Laws

AthenianTell me, strangers: is it a god or some human being who gets the credit among you for establishing your laws?note

CliniasA god, stranger, a god—to put it in the justest way. With us it’s Zeus; with the Spartans, where our friend here comes from, I believe they say Apollo. Isn’t that right?

MegillusYes.

AthenianDo you mean, then, as Homer says, that Minos used to go 624b every ninth year to meet with his father, and laid down laws for your cities according to the pronouncements he brought back from him?note

CliniasYes, that’s what’s said among us. And his brother Rhadamanthus too—you’ve heard the name—was the most just of men. 625a We Cretans at least would say that he rightly earned this praise from the way he handled judicial matters in those days.

AthenianA fine reputation, and very fitting for a son of Zeus. Since you and our friend here were brought up under legal customs like these, I expect it would be no unpleasant thing for us to spend the time now talking about constitutions and laws, speaking and listening as we go 625b along. The road from Knossos to the cave and shrine of Zeus is long enough, so we hear, and along the way, as you’d expect, there are shady resting places under tall trees, now that the heat is stifling. It would suit men of our age to rest in them often, and to encourage one another with conversation, and in that way to get through the whole journey with ease.

CliniasYes, stranger, and as you go further there are cypresses 625c in the sacred groves, of amazing height and beauty, and meadows where we could rest and pass the time.

AthenianYou’re right.

CliniasCertainly—and we’ll say so even more once we’ve seen them. But let’s go, and good luck to us.

AthenianSo be it. Now tell me: with what aim has your law arranged your common meals, your athletic training and the kind of arms you carry?note

CliniasI think, stranger, that anyone can easily grasp the reasons for ours at least. You can see that the land of Crete as a whole 625d isn’t flat, as Thessaly is. That’s why the Thessalians use horses more, and we use running on foot, since this land is uneven and better suited to training for foot races. In such country one has to have light arms, so as to run without carrying weight, and the lightness of bows and arrows seems to fit. So all these things have been fitted out for war, 625e and it seems to me, at least, that the lawgiver arranged everything with his eye on that. Even the common meals: he probably brought them in because he saw that whenever men are on campaign, the situation itself forces them all to eat together for that time, for their own protection.

AthenianYou seem to me, stranger, to be well trained in understanding the institutions of the Cretans. But explain this to me more clearly still. The standard you set for a well-governed city: 626c you seem to me to be saying that it must be organized so as to defeat other cities in war. Is that it?

CliniasCertainly. And I think our friend here agrees.

MegillusHow else could any Spartan answer, my inspired friend?

AthenianSo is this right for city against city, but something different for village against village?

CliniasNot at all.

AthenianThe same, then?

CliniasYes.

AthenianWhat about household against household in the village, and man against man, one against one? Still the same?

CliniasThe same.

AthenianAnd a man against himself: must we think of him as enemy against enemy? Or what do we say now?

CliniasAthenian stranger—for I wouldn’t like to call you “Attic”: you seem to me to deserve rather to be named after the goddess—you’ve made the argument clearer by rightly taking it back to its starting point. So you’ll more easily see that what we said just now was right: that all men are enemies of all in public life, and in private each is an enemy to himself.note

AthenianWhat do you mean, my remarkable friend?

CliniasHere too, stranger, victory over oneself is the first and best of all victories, and to be defeated by oneself is the most shameful and the worst of all things. This shows that there is a war in each of us against ourselves.

AthenianThen let’s turn the argument back the other way. Since each one of us is either superior to himself or inferior, 627a are we to say that households, villages and cities have this same thing in them, or not?

CliniasYou mean that one is superior to itself, another inferior?

AthenianYes.

CliniasYou were right to ask this too. There certainly is such a thing, very much so, and not least in cities. In all those where the better people defeat the multitude and the worse, that city would rightly be called superior to itself, and would be most justly praised for such a victory; and the opposite where the opposite happens.

