is a man fit for command, provided that he has military science, even though he be a coward and sea-sick with a kind of tipsy terror when danger comes?

Certainly not.

And suppose he has no military skill, besides being a coward?

You are describing an utterly worthless fellow, not a commander of men at all, but of the most womanish of women.

Now take the case of any social institution whatsoever which naturally has a commander and which, under its commander, is beneficial; and suppose that someone, who had never seen the conduct of the institution under its commander, but seen it only when with no commander or bad commanders, were to commend the institution or censure it: do we imagine that either the praise or the blame of such an observer of such an institution is of any value?

Certainly not, when the man has never seen nor shared in an institution of the kind

that was properly conducted.

Now stay a moment! Shall we lay it down that, of the numerous kinds of social institutions, that of banqueters and banquetings forms one?

Most certainly.

Now has anyone ever yet beheld this institution rightly conducted? Both of you can easily make answer—“Never yet at all,” for with you this institution is neither customary nor legal; but I have come across many modes of banqueting in many places, and I have also inquired into nearly all of them, and I have scarcely seen or heard of

a single one that was in all points rightly conducted; for if any were right at all, it was only in a few details, and most of them were almost entirely on the wrong lines.

What do you mean by that, Stranger? Explain yourself more clearly; for since we are (as you observed) without any experience of such institutions,

even if we did come across them, we would probably fail to see at once what was right in them and what wrong.

That is very probable. Try, however, to learn from my description. This you understand—that in all gatherings and associations for any purpose whatsoever it is right that each group should always have a commander.

Of course.

Moreover, we have recently said that the commander of fighting men must be courageous.

Of course.

The courageous man is less perturbed by alarms than the coward.

That is true, too.

Now if there had existed any device for putting an army in charge of a general who was absolutely impervious to fear or perturbation, should we not have made every effort to do so?

Most certainly.

But what we are discussing now is not the man who is to command an army in time of war, in meetings of foe with foe, but the man who is to command friends in friendly association with friends in time of peace.

Quite so.

Such a gathering, if accompanied by drunkenness, is not free from disturbance, is it?

Certainly not; quite the reverse, I imagine.

So those people also need, in the first place, a commander?

Undoubtedly—they above all.

Should we, if possible, provide them with a commander who is imperturbable?

Certainly.

Naturally, also, he should be wise about social gatherings. For he has both to preserve

the friendliness which already exists among the company and to see that the present gathering promotes it still further.

Very true.

Then the commander we set over drunken men should be sober and wise, rather than the opposite? For a commander of drunkards who was himself drunken, young, and foolish would be very lucky if he escaped doing some serious mischief.

Uncommonly lucky.

Suppose, then, that a man were to find fault with such institutions in States where they are managed in the best possible way,

having an objection to the institution in itself, he might perhaps be right in doing so but if a man abuses an institution when he sees it managed in the worst way possible, it is plain that he is ignorant, first, of the fact that it is badly conducted, and secondly, that every institution will appear similarly bad when it is carried on without a sober ruler and commander. For surely you perceive

that a sea-captain, and every commander of anything, if drunk, upsets everything, whether it be a ship or a chariot or an army or anything else that under his captaincy.

What you say, Stranger, is perfectly true. In the next place, then, tell us this:—suppose this institution of drinking were rightly conducted, of what possible benefit would it be to us? Take the case of an army, which we mentioned just now: there, given a right leader, his men will win victory in war, which is no small benefit; and so too with the other cases: but what solid advantage would accrue

either to individuals or to a State from the right regulation of a wine-party?

Well, what great gain should we say would accrue to the State from the right control of one single child or even of one band of children? To the question thus put to us we should reply that the State would benefit but little from one; if, however, you are putting a general question as to what solid advantage the State gains from the education of the educated, then it is quite simple to reply that well-educated men will prove good men, and being good they will conquer their foes in battle,

besides acting nobly in other ways. Thus, while education brings also victory, victory sometimes brings lack of education for men have often grown more insolent because of victory in war, and through their insolence they have become filled with countless other vices; and whereas education has never yet proved to be “Cadmeian,”

the victories which men win in war often have been, and will be, “Cadmeian.”

You are implying, my friend, as it seems to us, that the convivial gathering,

when rightly conducted, is an important element in education.

Assuredly.

Could you then show us, in the next place, how this statement is true?

The truth of my statement, which is disputed by many, it is for God to assert; but I am quite ready to give, if required, my own opinion, now that we have, in fact, embarked on a discussion of laws and constitutions.

Well, it is precisely your opinion

about the questions now in dispute that we are trying to learn.

Thus, then, we must do,—you must brace yourself in the effort to learn the argument, and I to expound it as best I can. But, first of all, I have a preliminary observation to make: our city, Athens, is, in the general opinion of the Greeks, both fond of talk and full of talk, but Lacedaemon is scant of talk, while Crete is more witty

than wordy;

so I am afraid of making you think that I am a great talker about a small matter, if I spin out a discourse of prodigious length about the small matter of drunkenness. But the fact is that the right ordering of this could never be treated adequately and clearly in our discourse apart from rightness in music, nor could music, apart from education as a whole; and these require lengthy discussions. Consider, then, what we are to do: suppose we leave these matters over for the present,

and take up some other legal topic instead.

O Stranger of Athens, you are not, perhaps, aware that our family is, in fact, a “proxenus”

of your State. It is probably true of all children that, when once they have been told that they are “proxeni” of a certain State, they conceive an affection for that State even from infancy, and each of them regards it as a second mother-land, next after his own country. That is precisely the feeling I now experience. For through hearing mere children crying out—

whenever they, being the Lacedaemonians, were blaming the Athenians for anything or praising them—“Your State, Megillus, has done us a bad turn or a good one,”—through hearing such remarks, I say, and constantly fighting your battles against those who were thus decrying your State, I acquired a deep affection for it; so that now not only do I delight in your accent, but I regard as absolutely true the common saying that “good Athenians are always incomparably good,” for they alone are good

not by outward compulsion but by inner disposition. Thus, so far as I am concerned, you may speak without fear and say all you please.

My story, too, Stranger, when you hear it, will show you that you may boldly say all you wish. You have probably heard how that inspired man Epimenides, who was a family connection of ours, was born in Crete; and how ten years

before the Persian War, in obedience to the oracle of the god, he went to Athens and offered certain sacrifices which the god had ordained; and how, moreover, when the Athenians were alarmed at the Persians' expeditionary force,

he made this prophecy—“They will not come for ten years, and when they do come, they will return back again with all their hopes frustrated, and after suffering more woes than they inflict.” Then our forefathers became guest-friends of yours, and ever since both my fathers and I myself

have cherished an affection for Athens.

Evidently, then, you are both ready to play your part as listeners. But as for my part, though the will is there, to compass the task is hard: still, I must try. In the first place, then, our argument requires that we should define education and describe its effects: that is the path on which our present discourse must proceed until it finally arrives at the god of Wine.

By all means let us do so, since it is your wish.

Then while I am stating how education ought to be defined, you must be considering whether you are satisfied with my statement.

Proceed with your statement.

I will. What I assert is that every man who is going to be good at any pursuit must practice that special pursuit from infancy, by using all the implements of his pursuit both in his play and in his work. For example, the man who is to make a good builder

must play at building toy houses, and to make a good farmer he must play at tilling land; and those who are rearing them must provide each child with toy tools modelled on real ones. Besides this, they ought to have elementary instruction in all the necessary subjects,—the carpenter, for instance, being taught in play the use of rule and measure, the soldier taught riding or some similar accomplishment. So, by means of their games, we should endeavor to turn the tastes and desires of the children in the direction of that object which forms their ultimate goal. First and foremost,

education, we say, consists in that right nurture which most strongly draws the soul of the child when at play to a love for that pursuit of which, when he becomes a man, he must possess a perfect mastery. Now consider, as I said before, whether, up to this point, you are satisfied with this statement of mine.

Certainly we are.

But we must not allow our description of education to remain indefinite. For at present, when censuring or commending a man's upbringing, we describe one man

as educated and another as uneducated, though the latter may often be uncommonly well educated in the trade of a pedlar or a skipper, or some other similar occupation. But we, naturally, in our present discourse are not taking the view that such things as these make up education: the education we speak of is training from childhood in goodness, which makes a man eagerly desirous of becoming a perfect citizen, understanding how both to rule and be ruled righteously. This is the special form of nurture

to which, as I suppose, our present argument would confine the term “education” whereas an upbringing which aims only at money-making or physical strength, or even some mental accomplishment devoid of reason and justice, it would term vulgar and illiberal and utterly unworthy of the name “education.” Let us not, however, quarrel over a name, but let us abide by the statement we agreed upon just now, that those who are rightly educated become, as a rule, good,

and that one should in no case disparage education, since it stands first among the finest gifts that are given to the best men; and if ever it errs from the right path, but can be put straight again, to this task every man, so long as he lives, must address himself with all his might.

You are right, and we agree with what you say.

Further, we agreed long ago that if men are capable of ruling themselves, they are good, but if incapable, bad.

Quite true.

Let us, then, re-state more clearly

what we meant by this. With your permission, I will make use of an illustration in the hope of explaining the matter.

Go ahead.

May we assume that each of us by himself is a single unit?

Yes.

And that each possesses within himself two antagonistic and foolish counsellors, whom we call by the names of pleasure and pain?

That is so.

And that, besides these two, each man possesses opinions about the future, which go by the general name of “expectations”; and of these, that which precedes pain bears the special name of “fear,” and that which precedes pleasure the special name of “confidence”;

and in addition to all these there is “calculation,” pronouncing which of them is good, which bad; and “calculation,” when it has become the public decree of the State, is named “law.”

I have some difficulty in keeping pace with you: assume, however, that I do so, and proceed.

I am in exactly the same predicament.

Let us conceive of the matter in this way. Let us suppose that each of us living creatures is an ingenious puppet of the gods, whether contrived by way of a toy of theirs or for some serious purpose—for as to that we know nothing;

but this we do know, that these inward affections of ours, like sinews or cords, drag us along and, being opposed to each other, pull one against the other to opposite actions; and herein lies the dividing line between goodness and badness. For, as our argument declares, there is one of these pulling forces which every man should always follow and nohow leave hold of, counteracting thereby the pull of the other sinews:

it is the leading-string, golden and holy, of “calculation,” entitled the public law of the State; and whereas the other cords are hard and steely and of every possible shape and semblance, this one is flexible and uniform, since it is of gold. With that most excellent leading-string of the law we must needs co-operate always; for since calculation is excellent, but gentle rather than forceful, its leading-string needs helpers to ensure that the golden kind within us may vanquish the other kinds.

In this way our story comparing ourselves to puppets will not fall flat, and the meaning of the terms “self-superior” and “self-inferior” will become somewhat more clear, and also how necessary it is for the individual man to grasp the true account of these inward pulling forces and to live in accordance therewith, and how necessary for the State (when it has received such an account either from a god or from a man who knows) to make this into a law for itself and be guided thereby in its intercourse both with itself and with all other States.

Thus both badness and goodness would be differentiated for us more clearly; and these having become more evident, probably education also and the other institutions will appear less obscure; and about the institution of the wine-party in particular it may very likely be shown that it is by no means, as might be thought, a paltry matter which it is absurd to discuss at great length but rather a matter which folly merits prolonged discussion.

Quite right: let us go through with every topic that seems important for the present discussion.

Tell me now: if we give strong drink to this puppet of ours, what effect will it have on its character?

In reference to what particular do you ask this question?

To no particular, for the moment: I am putting the question in general terms—“when this shares in that, what sort of thing does it become in consequence?” I will try to convey my meaning still more clearly: what I ask is this—does the drinking of wine intensify pleasures and pains and passions and lusts?

Yes, greatly.

And how about sensations and recollections and opinions and thoughts? Does it make them likewise more intense? Or rather, do not these quit a man entirely if he becomes surfeited with drink?

Yes, they quit him entirely.

He then arrives at the same condition of soul as when he was a young child?

He does.

So at that moment he will have very little control of himself?

Very little.

And such a man is, we say, very bad?

Very, indeed.

It appears, then, that not the grey-beard only may be in his “second childhood,” but the drunkard as well.

An admirable observation, Stranger.

Is there any argument which will undertake to persuade us that this is a practice we ought to indulge in, instead of shunning it with all our might so far as we possibly can?

It appears that there is: at any rate you assert this, and you were ready just now to argue it.

You are right in your reminder, and I am still ready to do so, now that you and Megillus have both expressed your willingness to listen to me.

Of course we shall listen, if only on account of the surprising paradox that, of his own free will, a man ought to plunge into the depths of depravity.

Depravity of soul, you mean, do you not?

Yes.

And how about plunging into a bad state of body, such as leanness or ugliness or impotence? Should we be surprised if a man of his own free will ever

got into such a state?

Of course we should.

Well then, do we suppose that persons who go of themselves to dispensaries to drink medicines are not aware that soon afterwards, and for many days to come, they will find themselves in a bodily condition such as would make life intolerable

if it were to last for ever? And we know, do we not, that men who go to the gymnasia for hard training commence by becoming weaker?

All this we know.

We know also that they go there voluntarily for the sake of the subsequent benefit ?

Quite true.

Should one not take the same view of the other institutions also?

Certainly.

Then one must also take the same view of the practice of wine-drinking, if one can rightly class it amongst the others.

Of course one must.

If then this practice should be shown to be quite as beneficial for us as bodily training, certainly at the outset it is superior to it, in so far as it is not, like bodily training, accompanied by pain.

That is true; but I should be surprised if we succeeded in discovering in it any benefit.

That is precisely the point which we must at once try to make plain. Tell me now: can we discern two kinds of fear, of which the one is nearly the opposite of the other?

What kinds do you mean?

These: when we expect evils to occur, we fear them.

Yes.

And often we fear reputation, when we think we shall gain a bad repute for doing or saying something base;

and this fear we (like everybody else, I imagine) call shame.

Of course.

These are the two fears I was meaning; and of these the second is opposed to pains and to all other objects of fear, and opposed also to the greatest and most numerous pleasures.

Very true.

Does not, then, the lawgiver, and every man who is worth anything, hold this kind of fear in the highest honor, and name it “modesty”; and to the confidence which is opposed to it does he not give the name “immodesty,” and pronounce it to be for all,

both publicly and privately, a very great evil?

Quite right.

And does not this fear, besides saving us in many other important respects, prove more effective than anything else in ensuring for us victory in war and security? For victory is, in fact, ensured by two things, of which the one is confidence towards enemies, the other, fear of the shame of cowardice in the eyes of friends.

That is so.

Thus each one of us ought to become both fearless and fearful;

and that for the several reasons we have now explained.

Certainly.

Moreover, when we desire to make a person fearless in respect of a number of fears, it is by drawing him, with the help of the law, into fear that we make him such.

Apparently.

And how about the opposite case, when we attempt with the aid of justice to make a man fearful? Is it not by pitting him against shamelessness and exercising him against it that we must make him victorious in the fight against his own pleasures? Or shall we say that, whereas in the case of courage it is only by fighting and conquering his innate cowardice

that a man can become perfect, and no one unversed and unpracticed in contests of this sort can attain even half the excellence of which he is capable,—in the case of temperance, on the other hand, a man may attain perfection without a stubborn fight against hordes of pleasures and lusts which entice towards shamelessness and wrong-doing, and without conquering them by the aid of speech and act and skill, alike in play and at work,—and, in fact, without undergoing any of these experiences?

It would not be reasonable to suppose so.

Well then: in the case of fear does there exist any specific, given by God to men, such that, the more a man likes to drink of it, the more,

at every draught, he fancies himself plunged in misfortune and finally, though he be the bravest of men, he arrives at a state of abject terror; whereas, when he has once got relieved of the potion and slept it off, he always becomes his normal self again?

What potion of the kind can we mention, Stranger, as existing anywhere?

There is none. Supposing, however, that there had been one, would it have been of any service to the lawgiver for promoting courage? For instance, we might quite well have addressed him concerning it in this wise: “Come now, O lawgiver,—whether it be Cretans you are legislating for

or anyone else, would not your first desire be to have a test of courage and of cowardice which you might apply to your citizens?”

Obviously everyone of them would say “Yes.”

“And would you desire a test that was safe and free from serious risks, or the reverse?”

All will agree, also, that the test must be safe.

“And would you utilize the test by bringing men into these fears and proving them while thus affected, so as to compel them to become fearless; employing exhortations admonitions and rewards,—

but degradation for all those that refused to conform wholly to the character you prescribed? And would you acquit without penalty everyone who had trained himself manfully and well, but impose a penalty on everyone who had done so badly? Or would you totally refuse to employ the potion as a test, although you have no objection to it on other grounds?”

Of course he would employ it, Stranger.

At any rate, my friend, the training involved would be wonderfully simple, as compared with our present methods, whether it were applied to individuals singly, or to small groups,

or to groups ever so large. Suppose, then, that a man, actuated by a feeling of shame and loth to show himself in public before he was in the best of condition, should remain alone by himself while undergoing this training against fears and relying on the potion alone for his solitary equipment, instead of endless exercises,—he would be acting quite rightly: so too would he who, trusting in himself that by nature and practice he is already well equipped, should have no hesitation in training in company with a number of drinking companions and showing off how for speed and strength he is superior to the potency of the draughts he is obliged to drink,

with the result that because of his excellence he neither commits any grave impropriety nor loses his head, and who, before they came to the last round, should quit the company, through fear of the defeat inflicted on all men by the wine-cup.

Yes, Stranger, this man too would be acting temperately.

Once more let us address the lawgiver and say: “Be it so, O lawgiver, that for producing fear no such drug apparently has been given to men by God, nor have we devised such ourselves (for quacks I count not of our company); but does there exist a potion for inducing fearlessness and excessive and untimely confidence,—of what shall we say about this?''

Presumably, he will assert that there is one,—naming wine.

And is not this exactly the opposite of the potion described just now? For, first, it makes the person who drinks it more jovial than he was before, and the more he imbibes it, the more

he becomes filled with high hopes and a sense of power, till finally, puffed up with conceit, he abounds in every kind of licence of speech and action and every kind of audacity, without a scruple as to what he says or what he does. Everyone, I imagine, would agree that this is so.

Undoubtedly.

Let us recall our previous statement that we must cultivate in our souls two things—namely,

the greatest possible confidence, and its opposite, the greatest possible fear.

Which you called, I think, the marks of modesty.

Your memory serves you well. Since courage and fearlessness ought to be practised amidst fears, we have to consider whether the opposite quality ought to be cultivated amidst conditions of the opposite kind.

It certainly seems probable.

It appears then that we ought to be placed amongst those conditions which naturally tend to make us exceptionally confident and audacious when we are practising how to be as free as possible from shamelessness

and excessive audacity, and fearful of ever daring to say or suffer or do anything shameful.

So it appears.

And are not these the conditions in which we are of the character described,—anger, lust, insolence, ignorance, covetousness, and extravagance; and these also,—wealth, beauty, strength, and everything which intoxicates a man with pleasure and turns his head? And for the purpose, first, of providing a cheap and comparatively harmless test of these conditions, and, secondly, of affording practice in them, what more suitable pleasure can we mention than wine,

with its playful testing—provided that it is employed at all carefully? For consider: in the case of a man whose disposition is morose and savage (whence spring numberless iniquities), is it not more dangerous to test him by entering into money transactions with him, at one's own personal risk, than by associating with him with the help of Dionysus and his festive insight?

And when a man is a slave to the pleasures of sex, is it not a more dangerous test to entrust to him one's own daughters and sons and wife, and thus imperil one's own nearest and dearest, in order to discover the disposition of his soul? In fact, one might quote innumerable instances in a vain endeavor to show the full superiority of this playful method of inspection which is without either serious consequence or costly damage. Indeed, so far as that is concerned, neither the Cretans,

I imagine, nor any other people would dispute the fact that herein we have a fair test of man by man, and that for cheapness, security and speed it is superior to all other tests.

That certainly is true.

This then—the discovery of the natures and conditions of men's souls—will prove one of the things most useful to that art whose task it is to treat them; and that art is (as I presume we say) the art of politics: is it not so?

Undoubtedly.

In the next place, we probably ought to enquire, regarding this subject, whether the discerning of men's natural dispositions is the only gain to be derived from the right use of wine-parties, or whether it entails benefits so great as to be worthy of serious consideration. What do we say about this? Our argument evidently tends to indicate that it does entail such benefits; so how and wherein it does so let us now hear,

and that with minds attentive, lest haply we be led astray by it.

Say on.

I want us to call to mind again

our definition of right education. For the safekeeping of this depends, as I now conjecture, upon the correct establishment of the institution mentioned.

That is a strong statement!

What I state is this,—that in children the first childish sensations are pleasure and pain, and that it is in these first that goodness and badness come to the soul; but as to wisdom and settled true opinions, a man is lucky if they come to him even in old age and; he that is possessed of these blessings, and all that they comprise,

is indeed a perfect man. I term, then, the goodness that first comes to children “education.” When pleasure and love, and pain and hatred, spring up rightly in the souls of those who are unable as yet to grasp a rational account; and when, after grasping the rational account, they consent thereunto that they have been rightly trained in fitting practices:—this consent, viewed as a whole, is goodness, while the part of it that is rightly trained in respect of pleasures and pains, so as to hate what ought to be hated, right from the beginning

up to the very end, and to love what ought to be loved, if you were to mark this part off in your definition and call it “education,” you would be giving it, in my opinion, its right name.

You are quite right, Stranger, as it seems to us, both in what you said before and in what you say now about education.

Very good. Now these forms of child-training, which consist in right discipline in pleasures and pains, grow slack and weakened to a great extent

in the course of men's lives; so the gods, in pity for the human race thus born to misery, have ordained the feasts of thanksgiving as periods of respite from their troubles; and they have granted them as companions in their feasts the Muses and Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus, that they may at least set right again their modes of discipline by associating in their feasts with gods. We must consider, then, whether the account that is harped on nowadays is true to nature? What it says is that, almost without exception, every young creature is able of keeping either its body or its tongue quiet,

and is always striving to move and to cry, leaping and skipping and delighting in dances and games, and uttering, also, noises of every description. Now, whereas all other creatures are devoid of any perception of the various kinds of order and disorder in movement (which we term rhythm and harmony), to men the very gods, who were given, as we said, to be our fellows in the dance, have granted the pleasurable perception of rhythm and harmony, whereby they cause us to move

and lead our choirs, linking us one with another by means of songs and dances; and to the choir they have given its name from the “cheer” implanted therein.

Shall we accept this account to begin with, and postulate that education owes its origin to Apollo and the Muses?

Yes.

Shall we assume that the uneducated man is without choir-training,

and the educated man fully choir-trained?

Certainly.

Choir-training, as a whole, embraces of course both dancing and song.

Undoubtedly.

So the well-educated man will be able both to sing and dance well.

Evidently.

Let us now consider what this last statement of ours implies.

Which statement?

Our words are,—” he sings well and dances well”:

ought we, or ought we not, to add,—“provided that he sings good songs and dances good dances”?

We ought to add this.

How then, if a man takes the good for good and the bad for bad and treats them accordingly? Shall we regard such a man as better trained in choristry and music when he is always able both with gesture and voice to represent adequately that which he conceives to be good, though he feels neither delight in the good nor hatred of the bad,—or when, though not wholly able to represent his conception rightly by voice and gesture,

he yet keeps right in his feelings of pain and pleasure, welcoming everything good and abhorring everything not good.

There is a vast difference between the two cases, Stranger, in point of education.

If, then, we three understand what constitutes goodness in respect of dance and song, we also know who is and who is not rightly educated but without this knowledge we shall never be able to discern whether there exists any safeguard for education

or where it is to be found. Is not that so?

It is.

What we have next to track down, like hounds on the trail, is goodness of posture and tunes in relation to song and dance; if this eludes our pursuit, it will be in vain for us to discourse further concerning right education, whether of Greeks or of barbarians.

Yes.

Well then, however shall we define goodness of posture or of tune? Come, consider: when a manly soul is beset by troubles,

and a cowardly soul by troubles identical and equal, are the postures and utterances that result in the two cases similar?

How could they be, when even their complexions differ in color?

Well said, my friend. But in, fact, while postures and tunes do exist in music,

which deals with rhythm and harmony, so that one can rightly speak of a tune or posture being “rhythmical” or “harmonious,” one cannot rightly apply the choir masters metaphor “well-colored” to tune and posture; but one can use this language about the posture and tune of the brave man and the coward,

and one is right in calling those of the brave man good, and those of the coward bad. To avoid a tediously long disquisition, let us sum up the whole matter by saying that the postures and tunes which attach to goodness of soul or body, or to some image thereof, are universally good, while those which attach to badness are exactly the reverse.

Your pronouncement is correct, and we now formally endorse it.

Another point:—do we all delight equally

in choral dancing, or far from equally?

Very far indeed.

Then what are we to suppose it is that misleads us? Is it the fact that we do not all regard as good the same things, or is it that, although they are the same, they are thought not to be the same? For surely no one will maintain that the choric performance of vice are better than those of virtue, or that he himself enjoys the postures of turpitude, while all others delight in music of the opposite kind. Most people, however, assert that the value of music consists in its power

of affording pleasure to the soul.

But such an assertion is quite intolerable, and it is blasphemy even to utter it. The fact which misleads us is more probably the following—

What?

Inasmuch as choric performances are representations of character, exhibited in actions and circumstances of every kind, in which, the several performers enact their parts by habit and imitative art, whenever the choric performances are congenial to them in point of diction, tune or other features (whether from natural bent or from habit, or from all these causes combined),

then these performers invariably delight in such, performances and extol them as excellent; whereas those who find them repugnant to their nature, disposition or habits cannot possibly delight in them or praise them, but call them bad. And when men are right in their natural tastes but wrong in those acquired by habituation, or right in the latter but wrong in the former, then by their expressions of praise they convey the opposite of their real sentiments;

for whereas they say of a performance that it is pleasant but bad, and feel ashamed to indulge in such bodily motions before men whose wisdom they respect, or to sing such songs (as though they seriously approved of them), they really take a delight in them in private.

Very true.

Does the man who delights in bad postures and tunes suffer any damage thereby, or do those who take pleasure in the opposite gain therefrom any benefit?

Probably.

Is it not probable or rather inevitable that the result here will be exactly the same as what takes place when a man who is living amongst the bad habits of wicked men, though he does not really abhor but rather accepts and delights in those habits, yet censures them casually, as though dimly aware of his own turpitude? In such a case it is, to be sure, inevitable that the man thus delighted becomes assimilated to those habits, good or bad, in which he delights, even though he is ashamed to praise them. Yet what blessing could we name, or what curse, greater than that of assimilation which befalls us so inevitably?

There is none, I believe.

Now where laws are, or will be in the future, rightly laid down regarding musical education and recreation, do we imagine that poets will be granted such licence that they may teach whatever form of rhythm or tune they best like themselves to the children of law-abiding citizens and the young men in the choirs, no matter what the result may be in the way of virtue or depravity?

That would be unreasonable, most certainly.

But at present this licence is allowed in practically every State, with the exception of Egypt.

How, then, does the law stand in Egypt?

It is marvellous, even in the telling. It appears that long ago they determined on the rule of which we are now speaking, that the youth of a State should practise in their rehearsals postures and tunes that are good: these they prescribed in detail and posted up in the temples,

and outside this official list it was, and still is, forbidden to painters and all other producers of postures and representations to introduce any innovation or invention, whether in such productions or in any other branch of music, over and above the traditional forms. And if you look there, you will find that the things depicted or graven there 10,000 years ago (I mean what I say,

not loosely but literally 10,000) are no whit better or worse than the productions of today, but wrought with the same art.

A marvellous state of affairs!

Say rather, worthy in the highest degree of a statesman and a legislator. Still, you would find in Egypt other things that are bad. This, however, is a true and noteworthy fact, that as regards music it has proved possible for the tunes which possess a natural correctness to be enacted by law and permanently consecrated. To effect this would be the task of a god or a godlike man,—even as in Egypt they say that the tunes preserved throughout

all this lapse of time are the compositions of Isis. Hence, as I said, if one could by any means succeed in grasping no principle of correctness in tune, one might then with confidence reduce them to legal form and prescription, since the tendency of pleasure and pain to indulge constantly in fresh music has, after all, no very great power to corrupt choric forms that are consecrated, by merely scoffing at them as antiquated. In Egypt, at any rate, it seems to have had no such power of corrupting,—in fact, quite the reverse.

Such would evidently be the case, judging from what you now say.

May we confidently describe the correct method in music and play, in connection with choristry, in some such terms as this: we rejoice whenever we think we are prospering, and, conversely, whenever we rejoice we think we are prospering? Is not that so?

Yes, that is so.

Moreover, when in this state of joy we are unable to keep still.

True.

Now while our young men are fitted for actually dancing themselves, we elders regard ourselves as suitably employed in looking on at them, and enjoying their sport and merrymaking, now that our former nimbleness is leaving us; and it is our yearning regret for this that causes us to propose such contests for those who can best arouse in us through recollection, the dormant emotions of youth.

Very true.

Thus we shall not dismiss as entirely groundless the opinion now

commonly expressed about merrymakers,—namely, that he who best succeeds in giving us joy and pleasure should be counted the most skilful and be awarded the prize. For, seeing that we give ourselves up on such occasions of recreation, surely the highest honor and the prize of victory, as I said just now, should be awarded to the performer who affords the greatest enjoyment to the greatest number. Is not this the right view,

and the right mode of action too, supposing it were carried out?

Possibly.

But, my dear sir, we must not decide this matter hastily; rather we must analyze it thoroughly and examine it in some such fashion as this: suppose a man were to organize a competition, without qualifying or limiting it to gymnastic, musical or equestrian sports; and suppose that he should assemble the whole population of the State and, proclaiming that this is purely a pleasure-contest in which anyone who chooses may compete, should offer a prize to the competitor who gives the greatest amusement to the spectators,—

without any restrictions as to the methods employed,—and who excels others just in doing this in the highest possible degree, and is adjudged the most pleasure-giving of the competitors: what do we suppose would be the effect of such a proclamation?

In what respect do you mean?

The natural result would be that one man would, like Homer, show up a rhapsody, another a harp-song, one a tragedy and another a comedy; nor should we be surprised if someone were even to fancy

that he had the best chance of winning with a puppet-show. So where such as these and thousands others enter the competition, can we say who will deserve to win the prize?

An absurd question; for who could possibly pretend to know the answer before he had himself actually heard each of the competitors?

Very well, then; do you wish me to supply you with the answer to this absurd question?

By all means.

If the tiniest children are to be the judges, they will award the prize to the showman of puppets, will they not?

Certainly they will.

And older lads to the exhibitor of comedies; while the educated women and the young men, and the mass of the people in general, will award it to the shower of tragedies.

Most probably.

And we old men would very likely take most delight in listening to a rhapsode giving a fine recitation of the Iliad or the Odyssey or of a piece from Hesiod, and declare that he is easily the winner. Who then would rightly be the winner of the prize? That is the next question, is it not?

Yes.

Evidently we three cannot avoid saying that those who are adjudged the winners by our own contemporaries would win rightly. For in our opinion epic poetry is by far the best to be found nowadays anywhere in any State in the world.

Of course.

Thus much I myself am willing to concede to the majority of men,—that the criterion of music should be pleasure not, however, the pleasure of any chance person; rather I should regard that music which pleases the best men

and the highly educated as about the best, and as quite the best if it pleases the one man who excels all others in virtue and education. And we say that the judges of these matters need virtue for the reason that they need to possess not only wisdom in general, but especially courage. For the true judge should not take his verdicts from the dictation of the audience, nor yield weakly to the uproar of the crowd or his own lack of education; nor again, when he knows the truth, should he give his verdict carelessly through cowardice and lack of spirit, thus swearing falsely out of the same mouth with which he invoked Heaven when he first took his seat as judge.

For, rightly speaking, the judge sits not as a pupil, but rather as a teacher of the spectators, being ready to oppose those who offer them pleasure in a way that is unseemly or wrong; and that is what the present law of Sicily and Italy actually does: by entrusting the decision to the spectators, who award the prize by show of hands, not only has it corrupted the poets

(since they adapt their works to the poor standard of pleasure of the judges, which means that the spectators are the teachers of the poets), but it has corrupted also the pleasures of the audience; for whereas they ought to be improving their standard of pleasure by listening to characters superior to their own, what they now do has just the opposite effect. What, then, is the conclusion to be drawn from this survey? Is it this, do you suppose?

What?

This is, I imagine, the third or fourth time that our discourse has described a circle

and come back to this same point—namely, that education is the process of drawing and guiding children towards that principle which is pronounced right by the law and confirmed as truly right by the experience of the oldest and the most just. So in order that the soul of the child may not become habituated to having pains and pleasures in contradiction to the law and those who obey the law, but in conformity thereto, being pleased and pained at the same things as the old man,—

for this reason we have what we call “chants,” which evidently are in reality incantations

seriously designed to produce in souls that conformity and harmony of which we speak. But inasmuch as the souls of the young are unable to endure serious study, we term these “plays” and “chants,'' and use them as such,—just as, when people suffer from bodily ailments and infirmities, those whose office it is try to administer to them nutriment that is wholesome in meats

and drinks that are pleasant, but unwholesome nutriment in the opposite, so that they may form the right habit of approving the one kind and detesting the other. Similarly in dealing with the poet, the good legislator will use noble and laudable phrases to persuade him—and, failing persuasion, he will compel him—to portray by his rhythms the gestures, and by his harmonies the tunes, of men who are temperate, courageous, and good in all respects, and thereby to compose poems aright.

In Heaven's name, Stranger, do you believe that that is the way poetry is composed nowadays in other States? So far as my own observation goes, I know of no practices such as you describe except in my own country and in Lacedaemon; but I do know that novelties are always being introduced in dancing and all other forms of music, which changes due not to the laws, but to disorderly tastes and these are so far from being constantly uniform and stable—like the Egyptian ones you describe—that they are never for a moment uniform.

Nobly spoken, O Clinias! If, however, I seemed to you to say that the practices you refer to are in use now, very likely our mistake arose from my own failure to express my meaning clearly; probably I stated my own desires with regard to music in such a way that you imagined me to be stating present facts. To denounce things that are beyond remedy and far gone in error is a task that is by no means pleasant; but at times it is unavoidable. And now that you hold the same opinion on this subject, come, tell me, do you assert that such practices are more general among the Cretans

and the Lacedaemonians than among the other Greeks?

Certainly.

Suppose now that they were to become general among the rest also,—should we say that the method of procedure then would be better than it is now?

The improvement would be immense, if things were done as they are in my country and in that of our friends here, and as, moreover, you yourself said just now they ought to be done.

Come now, let us come to an understanding on this matter. In all

education and music in your countries, is not this your teaching? You oblige the poets to teach that the good man, since he is temperate and just, is fortunate and happy, whether he be great or small, strong or weak, rich or poor; whereas, though he be richer even “than Cinyras or Midas,”

if he be unjust, he is a wretched man and lives a miserable life. Your poet says—if he speaks the truth—“I would spend no word on the man, and hold him in no esteem,” who without justice performs or acquires all the things accounted good; and again he describes how the just man

“drives his spear against the foe at close quarters,” whereas the unjust man dares not “to look upon the face of bloody death,” nor does he outpace in speed of foot “the north wind out of Thrace,” nor acquire any other of the things called “good.” For the things which most men call good are wrongly so described. Men say that the chief good is health, beauty the second, wealth the third; and they call countless other things “goods”—such as sharpness of sight and hearing,

and quickness in perceiving all the objects of sense; being a king, too, and doing exactly as you please; and to possess the whole of these goods and become on the spot an immortal, that, as they say, is the crown and top of all felicity. But what you and I say is this,—that all these things are very good as possessions for men who are just and holy, but for the unjust they are (one and all, from health downwards) very bad; and we say too that sight and hearing and

sensation and even of itself are very great evils for the man endowed with all the so-called goods, but lacking in justice and all virtue, if he is immortal forever, but a lesser evil for such a man if he survives but a short time. This, I imagine, is what you (like myself) will persuade or compel your poets to teach, and compel them also to educate your youth by furnishing them with rhythms and harmonies in consonance with this teaching. Am I not right? Just consider:

what I assert is that what are called “evils” are good for the unjust, but evil for the just, while the so-called “goods” are really good for the good, but bad for the bad. Are you in accord with me, then,—that was my question,—or how stands the matter?

We are, apparently, partly in accord, but partly quite the reverse.

Take the case of a man who has health and wealth and absolute power in perpetuity,—in addition to which I bestow on him, if you like, matchless strength and courage, together with immortality

and freedom from all the other “evils” so called,—but a man who has within him nothing but injustice and insolence: probably I fail to convince you that the man who lives such a life is obviously not happy but wretched?

Quite true.

Well, then, what ought I to say next? Do you not think that if a man who is courageous, strong, beautiful, and rich, and who does exactly as he likes all his life long,

is really unjust and insolent, he must necessarily be living a base life? Probably you will agree at any rate to call it “base”?

Certainly.

And also a bad life

?

We would not go so far as to admit that.

Well, would you admit the epithets “unpleasant” and “unprofitable to himself”?

How could we agree to such further descriptions?

“How?” do you ask? Only (as it seems, my friend)

if some god were to grant us concord, since at present we are fairly at discord one with another. In my opinion these facts are quite indisputable even more plainly so, my dear Clinias, than the fact that Crete is an island; and were I a legislator, I should endeavor to compel the poets and all the citizens to speak in this sense; and I should impose all but the heaviest of penalties on anyone in the land who should declare that

any wicked men lead pleasant lives, or that things profitable and lucrative are different from things just; and there are many other things contrary to what is now said, as it seems, by Cretans and Lacedaemonians,—and of course by the rest of mankind,—which I should persuade my citizens to proclaim. For, come now, my most excellent sirs, in the name of Zeus and Apollo, suppose we should interrogate those very gods themselves who legislated for you, and ask: “Is the most just life the most pleasant;

or are there two lives, of which the one is most pleasant, the other most just?” If they replied that there were two, we might well ask them further, if we were to put the correct question; “Which of the two ought one to describe as the happier, those that live the most just or those that live the most pleasant life? If they replied, “Those that live the most pleasant life,” that would be a monstrous statement in their mouths. But I prefer not to ascribe such statements to gods, but rather to ancestors and lawgivers:

imagine, then, that the questions I have put have been put to an ancestor and lawgiver, and that he has stated that the man who lives the most pleasant life is the happiest. In the next place I would say to him this: “O father, did you not desire me to live as happily as possible? Yet you never ceased bidding me constantly to live as justly as possible.” And hereby, as I think, our lawgiver or ancestor would be shown up as illogical and incapable of speaking consistently with himself, but if, on the other hand, he were to declare the most just life to be the happiest, everyone who heard him would, I suppose, enquire what is the good and charm it contains which is superior to pleasure, for which the lawgiver praises it.

For, apart from pleasure, what good could accrue to a just man? “Come, tell me, is fair fame and praise from the mouths of men and gods a noble and good thing, but unpleasant, while ill-fame is the opposite?” “By no means, my dear lawgiver,” we shall say. And is it unpleasant, but noble and good, neither to injure anyone nor be injured by anyone, while the opposite is pleasant, but ignoble and bad?

By no means.

So then the teaching which refuses to separate the pleasant from the just helps,

if nothing else, to induce a man to live the holy and just life, so that any doctrine which denies this truth is, in the eyes of the lawgiver, most shameful and most hateful; for no one would voluntarily consent to be induced to commit an act, unless it involves as its consequence more pleasure than pain. Now distance has the effect of befogging the vision of nearly everybody, and of children especially; but our lawgiver will reverse the appearance by removing the fog,

and by one means or another—habituation, commendation, or argument—will persuade people that their notions of justice and injustice are illusory pictures, unjust objects appearing pleasant and just objects most unpleasant to him who is opposed to justice, through being viewed from his own unjust and evil standpoint, but when seen from the standpoint of justice, both of them appear in all ways entirely the opposite.

So it appears.

In point of truth, which of the two judgements shall we say is the more authoritative,—that of the worse soul or that of the better.

That of the better, undoubtedly.

Undoubtedly, then, the unjust life is not only more base and ignoble, but also in very truth more unpleasant, than the just and holy life.

It would seem so, my friends, from our present argument.

And even if the state of the case were different from what it has now been proved to be by our argument, could a lawgiver who was worth his salt find any more useful fiction than this (if he dared to use any fiction at all in addressing the youths for their good), or one more effective in persuading all men to act justly in all things

willingly and without constraint?

Truth is a noble thing, Stranger, and an enduring; yet to persuade men of it seems no easy matter.

Be it so; yet it proved easy to persuade men of the Sidonian fairy-tale,

incredible though it was, and of numberless others.

What tales?

The tale of the teeth that were sown, and how armed men sprang out of them. Here, indeed, the lawgiver has a notable example

of how one can, if he tries, persuade the souls of the young of anything, so that the only question he has to consider in his inventing is what would do most good to the State, if it were believed; and then he must devise all possible means to ensure that the whole of the community constantly, so long as they live, use exactly the same language, so far as possible, about these matters, alike in their songs, their tales, and their discourses. If you, however, think otherwise, I have no objection to your arguing in the opposite sense.

Neither of us, I think, could possibly argue against your view.

Our next subject I must handle myself. I maintain that all the three choirs

must enchant the souls of the children, while still young and tender, by rehearsing all the noble things which we have already recounted, or shall recount hereafter; and let this be the sum of them: in asserting that one and the same life is declared by the gods to be both most pleasant and most just, we shall not only be saying what is most true,

but we shall also convince those who need convincing more forcibly than we could by any other assertion.

We must assent to what you say.

First, then, the right order of procedure will be for the Muses' choir of children to come forward first to sing these things with the utmost vigor and before the whole city; second will come the choir of those under thirty, invoking Apollo Paian

as witness of the truth of what is said, and praying him of grace to persuade the youth.

The next singers will be the third choir, of those over thirty and under sixty; and lastly, there were left those who, being no longer able to uplift the song, shall handle the same moral themes in stories and by oracular speech.

Whom do you mean, Stranger, by these third choristers. For we do not grasp very clearly what you intend to convey about them.

Yet they are in fact the very people to whom most of our previous discourse was intended to lead up.

We are still in the dark: try to explain yourself more clearly still.

At the commencement of our discourse we said, if we recollect, that since all young creatures are by nature fiery, they are unable to keep still either body or voice, but are always crying and leaping in disorderly fashion; we said also that none of the other creatures attains a sense of order, bodily and vocal, and that this is possessed by man alone; and that the order

of motion is called “rhythm,” while the order of voice (in which acute and grave are blended together) is termed “harmony,” and to the combination of these two the name “choristry” is given. We stated also that the gods, in pity for us, have granted to us as fellow-choristers and choir-leaders Apollo and the Muses,—besides whom we mentioned, if we recollect, a third, Dionysus.