AthenianWell, whether the worse is ever superior to the better, let’s leave aside—that needs a longer discussion. But I understand what you’re saying now: that sometimes citizens, kinsmen born of the same city, who are unjust and numerous, will band together and use force to enslave the just, who are fewer. When they prevail, the city would rightly be called inferior to itself and bad as well; and where they are defeated, superior to itself and good.

CliniasWhat’s being said now is very strange, stranger. Still, we can’t avoid agreeing to it.

AthenianWait, then. Let’s look at this as well. Presumably one man and one woman might have many sons who are brothers; and it would be no wonder if most of them turned out unjust and the fewer just.

CliniasNo wonder at all.

AthenianAnd it wouldn’t be fitting for you and me to chase after this point: that when the wicked win, the household and the whole family would be called inferior to itself, and superior 627d when they’re defeated. We’re not examining now the propriety or impropriety of words, as ordinary people use them, but the correctness and error of laws—whatever it is by nature.

CliniasVery true, stranger.

MegillusWell said—so far, at least, I agree, for now.

AthenianLet’s look at this too. Presumably these brothers we just mentioned might have a judge?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianWhich one would be better, then? One who put to death 627e all the bad ones among them and appointed the better ones to rule themselves? Or one who had the good ones rule, but let the worse live and made them willing to be ruled? And we might name a third judge, still better with respect to virtue: if there were one who took over a single family at odds with itself, and put no one 628a to death, but reconciled them for the future, laid down laws for them, and was able to watch over them so that they would be friends to one another.

CliniasSuch a judge and lawgiver would be far better.

AthenianAnd yet in laying down their laws he would be looking to the opposite of war.

CliniasThat’s true.

AthenianWhat about the man who brings a city into harmony? Would he order its life with his eye on external war rather 628b than on the war that from time to time arises within it, the one called civil strife? That’s the war everyone would most want never to happen in his own city, and, if it does happen, to be rid of as quickly as possible.

CliniasClearly on the second.

AthenianWould anyone choose that peace should follow civil strife through the destruction of one side and the victory of the other, rather than that friendship and peace should come about through reconciliation, and the city then have to turn its 628c attention to enemies outside?

CliniasAnyone would want it that way for his own city rather than the other way.

AthenianAnd the lawgiver likewise?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianSo would anyone lay down all his rules for the sake of anything but the best?

CliniasHow could he?

AthenianYet the best is neither war nor civil strife—to need these is something we pray against—but peace with one another together with goodwill. And even the city’s victory over 628d itself, it seems, turns out to be not among the best things but among the necessary ones. It’s as if someone supposed that a sick body, when it gets medical purging, is at its best then, and paid no attention at all to a body that never needed such a thing. In the same way, anyone who thinks like this about the happiness of a city, or of an individual, would never be a true statesman, if he looks only, and first, to wars with outsiders; nor would he be a precise lawgiver unless he legislated for war for the sake of peace, rather 628e than for peace for the sake of war.

CliniasThis argument does seem somehow to be right, stranger. And yet I’d be surprised if our institutions, and the Spartan ones too, haven’t put all their effort into war.

AthenianPerhaps so. But we mustn’t do battle with them harshly now, but question them calmly, on the assumption that both we and they are very serious about these matters. Follow the argument with me. Let’s bring forward Tyrtaeus, an Athenian by birth who became a citizen of our friends here, and who, more than anyone, was serious about these things. He says: “I would not mention, nor take account of, a man 629b —not if he were the richest of men,” he says, “nor if he had many goods”—and he lists nearly all of them—“if he did not always prove best in war.” You’ve surely heard these poems too; our friend here, I imagine, has had his fill of them.note

MegillusCertainly.

CliniasYes, and they’ve come over to us too, brought from Sparta.