Certainly we recollect.

The choir of Apollo and that of the Muses have been described, and the third and remaining

choir must necessarily be described, which is that of Dionysus.

How so? Tell us; for at the first mention of it, a Dionysiac choir of old men sounds mighty strange,—if you mean that men over thirty, and even men over fifty and up to sixty, are really going to dance in his honor.

That is, indeed, perfectly true. It needs argument, I fancy, to show how such a procedure would be reasonable.

It does.

Are we agreed about our previous proposals?

In what respect?

That it is the duty of every man and child—bond and free, male and female,—and the duty of the whole State, to charm themselves unceasingly with the chants we have described, constantly changing them and securing variety in every way possible, so as to inspire the singers with an insatiable appetite for the hymns and with pleasure therein.

Assuredly we would agree as to the duty of doing this.

Then where should we put the best element in the State,—that which by age and judgment alike is the most influential it contains,—so that by singing its noblest songs it might do most good? Or shall we be so foolish as to dismiss that section which possesses the highest capacity for the noblest and most useful songs?

We cannot possibly dismiss it, judging from what you now say.

What seemly method can we adopt about it? Will the method be this?

What?

Every man as he grows older becomes reluctant to sing songs, and takes less pleasure in doing so; and when compelled to sing,

the older he is and the more temperate, the more he will feel ashamed. Is it not so?

It is.

Surely, then, he will be more than ever ashamed to get up and sing in the theater, before people of all sorts. Moreover, if old men like that were obliged to do as the choristers do, who go lean and fasting when training their voices for a competition, they would assuredly find singing an unpleasant and degrading task, and they would undertake it with no great readiness.

That is beyond a doubt.

How then shall we encourage them to take readily to singing? Shall we not pass a law that, in the first place, no children under eighteen may touch wine at all, teaching that it is wrong to pour fire upon fire either in body or in soul, before they set about tackling their real work, and thus guarding against the excitable disposition of the young? And next, we shall rule that the young man under thirty may take wine in moderation,

but that he must entirely abstain from intoxication and heavy drinking. But when a man has reached the age of forty, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysus, above all other gods, inviting his presence at the rite (which is also the recreation) of the elders, which he bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls

may lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire. Will not this softer disposition, in the first place, render each one of them more ready and less ashamed to sing chants and “incantations” (as we have often called them), in the presence, not of a large company of strangers, but of a small number of intimate friends?

Yes! much more ready.

So then, for the purpose of inducing them

to take a share in our singing, this plan would not be altogether unseemly.

By no means.

What manner of song will the men raise? Will it not, evidently, be one that suits their own condition in every case?

Of course.

What song, then, would suit godlike men? Would a choric song

?

At any rate, Stranger, we and our friends here would be unable to sing any other song than that which we learnt by practice in choruses.

Naturally; for in truth you never attained to

the noblest singing. For your civic organization is that of an army rather than that of city-dwellers, and you keep your young people massed together like a herd of colts at grass: none of you takes his own colt, dragging him away from his fellows, in spite of his fretting and fuming, and puts a special groom in charge of him, and trains him by rubbing him down and stroking him and using all the means proper to child-nursing, that so he may turn out not only a good soldier,

but able also to manage a State and cities—in short, a man who (as we said at the first) is more of a warrior than the warriors of Tyrtaeus, inasmuch as always and everywhere, both in States and in individuals, he esteems courage as the fourth in order of the virtues, not the first.

Once again, Stranger, you are—in a sort of a way—disparaging our lawgivers.

It is not intentionally, my friend, that I do so—if I am doing it but whither the argument leads us, thither, if you please, let us go. If we know of a music that is superior to that of the choirs or to that of the public theaters,

let us try to supply it to those men who, as we said, are ashamed of the latter, yet are eager to take a part in that music which is noblest.

Certainly.

Now, in the first place, must it not be true of everything which possesses charm as its concomitant, that its most important element is either this charm in itself, or some form of correctness, or, thirdly, utility? For instance, meat and drink and nutriment in general have, as I say, for concomitant that charm which we should term pleasure;

but as regards their correctness and utility, what we call the wholesomeness of each article administered is precisely the most perfect element they contain.

Certainly.

Learning, too, is accompanied by the element of charm, which is pleasure; but that which produces its correctness and utility, its goodness and nobleness, is truth.

Quite so.

Then how about the imitative arts which produce likenesses? If they succeed in their productions, should not any concomitant pleasure which results therefrom be most properly called “charm”?

Yes.

But, speaking generally, the correctness of these things would be the result not, primarily, of pleasure, but of equality in respect of both quality and quantity.

Excellent.

Then we shall rightly judge by the criterion of pleasure

that object only which, in its effects, produces neither utility nor truth nor similarity, nor yet harm, and which exists solely for the sake of the concomitant element of charm,—which element will best be named “pleasure” whenever it is accompanied by none of the other qualities mentioned.

You mean only harmless pleasure.

Yes, and I say that this same pleasure is also play, whenever the harm or good it does is negligible.

Very true.

Should we not then assert, as a corollary, that no imitation should be judged by the criterion of pleasure

or of untrue opinion, nor indeed should any kind of equality be so judged? The reason why the equal is equal, or the symmetrical symmetrical, is not at all because a man so opines, or is charmed thereby, but most of all because of truth, and least of all for any other reason.

Most certainly.

We assert, do we not, that all music is representative and imitative?

Of course.

So whenever a man states that pleasure is the criterion of music, we shall decisively reject his statement; and we shall regard such music as the least important of all (if indeed any music

is important) and prefer that which possesses similarity in its imitation of the beautiful.

Very true.

Thus those who are seeking the best singing and music must seek, as it appears, not that which is pleasant, but that which is correct; and the correctness of imitation consists, as we say, in the reproduction of the original in its own proper quantity and quality.

Of course.

And this is certainly true of music, as everyone would allow,—that all its productions are

imitative and representative;

that much, at least, they would all admit,—poets, audience, and actors alike, would they not?

They would.

Now the man who is to judge a poem

unerringly must know in each particular case the exact nature of the poem; for if he does not know its essence,—what its intention is and what the actual original which it represents,—then he will hardly be able to decide how far it succeeds or fails in fulfilling its intention.

Hardly, to be sure.

And would a man who does not know what constitutes perfection be able to decide as to the goodness or badness of a poem? But I am not making myself quite clear: it might be clearer if I put it in this way—

In what way?

As regards objects of sight we have, of course, thousands of representations.

Yes.

How, then, if in this class of objects a man were to be ignorant of the nature of each of the bodies represented could he ever know whether it is perfectly executed? What I mean is this: whether it preserves the proper dimensions and the positions of each of the bodily parts,

and has caught their exact number and the proper order in which one is placed next another, and their colors and shapes as well,—or whether all these things are wrought in a confused manner. Do you suppose that anyone could possibly decide these points if he were totally ignorant as to what animal was being represented?

How could he?

Well, suppose we should know that the object painted or moulded is a man, and know that art has endowed him with all his proper parts, colors,

and shapes,—is it at once inevitable that the person who knows this can easily discern also whether the work is beautiful, or wherein it is deficient in beauty?

If that were so, Stranger, practically all of us would know what animals are beautiful.

You are quite right. In regard, then, to every representation—whether in painting, music or any other art—must not the judicious critic possess these three requisites:

first, a knowledge of the nature of the original; next, a knowledge of the correctness of the copy; and thirdly, a knowledge of the excellence with which the copy is executed?

It would seem so, certainly.

Let us not hesitate, then, to mention the point wherein lies the difficulty of music. Just because it is more talked about than any other form of representation, it needs more caution than any. The man who blunders in this art will do himself the greatest harm, by welcoming base morals;

and, moreover, his blunder is very hard to discern, inasmuch as our poets are inferior as poets to the Muses themselves.

For the Muses would never blunder so far as to assign a feminine tune and gesture to verses composed for men, or to fit the rhythms of captives and slaves to gestures framed for free men, or conversely, after constructing the rhythms and gestures of free men, to assign to the rhythms

a tune or verses of an opposite style. Nor would the Muses ever combine in a single piece the cries of beasts and men, the clash of instruments, and noises of all kinds, by way of representing a single object; whereas human poets, by their senselessness in mixing such things and jumbling them up together, would furnish a theme for laughter to all the men who, in OrpheusÕ phrase, “have attained the full flower of joyousness.” For they behold all these things jumbled together, and how, also, the poets rudely sunder rhythm and gesture from tune, putting tuneless words into meter, or leaving time and rhythm

without words, and using the bare sound of harp or flute, wherein it is almost impossible to understand what is intended by this wordless rhythm and harmony, or what noteworthy original it represents. Such methods, as one ought to realize, are clownish in the extreme in so far as they exhibit an excessive craving for speed, mechanical accuracy, and the imitation of animals' sounds, and consequently employ the pipe and the harp without the accompaniment of dance and song;

for the use of either of these instruments by itself is the mark of the mountebank or the boor. Enough, then, of that matter: now as to ourselves. What we are considering is, not how those of us who are over thirty years old, or beyond fifty, ought not to make use of the Muses, but how they ought to do so. Our argument already indicates, I think, this result from our discussion,—that all men of over fifty that are fit to sing ought to have a training that is better than that of the choric Muse.

For they must of necessity possess knowledge and a quick perception of rhythms and harmonies; else how shall a man know which tunes are correct?

Obviously he cannot know this at all.

It is absurd of the general crowd to imagine that they can fully understand what is harmonious and rhythmical, or the reverse, when they have been drilled to sing to the flute or step

in time; and they fail to comprehend that, in doing each of these things, they do them in ignorance. But the fact is that every tune which has its appropriate elements is correct, but incorrect if the elements are inappropriate.

Undoubtedly.

What then of the man who does not know in the least what the tune's elements are? Will he ever know about any tune, as we said, that it is correct?

There is no possible means of his doing so.

We are now once more, as it appears, discovering the fact that these singers of ours (whom we are now inviting

and compelling, so to say, of their own free will to sing) must almost necessarily be trained up to such a point that every one of them may be able to follow both the steps

of the rhythms and the chords of the tunes, so that, by observing the harmonies and rhythms, they may be able to select those of an appropriate kind, which it is seemly for men of their own age and character to sing, and may in this wise sing them, and in the singing may not only enjoy innocent pleasure themselves at the moment, but also may serve as leaders to the younger men in their seemly adoption of noble manners.

If they were trained up to such a point, their training would be more thorough than that of the majority, or indeed of the poets themselves. For although it is almost necessary for a poet to have a knowledge of harmony and rhythm, it is not necessary for him to know the third point also—namely, whether the representation is noble or ignoble

; but for our older singers a knowledge of all these three points is necessary,

to enable them to determine what is first, what second in order of nobility; otherwise none of them will ever succeed in attracting the young to virtue by his incantations. The primary intention of our argument, which was to demonstrate that our defence of the Dionysiac chorus was justifiable, has now been carried out to the best of our ability. Let us consider if that is really so. Such a gathering inevitably tends, as the drinking proceeds, to grow ever more and more uproarious; and in the case of the present day gatherings that is, as we said at the outset,

an inevitable result.

Inevitable.

Everyone is uplifted above his normal self, and is merry and bubbles over with loquacious audacity himself, while turning a deaf ear to his neighbors, and regards himself as competent to rule both himself and everyone else.

To be sure.

And did we not say that when this takes place, the souls of the drinkers turn softer, like iron, through being heated, and younger too; whence they become ductile, just as when they were young,

in the hands of the man who has the skill and the ability to train and mould them. And now, even as then, the man who is to mould them is the good legislator; he must lay down banqueting laws, able to control that banqueter who becomes confident and bold and unduly shameless, and unwilling to submit to the proper limits of silence and speech, of drinking and of music, making him consent to do in all ways the opposite,—

laws able also, with the aid of justice, to fight against the entrance of such ignoble audacity, by bringing in that most noble fear which we have named “modesty” and “shame.”

That is so.

And as law-wardens of these laws and cooperators therewith, there must be sober and sedate men to act as commanders over the un-sober; for to fight drunkenness without these would be a more formidable task than to fight enemies without sedate leaders. Any man who refuses willingly to obey these men and the officers

of Dionysus (who are over sixty years of age) shall incur as much disgrace as the man who disobeys the officers of Ares, and even more.

Quite right.

If such was the character of the drinking and of the recreation, would not such fellow-drinkers be the better for it, and part from one another better friends than before, instead of enemies, as now? For they would be guided by laws in all their intercourse,

and would listen to the directions given to the un-sober by the sober.

True, if it really were of the character you describe.

Then we must no longer, without qualification, bring that old charge against the gift of Dionysus, that it is bad and unworthy of admittance into a State. Indeed, one might enlarge considerably on this subject; for the greatest benefit that gift confers is one which one hesitates to declare to the multitude, since,

when declared, it is misconceived and misunderstood.

What is that?

There is a secret stream of story and report to the effect that the god Dionysus was robbed of his soul's judgment by his stepmother Hera, and that in vengeance therefor he brought in Bacchic rites and all the frenzied choristry, and with the same aim bestowed also the gift of wine. These matters, however, I leave to those who think it safe to say them about deities

; but this much I know,—that no creature is ever born in possession of that reason, or that amount of reason,

which properly belongs to it when fully developed; consequently, every creature, during the period when it is still lacking in its proper intelligence, continues all in a frenzy, crying out wildly, and, as soon as it can get on its feet, leaping wildly. Let us remember how we said that in this we have the origin of music and gymnastic.

We remember that, of course.

Do we not also remember how we said that from this origin there was implanted

in us men the sense of rhythm and harmony, and that the joint authors thereof were Apollo and the Muses and the god Dionysus?

Certainly we remember.

Moreover, as to wine, the account given by other people apparently is that it was bestowed on us men as a punishment, to make us mad; but our own account, on the contrary, declares that it is a medicine given for the purpose of securing modesty of soul and health and strength of body.

You have recalled our account admirably, Stranger.

We may say, then, that the one half of the subject of choristry has now been disposed of. Shall we proceed at once to deal with the other half in whatever way seems best, or shall we leave it alone?

What halves do you mean? How are you dividing the subject?

In our view, choristry as a whole is identical with education as a whole; and the part of this concerned with the voice consists of rhythms and harmonies.

Yes.

And the part concerned with bodily motion possesses, in common with vocal motion, rhythm; besides which it possesses gesture as its own peculiar attribute, just as tune is the peculiar attribute of vocal

motion.

Very true.

Now the vocal actions which pertain to the training of the soul in excellence we ventured somehow to name “music.”

And rightly so.

As regards the bodily actions which we called playful dancing,—if such action attains to bodily excellence, we may term the technical guidance of the body to this end “gymnastic.”

Quite rightly.

As to music, which was referred to when we said a moment ago that the one half of choristry had been described and disposed of,—let us say the same of it now; but as to the other half, are we to speak about it, or what are we to do?

My good sir, you are conversing with Cretans and Lacedaemonians, and we have discussed the subject of music; what reply, then, to your question do you suppose that either of us will make, when the subject left still untouched is gymnastic?

You have given me a pretty clear answer, I should say,

in putting this question; although it is a question, I understand it to be also (as I say) an answer—or rather, an actual injunction to give a full account of gymnastic.

You have grasped my meaning excellently: please do so.

Do it I must; and indeed it is no very hard task to speak of things well known to you both. For you are far better acquainted with this art than with the other.

That is about true.

The origin of the play

we are speaking of

is to be found in the habitual tendency of every living creature to leap; and the human creature, by acquiring, as we said, a sense of rhythm, generated and brought forth dancing; and since the rhythm is suggested and awakened by the tune, the union of these two brought forth choristry and play.

Very true.

Of choristry we have already discussed the one part, and we shall next endeavor to discuss the other part.

By all means.

But, if you both agree, let us first put the finishing stroke

to our discourse on the use of drink.

What, or what kind of, finish do you mean?

If a State shall make use of the institution now mentioned in a lawful and orderly manner, regarding it in a serious light and practising it with a view to temperance, and if in like manner and with a like object, aiming at the mastery of them, it shall allow indulgence in all other pleasures,—then they must all be made use of in the manner described. But if, on the other hand, this institution is regarded in the light of play, and if anyone that likes is to be allowed to drink whenever he likes

and with any companions he likes, and that in conjunction with all sorts of other institutions,—then I would refuse to vote for allowing such a State or such an individual ever to indulge in drink, and I would go even beyond the practice of the Cretans and Lacedaemonians

; and to the Carthaginian law, which ordains that no soldier on the march should ever taste of this potion, but confine himself for the whole of the time to water-drinking only, I would add this, that in the city also no bondsman or bondsmaid should ever taste of it; and that magistrates

during their year of office, and pilots and judges while on duty, should taste no wine at all; nor should any councillor, while attending any important council; nor should anyone whatever taste of it at all, except for reasons of bodily training or health, in the daytime; nor should anyone do so by night—be he man or woman—when proposing to procreate children. Many other occasions, also, might be mentioned when wine should not be drunk by men who are swayed by right reason and law.

Hence, according to this argument, there would be no need for any State to have a large number of vineyards; and while all the other agricultural products, and all the foodstuffs, would be controlled, the production of wine especially would be kept within the smallest and most modest dimensions. Let this, then, Strangers, if you agree, be the finishing stroke which we put to our discourse concerning wine.

Very good; we quite agree.

So much for that, then! Now, what are we to say about the origin of government? Would not the best and easiest way of discerning it be from this standpoint?

What standpoint?

That from which one should always observe the progress of States as they move towards either goodness or badness.

What point is that?

The observation, as I suppose, of an infinitely long period of time

and of the variations therein occurring.

Explain your meaning.

Tell me now: do you think you could ever ascertain the space of time that has passed since cities came into existence and men lived under civic rule?

Certainly it would be no easy task.

But you can easily see that it is vast and immeasurable?

That I most certainly can do.

During this time, have not thousands upon thousands of States come into existence, and, on a similar computation, just as many perished?

And have they not in each case exhibited all kinds of constitutions over and over again? And have they not changed at one time from small to great, at another from great to small, and changed also from good to bad and from bad to good?

Necessarily.

Of this process of change let us discover, if we can, the cause; for this, perhaps, would show us what is the primary origin of constitutions, as well as their transformation.

You are right; and we must all exert ourselves,—you to expound your view about them, and we to keep pace with you.

Do you consider that there is any truth in the ancient tales?

What tales?

That the world of men has often been destroyed by floods, plagues, and many other things, in such a way that only a small portion of the human race has survived.

Everyone would regard such accounts as perfectly credible.

Come now, let us picture to ourselves one of the many catastrophes,—namely, that which occurred once upon a time through the Deluge.

And what are we to imagine about it?

That the men who then escaped destruction must have been mostly herdsmen of the hills, scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops.

Evidently.

Moreover, men of this kind must necessarily have been unskilled in the arts generally, and especially in such contrivances as men use against one another in cities for purposes of greed and rivalry and all the other villainies which they devise one against another.

It is certainly probable.

Shall we assume that the cities situated in the plains and near the sea were totally destroyed at the time?

Let us assume it.

And shall we say that all implements were lost, and that everything in the way of important arts or inventions that they may have had,—whether concerned with politics or other sciences,— perished at that time? For, supposing that things had remained all that time ordered just as they are now, how, my good sir, could anything new have ever been invented?

Do you mean that these things were unknown to the men of those days for thousands upon thousands of years, and that one or two thousand years ago some of them were revealed to Daedalus, some to Orpheus, some to Palamedes, musical arts to Marsyas and Olympus, lyric to Amphion, and, in short, a vast number of others to other persons—all dating, so to say, from yesterday or the day before?

Are you aware, Clinias, that you have left out your friend who was literally a man of yesterday?

Is it Epimenides

you mean?

Yes, I mean him. For he far outstripped everybody you had, my friend, by that invention of his of which he was the actual producer, as you Cretans say, although Hesiod

had divined it and spoken of it long before.

We do say so.

Shall we, then, state that, at the time when the destruction took place, human affairs were in this position: there was fearful and widespread desolation over a vast tract of land; most of the animals were destroyed, and the few herds of oxen and flocks of goats that happened to survive afforded at the first but scanty sustenance

to their herdsmen?

Yes.

And as to the matters with which our present discourse is concerned—States and statecraft and legislation,—do we think they could have retained any memory whatsoever, broadly speaking, of such matters?

By no means.

So from those men, in that situation, there has sprung the whole of our present order—States and constitutions, arts and laws, with a great amount both of evil and of good?

How do you mean?

Do we imagine, my good Sir, that the men of that age, who were unversed in the ways of city life—many of them noble, many ignoble,—were perfect either in virtue or in vice?

Well said! We grasp your meaning.

As time went on and our race multiplied, all things advanced—did they not?—to the condition which now exists.

Very true.

But, in all probability, they advanced, not all at once, but by small degrees, during an immense space of time.

Yes, that is most likely.

For they all, I fancy, felt as it were still ringing in their ears a dread of going down from the highlands to the plains.

Of course.

And because there were so few of them round about in those days, were they not delighted to see one another, but for the fact that means of transport, whereby they might visit one another by sea or land, had practically all perished along with the arts? Hence intercourse, I imagine, was not very easy.

For iron and bronze and all the metals in the mines had been flooded and had disappeared; so that it was extremely difficult to extract fresh metal; and there was a dearth, in consequence, of felled timber. For even if there happened to be some few tools still left somewhere on the mountains, these were soon worn out, and they could not be replaced by others until men had rediscovered the art of metal-working.

They could not.

Now, how many generations, do we suppose, had passed before this took place?

A great many, evidently.

And during all this period, or even longer, all the arts that require iron and bronze and all such metals must have remained in abeyance?

Of course.

Moreover, civil strife and war also disappeared during that time, and that for many reasons.

How so?

In the first place, owing to their desolate state, they were kindly disposed and friendly towards one another; and secondly, they had no need to quarrel about food.

For they had no lack of flocks and herds (except perhaps some of them at the outset), and in that age these were what men mostly lived on: thus they were well supplied with milk and meat, and they procured further supplies of food, both excellent and plentiful, by hunting. They were also well furnished with clothing and coverlets and houses, and with vessels for cooking and other kinds; for no iron is required for the arts of moulding and weaving,

which two arts God gave to men to furnish them with all these necessaries, in order that the human race might have means of sprouting and increase whenever it should fall into such a state of distress. Consequently, they were not excessively poor, nor were they constrained by stress of poverty to quarrel one with another; and, on the other hand, since they were without gold and silver, they could never have become rich. Now a community which has no communion with either poverty or wealth is generally the one in which the noblest characters will be formed;

for in it there is no place for the growth of insolence and injustice, of rivalries and jealousies. So these men were good, both for these reasons and because of their simple-mindedness, as it is called; for, being simple-minded, when they heard things called bad or good, they took what was said for gospel-truth and believed it. For none of them had the shrewdness of the modern man to suspect a falsehood; but they accepted as true the statements made about gods and men, and ordered their lives by them. Thus they were entirely of the character we have just described.

Certainly Megillus and I quite agree with what you say.

And shall we not say that people living in this fashion for many generations were bound to be unskilled, as compared with either the antediluvians or the men of today, and ignorant of arts in general and especially of the arts of war as now practised by land and sea, including those warlike arts which, disguised under the names of law-suits and factions, are peculiar to cities, contrived as they are with every device of word and deed to inflict mutual hurt and injury;

and that they were also more simple and brave and temperate, and in all ways more righteous? And the cause of this state of things we have already explained.

Quite true.

We must bear in mind that the whole purpose of what we have said and of what we are going to say next is this,—that we may understand

what possible need of laws the men of that time had, and who their lawgiver was.

Excellent.

Shall we suppose that those men had no need of lawgivers, and that in those days it was not as yet usual to have such a thing? For those born in that age of the world's history did not as yet possess the art of writing, but lived by following custom and what is called patriarchal law.

That is certainly probable.

But this already amounts to a kind of government.

What kind?

Everybody, I believe, gives the name of “headship” to the government which then existed,—and it still continues to exist to-day among both Greeks and barbarians in many quarters.

And, of course, Homer mentions its existence in connection with the household system of the Cyclopes, where he says— “No halls of council and no laws are theirs, But within hollow caves on mountain heights Aloft they dwell, each making his own law.”

“For wife and child; of others reck they naught.”

This poet of yours seems to have been a man of genius. We have also read other verses of his, and they were extremely fine; though in truth we have not read much of him, since we Cretans do not indulge much in foreign poetry.

But we Spartans do, and we regard Homer as the best of them; all the same, the mode of life he describes is always Ionian rather than Laconian.

And now he appears to be confirming your statement admirably, when in his legendary account he ascribes the primitive habits of the Cyclopes to their savagery.

Yes, his testimony supports us; so let us take him as evidence that polities of this sort do sometimes come into existence.

Quite right.

Did they not originate with those people who lived scattered in separate clans or in single households, owing to the distress which followed after the catastrophes; for amongst these the eldest holds rule, owing to the fact that the rule proceeds from the parents,

by following whom they form a single flock, like a covey of birds, and live under a patriarchal government and a kingship which is of all kingships the most just?

Most certainly.

Next, they congregate together in greater numbers, and form larger droves; and first they turn to farming on the hill-sides,

and make ring-fences of rubble and walls to ward off wild beasts, till finally they have constructed a single large common dwelling.

It is certainly probable that such was the course of events.

Well, is not this also probable?

What?

That, while these larger settlements were growing out of the original small ones, each of the small settlements continued to retain, clan by clan, both the rule of the eldest

and also some customs derived from its isolated condition and peculiar to itself. As those who begot and reared them were different, so these customs of theirs, relating to the gods and to themselves, differed, being more orderly where their forefathers had been orderly, and more brave where they had been brave; and as thus the fathers of each clan in due course stamped upon their children and children's children their own cast of mind, these people came (as we say) into the larger community furnished each with their own peculiar laws.

Of course.

And no doubt each clan was well pleased with its own laws, and less well with those of its neighbors.

True.

Unwittingly, as it seems, we have now set foot, as it were, on the starting-point of legislation.

We have indeed.

The next step necessary is that these people should come together and choose out some members of each clan who, after a survey of the legal usages of all the clans, shall notify publicly to the tribal leaders and chiefs (who may be termed their “kings”) which of those usages please them best,

and shall recommend their adoption. These men will themselves be named “legislators,” and when they have established the chiefs as “magistrates,” and have framed an aristocracy, or possibly even a monarchy, from the existing plurality of “headships,” they will live under the constitution thus transformed.

The next steps would certainly be such as you describe.

Let us go on to describe the rise of a third form of constitution, in which are blended all kinds and varieties of constitutions, and of States as well.

What form is that?

The same that Homer himself mentioned next to the second, when he said that the third form arose in this way. His verses run thus— “Dardania he founded when as yet The Holy keep of Ilium was not built Upon the plain, a town for mortal folk, But still they dwelt upon the highland slopes Of many-fountained Ida.”

Indeed, these verses of his, as well as those he utters concerning the Cyclopes, are in a kind of unison with the voices of both God and Nature. For being divinely inspired in its chanting, the poetic tribe, with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the truth of history.

It certainly does.

Now let us advance still further in the tale that now engages us; for possibly it may furnish some hint regarding the matter we have in view. Ought we not to do so?

Most certainly.

Ilium was founded, we say, after moving from the highlands down to a large and noble plain, on a hill of no great height which had many rivers flowing down from Ida above.

So they say.

And do we not suppose that this took place many ages after the Deluge?

Many ages after, no doubt.

At any rate they seem to have been strangely forgetful

of the catastrophe now mentioned, since they placed their city, as described, under a number of rivers descending from the mount, and relied for their safety upon hillocks of no great height.

So it is evident that they were removed by quite a long interval from that calamity.

By this time, too, as mankind multiplied, many other cities had been founded.

Of course.

And these cities also made attacks on Ilium, probably by sea too, as well as by land, since by this time all made use of the sea fearlessly.

So it appears.

And after a stay of ten years the Achaeans sacked Troy.

Very true.

Now during this period of ten years, while the siege lasted, the affairs of each of the besiegers at home suffered much owing to the seditious conduct of the young men. For when the soldiers returned to their own cities and homes,

these young people did not receive them fittingly and justly, but in such a way that there ensued a vast number of cases of death, slaughter, and exile. So they, being again driven out, migrated by sea; and because Dorieus

was the man who then banded together the exiles, they got the new name of “Dorians,” instead of “Achaeans.” But as to all the events that follow this, you Lacedaemonians relate them all fully in your traditions.

Quite true.

And now—as it were by divine direction—we have returned once more to the very point in our discourse on laws where we made our digression,

when we plunged into the subject of music and drinking-parties; and we can, so to speak, get a fresh grip upon the argument, now that it has reached this point,—the settlement of Lacedaemon,

about which you said truly that it and Crete were settled under kindred laws. From the wandering course of our argument, and our excursion through various polities and settlements, we have now gained this much: we have discerned a first, a second and a third State,

all, as we suppose, succeeding one another in the settlements which took place during vast ages of time. And now there has emerged this fourth State—or “nation,” if you so prefer—which was once upon a time in course of establishment and is now established.

Now, if we can gather from all this which of these settlements was right and which wrong, and which laws keep safe what is kept safe, and which laws ruin what is mined, and what changes in what particulars would effect the happiness of the State,—then, O Megillus and Clinias, we ought to describe these things again, making a fresh start from the beginning,—unless we have some fault to find with our previous statements.

I can assure you, Stranger, that if some god were to promise us that,

in making this second attempt to investigate legislation, we shall listen to a discourse that is no worse and no shorter than that we have just been listening to, I for one would go a long way to hear it; indeed, this would seem quite a short day, although it is, as a matter of fact, close on midsummer.

So it seems that we must proceed with our enquiry.

Most certainly.

Let us, then, place ourselves in imagination at that epoch when Lacedaemon, together with Argos and Messene and the adjoining districts, had become completely subject,

Megillus, to your forefathers. They determined next, according to the tradition, to divide their host into three parts, and to establish three States,—Argos, Messene and Lacedaemon.

Very true.

And Temenus became King of Argos, Cresphontes of Messene, and Proclus and Eurysthenes of Lacedaemon.

Of course.

And all the men of that time swore that they would assist these kings

if anyone should try to wreck their kingdoms.

Quite so.

Is the dissolution of a kingdom, or of any government that has ever yet been dissolved, caused by any other agency than that of the rulers themselves? Or, though we made this assertion a moment ago when we happened upon this subject, have we now forgotten it?

How could we possibly have forgotten?

Shall we further confirm that assertion now? For we have come to the same view now, as it appears, in dealing with facts of history; so that we shall be examining it with reference not to a mere abstraction,

but to real events. Now what actually took place was this: each of the three royal houses, and the cities under their sway, swore to one another,

according to the laws, binding alike on ruler and subject, which they had made,—the rulers that, as time went on and the nation advanced, they would refrain from making their rule more severe, and the subjects that, so long as the rulers kept fast to their promise, they would never upset the monarchy themselves, nor would they allow others to do so; and they swore that the kings should aid both kings and peoples

when wronged, and the peoples aid both peoples and kings. Was not that the way of it?

It was.

In the polities legally established—whether by the kings or others—in the three States, was not this the most important principle?

What?

That the other two States should always help against the third, whenever it disobeyed the laws laid down.

Evidently.

And surely most people insist on this,—

that the lawgivers shall enact laws of such a kind that the masses of the people accept them willingly; just as one might insist that trainers or doctors should make their treatments or cures of men's bodies pleasurable.

Exactly so.

But in fact one often has to be content if one can bring a body into a sound and healthy state with no great amount of pain.

Very true.

The men of that age possessed also another advantage which helped not a little to facilitate legislation.

What was that?

Their legislators, in their efforts to establish equality of property, were free from that worst of accusations which is commonly incurred in States with laws of a different kind, whenever anyone seeks to disturb the occupation of land, or to propose the abolition of debts, since he perceives that without these measures equality could never be fully secured. In such cases, if the lawgiver attempts to disturb any of these things,

everyone confronts him with the cry, “Hands off,” and they curse him for introducing redistributions of land and remissions of debts, with the result that every man is rendered powerless. But the Dorians had this further advantage, that they were free from all dread of giving offence, so that they could divide up their land without dispute; and they had no large debts of old standing.

True

How was it then, my good sirs, that their settlement and legislation turned out so badly?

What do you mean? What fault have you to find with it?

This, that whereas there were three States settled, two of the three

speedily wrecked their constitution and their laws, and one only remained stable—and that was your State, Megillus.

The question is no easy one.

Yet surely in our consideration and enquiry into this subject, indulging in an old man's sober play with laws, we ought to proceed on our journey

painlessly, as we said

when we first started out.

Certainly, we must do as you say.

Well, what laws would offer a better subject for investigation than the laws by which those States were regulated? Or what larger or more famous States are there about whose settling we might enquire?

It would be hard to mention better instances than these.

It is fairly evident that the men of that age intended this organization of theirs to serve as an adequate protection

not only for the Peloponnesus, but for the whole of Hellas as well, in case any of the barbarians should attack them just as the former dwellers around Ilium were emboldened to embark on the Trojan War through reliance on the Assyrian power as it had been in the reign of Ninus.

For much of the splendor of that empire still survived and the people of that age stood in fear of its confederate power, just as we men of today dread the Great King. For since Troy was a part of the Assyrian empire, the second

capture of Troy

formed a grave charge against the Greeks. It was in view of all this that the Dorian host was at that time organizes and distributed amongst three States under brother princes, the sons of Heracles

; and men thought it admirably devised, and in its equipment superior even to the host that had sailed to Troy. For men reckoned, first, that in the sons of Heracles they had better chiefs than the Pelopidae,

and further,

that this army was superior in valor to the army which went to Troy, since the latter, which was Achaean, was worsted by the former, which was Dorian. Must we not suppose that it was in this way, and with this intention, that the men of that age organized themselves?

Certainly.

Is it not also probable that they would suppose this to be a stable arrangement, and likely to continue quite a long time,

since they had shared together many toils and dangers, and were marshalled under leaders of a single family (their princes being brothers), and since, moreover, they had consulted a number of diviners and, amongst others, the Delphian Apollo?

That is certainly probable.

But it seems that these great expectations speedily vanished, except only, as we said, in regard to that small fraction, your State of Laconia;

and ever since, up to the present day, this fraction has never ceased warring against the other two. For if the original intention had been realized, and if they had been in accord about their policy, it would have created a power invincible in war.

It certainly would.

How then, and by what means, was it destroyed? Is it not worth while to enquire by what stroke of fortune so grand a confederacy was wrecked?

Yes for, if one passed over these examples,

one would not be likely to find elsewhere either laws or constitutions which preserve interests thus fair and great, or, on the contrary, wreck them totally.

Thus by a piece of good luck, as it seems, we have embarked on an enquiry of some importance.

Undoubtedly.

Now, my dear sir, do not men in general, like ourselves at the present moment, unconsciously fancy that every fine object they set eyes on would produce marvellous results, if only a man understood the right way to make a fine use of it?

But for us to hold such an idea in regard to the matter before us would possibly be both wrong and against nature; and the same is true of all other cases where men hold such ideas.

What is it you mean? And what shall we say is the special point of your remarks ?

Why, my dear sir, I had a laugh at my own expense just now. For when I beheld this armament of which we are speaking, I thought it an amazingly fine thing, and that, if anyone had made a fine use of it at that time, it would have proved, as I said,

a wonderful boon to the Greeks.

And was it not quite right and sensible of you to say this, and of us to endorse it?

Possibly; I conceive, however, that everyone, when he beholds a thing that is large, powerful and strong, is instantly struck by the conviction that, if its possessor knew how to employ an instrument of that magnitude and quality, he could make himself happy by many wonderful achievements.

Is not that a right conviction? Or what is your view?

Just consider what one ought to have in view in every instance, in order to justify the bestowal of such praise. And first, with regard to the matter now under discussion,—if the men who were then marshalling the army knew how to organize it properly, how would they have achieved success? Must it not have been by consolidating it firmly and by maintaining it perpetually, so that they should be both free themselves and masters over all others whom they chose, and so that both they and their children should do

in general just what they pleased throughout the world of Greeks and barbarians alike? Are not these the reasons why they would be praised?

Certainly.

And in every case where a man uses the language of eulogy on seeing great wealth or eminent family distinctions or anything else of the kind, would it not be true to say that, in using it, he has this fact specially in mind,—that the possessor of such things is likely, just because of this, to realize all, or at least the most and greatest, of his desires.

That is certainly probable.

Come now, is there one object of desire—that now indicated by our argument—which is common to all men?

What is that?

The desire that, if possible, everything,—or failing that, all that is humanly possible—should happen in accordance with the demands of one's own heart.

To he sure.

Since this, then, is what we all wish always, alike in childhood and manhood and old age, it is for this, necessarily, that we should pray continually.

Of course.

Moreover, on behalf of our friends we will join in making the same prayer which they make on their own behalf.

To be sure.

And a son is a friend to his father, the boy to the man.

Certainly.

Yet the father will often pray the gods that the things which the son prays to obtain may in no wise he granted according to the son's prayers.

Do you mean, when the son who is praying is still young and foolish?

Yes, and also when the father, either through age or through the hot temper of youth,

being devoid of all sense of right and justice, indulges in the vehement prayers of passion (like those of Theseus against Hippolytus

, when he met his luckless end), while the son, on the contrary, has a sense of justice,—in this case do you suppose that the son will echo his father's prayers?

I grasp your meaning. You mean, as I suppose, that what a man ought to pray and press for is not that everything should follow his own desire, while his desire in no way follows his own reason; but it is the winning of wisdom that everyone of us, States and individuals alike, ought to pray for and strive after.

Yes. And what is more, I would recall to your recollection, as well as to my own, how it was said

(if you remember) at the outset that the legislator of a State, in settling his legal ordinances, must always have regard to wisdom. The injunction you gave was that the good lawgiver must frame all his laws with a view to war: I, on the other hand, maintained that, whereas by your injunction the laws would be framed with reference to one only of the four virtues, it was really essential

to look to the whole of virtue, and first and above all to pay regard to the principal virtue of the four, which is wisdom and reason and opinion, together with the love and desire that accompany them. Now the argument has come hack again to the same point, and I now repeat my former statement,—in jest, if you will, or else in earnest; I assert that prayer is a perilous practice for him who is devoid of reason, and that what he obtains is the opposite of his desires.

For I certainly expect that, as you follow the argument recently propounded, you will now discover that the cause of the ruin of those kingdoms, and of their whole design, was not cowardice or ignorance of warfare on the part either of the rulers or of those who should have been their subjects; but that what ruined them was badness of all other kinds, and especially ignorance concerning the greatest of human interests. That this was the course of events then, and is so still,

whenever such events occur, and will be so likewise in the future,—this, with your permission, I will endeavor to discover in the course of the coming argument, and to make it as clear as I can to you, my very good friends.

Verbal compliments are in poor taste, Stranger; but by deed, if not by word, we shall pay you the highest of compliments by attending eagerly to your discourse; and that is what best shows whether compliments are spontaneous or the reverse.

Capital, Clinias! Let us do just as you say.

It shall be so, God willing. Only say on.

Well then, to advance further on the track of our discourse,—we assert that it was ignorance, in its greatest form, which at that time destroyed the power we have described, and which naturally produces still the same results; and if this is so, it follows that the lawgiver must try to implant in States as much wisdom as possible, and to root out folly to the utmost of his power.

Obviously.

What kind of ignorance would deserve to be called the “greatest”? Consider whether you will agree with my description; I take it to be ignorance of this kind,—

What kind?

That which we see in the man who hates, instead of loving, what he judges to be noble and good, while he loves and cherishes what he judges to be evil and unjust. That want of accord, on the part of the feelings of pain and pleasure, with the rational judgment is, I maintain, the extreme form of ignorance, and also the “greatest” because it belongs to the main mass of the soul,—

for the part of the soul that feels pain and pleasure corresponds to the mass of the populace in the State.

So whenever this part opposes what are by nature the ruling principles—knowledge, opinion, or reason,—this condition I call folly, whether it be in a State, when the masses disobey the rulers and the laws, or in an individual, when the noble elements of reason existing in the soul produce no good effect, but quite the contrary.

All these I would count as the most discordant forms of ignorance, whether in the State or the individual, and not the ignorance of the artisan,—if you grasp my meaning, Strangers.

We do, my dear sir, and we agree with it.

Then let it be thus resolved and declared, that no control shall be entrusted to citizens thus ignorant, but that they shall be held in reproach for their ignorance, even though they be expert calculators, and trained in all accomplishments and in everything that fosters agility

of soul, while those whose mental condition is the reverse of this shall be entitled “wise,” even if—as the saying goes—“they spell not neither do they swim”

; and to these latter, as to men of sense, the government shall be entrusted. For without harmony,

my friends, how could even the smallest fraction of wisdom exist? It is impossible. But the greatest and best of harmonies would most properly be accounted the greatest wisdom; and therein he who lives rationally has a share, whereas he who is devoid thereof

will always prove to be a home-wrecker and anything rather than a saviour of the State, because of his ignorance in these matters. So let this declaration stand, as we recently said, as one of our axioms.

Yes, let it stand.

Our States, I presume, must have rulers and subjects.

Of course.

Very well then: what and how many are the agreed rights or claims in the matter of ruling and being ruled, alike in States, large or small, and in households? Is not the right of father and mother one of them? And in general would not the claim of parents to rule over offspring be a claim universally just?

Certainly.

And next to this, the right of the noble to rule over the ignoble; and then, following on these as a third claim, the right of older people to rule and of younger to be ruled.

To be sure.

The fourth right is that slaves ought to be ruled, and masters ought to rule.

Undoubtedly.

And the fifth is, I imagine, that the stronger should rule and the weaker be ruled.

A truly compulsory form of rule!

Yes, and one that is very prevalent among all kinds of creatures, being “according to nature,” as Pindar of Thebes once said.

The most important right is, it would seem, the sixth, which ordains that the man without understanding should follow, and the wise man lead and rule. Nevertheless,

my most sapient Pindar, this is a thing that I, for one, would hardly assert to be against nature, but rather according thereto—the natural rule of law, without force, over willing subjects.

A very just observation.

Heaven's favour and good-luck mark the seventh form of rule, where we bring a man forward for a casting of lots, and declare that if he gains the lot he will most justly be ruler, but if he fails he shall take his place among the ruled.

Very true.

“Seest thou, O legislator,”—it is thus we might playfully address one of those who lightly start on the task of legislation— “how many are the rights pertaining to rulers, and how they are essentially opposed to one another? Herein we have now discovered a source of factions, which thou must remedy. So do thou, in the first place, join with us in enquiring how it came to pass, and owing to what transgression of those rights, that the kings of Argos and Messene brought ruin alike on themselves and on the Hellenic power,

splendid as it was at that epoch. Was it not through ignorance of that most true saying of Hesiod

that 'oftimes the half is greater than the whole'?”

Most true, indeed.

Is it our view, then, that this causes ruin when it is found in kings rather than when found in peoples?

Probably this is, in the main, a disease of kings, in whom luxury breeds pride of life.

Is it not plain that what those kings strove for first was to get the better of the established laws, and that they were not in accord with one another about the pledge which they had approved both by word and by oath; and this discord—reputed to be wisdom, but really, as we affirm, the height of ignorance, owing to its grating dissonance and lack of harmony, brought the whole Greek world to ruin?

It would seem so, certainly.

Very well then: what precaution ought the legislator to have taken at that time in his enactments, to guard against the growth of this disorder? Verily, to perceive that now requires no great sagacity, nor is it a hard thing to declare; but the man who foresaw it in those days—if it could possibly have been foreseen—would have been a wiser man than we.

To what are you alluding?

If one looks at what has happened, Megillus, among you Lacedaemonians, it is easy to perceive, and after perceiving to state, what ought to have been done at that time.

Speak still more clearly.

The clearest statement would be this—

What?

If one neglects the rule of due measure, and gives things too great in power to things too small—sails to ships, food to bodies, offices of rule to souls—then everything is upset, and they run, through excess of insolence, some to bodily disorders, others to that offspring of insolence, injustice.

What, then, is our conclusion? Is it not this? There does not exist, my friends, a mortal soul whose nature, when young and irresponsible, will ever be able to stand being in the highest ruling position upon earth without getting surfeited in mind with that greatest of disorders,

folly, and earning the detestation of its nearest friends; and when this occurs, it speedily ruins the soul itself and annihilates the whole of its power. To guard against this, by perceiving the due measure, is the task of the great lawgiver. So the most duly reasonable conjecture we can now frame as to what took place at that epoch appears to be this—

What?

To begin with, there was a god watching over you; and he, foreseeing the future, restricted within due bounds the royal power by making

your kingly line no longer single but twofold. In the next place, some man,

in whom human nature was blended with power divine, observing your government to be still swollen with fever, blended the self-willed force

of the royal strain with the temperate potency of age, by making the power of the eight-and-twenty elders of equal weight with that of the kings in the greatest matters. Then your “third saviour,”

seeing your government still fretting and fuming, curbed it, as one may say, by the power of the ephors, which was not far removed from government by lot. Thus, in your case, according to this account, owing to its being blended of the right elements and possessed of due measure, the kingship not only survived itself but ensured the survival of all else.

For if the matter had lain with Temenus and Cresphontes

and the lawgivers of their day—whosoever those lawgivers really were,—even the portion of Aristodemus

could never have survived, for they were not fully expert in the art of legislation; otherwise they could hardly have deemed it sufficient to moderate by means of sworn pledges

a youthful soul endowed with power such as might develop into a tyranny; but now God has shown of what kind the government ought to have been then, and ought to be now, if it is to endure. That we should understand this,

after the occurrence, is—as I said before

—no great mark of sagacity, since it is by no means difficult to draw an inference from an example in the past; but if, at the time, there had been anyone who foresaw the result and was able to moderate the ruling powers and unify them,—such a man would have preserved all the grand designs then formed, and no Persian or other armament would ever have set out against Greece, or held us in contempt as a people of small account.

True.

The way they repulsed the Persians, Clinias, was disgraceful. But when I say “disgraceful,” I do not imply that they did not win fine victories both by land and sea in those victorious campaigns: what I call “disgraceful” is this,—that, in the first place, one only of those three States defended Greece, while the other two were so basely corrupt that one of them

actually prevented Lacedaemon from assisting Greece by warring against her with all its might, and Argos, the other,—which stood first of the three in the days of the Dorian settlement—

when summoned to help against the barbarian, paid no heed and gave no help.

Many are the discreditable charges one would have to bring against Greece in relating the events of that war; indeed, it would be wrong to say that Greece defended herself, for had not the bondage that threatened her been warded off by the concerted policy of the Athenians

and Lacedaemonians, practically all the Greek races would have been confused together by now, and barbarians confused with Greeks and Greeks with barbarians,—just as the races under the Persian empire today are either scattered abroad or jumbled together and live in a miserable plight. Such, O Megillus and Clinias, are the charges we have to make against the so-called statesmen and lawgivers, both of the past and of the present, in order that, by investigating their causes, we may discover

what different course ought to have been pursued; just as, in the case before us, we called it a blunder to establish by law a government that is great or unblended, our idea being that a State ought to be free and wise and in friendship with itself, and that the lawgiver should legislate with a view to this. Nor let it surprise us that, while we have often already proposed ends which the legislator should, as we say, aim at in his legislation,

the various ends thus proposed are apparently different. One needs to reflect that wisdom and friendship, when stated to be the aim in view, are not really different aims, but identical and, if we meet with many other such terms, let not this fact disturb us.

We shall endeavor to bear this in mind as we traverse the arguments again. But for the moment, as regards friendship, wisdom and freedom,—tell us,

what was it you intended to say that the lawgiver ought to aim at?

Listen. There are two mother-forms of constitution, so to call them, from which one may truly say all the rest are derived. Of these the one is properly termed monarchy, the other democracy, the extreme case of the former being the Persian polity, and of the latter the Athenian; the rest are practically all, as I said, modifications of these two. Now it is essential for a polity to partake of both these two forms, if it is to have freedom and friendliness combined with wisdom.

And that is what our argument intends to enjoin, when it declares that a State which does not partake of these can never be rightly constituted.

It could not.

Since the one embraced monarchy and the other freedom, unmixed and in excess, neither of them has either in due measure: your Laconian and Cretan States are better in this respect, as were the Athenian and Persian in old times—

in contrast to their present condition. Shall we expound the reasons for this?

By all means—that is if we mean to complete the task we have set ourselves.

Let us attend then. When the Persians, under Cyrus, maintained the due balance between slavery and freedom, they became, first of all, free themselves, and, after that, masters of many others. For when the rulers gave a share of freedom to their subjects and advanced them to a position of equality, the soldiers were more friendly

towards their officers and showed their devotion in times of danger; and if there was any wise man amongst them, able to give counsel, since the king was not jealous but allowed free speech and respected those who could help at all by their counsel,—such a man had the opportunity of contributing to the common stock the fruit of his wisdom. Consequently, at that time all their affairs made progress, owing to their freedom, friendliness and mutual interchange of reason.

Probably that is pretty much the way in which the matters you speak of took place.

How came it, then, that they were ruined in Cambyses' reign, and nearly restored again under Darius? Shall I use a kind of divination to picture this?

Yes that certainly will help us to gain a view of the object of our search.

What I now divine regarding Cyrus is this,—that, although otherwise a good and patriotic commander, he was entirely without a right education, and had paid no attention to household management.

What makes us say this?

Probably he spent all his life from boyhood in soldiering, and entrusted his children to the women folk to rear up; and they brought them up from earliest childhood as though they had already attained to Heaven's favour and felicity, and were lacking in no celestial gift; and so by treating them as the special favorites of Heaven, and forbidding anyone to oppose them, in anything, and compelling everyone to praise their every word and deed, they reared them up into what they were.

A fine rearing, I should say!

Say rather, a womanish rearing by royal women lately grown rich, who, while the men were absent, detained by many dangers and wars, reared up the children.

That sounds reasonable.

And their father, while gaining flocks and sheep and plenty of herds, both of men and of many other chattels,

yet knew not that the children to whom he should bequeath them were without training in their father's craft, which was a hard one, fit to turn out shepherds of great strength, able to camp out in the open and to keep watch and, if need be, to go campaigning. He overlooked the fact that his sons were trained by women and eunuchs and that the indulgence shown them as “Heaven's darlings” had ruined their training, whereby they became

such as they were likely to become when reared with a rearing that “spared the rod.” So when, at the death of Cyrus, his sons took over the kingdom, over-pampered and undisciplined as they were, first, the one killed the other,

through annoyance at his being put on an equality with himself, and presently, being mad with drink and debauchery, he lost his own throne at the hands of the Medes, under the man then called the Eunuch,

who despised the stupidity of Cambyses.

That, certainly, is the story, and probably it is near to

the truth.

Further, the story tells how the kingdom was restored to the Persians through Darius and the Seven.

It does.

Let us follow the story and see how things went.

Darius was not a king's son, nor was he reared luxuriously. When he came and seized the kingdom, with his six companions, he divided it into seven parts, of which some small vestiges remain even to this day;

and he thought good to manage it by enacting laws into which he introduced some measure of political equality, and also incorporated in the law regulations about the tribute-money which Cyrus had promised the Persians, whereby he secured friendliness and fellowship amongst all classes of the Persians, and won over the populace by money and gifts; and because of this, the devotion of his armies won for him as much more land as Cyrus had originally bequeathed. After Darius came Xerxes, and he again was brought up with the luxurious rearing of a royal house: “O Darius”—for it is thus one may rightly address the father—“how is it that you have ignored the blunder of Cyrus,

and have reared up Xerxes in just the same habits of life in which Cyrus reared Cambyses?” And Xerxes, being the product of the same training, ended by repeating almost exactly the misfortunes of Cambyses. Since then there has hardly ever been a single Persian king who was really, as well as nominally, “Great.”

And, as our argument asserts, the cause of this does not lie in luck,

but in the evil life which is usually lived by the sons of excessively rich monarchs; for such an upbringing can never produce either boy or man or greybeard of surpassing goodness. To this, we say, the lawgiver must give heed,—as must we ourselves on the present occasion. It is proper, however, my Lacedaemonian friends, to give your State credit for this at least,—that you assign no different honor or training whatsoever to poverty or wealth, to the commoner or the king,

beyond what your original oracle

declared at the bidding of some god. Nor indeed is it right that pre-eminent honors in a State should be conferred on a man because he is specially wealthy, any more than it is right to confer them because he is swift or comely or strong without any virtue, or with a virtue devoid of temperance.

What do you mean by that, Stranger?

Courage is, presumably, one part of virtue.

Certainly.

Now that you have heard the argument, judge for yourself whether you would welcome as housemate or neighbor a man who is extremely courageous, but licentious rather than temperate.

Don't suggest such a thing!

Well then,—a man wise in arts and crafts, but unjust.

Certainly not.

But justice, surely, is not bred apart from temperance.

Impossible.

Nor is he whom we recently proposed

as our type of wisdom,—the man who has his feelings of pleasure and pain in accord with the dictates of right reason and obedient thereto.

No, indeed.

Here is a further point we must consider, in order to judge about the conferment of honors in States, when they are right and when wrong.

What point?

If temperance existed alone in a man's soul, divorced from all the rest of virtue, would it justly be held in honor or the reverse?

I cannot tell what reply to make.

Yet, in truth, you have made a reply, and a reasonable one. For if you had declared for either of the alternatives in my question, you would have said what is, to my mind, quite out of tune.

So it has turned out to be all right.

Very good. Accordingly, the additional element in objects deserving of honor

or dishonor will be one that demands not speech so much as a kind of speechless silence.

I suppose you mean temperance.

Yes. And of the rest, that which, with the addition of temperance, benefits us most would best deserve to be held in the highest honor, and the second in degree of benefit put second in order of honor; and so with each of the others in succession—to each it will be proper to assign the honor due to its rank.

Just so.

Well then, shall we not declare that the distribution of these things is the lawgiver's task?

Certainly.

Is it your wish that we should hand over the whole distribution to him, to deal with every case and all the details, while we—as legal enthusiasts ourselves also—confine ourselves to making a threefold division, and endeavor to distinguish what comes first in importance, and what second and third?

By all means.

We declare, then, that a State which is to endure,

and to be as happy as it is possible for man to be, must of necessity dispense honors rightly. And the right way is this: it shall be laid down that the goods of the soul are highest in honor and come first, provided that the soul possesses temperance; second come the good and fair things of the body; and third the so-called goods of substance and property. And if any law-giver or State transgresses these rules, either by promoting wealth to honors, or by raising one of the lower goods

to a higher rank by means of honors, he will be guilty of a breach both of religion and of statesmanship. Shall this be our declaration, or what?

By all means let us declare this plainly.

It was our investigation of the polity of the Persians that caused us to discuss these matters at greater length. We find that they grew still worse, the reason being, as we say, that by robbing the commons unduly of their liberty and introducing despotism in excess, they destroyed

in the State the bonds of friendliness and fellowship. And when these are destroyed, the policy of the rulers no longer consults for the good of the subjects and the commons, but solely for the maintenance of their own power; if they think that it will profit them in the least degree, they are ready at any time to overturn States and to overturn and burn up friendly nations; and thus they both hate and are hated with a fierce and ruthless hatred. And when they come to need the commons, to fight in their support, they find in them no patriotism

or readiness to endanger their lives in battle; so that, although they possess countless myriads of men, they are all useless for war, and they hire soldiers from abroad as though they were short of men, and imagine that their safety will be secured by hirelings and aliens. And besides all this,

they inevitably display their ignorance, inasmuch as by their acts they declare that the things reputed to be honorable and noble in a State are never anything but dross compared to silver and gold.

Very true.

So let this be the conclusion of our account of the Persian empire, and how its present evil administration is due to excess of slavery and of despotism.

By all means.

We ought to examine next, in like manner, the Attic polity, and show how complete liberty, unfettered by any authority, is vastly inferior to a moderate form of government under elected magistrates.

At the time when the Persians made their onslaught upon the Greeks—and indeed one might say on nearly all the nations of Europe—we Athenians had an ancient constitution,

and magistrates based on a fourfold grading; and we had Reverence, which acted as a kind of queen, causing us to live as the willing slaves of the existing laws. Moreover, the vastness of the Persian armament that threatened us both by sea and land, by the desperate fear it inspired, bound us still more closely in the bonds of slavery

to our rulers and our laws; and because of all this, our mutual friendliness and patriotism was greatly intensified. It was just about ten years before the seafight at Salamis that the Persian force arrived under Datis, whom Darius had despatched expressly against the Athenians and Eretrians, with orders to bring them back in chains, and with the warning that death would be the penalty of failure. So within a very short time

Datis, with his many myriads, captured by force the whole of the Eretrians; and to Athens he sent on an alarming account of how not a man of the Eretrians had escaped him: the soldiers of Datis had joined hands and swept the whole of Eretria clean as with a draw-net. This account—whether true, or whatever its origin—struck terror into the Greeks generally, and especially the Athenians; but when they sent out embassies in every direction to seek aid, all refused,

except the Lacedaemonians; and they were hindered by the war they were then waging against Messene, and possibly by other obstacles, about which we have no information, with the result that they arrived too late by one single day for the battle which took place at Marathon. After this, endless threats and stories of huge preparations kept arriving from the Persian king. Then, as time went on, news came that Darius was dead, and that his son, who had succeeded to the throne, was a young hothead, and still keen on the projected expedition.

The Athenians imagined that all these preparations were aimed against them because of the affair at Marathon; and when they heard of how the canal had been made through Athos, and the bridge thrown over the Hellespont, and were told of the vast number of vessels in the Persian flotilla, then they felt that there was no salvation for them by land, nor yet by sea. By land they had no hopes that anyone would come to their aid; for they remembered how, on the first arrival of the Persians and their subjugation of Eretria, nobody helped them or

ventured to join in the fight with them; and so they expected that the same thing would happen again on this occasion. By sea, too, they saw no hope of safety, with more than a thousand war-ships bearing down against them. One solitary hope of safety did they perceive—a slight one, it is true, and a desperate, yet the only hope—and it they derived from the events of the past, when victory in battle appeared to spring out of a desperate situation; and buoyed up by this hope, they discovered that they must rely for refuge on themselves only and on the gods.

So all this created in them a state of friendliness one towards another—both the fear which then possessed them, and that begotten of the past, which they had acquired by their subjection to the former laws—the fear to which, in our previous discussions,

we have often given the name of “reverence,” saying that a man must be subject to this if he is to be good (though the coward is unfettered and unaffrighted by it). Unless this fear had then seized upon our people, they would never have united in self-defence, nor would they have defended their temples and tombs and fatherland, and their relatives and friends as well,

in the way in which they then came to the rescue; but we would all have been broken up at that time and dispersed one by one in all directions.

What you say, Stranger, is perfectly true, and worthy of your country as well as of yourself.

That is so, Megillus: it is proper to mention the events of that period to you, since you share in the native character of your ancestors. But both you and Clinias must now consider whether what we are saying is

at all pertinent to our law-making; for my narrative is not related for its own sake, but for the sake of the law-making I speak of. Just reflect: seeing that we Athenians suffered practically the same fate as the Persians—they through reducing their people to the extreme of slavery, we, on the contrary, by urging on our populace to the extreme of liberty—what are we to say was the sequel, if our earlier statements have been at all nearly correct?

Well said! Try, however, to make your meaning still more clear to us.

I will. Under the old laws, my friends, our commons had no control over anything, but were, so to say, voluntary slaves to the laws.

What laws do you mean?

Those dealing with the music of that age, in the first place,—to describe from its commencement how the life of excessive liberty grew up. Among us, at that time, music was divided into various classes and styles:

one class of song was that of prayers to the gods, which bore the name of “hymns”; contrasted with this was another class, best called “dirges”; “paeans” formed another; and yet another was the “dithyramb,” named, I fancy, after Dionysus. “Nomes” also were so called as being a distinct class of song; and these were further described as “citharoedic nomes.”

So these and other kinds being classified and fixed, it was forbidden to set one kind of words to a different class of tune.

The authority whose duty it was to know these regulations, and, when known, to apply them in its judgments and to penalize the disobedient, was not a pipe nor, as now, the mob's unmusical shoutings, nor yet the clappings which mark applause: in place of this, it was a rule made by those in control of education that they themselves should listen throughout in silence, while the children and their ushers and the general crowd were kept in order by the discipline of the rod.

In the matter of music the populace willingly submitted to orderly control and abstained from outrageously judging by clamor; but later on, with the progress of time, there arose as leaders of unmusical illegality poets who, though by nature poetical, were ignorant of what was just and lawful in music; and they, being frenzied and unduly possessed by a spirit of pleasure, mixed dirges with hymns and paeans with dithyrambs, and imitated flute-tunes with harp-tunes, and blended every kind of music with every other;

and thus, through their folly, they unwittingly bore false witness against music, as a thing without any standard of correctness, of which the best criterion is the pleasure of the auditor, be he a good man or a bad.

By compositions of such a character, set to similar words, they bred in the populace a spirit of lawlessness in regard to music, and the effrontery of supposing themselves capable of passing judgment on it. Hence the theater-goers became noisy

instead of silent, as though they knew the difference between good and bad music, and in place of an aristocracy in music there sprang up a kind of base theatrocracy.

For if in music, and music only, there had arisen a democracy of free men, such a result would not have been so very alarming; but as it was, the universal conceit of universal wisdom and the contempt for law originated in the music, and on the heels of these came liberty. For, thinking themselves knowing, men became fearless; and audacity begat effrontery. For to be fearless

of the opinion of a better man, owing to self-confidence, is nothing else than base effrontery; and it is brought about by a liberty that is audacious to excess.

Most true.

Next after this form of liberty would come that which refuses to be subject to the rulers;

and, following on that, the shirking of submission to one's parents and elders and their admonitions; then, as the penultimate stage, comes the effort to disregard the laws; while the last stage of all is to lose all respect for oaths or pledges or divinities,—wherein men display and reproduce the character of the Titans of story,

who are said to have reverted to their original state, dragging out a painful existence with never any rest from woe. What, again, is our object in saying all this? Evidently, I must, every time, rein in my discourse, like a horse, and not let it run away with me as though it had no bridle

in its mouth, and so “get a toss off the donkey”

(as the saying goes): consequently, I must once more repeat my question, and ask—“With what object has all this been said?”

Very good.

What has now been said bears on the objects previously stated.

What were they?

We said

that the lawgiver must aim, in his legislation, at three objectives—to make the State he is legislating for free, and at unity with itself, and possessed of sense. That was so, was it not?

Certainly.

With these objects in view, we selected the most despotic of polities and the most absolutely free, and are now enquiring which of these is rightly constituted. When we took a moderate example of each—of despotic rule on the one hand, and liberty on the other,—we observed that there they enjoyed prosperity in the highest degree but when they advanced, the one to the extreme of slavery, the other to the extreme of liberty, then there was no gain to either the one or the other.

Most true.

With the same objects in view we surveyed,

also, the settling of the Doric host and the homes of Dardanus at the foot of the hills and the colony by the sea and the first men who survived the Flood, together with our previous discourses

concerning music and revelry, as well as all that preceded these. The object of all these discourses was to discover how best

a State might be managed, and how best the individual citizen might pass his life. But as to the value of our conclusions, what test can we apply in conversing among ourselves, O Megillus and Clinias?

I think, Stranger, that I can perceive one. It is a piece of good luck for me that we have dealt with all these matters in our discourse. For I myself have now come nearly to the point when I shall need them, and my meeting with you and Megillus here was quite opportune. I will make no secret to you of what has befallen me;

nay, more, I count it to be a sign from Heaven. The most part of Crete is undertaking to found a colony, and it has given charge of the undertaking to the Cnosians, and the city of Cnosus has entrusted it to me and nine others. We are bidden also to frame laws, choosing such as we please either from our own local laws or from those of other countries, taking no exception to their alien character, provided only that they seem superior. Let us, then, grant this favour to me, and yourselves also;

let us select from the statements we have made, and build up by arguments the framework of a State, as though we were erecting it from the foundation. In this way we shall be at once investigating our theme, and possibly I may also make use of our framework for the State that is to be formed.

Your proclamation, Clinias, is certainly not a proclamation of war! So, if Megillus has no objection, you may count on me to do all I can to gratify your wish.

It is good to hear that.

And you can count on me too.

Splendid of you both! But, in the first place, let us try to found the State by word.

Come now, what is this State going to be, shall we suppose I am not asking for its present name or the name it will have to go by in the future; for this might be derived from the conditions of its settlement, or from some locality, or a river or spring or some local deity might bestow its sacred title

on the new State. The point of my question about it is rather this,—is it to be an inland State, or situated on the sea-coast?

The State which I mentioned just now, Stranger, lies about eighty stades, roughly speaking, from the sea.

Well, has it harbors on the sea-board side, or is it quite without harbors?

It has excellent harbors on that side, Stranger, none better.

Dear me! how unfortunate!

But what of the surrounding country? Is it productive in all respects, or deficient in some products?

There is practically nothing that it is deficient in.

Will there be any State bordering close on it?

None at all, and that is the reason for settling it. Owing to emigration from this district long ago, the country has lain desolate for ever so long.

How about plains, mountains and forests? What extent of each of these does it contain?

As a whole, it resembles in character the rest of Crete.

You would call it hilly rather than level?

Certainly.

Then it would not be incurably unfit for the acquisition of virtue. For if the State was to be on the sea-coast, and to have fine harbors, and to be deficient in many products, instead of productive of everything,—in that case it would need a mighty savior and divine lawgivers, if, with such a character, it was to avoid having a variety of luxurious and depraved habits.

As things are, however, there is consolation in the fact of that eighty stades. Still, it lies unduly near the sea, and the more so because, as you say, its harbors are good; that, however, we must make the best of.

For the sea is, in very truth, “a right briny and bitter neighbor,”

although there is sweetness in its proximity for the uses of daily life; for by filling the markets of the city with foreign merchandise and retail trading, and breeding in men's souls knavish and tricky ways, it renders the city faithless and loveless, not to itself only, but to the rest of the world as well. But in this respect

our State has compensation in the fact that it is all-productive; and since it is hilly, it cannot be highly productive as well as all-productive; if it were, and supplied many exports, it would be flooded in return with gold and silver money—the one condition of all, perhaps, that is most fatal, in a State, to the acquisition of noble and just habits of life,—as we said, if you remember, in our previous discourse.

We remember, and we endorse what you said both then and now.

Well, then, how is our district off for timber for ship-building?

There is no fir to speak of, nor pine, and but little cypress; nor could one find much larch or plane, which shipwrights are always obliged to use for the interior fittings of ships.

Those, two, are natural features which would not be bad for the country.

Why so?

That a State should not find it easy to copy its enemies in bad habits is a good thing.

To which of our statements does this observation allude?

My dear Sir, keep a watch on me, with an eye cast back on our opening

statement about the Cretan laws. It asserted that those laws aimed at one single object; and whereas you declared that this object was military strength, I made the rejoinder that, while it was right that such enactments should have virtue for their aim, I did not at all approve of that aim being restricted to a part, instead of applying to the whole.

So do you now, in turn, keep a watch on my present lawmaking, as you follow it, in case I should enact any law either not tending to virtue at all, or tending only to a part of it. For I lay it down as an axiom that no law is rightly enacted which does not aim always, like an archer, at that object, and that alone, which is constantly

accompanied by something ever-beautiful,—passing over every other object, be it wealth or anything else of the kind that is devoid of beauty. To illustrate how the evil imitation of enemies, which I spoke of, comes about, when people dwell by the sea and are vexed by enemies, I will give you an example (though with no wish, of course, to recall to you painful memories). When Minos, once upon a time, reduced the people of Attica

to a grievous payment of tribute, he was very powerful by sea, whereas they possessed no warships at that time such as they have now, nor was their country so rich in timber that they could easily supply themselves with a naval force. Hence they were unable quickly to copy the naval methods of their enemies and drive them off by becoming sailors themselves. And indeed it would have profited them to lose seventy times seven children

rather than to become marines instead of staunch foot-soldiers; for marines are habituated to jumping ashore frequently and running back at full speed to their ships, and they think no shame of not dying boldly at their posts when the enemy attack; and excuses are readily made for them, as a matter of course, when they fling away their arms and betake themselves to what they describe as “no dishonorable flight.” These “exploits” are the usual result of employing naval soldiery, and they merit, not “infinite praise,” but precisely the opposite;

for one ought never to habituate men to base habits, and least of all the noblest section of the citizens. That such an institution is not a noble one might have been learnt even from Homer. For he makes Odysseus abuse Agamemnon for ordering the Achaeans to haul down their ships to the sea, when they were being pressed in fight by the Trojans; and in his wrath he speaks thus:—

“Dost bid our people hale their fair-benched ships Seaward, when war and shouting close us round? So shall the Trojans see their prayers fulfilled, And so on us shall sheer destruction fall! For, when the ships are seaward drawn, no more Will our Achaeans hold the battle up, But, backward glancing, they will quit the fray:”

“Thus baneful counsel such as thine will prove.” So Homer, too, was aware of the fact that triremes lined up in the sea alongside of infantry fighting on land are a bad thing: why, even lions, if they had habits such as these, would grow used to running away from does! Moreover, States dependent upon navies for their power give honors, as rewards for their safety, to a section of their forces that is not the finest; for they owe their safety to the arts of the pilot, the captain and the rower—

men of all kinds and not too respectable,—so that it would be impossible to assign the honors to each of them rightly. Yet, without rectitude in this, how can it still be right with a State?

It is well-nigh impossible. None the less, Stranger, it was the sea-fight at Salamis, fought by the Greeks against the barbarians, which, as we Cretans at least affirm, saved Greece.

Yes, that is what is said by most of the Greeks and barbarians.

But we—that is, I myself and our friend Megillus—affirm that it was the land-battle of Marathon which began the salvation of Greece, and that of Plataea which completed it; and we affirm also that, whereas these battles made the Greeks better, the sea-fights made them worse,—if one may use such an expression about battles that helped at that time to save us (for I will let you count Artemisium also as a sea-fight, as well as Salamis). Since, however,

our present object is political excellence, it is the natural character of a country and its legal arrangements that we are considering; so that we differ from most people in not regarding mere safety and existence as the most precious thing men can possess, but rather the gaining of all possible goodness and the keeping of it throughout life. This too, I believe, was stated by us before.

It was.

Then let us consider only this,—whether we are traversing by the same road which we took then, as being the best for states in the matter of settlements and modes of legislation.

The best by far.

In the next place tell me this: who are the people that are to be settled? Will they comprise all that wish to go from any part of Crete, supposing that there has grown up in every city a surplus population too great for the country's food supply? For you are not; I presume, collecting all who wish to go from Greece; although I do, indeed, see in your country settlers from Argos, Aegina,

and other parts of Greece. So tell us now from what quarters the present expedition of citizens is likely to be drawn.

It will probably be from the whole of Crete and of the rest of the Greeks, they seem most ready to admit people from the Peloponnese as fellow-settlers. For it is quite true, as you said just now, that we have some here from Argos, amongst them being the most famous of our clans, the Gortynian, which is a colony from Gortys, in the Peloponnese.

It would not be equally easy for States to conduct settlements in other cases as in those when, like a swarm of bees, a single clan goes out from a single country and settles, as a friend coming from friends, being either squeezed out by lack of room or forced by some other such pressing need. At times, too, the violence of civil strife might compel a whole section of a State to emigrate; and on one occasion an entire State went into exile, when it was totally crushed by an overpowering attack.

All such cases are in one way easier to manage, as regards settling and legislation, but in another way harder. In the case where the race is one, with the same language and laws, this unity makes for friendliness, since it shares also in sacred rites and all matters of religion; but such a body does not easily tolerate laws or polities which differ from those of its homeland. Again, where such a body has seceded owing to civil strife due to the badness of the laws, but still strives to retain, owing to long habit, the very customs which caused its former ruin, then, because of this, it proves a difficult and intractable subject for the person who has control of its settlement and its laws.

On the other hand, the clan that is formed by fusion of various elements would perhaps be more ready to submit to new laws, but to cause it to share in one spirit and pant (as they say) in unison like a team of horses would be a lengthy task and most difficult. But in truth legislation and the settlement of States are tasks that require men perfect above all other men in goodness.

Very probably; but tell us still more clearly the purport of these observations.

My good Sir, in returning to the subject of lawgivers in our investigation, I may probably have to cast a slur on them; but if what I say is to the point, then there will be no harm in it. Yet why should I vex myself? For practically all human affairs seem to be in this same plight.

What is it you refer to?

I was on the point of saying that no man ever makes laws,

but chances and accidents of all kinds, occurring in all sorts of ways, make all our laws for us. For either it is a war that violently upsets polities and changes laws, or it is the distress due to grievous poverty. Diseases, too, often force on revolutions, owing to the inroads of pestilences and recurring bad seasons prolonged over many years. Foreseeing all this, one might deem it proper to say—as I said just now—that no mortal man frames any law,

but human affairs are nearly all matters of pure chance. But the fact is that, although one may appear to be quite right in saying this about sea-faring and the arts of the pilot, the physician, and the general, yet there really is something else that we may say with equal truth about these same things.

What is that?

That God controls all that is, and that Chance and Occasion co-operate with God in the control of all human affairs. It is, however, less harsh to admit that these two must be accompanied by a third factor, which is Art. For that the pilots' art

should cooperate with Occasion—verily I, for one, should esteem that a great advantage. Is it not so?

It is.

Then we must grant that this is equally true in the other cases also, by parity of reasoning, including the case of legislation. When all the other conditions are present which a country needs to possess in the way of fortune if it is ever to be happily settled, then every such State needs to meet with a lawgiver who holds fast to truth.

Very true.

Would not, then, the man who possessed art in regard to each of the crafts mentioned be able to pray aright for that condition which, if it were given by Chance, would need only the supplement of his own art?

Certainly.

And if all the other craftsmen mentioned just now were bidden to state the object of their prayers, they could do so, could they not?

Of course.

And the lawgiver, I suppose, could do likewise?

I suppose so.

“Come now, O lawgiver,” let us say to him, “what are we to give you, and what condition of State, to enable you, when you receive it, thence-forward to manage the State by yourself satisfactorily?”

What is the next thing that can rightly be said?

You mean, do you not, on the side of the lawgiver?

Yes.

This is what he will say: “Give me the State under a monarchy;

and let the monarch be young, and possessed by nature of a good memory, quick intelligence, courage and nobility of manner; and let that quality, which we formerly mentioned

as the necessary accompaniment of all the parts of virtue, attend now also

on our monarch's soul, if the rest of his qualities are to be of any value.”

Temperance, as I think, Megillus, is what the Stranger indicates as the necessary accompaniment. Is it not?

Yes, Clinias; temperance, that is, of the ordinary kind

not the kind men mean when they use academic language and identify temperance with wisdom, but that kind which by natural instinct springs up at birth in children and animals, so that some are not incontinent, others continent, in respect of pleasures; and of this we said

that, when isolated from the numerous so-called “goods,” it was of no account. You understand, of course, what I mean.

Certainly.

Let our monarch, then, possess this natural quality in addition to the other qualities mentioned, if the State is to acquire in the quickest and best way possible the constitution it needs for the happiest kind of life. For there does not exist, nor could there ever arise, a quicker and better form of constitution than this.

How and by what argument, Stranger, could one convince oneself that to say this is to speak the truth?

It is quite easy to perceive at least this, Clinias, that the facts stand by nature's ordinance in the way described.

In what way do you mean? On condition, do you say, that there should be a monarch who was young, temperate, quick at learning, with a good memory, brave and of a noble manner?

Add also “fortunate,”—not in other respects, but only in this, that in his time there should arise a praiseworthy lawgiver, and that, by a piece of good fortune,

the two of them should meet; for if this were so, then God would have done nearly everything that he does when he desires that a State should be eminently prosperous. The second best condition is that there should arise two such rulers; then comes the third best, with three rulers; and so on, the difficulty increasing in proportion as the number becomes greater, and vice versa.

You mean, apparently, that the best State would arise from a monarchy, when it has a first-rate lawgiver and a virtuous monarch, and these are the conditions under which the change into such a State could be effected most easily and quickly; and, next to this, from an oligarchy—

or what is it you mean?

Not at all: the easiest step is from a monarchy, the next easiest from a monarchic constitution, the third from some form of democracy. An oligarchy, which comes fourth in order, would admit of the growth of the best State only with the greatest difficulty, since it has the largest number of rulers. What I say is that the change takes place when nature supplies a true lawgiver, and when it happens that his policy is shared by the most powerful persons in the State;

and wherever the State authorities are at once strongest and fewest in number, then and there the changes are usually carried out with speed and facility.

How so? We do not understand.

Yet surely it has been stated not once, I imagine, but many times over. But you, very likely, have never so much as set eyes on a monarchical State.

No, nor have I any craving for such a sight.

You would, however, see in it an illustration of what we spoke of just now.

What was that?

The fact that a monarch, when he decides to change the moral habits of a State, needs no great efforts nor a vast length of time, but what he does need is to lead the way himself first along the desired path, whether it be to urge the citizens towards virtue's practices or the contrary; by his personal example he should first trace out the right lines, giving praise and honor to these things,

blame to those, and degrading the disobedient according to their several deeds.

Yes, we may perhaps suppose that the rest of the citizens will quickly follow the ruler who adopts such a combination of persuasion and force.

Let none, my friends, persuade us that a State could ever change its laws more quickly or more easily by any other way than by the personal guidance of the rulers: no such thing could ever occur, either now or hereafter. Indeed, that is not the result which we find it difficult or impossible

to bring about; what is difficult to bring about is rather that result which has taken place but rarely throughout long ages, and which, whenever it does take place in a State, produces in that State countless blessings of every kind.

What result do you mean?

Whenever a heaven-sent desire for temperate and just institutions arises in those who hold high positions,—whether as monarchs, or because of conspicuous eminence

of wealth or birth, or, haply, as displaying the character of Nestor, of whom it is said that, while he surpassed all men in the force of his eloquence, still more did he surpass them in temperance. That was, as they say, in the Trojan age, certainly not in our time; still, if any such man existed, or shall exist, or exists among us now, blessed is the life he leads, and blessed are they who join in listening to the words of temperance that proceed out of his mouth. So likewise of power in general, the same rule holds good:

whenever the greatest power coincides in man with wisdom and temperance, then the germ of the best polity is planted;

but in no other way will it ever come about. Regard this as a myth oracularly uttered, and let us take it as proved that the rise of a well-governed State is in one way difficult, but in another way—given, that is, the condition we mention—it is easier by far and quicker than anything else.

No doubt.

Let us apply the oracle to your State, and so try, like greybeard boys, to model its laws by our discourse.

Yes, let us proceed, and delay no longer.

Let us invoke the presence of the God at the establishment of the State; and may he hearken, and hearkening may he come, propitious and kindly to us-ward, to help us in the fashioning of the State and its laws.

Yes, may he come!

Well, what form of polity is it that we intend to impose

upon the State?

What, in particular, do you refer to? Explain still more clearly. I mean, is it a democracy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy? For certainly you cannot mean a tyranny: that we can never suppose.

Come now, which of you two would like to answer me first and tell me to which of these kinds his own polity at home belongs?

Is it not proper that I, as the elder, should answer first?

No doubt.

In truth, Stranger, when I reflect on the Lacedaemonian polity, I am at a loss to tell you by what name one should describe it. It seems to me to resemble a tyranny, since the board of ephors it contains is a marvellously tyrannical feature; yet sometimes it strikes me as, of all States, the nearest to a democracy. Still, it would be totally absurd to deny that it is an aristocracy;

while it includes, moreover, a life monarchy, and that the most ancient of monarchies, as is affirmed, not only by ourselves, but by all the world. But now that I am questioned thus suddenly, I am really, as I said, at a loss to say definitely to which of these polities it belongs.

And I, Megillus, find myself equally perplexed; for I find it very difficult to affirm that our Cnosian polity is any one of these.

Yes, my good Sirs; for you do, in fact, partake in a number of polities. But those we named just now are not polities, but arrangements of States which rule or serve

parts of themselves, and each is named after the ruling power. But if the State ought to be named after any such thing, the name it should have borne is that of the God who is the true ruler of rational men.

Who is that God?

May we, then, do a little more story-telling, if we are to answer this question suitably?

Should we not do so?

We should. Long ages before even those cities existed

whose formation we have described above, there existed in the time of Cronos, it is said, a most prosperous government and settlement, on which the best of the States now existing is modelled.

Evidently it is most important to hear about it.

I, for one, think so; and that is why I have introduced the mention of it.

You were perfectly right to do so; and, since your story

is pertinent, you will be quite right in going on with it to the end.

I must do as you say. Well, then, tradition tells us how blissful was the life of men in that age, furnished with everything in abundance, and of spontaneous growth. And the cause thereof is said to have been this: Cronos was aware of the fact that no human being (as we have explained

) is capable of having irresponsible control of all human affairs without becoming filled with pride and injustice; so, pondering this fact, he then appointed as kings

and rulers for our cities, not men, but beings of a race that was nobler and more divine, namely, daemons. He acted just as we now do in the case of sheep and herds of tame animals: we do not set oxen as rulers over oxen, or goats over goats, but we, who are of a nobler race, ourselves rule over them. In like manner the God, in his love for humanity, set over us at that time the nobler race of daemons who, with much comfort to themselves and much to us, took charge of us and furnished peace

and modesty and orderliness and justice without stint, and thus made the tribes of men free from feud and happy. And even today this tale has a truth to tell, namely, that wherever a State has a mortal, and no god, for ruler, there the people have no rest from ills and toils; and it deems that we ought by every means to imitate the life of the age of Cronos, as tradition paints it, and order both

our homes and our States in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving to reason's ordering the name of “law.”

But if an individual man or an oligarchy or a democracy, possessed of a soul which strives after pleasures and lusts and seeks to surfeit itself therewith, having no continence and being the victim of a plague that is endless and insatiate of evil,— if such an one shall rule over a State or an individual by trampling on the laws, then there is (as I said just now)

no means of salvation. This, then, is the statement, Clinias, which we have to examine, to see whether we believe it, or what we are to do.

We must, of course, believe it.

Are you aware that, according to some, there are as many kinds of laws as there are kinds of constitutions? And how many constitutions are commonly recognized we have recently recounted.

Please do not suppose that the problem now raised is one of small importance; rather it is of the highest importance. For we are again

faced with the problem as to what ought to be the aim of justice and injustice. The assertion of the people I refer to is this,—

that the laws ought not to aim either at war or at goodness in general, but ought to have regard to the benefit of the established polity, whatever it may be, so that it may keep in power forever and never be dissolved; and that the natural definition of justice is best stated in this way.

In what way?

That justice is “what benefits the stronger.”

.

Explain yourself more clearly.

This is how it is:—the laws (they say) in a State are always enacted by the stronger power? Is it not so?

That is quite true.

Do you suppose, then (so they argue), that a democracy

or any other government—even a tyrant—if it has gained the mastery, will of its own accord set up laws with any other primary aim than that of securing the permanence of its own authority?

Certainly not.

Then the lawgiver will style these enactments “justice,” and will punish every transgressor as guilty of injustice.

That is certainly probable.

So these enactments will thus and herein always constitute justice.

That is, at any rate, what the argument asserts.

Yes, for this is one of those “agreed claims” concerning government.

What “claims”?

Those which we dealt with before,—claims as to who should govern whom. It was shown that parents should govern children, the older the younger, the high-born the low-born, and (if you remember) there were many other claims, some of which were conflicting. The claim before us is one of these, and we said that

—to quote Pindar—“the law marches with nature

when it justifies the right of might.”

Yes, that is what was said then.

Consider now, to which class of men should we entrust our State. For the condition referred to is one that has already occurred in States thousands of times.

What condition?

Where offices of rule are open to contest, the victors in the contest monopolize power in the State so completely that they offer not the smallest share in office to the vanquished party or their descendants; and each party keeps a watchful eye on the other,

lest anyone should come into office and, in revenge for the former troubles, cause a rising against them. Such polities we, of course, deny to be polities, just as we deny that laws are true laws unless they are enacted in the interest of the common weal of the whole State. But where the laws are enacted in the interest of a section, we call them feudalities

rather than polities; and the “justice” they ascribe to such laws is, we say, an empty name. Our reason for saying this is that in your State we shall assign office to a man, not because he is wealthy,

nor because he possesses any other quality of the kind—such as strength or size or birth; but the ministration of the laws must be assigned, as we assert, to that man who is most obedient to the laws and wins the victory for obedience in the State,—the highest office to the first, the next to him that shows the second degree of mastery, and the rest must similarly be assigned, each in succession, to those that come next in order. And those who are termed “magistrates” I have now called “ministers”

of the laws, not for the sake of coining a new phrase,

but in the belief that salvation, or ruin, for a State hangs upon nothing so much as this. For wherever in a State the law is subservient and impotent, over that State I see ruin impending; but wherever the law is lord over the magistrates, and the magistrates are servants to the law, there I descry salvation and all the blessings that the gods bestow on States.

Aye, by Heaven, Stranger; for, as befits your age, you have keen sight.

Yes; for a man's vision of such objects is at its dullest

when he is young, but at its keenest when he is old.

Very true.

What, then, is to be our next step? May we not assume that our immigrants have arrived and are in the country, and should we not proceed with our address to them?

Of course.

Let us, then, speak to them thus:—“O men, that God who, as old tradition

tells, holdeth the beginning, the end, and the center of all things that exist,

completeth his circuit by nature's ordinance in straight, unswerving course. With him followeth Justice, as avenger of them that fall short of the divine law; and she, again, is followed by every man who would fain be happy, cleaving to her with lowly and orderly behavior; but whoso is uplifted by vainglory, or prideth himself on his riches or his honors or his comeliness of body, and through this pride joined to youth and folly, is inflamed in soul with insolence, dreaming that he has no need of ruler or guide, but rather is competent himself to guide others,—

such an one is abandoned and left behind by the God, and when left behind he taketh to him others of like nature, and by his mad prancings throweth all into confusion: to many, indeed, he seemeth to be some great one, but after no long time he payeth the penalty, not unmerited, to Justice, when he bringeth to total ruin himself, his house, and his country. Looking at these things, thus ordained, what ought the prudent man to do, or to devise, or to refrain from doing?”

The answer is plain: Every man ought so to devise as to be of the number of those who follow in the steps of the God.

What conduct, then, is dear to God and in his steps? One kind of conduct, expressed in one ancient phrase,

namely, that “like is dear to like” when it is moderate, whereas immoderate things are dear neither to one another nor to things moderate. In our eyes God will be “the measure of all things” in the highest degree—a degree much higher than is any “man” they talk of.

He, then, that is to become dear to such an one must needs become, so far as he possibly can, of a like character; and, according to the present argument, he amongst us that is temperate is dear to God,

since he is like him, while he that is not temperate is unlike and at enmity,—as is also he who is unjust, and so likewise with the rest, by parity of reasoning. On this there follows, let us observe, this further rule,—and of all rules it is the noblest and truest,—that to engage in sacrifice and communion with the gods continually, by prayers and offerings and devotions of every kind, is a thing most noble and good and helpful towards the happy life, and superlatively fitting also, for the good man;

but for the wicked, the very opposite. For the wicked man is unclean of soul, whereas the good man is clean; and from him that is defiled no good man, nor god, can ever rightly receive gifts.

Therefore all the great labor that impious men spend upon the gods is in vain, but that of the pious is most profitable to them all. Here, then, is the mark at which we must aim; but as to shafts we should shoot, and (so to speak) the flight of them,—what kind of shafts, think you, would fly most straight to the mark? First of all, we say, if—after the honors paid to the Olympians and the gods who keep the State—we should assign the Even and the Left as their honors to the gods of the under-world, we would be aiming most straight at the mark of piety—

as also in assigning to the former gods the things superior, the opposites of these.

Next after these gods the wise man will offer worship to the daemons, and after the daemons to the heroes. After these will come private shrines legally dedicated to ancestral deities; and next, honors paid to living parents. For to these duty enjoins that the debtor should pay back the first and greatest of debts, the most primary of all dues, and that he should acknowledge that all that he owns and has belongs to those who begot and reared him,

so that he ought to give them service to the utmost of his power—with substance, with body, and with soul, all three—thus making returns for the loans of care and pain spent on the children by those who suffered on their behalf in bygone years, and recompensing the old in their old age, when they need help most. And throughout all his life he must diligently observe reverence of speech towards his parents above all things,

seeing that for light and winged words there is a most heavy penalty,—for over all such matters Nemesis, messenger of Justice, is appointed to keep watch;

wherefore the son must yield to his parents when they are wroth, and when they give rein to their wrath either by word or deed, he must pardon them, seeing that it is most natural for a father to be especially wroth when he deems that he is wronged by his own son. When parents die, the most modest funeral rites are the best, whereby the son neither exceeds the accustomed pomp, nor falls short of what his forefathers

paid to their sires; and in like manner he should duly bestow the yearly attentions, which ensure honor, on the rites already completed. He should always venerate them, by never failing to provide a continual memorial,

and assigning to the deceased a due share of the means which fortune Provides for expenditure. Every one of us, if we acted thus and observed these rules of life, would win always a due reward from the gods and from all that are mightier than ourselves, and would pass the greatest part of our lives in the enjoyment of hopes of happiness. As regards duties to children, relations, friends and citizens, and those of service done to strangers for Heaven's sake, and of social intercourse with all those classes,—by fulfilling which a man should brighten his own life and order it as the law enjoins,—

the sequel of the laws themselves, partly by persuasion and partly (when men's habits defy persuasion) by forcible and just chastisement, will render our State, with the concurrence of the gods, a blessed State and a prosperous. There are also matters which a lawgiver, if he shares my view, must necessarily regulate, though they are ill-suited for statement in the form of a law; in dealing with these he ought, in my opinion, to produce a sample for his own use and that of those

for whom he is legislating, and, after expounding all other matters as best he can, pass on next to commencing the task of legislation.

What is the special form in which such matters are laid down?

It is by no means easy to embrace them all in a single model of statement (so to speak) but let us conceive of them in some such way as this, in case we may succeed in affirming something definite about them.

Tell us what that “something” is.

I should desire the people to be as docile as possible in the matter of virtue; and this evidently is what the legislator will endeavor to effect in all his legislation.

Assuredly.

I thought the address we have made might prove of some help in making them listen to its monitions with souls not utterly savage, but in a more civil and less hostile mood. So that we may be well content if as I say, it renders the hearer even but a little more docile, because a little less hostile. For there is no great plenty or abundance of persons anxious to become with all speed as good as possible;

the majority, indeed, serve to show how wise Hesiod was when he said, “smooth is the way that leadeth unto wickedness,” and that “no sweat is needed to traverse it,” since it is “passing short,” but (he says)— “In front of goodness the immortal gods Have set the sweat of toil, and thereunto Long is the road and steep, and rough withal”

“The first ascent; but when the crest is won, 'Tis easy travelling, albeit 'twas hard.”

The poet speaks nobly, I should say.

He certainly does. Now I wish to put before you what I take to be the result of the foregoing argument.

Do so.

Let us address the lawgiver and say: “Tell us, O lawgiver: if you knew what we ought

to do and say, is it not obvious that you would state it?”

Inevitably.

“Now did not we hear you saying a little while ago

that the lawgiver should not permit the poets to compose just as they please? For they would not be likely to know what saying of theirs might be contrary to the laws and injurious to the State.”

That is quite true.

Would our address be reasonable, if we were to address him on behalf of the poets

in these terms?—

What terms?

These:—“There is, O lawgiver, an ancient saying—constantly repeated by ourselves and endorsed by everyone else—that whenever a poet is seated on the Muses' tripod, he is not in his senses, but resembles a fountain, which gives free course to the upward rush of water and, since his art consists in imitation, he is compelled often to contradict himself, when he creates characters of contradictory moods; and he knows not which of these contradictory utterances is true. But it is not possible for the lawgiver in his law

thus to compose two statements about a single matter; but he must always publish one single statement about one matter. Take an example from one of your own recent statements.

A funeral may be either excessive or defective or moderate: of these three alternatives you chose one, the moderate, and this you prescribe, after praising it unconditionally. I, on the other hand, if (in my poem) I had a wife of surpassing wealth, and she were to bid me bury her,

would extol the tomb of excessive grandeur; while a poor and stingy man would praise the defective tomb, and the person of moderate means, if a moderate man himself, would praise the same one as you. But you should not merely speak of a thing as moderate, in the way you have now done, but you should explain what 'the moderate' is, and what is its size; otherwise it is too soon for you to propose that such a statement should be made law.”

Exceedingly true.

Should, then, our appointed president of the laws commence his laws with no such prefatory statement,

but declare at once what must be done and what not, and state the penalty which threatens disobedience, and so turn off to another law, without adding to his statutes a single word of encouragement and persuasion? Just as is the way with doctors, one treats us in this fashion, and another in that: they have two different methods, which we may recall, in order that, like children who beg the doctor to treat them by the mildest method, so we may make a like request of the lawgiver. Shall I give an illustration of what I mean? There are men that are doctors, we say, and others that are doctors' assistants; but we call the latter also, to be sure, by the name of “doctors.”

We do.

These, whether they be free-born or slaves, acquire their art under the direction of their masters, by observation and practice and not by the study of nature—which is the way in which the free-born doctors have learnt the art themselves and in which they instruct their own disciples. Would you assert that we have here two classes of what are called “doctors”?

Certainly.

You are also aware that, as the sick folk in the cities comprise both slaves and free men,

the slaves are usually doctored by slaves, who either run round the town or wait in their surgeries; and not one of these doctors either gives or receives any account of the several ailments of the various domestics, but prescribes for each what he deems right from experience, just as though he had exact knowledge, and with the assurance of an autocrat; then up he jumps and off he rushes to another sick domestic, and thus he relieves his master in his attendance on the sick.

But the free-born doctor is mainly engaged in visiting and treating the ailments of free men, and he does so by investigating them from the commencement and according to the course of nature; he talks with the patient himself and with his friends, and thus both learns himself from the sufferers and imparts instruction to them, so far as possible; and he gives no prescription until he has gained the patient's consent, and only then, while securing the patient's continued docility by means of persuasion,

does he attempt to complete the task of restoring him to health. Which of these two methods of doctoring shows the better doctor, or of training, the better trainer? Should the doctor perform one and the same function in two ways, or do it in one way only

and that the worse way of the two and the less humane?

The double method, Stranger, is by far the better.

Do you wish us to examine the double method and the single as applied also to actual legislation?

Most certainly I wish it.

Come, tell me then, in Heaven's name,—what would be the first law to be laid down by the lawgiver? Will he not follow the order of nature, and in his ordinances regulate

first the starting-point of generation in States?

Of course.

Does not the starting-point of generation in all States lie in the union and partnership of marriage?

.

Certainly.

So it seems that, if the marriage laws were the first to be enacted, that would be the right course in every State.

Most assuredly.

Let us state the law in its simple form first: how will it run? Probably like this:—“A man shall marry when he is thirty years old

and under five and thirty;

if he fails to do so, he shall be punished both by a fine in money and by degradation, the fine being of such and such an amount, and the degradation of such and such a kind.” Such shall be the simple form of marriage law. The double form shall be this,—“A man shall marry when he is thirty years old and under thirty-five, bearing in mind that this is the way by which the human race, by nature's ordinance, shares in immortality, a thing for which nature has implanted in everyone a keen desire.

The desire to win glory, instead of lying in a nameless grave, aims at a like object. Thus mankind is by nature coeval with the whole of time, in that it accompanies it continually both now and in the future; and the means by which it is immortal is this:—by leaving behind it children's children and continuing ever one and the same, it thus by reproduction shares in immortality. That a man should deprive himself thereof voluntarily is never an act of holiness; and he who denies himself wife and children is guilty of such intentional deprivation.

He who obeys the law may be dismissed without penalty, but he that disobeys and does not marry when thirty-five years old shall pay a yearly fine of such and such an amount,—lest he imagine that single life brings him gain and ease,—and he shall have no share in the honors which are paid from time to time by the younger men in the State to their seniors.” When one hears and compares this law with the former one,

it is possible to judge in each particular case whether the laws ought to be at least double in length, through combining threats with persuasion, or only single in length, through employing threats alone.

Our Laconian way, Stranger, is to prefer brevity always. But were I bidden to choose which of these two statutes I should desire to have enacted in writing in my State, I should choose the longer;

and what is more, I should make the same choice in the case of every law in which, as in the example before us, these two alternatives were offered. It is necessary, however, that the laws we are now enacting should have the approval of our friend Clinias also; for it is his State which is now proposing to make use of such things.

I highly approve of all you have said, Megillus.

Still, it is extremely foolish to argue about the length or brevity of writings, for what we should value, I suppose, is not their extreme brevity or prolixity,

but their excellence; and in the case of the laws mentioned just now, not only does the one form possess double the value of the other in respect of practical excellence, but the example of the two kinds of doctors, recently mentioned,

presents a very exact analogy. But as regards this, it appears that no legislator has ever yet observed that, while it is in their power to make use in their law-making of two methods,—namely, persuasion and force,—in so far as that is feasible in dealing with the uncultured populace, they actually employ one method only: in their legislation they do not temper compulsion

with persuasion, but use untempered force alone. And I, my dear sirs, perceive still a third requisite which ought to be found in laws, but which is nowhere to be found at present.

What is it you allude to?

A matter which, by a kind of divine direction, has sprung out of the subjects we have now been discussing. It was little more than dawn when we began talking about laws, and now it is high noon, and here we are in this entrancing resting-place; all the time we have been talking of nothing but laws,

yet it is only recently that we have begun, as it seems, to utter laws, and what went before was all simply preludes to laws. What is my object in saying this? It is to explain that all utterances and vocal expressions have preludes and tunings-up (as one might call them), which provide a kind of artistic preparation which assists towards the further development of the subject. Indeed, we have examples before us of preludes, admirably elaborated,

in those prefixed to that class of lyric ode called the “nome,”

and to musical compositions of every description. But for the “nomes” (i.e. laws) which are real nomes—and which we designate “political”—no one has ever yet uttered a prelude, or composed or published one, just as though there were no such thing. But our present conversation proves, in my opinion, that there is such a thing; and it struck me just now that the laws we were then stating are something more than simply double, and consist of these two things combined—law, and prelude to law. The part which we called the “despotic prescription”—

comparing it to the prescriptions of the slave-doctors we mentioned—is unblended law; but the part which precedes this, and which is uttered as persuasive thereof, while it actually is “persuasion,” yet serves also the same purpose as the prelude to an oration.

To ensure that the person to whom the lawgiver addresses the law should accept the prescription quietly—and, because quietly, in a docile spirit,—that, as I supposed, was the evident object with which the speaker uttered all his persuasive discourse.

Hence, according to my argument,

the right term for it would be, not legal “statement,” but “prelude,” and no other word. Having said this, what is the next statement I would desire to make? It is this: that the lawgiver must never omit to furnish preludes, as prefaces both to the laws as a whole and to each individual statute, whereby they shall surpass their original form by as much as the “double” examples recently given surpassed the “single.”

I, for my part, would charge the expert in these matters to legislate thus, and not otherwise.

You are right, I believe, Clinias, in asserting at least thus much,—that all laws have preludes, and that, in commencing each piece of legislation, one ought to preface each enactment with the prelude that naturally belongs to it—for the statement that is to follow the prelude is one of no small importance, and it makes a vast difference whether these statements are distinctly or indistinctly remembered; still, we should be wrong if we prescribed that all statutes, great and small, should be equally provided with preludes.

For neither ought that to be done in the case of songs and speeches of every kind; for they all naturally have preludes, but we cannot employ them always; that is a thing which must be left in each case to the judgment of the actual orator or singer or legislator.

What you say is, I believe, very true. But let us not spend more time, Stranger, in delay, but return to our main subject, and start afresh (if you agree) from the statements you made above—and made not

by way of prelude. Let us, then, repeat from the start the second thoughts that are “best” (to quote the players' proverb), treating them throughout as a prelude, and not, as before, as a chance discourse; and let us handle the opening part as being confessedly a prelude. As to the worship of the gods and the attention to be paid to ancestors, our previous statement

is quite sufficient; it is what comes next to these that you must try to state, until the whole of the prelude has been, in our opinion, adequately set forth by you. After that you will proceed with your statement of the actual laws.

So then the prelude we previously composed concerning the gods and those next to the gods, and concerning parents, living and dead, was, as we now declare, sufficient; and you are now bidding me, I understand, to bring up, as it were, to the light of day the residue of this same subject.

Most certainly.

Well, surely it is both fitting and of the greatest mutual advantage that, next to the matters mentioned, the speaker and his hearers should deal with the question of the degree of zeal or slackness

which men ought to use in respect of their souls, their bodies, and their goods, and should ponder thereon, and thus get a grasp of education as far as possible. Precisely this, then, is the statement which we must actually make and listen to next.

Perfectly right.

Let everyone who has just heard the ordinances concerning gods and dear forefathers now give ear. Of all a man's own belongings, the most divine is his soul, since it is most his own. A man's own belongings are invariably twofold: the stronger and better are the ruling elements, the weaker and worse those that serve; wherefore of one's own belongings one must honor those that rule above those that serve.

Thus it is that in charging men to honor their own souls next after the gods who rule and the secondary divinities, I am giving a right injunction. But there is hardly a man of us all who pays honor rightly, although he fancies he does so; for honor paid to a thing divine is beneficent, whereas nothing that is maleficent confers honor; and he that thinks to magnify his soul by words or gifts or obeisances, while he is improving it no whit in goodness, fancies indeed that he is paying it honor, but in fact does not do so. Every boy, for example, as soon as he has grown to manhood, deems himself capable of learning all things, and supposes that by lauding his soul he honors it,

and by eagerly permitting it to do whatsoever it pleases. But by acting thus, as we now declare, he is not honoring his soul, but injuring it; whereas, we affirm, he ought to pay honor to it next after the gods. Again, when a man counts not himself but others responsible always for his own sins and for the most and greatest evils, and exempts himself always from blame, thereby honoring, as he fancies, his own soul,—then he is far indeed from honoring it,

since he is doing it injury. Again, when a man gives way to pleasures contrary to the counsel and commendation of the lawgiver, he is by no means conferring honor on his soul, but rather dishonor, by loading it with woes and remorse. Again, in the opposite case, when toils, fears, hardships and pains are commended, and a man flinches from them, instead of stoutly enduring them,—then by his flinching he confers no honor on his soul; for by all such actions he renders it dishonored. Again, when a man deems life at any price to be a good thing,

then also he does not honor, but dishonor, to his soul; for he yields to the imagination of his soul that the conditions in Hades are altogether evil, instead of opposing it, by teaching and convincing his soul that, for all it knows, we may find, on the contrary, our greatest blessings in the realm of the gods below. Again, when a man honors beauty above goodness, this is nothing else than a literal and total dishonoring of the soul; for such a statement asserts that the body is more honorable than the soul,—

but falsely, since nothing earth-born is more honorable than the things of heaven, and he that surmises otherwise concerning the soul knows not that in it he possesses, and neglects, a thing most admirable. Again, when a man craves to acquire wealth ignobly, or feels no qualm in so acquiring it,

he does not then by his gifts pay honor to his soul,—far from it, in sooth!—for what is honorable therein and noble he is bartering away for a handful of gold; yet all the gold on earth, or under it, does not equal the price of goodness. To speak shortly:—in respect of the things which the lawgiver enumerates and describes as either, on the one hand, base and evil, or, on the other hand, noble and good, if any man refuses to avoid by every means the one kind, and with all his power to practise the other kind,—such a man knows not that

everyone who acts thus is treating most dishonorably and most disgracefully that most divine of things, his soul. Hardly anyone takes account of the greatest “judgment” (as men call it) upon evil-doing; that greatest judgment is this,—to grow like unto men that are wicked, and, in so growing, to shun good men and good counsels and cut oneself off from them,

but to cleave to the company of the wicked and follow after them; and he that is joined to such men inevitably acts and is acted upon in the way that such men bid one another to act.

Now such a resultant condition is not a “judgment” (for justice and judgment are things honorable) , but a punishment, an infliction that follows on injustice; both he that undergoes this and he that undergoes it not are alike wretched,—the one in that he remains uncured, the other in that he is destroyed in order to secure the salvation of many others.

Thus we declare that honor, speaking generally, consists in following the better, and in doing our utmost to effect the betterment of the worse, when it admits of being bettered. Man has no possession better fitted by nature than the soul for

the avoidance of evil and the tracking and taking of what is best of all, and living in fellowship therewith, when he has taken it, for all his life thereafter. Wherefore the soul is put second

in order of honor; as for the third, everyone would conceive that this place naturally belongs to the honor due to the body. But here again one has to investigate the various forms of honor,—which of them are genuine, which spurious; and this is the lawgiver's task. Now he, as I suppose, declares that the honors are these and of these kinds:—the honorable body is not the fair body nor the strong nor

the swift nor the large, nor yet the body that is sound in health, although this is what many believe; neither is it a body of the opposite kind to any of these; rather those bodies which hold the mean position between all these opposite extremes are by far the most temperate and stable; for while the one extreme makes the souls puffed up and proud, the other makes them lowly and spiritless. The same holds good of the possession of goods and chattels, and they are to be valued on a similar scale. In each case, when they are in excess,

they produce enmities and feuds both in States and privately, while if they are deficient they produce, as a rule, serfdom. And let no man love riches for the sake of his children, in order that he may leave them as wealthy as possible; for that is good neither for them nor for the State. For the young the means that attracts no flatterers, yet is not lacking in things necessary, is the most harmonious of all and the best; for it is in tune with us and in accord, and thus it renders our life in all respects painless.

To his children it behoves a man to bequeath modesty, not money, in abundance. We imagine that chiding the young for their irreverence is the way to bequeath this; but no such result follows from the admonition commonly given nowadays to the young, when people tell them that “youth must reverence everyone.” Rather will the prudent lawgiver admonish the older folk to reverence the young, and above all to beware lest any of them be ever seen or heard by any of the young either doing or saying anything shameful;

for where the old are shameless, there inevitably will also the young be very impudent. The most effective way of training the young—as well as the older people themselves—is not by admonition, but by plainly practising throughout one's own life the admonitions which one gives to others. By paying honor and reverence to his kinsfolk, and all who share in the worship of the tribal gods and are sprung from the same blood, a man will, in proportion to his piety, secure the goodwill of the gods of Birth to bless his own begetting of children. Moreover,

a man will find his friends and companions kindly disposed, in regard to life's intercourse, if he sets higher than they do the value and importance of the services he receives from them, while counting the favors he confers on them as of less value than they are deemed by his companions and friends themselves. In relation to his State and fellow-citizens that man is by far the best who, in preference to a victory at Olympia or in any other contest of war or peace, would choose to have a victorious reputation for service to his native laws, as being the one man above all others who has served them with distinction throughout his life.

Further, a man should regard contracts made with strangers as specially sacred; for practically all the sins against Strangers are—as compared with those against citizens—connected more closely with an avenging deity. For the stranger, inasmuch as he is without companions or kinsfolk, is the more to be pitied by men and gods; wherefore he that is most able to avenge succors them most readily, and the most able of all, in every case, is the Strangers' daemon and god,

and these follow in the train of Zeus Xenios.

Whoso, then, is possessed of but a particle of forethought will take the utmost care to go through life to the very end without committing any offence in respect of Strangers. Of offences against either Strangers or natives, that which touches suppliants is in every case the most grave; for when a suppliant, after invoking a god as witness, is cheated of his compact, that god becomes the special guardian of him who is wronged, so that he will never be wronged without vengeance being taken for his wrongs.

As concerns a man's social relations towards his parents, himself and his own belongings, towards the State also and friends and kindred,—whether foreign relations or domestic,—our exposition is now fairly complete. It remains to expound next the character which is most conducive to nobility of life; and after that we shall have to state all the matters which are subject, not to law, but rather to praise or blame,—as the instruments whereby the citizens are educated individually and rendered more tractable and well-inclined towards the laws which are to be imposed on them. Of all the goods,

for gods and men alike, truth stands first. Thereof let every man partake from his earliest days, if he purposes to become blessed and happy, that so he may live his life as a true man so long as possible. He is a trusty man; but untrustworthy is the man who loves the voluntary lie; and senseless is the man who loves the involuntary lie; and neither of these two is to be envied. For everyone that is either faithless or foolish is friendless; and since, as time goes on, he is found out, he is making for himself, in his woeful old-age, at life's close,

a complete solitude, wherein his life becomes almost equally desolate whether his companions and children are living or dead. He that does no wrong is indeed a man worthy of honor; but worthy of twice as much honor as he, and more, is the man who, in addition, consents not to wrongdoers when they do wrong;

for while the former counts as one man, the latter counts as many, in that he informs the magistrates of the wrongdoing of the rest. And he that assists the magistrates in punishing, to the best of his power, let him be publicly proclaimed to be the Great Man of the State and perfect, the winner of the prize for excellence.

Upon temperance and upon wisdom one should bestow the same praise, and upon all the other goods which he who possesses them can not only keep himself but can share also with others. He that thus shares these should be honored as highest in merit; and he that would fain share them but cannot, as second in merit; while if a man is jealous and unwilling to share any good things with anyone in a friendly spirit,

then the man himself must be blamed, but his possession must not be disesteemed any the more because of its possessor,—rather one should strive to gain it with all one's might. Let every one of us be ambitious to gain excellence, but without jealousy. For a man of this character enlarges a State, since he strives hard himself and does not thwart the others by calumny; but the jealous man, thinking that calumny of others is the best way to secure his own superiority, makes less effort himself to win true excellence, and disheartens his rivals by getting them unjustly blamed; whereby he causes the whole State

to be ill-trained for competing in excellence, and renders it, for his part, less large in fair repute. Every man ought to be at once passionate and gentle in the highest degree.

For, on the one hand, it is impossible to escape from other men's wrongdoings, when they are cruel and hard to remedy, or even wholly irremediable, otherwise than by victorious fighting and self-defence, and by punishing most rigorously; and this no soul

can achieve without noble passion. But, on the other hand, when men commit wrongs which are remediable, one should, in the first place, recognize that every wrongdoer is a wrongdoer involuntarily;

for no one anywhere would ever voluntarily acquire any of the greatest evils, least of all in his own most precious possessions. And most precious in very truth to every man is, as we have said, the soul. No one, therefore, will voluntarily admit into this most precious thing the greatest evil and live

possessing it all his life long. Now while in general the wrong-doer and he that has these evils are to be pitied, it is permissible to show pity to the man that has evils that are remediable, and to abate one's passion and treat him gently, and not to keep on raging like a scolding wife; but in dealing with the man who is totally and obstinately perverse and wicked one must give free course to wrath. Wherefore we affirm that it behoves the good man to be always at once passionate and gentle. There is an evil, great above all others, which most men have, implanted in their souls, and which each one of them excuses in himself and makes no effort to avoid.

It is the evil indicated in the saying that every man is by nature a lover of self, and that it is right that he should be such.

But the truth is that the cause of all sins in every case lies in the person's excessive love of self. For the lover is blind in his view of the object loved, so that he is a bad judge

of things just and good and noble, in that he deems himself

bound always to value what is his own more than what is true; for the man who is to attain the title of “Great” must be devoted neither to himself nor to his own belongings, but to things just, whether they happen to be actions of his own or rather those of another man. And it is from this same sin that every man has derived the further notion that his own folly is wisdom; whence it comes about that though we know practically nothing, we fancy that we know everything; and since we will not entrust to others the doing of things we do not understand,

we necessarily go wrong in doing them ourselves. Wherefore every man must shun excessive self-love, and ever follow after him that is better than himself, allowing no shame to prevent him from so doing. Precepts that are less important than these and oftentimes repeated—but no less profitable—a man should repeat to himself by way of reminder; for where there is a constant efflux, there must also be a corresponding influx, and when wisdom flows away, the proper influx consists in recollection;

wherefore men must be restrained from untimely laughter and tears,

and every individual, as well as the whole State, must charge every man to try to conceal all show of extreme joy or sorrow, and to behave himself seemly, alike in good fortune and in evil, according as each man's Genius

ranges itself,—hoping always that God will diminish the troubles that fall upon them by the blessings which he bestows, and will change for the better

the present evils; and as to their blessings, hoping that they, contrariwise, will, with the help of good fortune, be increased. In these hopes, and in the recollections of all these truths, it behoves every man to live, sparing no pains, but constantly recalling them clearly to the recollection both of himself and of his neighbor, alike when at work and when at play. Thus, as regards the right character of institutions

and the right character of individuals, we have now laid down practically all the rules that are of divine sanction. Those that are of human origin we have not stated as yet, but state them we must; for our converse is with men, not gods. Pleasures, pains and desires are by nature especially human; and from these, of necessity, every mortal creature is, so to say, suspended and dependent by the strongest cords of influence. Thus one should commend the noblest life, not merely because it is of superior fashion in respect of fair repute,

but also because, if a man consents to taste it and not shun it in his youth, it is superior likewise in that which all men covet,—an excess, namely, of joy and a deficiency of pain throughout the whole of life. That this will clearly be the result, if a man tastes of it rightly, will at once be fully evident. But wherein does this “rightness” consist? That is the question which we must now, under the instruction of our Argument, consider; comparing the more pleasant life with the more painful, we must in this wise consider whether this mode is natural to us, and that other mode unnatural. We desire that pleasure should be ours,

but pain we neither choose nor desire; and the neutral state we do not desire in place of pleasure, but we do desire it in exchange for pain; and we desire less pain with more pleasure, but we do not desire less pleasure with more pain; and when the two are evenly balanced, we are unable to state any clear preference. Now all these states—in their number, quantity, intensity, equality, and in the opposites thereof—have, or have not, influence on desire,

to govern its choice of each. So these things being thus ordered of necessity, we desire that mode of life in which the feelings are many, great, and intense, with those of pleasure predominating, but we do not desire the life in which the feelings of pain predominate; and contrariwise, we do not desire the life in which the feelings are few, small, and gentle, if the painful predominate, but if the pleasurable predominate, we do desire it. Further, we must regard the life in which there is an equal balance of pleasure and pain as we previously regarded the neutral state: we desire the balanced life in so far as it exceeds

the painful life in point of what we like, but we do not desire it in so far as it exceeds the pleasant lives in point of the things we dislike. The lives of us men must all be regarded as naturally bound up in these feelings, and what kinds of lives we naturally desire is what we must distinguish; but if we assert that we desire anything else, we only say so through ignorance and inexperience of the lives as they really are. What, then, and how many are the lives in which a man—when he has chosen the desirable and voluntary in preference to the undesirable and the involuntary, and has made it into a private law for himself, by choosing

what is at once both congenial and pleasant and most good and noble—may live as happily as man can? Let us pronounce that one of them is the temperate life, one the wise, one the brave, and let us class the healthy life as one; and to these let us oppose four others—the foolish, the cowardly, the licentious, and the diseased. He that knows the temperate life will set it down as gentle in all respects,

affording mild pleasures and mild pains, moderate appetites and desires void of frenzy; but the licentious life he will set down as violent in all directions, affording both pains and pleasures that are extreme, appetites that are intense and maddening, and desires the most frenzied possible; and whereas in the temperate life the pleasures outweigh the pains, in the licentious life the pains exceed the pleasures in extent, number, and frequency. Whence it necessarily results that the one life must be naturally more pleasant, the other more painful to us;

and it is no longer possible for the man who desires a pleasant life voluntarily to live a licentious life, but it is clear by now (if our argument is right) that no man can possibly be licentious voluntarily: it is owing to ignorance or incontinence, or both, that the great bulk of mankind live lives lacking in temperance. Similarly with regard to the diseased life and the healthy life, one must observe that while both have pleasures and pains, the pleasures exceed

the pains in health, but the pains the pleasures in disease. Our desire in the choice of lives is not that pain should be in excess, but the life we have judged the more pleasant is that in which pain is exceeded by pleasure. We will assert, then, that since the temperate life has its feelings smaller, fewer and lighter than the licentious life, and the wise life than the foolish, and the brave than the cowardly, and since the one life is superior to the other in pleasure, but inferior in pain,

the brave life is victorious over the cowardly and the wise over the foolish; consequently the one set of lives ranks as more pleasant than the other: the temperate, brave, wise, and healthy lives are more pleasant than the cowardly, foolish, licentious and diseased. To sum up, the life of bodily and spiritual virtue, as compared with that of vice, is not only more pleasant, but also exceeds greatly in nobility, rectitude, virtue and good fame, so that it causes the man who lives it to live ever so much more happily than he who lives

the opposite life. Thus far we have stated the prelude of our laws, and here let that statement end: after the prelude must necessarily follow the tune,

—or rather, to be strictly accurate, a sketch of the State-organization. Now, just as in the case of a piece of webbing, or any other woven article, it is not possible to make both warp and woof of the same materials, but the stuff of the warp must be of better quality—for it is strong and is made firm by its twistings,

whereas the woof is softer and shows a due degree of flexibility

—from this we may see that in some such way we must mark out those who are to hold high offices in the State and those who are to hold low offices,

after applying in each case an adequate educational test. For of State organization there are two divisions, of which the one is the appointment of individuals to office, the other the assignment of laws to the offices. But, in truth, before we deal with all these matters we must observe the following.

In dealing with a flock of any kind, the shepherd or cowherd, or the keeper of horses or any such animals, will never attempt to look after it until he has first applied to each group of animals the appropriate purge—which is to separate the sound from the unsound, and the well-bred from the ill-bred,

and to send off the latter to other herds, while keeping the former under his own care; for he reckons that his labor would be fruitless and unending if it were spent on bodies and souls which nature and

ill-nurture have combined to ruin, and which themselves bring ruin on a stock that is sound and clean both in habit and in body,—whatever the class of beast,—unless a thorough purge be made in the existing herd. This is a matter of minor importance in the case of other animals, and deserves mention only by way of illustration; but in the case of man it is of the highest importance for the lawgiver to search out and to declare what is proper for each class both as regards purging out and all other modes of treatment. For instance, in respect of civic purgings,

this would be the way of it. Of the many possible modes of purging, some are milder, some more severe; those that are severest and best a lawgiver who was also a despot

might be able to effect, but a lawgiver without despotic power might be well content if, in establishing a new polity and laws, he could effect even the mildest of purgations. The best purge is painful, like all medicines of a drastic nature,—

the purge which hales to punishments by means of justice linked with vengeance, crowning the vengeance with exile or death: it, as a rule, clears out the greatest criminals when they are incurable and cause serious damage to the State. A milder form of purge is one of the following kind:—when, owing to scarcity of food, people are in want, and display a readiness

to follow their leaders in an attack on the property of the wealthy,—then the lawgiver, regarding all such as a plague inherent in the body politic, ships them abroad as gently as possible, giving the euphemistic title of “emigration” to their evacuation. By some means or other this must be done by every legislator at the beginning, but in our case the task is now even more simple; for we have no need to contrive for the present either a form of emigration or any other purgative selection; but just as

when there is a confluence of floods from many sources—some from springs, some from torrents—into a single pool we have to take diligent precautions to ensure that the water may be of the utmost possible purity, by drawing it off in some cases, and in others by making channels to divert its course.

Yet toil and risk, it would appear, are involved in every exercise of statecraft. Since, however, our present efforts are verbal rather than actual, let us assume that our collection of citizens is now completed, and its purity secured to our satisfaction; for we shall test thoroughly by every kind of test and by length of time the vicious among those

who attempt to enter our present State as citizens, and so prevent their arrival, whereas we shall welcome the virtuous with all possible graciousness and goodwill. And let us not omit to notice this piece of good luck—that, just as we said

that the colony of the Heraclidae was fortunate in avoiding fierce and dangerous strife concerning the distribution of land and money and the cancelling of debts (so we are similarly lucky) ; for when a State is obliged

to settle such strife by law, it can neither leave vested interests unaltered nor yet can it in any wise alter them, and no way is left save what one might term that of “pious aspiration” and cautious change, little by little, extended over a long period, and that way is this:—there must already exist a supply of men to effect the change, who themselves, on each occasion, possess abundance of land and have many persons in their debt, and who are kind enough to wish to give a share of these things to those of them who are in want,

partly by remissions and partly by distributions, making a kind of rule of moderation and believing that poverty consists, not in decreasing one's substance, but in increasing one's greed. For this is the main foundation of the security of a State, and on this as on a firm keel it is possible to build whatever kind of civic organization may be subsequently built suitable for the arrangement described;

but if the foundation be rotten, the subsequent political operations will prove by no means easy for any State. This difficulty, as we say, we avoid; it is better, however, that we should explain the means by which, if we had not actually avoided it, we might have found a way of escape. Be it explained, then, that that means consists in renouncing avarice by the aid of justice, and that there is no way of escape, broad or narrow, other than this device. So let this stand fixed for us now as a kind of pillar of the State. The properties of the citizens must be established somehow or other on a basis that is secure from intestine disputes;

otherwise, for people who have ancient disputes with one another, men will not of their own free will proceed any further with political construction, if they have a grain of sense.

But as for those to whom—as to us now—God has given a new State to found, and one free as yet from internal feuds,—that those founders should excite enmity against themselves because of the distribution of land and houses would be a piece of folly combined with utter depravity of which no man could be capable.

What then would be the plan of a right distribution? First, we must fix at the right total the number of citizens; next, we must agree about the distribution of them,—into how many sections, and each of what size, they are to be divided; and among these sections we must distribute, as equally as we can, both the land and the houses. An adequate figure for the population could not be given without reference to the territory and to the neighboring States.

Of land we need as much as is capable of supporting so many inhabitants of temperate habits, and we need no more; and as to population, we need a number such that they will be able to defend themselves against injury from adjoining peoples, and capable also of lending some aid to their neighbors when injured. These matters we shall determine, both verbally and actually, when we have inspected the territory and its neighbors; but for the present it is only a sketch in outline of our legislation that our argument will now proceed to complete.

Let us assume that there are—as a suitable number—5,040 men, to be land-holders and to defend their plots;

and let the land and houses be likewise divided into the same number of parts—the man and his allotment forming together one division. First, let the whole number be divided into two; next into three; then follow in natural order four and five, and so on up to ten. Regarding numbers, every man who is making laws must understand at least thus much,—

what number and what kind of number will be most useful for all States. Let us choose that which contains the most numerous and most consecutive sub-divisions. Number as a whole comprises every division for all purposes; whereas the number 5,040, for purposes of war, and in peace for all purposes connected with contributions and distributions, will admit of division

into no more than 59 sections, these being consecutive from one up to ten.

These facts about numbers must be grasped firmly and with deliberate attention by those who are appointed by law to grasp them: they are exactly as we have stated them, and the reason for stating them when founding a State is this:—in respect of gods, and shrines, and the temples which have to be set up for the various gods in the State, and the gods and daemons they are to be named after, no man of sense,—whether he be framing a new State or reforming an old one that has been corrupted,—will attempt to alter

the advice from Delphi or Dodona or Ammon, or that of ancient sayings, whatever form they take—whether derived from visions or from some reported inspiration from heaven. By this advice they instituted sacrifices combined with rites, either of native origin or imported from Tuscany or Cyprus or elsewhere; and by means of such sayings they sanctified oracles and statues and altars and temples, and marked off for each of them sacred glebes. Nothing of all these

should the lawgiver alter in the slightest degree; to each section he should assign a god or daemon, or at the least a hero; and in the distribution of the land he should assign first to these divinities choice domains with all that pertains to them, so that, when assemblies of each of the sections take place at the appointed times, they may provide an ample supply of things requisite, and the people may fraternize with one another at the sacrifices and gain knowledge and intimacy,

since nothing is of more benefit to the State than this mutual acquaintance; for where men conceal their ways one from another in darkness rather than light, there no man will ever rightly gain either his due honor or office, or the justice that is befitting. Wherefore every man in every State must above all things endeavor to show himself always true and sincere towards everyone, and no humbug, and also to allow himself to be imposed upon by no such person.

The next move in our settling of the laws is one that might at first hearing cause surprise because of its unusual character—like the move of a draughts-player who quits his “sacred line” ;

none the less, it will be clear to him who reasons it out and uses experience that a State will probably have a constitution no higher than second in point of excellence. Probably one might refuse to accept this, owing to unfamiliarity with lawgivers who are not also despots:

but it is, in fact, the most correct plan to describe the best polity, and the second best, and the third, and after describing them to give the choice to the individual who is charged with the founding of the settlement.

This plan let us now adopt: let us state the polities which rank first, second, and third in excellence; and the choice let us hand over to Clinias and to whosoever else may at any time wish, ill proceeding to the selection of such things, to take over, according to his own disposition, what he values in his own country. That State and polity come first, and those laws are best, where there is observed as carefully as possible

throughout the whole State the old saying

that “friends have all things really in common.” As to this condition,—whether it anywhere exists now, or ever will exist,—in which there is community of wives, children, and all chattels, and all that is called “private” is everywhere and by every means rooted out of our life, and so far as possible it is contrived that even things naturally “private” have become in a way “communized,” —eyes, for instance, and ears and hands seem to see, hear, and act in common,—

and that all men are, so far as possible, unanimous in the praise and blame they bestow, rejoicing and grieving at the same things, and that they honor with all their heart those laws which render the State as unified as possible,—no one will ever lay down another definition that is truer or better than these conditions in point of super-excellence. In such a State,—be it gods or sons of gods that dwell in it,—they dwell pleasantly, living such a life as this. Wherefore one should not look elsewhere

for a model constitution, but hold fast to this one, and with all one's power seek the constitution that is as like to it as possible. That constitution which we are now engaged upon, if it came into being, would be very near to immortality, and would come second in point of merit. The third we shall investigate hereafter, if God so will; for the present, however, what is this second best polity, and how would it come to be of such a character? First, let them portion out the land and houses,

and not farm in common, since such a course is beyond the capacity of people with the birth, rearing and training we assume. And let the apportionment be made with this intention,—that the man who receives the portion should still regard it as common property of the whole State, and should tend the land, which is his fatherland, more diligently than a mother tends her children, inasmuch as it, being a goddess, is mistress over its mortal population, and should observe the same attitude also towards the local gods

and daemons. And in order that these things may remain in this state for ever, these further rules must be observed: the number of hearths, as now appointed by us, must remain unchanged, and must never become either more or less. This will be securely effected, in the case of every State, in the following way: the allotment-holder shall always leave behind him one son, whichever he pleases, as the inheritor of his dwelling, to be his successor in the tendance of the deified ancestors

both of family and of State, whether living or already deceased; as to the rest of the children, when a man has more than one, he should marry off the females according to the law that is to be ordained,

and the males he should dispose of to such of the citizens as have no male issue, by a friendly arrangement if possible; but where such arrangements prove insufficient, or where the family is too large either in females or in males, or where, on the other hand, it is too small,

through the occurrence of sterility,—in all these cases the magistrates, whom we shall appoint as the highest and most distinguished,

shall consider how to deal with the excess or deficiency in families, and contrive means as best they can to secure that the 5,040 househoIds shall remain unaltered. There are many contrivances possible: where the fertility is great, there are methods of inhibition, and contrariwise there are methods of encouraging and stimulating the birth-rate, by means of honors and dishonors, and by admonitions addressed