AthenianCome on, then, let’s question this poet together, something like this: “Tyrtaeus, most inspired of poets—for you seem to us 629c wise and good, since you’ve praised exceptionally those who are exceptional in war—now, the three of us, I and this man and Clinias of Knossos here, happen to agree with you strongly on this, as we think. But we want to know clearly whether we’re talking about the same men or not. So tell us: do you, like us, clearly hold that there are two kinds of war? Or how do you see it?” To this I think even someone much less able 629d than Tyrtaeus would give the true answer: that there are two. One is what we all call civil strife, which is the harshest of all wars, as we said just now. The other kind of war, I think, we’ll all take to be the one we engage in when we quarrel with outsiders and foreigners, and it is much milder than the first.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianCome, then: which men, and with an eye to which war, did you praise so extravagantly, and which did you blame? It seems to be those in the war against outsiders. At any rate you’ve said this in your 629e poems, that you can’t abide the sort of men who “dare not look upon bloody slaughter, and reach for the enemy, standing close.” Then we’d go on to say: “Tyrtaeus, it seems that you praise most of all those who distinguish themselves in foreign war, against outsiders.” I suppose he’d say yes and agree?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianBut we say that, good as these men are, those who are plainly best in the greatest war are better still, and by a long way. We too have a poet as witness, Theognis, a citizen of Megara in Sicily, who says: “A trustworthy man, Cyrnus, is worth his weight in gold and silver in harsh civil discord.” Such a man, we say, proves far better than the other in the harsher war—almost as much better as justice, 630b moderation and wisdom, joined together with courage, are better than courage by itself alone. For no one could ever be trustworthy and sound in civil strife without the whole of virtue. But plenty of mercenaries will “plant their feet firm” and fight, willing to die, in the war Tyrtaeus speaks of; and most of them turn out reckless, unjust, violent and just about the most senseless of all people, apart from a very few.note

CliniasStranger, we’re relegating our own lawgiver to the back ranks of lawgivers.

AthenianNot him, my good friend, but ourselves—when we think that Lycurgus and Minos laid down all the institutions in Sparta and here with their eyes chiefly on war.note

CliniasThen how should we have put it?

AthenianIn the way that is true, I think, and right to say when discussing a legislation that is 630e divine: not that he legislated with his eye on a part of virtue, and the most trivial part at that, but on the whole of virtue; and that he sought out his laws according to their kinds—but not the kinds that people now set out when they search. Nowadays each person sets out and looks for whatever he happens to need: one the laws about inheritances and heiresses, another about assault, others countless other things of the sort. But we say that the inquiry 631a into laws, among those who inquire well, is the kind we’ve just begun.

CliniasBy all means.

AthenianYou should have said something like this. Stranger, it’s not for nothing that the laws of the Cretans are exceptionally well regarded among all the Greeks. They are right, since they make those who use them happy, providing all good things. Goods are of two kinds, human and divine. The first kind depends on the divine; and if a city receives the greater goods, 631c it gains the lesser too, but if not, it is deprived of both.

CliniasThen how, stranger, should the discussion go from here?

AthenianIt seems to me we should go through it again from the beginning, 632e as we began: first the practices that make for courage; then we’ll go through another kind of virtue, and then another, if you like. And as we go through the first, let’s try to make it a model, and by talking through the rest in the same way, make the talk a solace for the road. Afterward we’ll show that everything we’ve just gone through looks to the whole of virtue, if the god is willing.

MegillusWell said. And try first to put this praiser of Zeus of ours to the test.

AthenianI’ll try—you and myself too, since the argument is shared. So tell me: do we say that the common meals and the athletic training were devised by the lawgiver for war?

MegillusYes.

AthenianAnd what’s third, or fourth? For perhaps one should enumerate in this way also with the parts of the rest of virtue—or whatever one ought to call them, provided one makes clear what one means.

MegillusThird, then, I and any Spartan at all would say, he devised hunting.

AthenianLet’s try to say a fourth, and a fifth, if we can.

MegillusWell, I’d try to name a fourth as well: the endurance of pain, which is much practiced among us, both in fistfights with one another and in certain raids for plunder, which always involve many blows. And there’s also something called the krypteia, wonderfully laborious 633c as training in endurance: going barefoot in winter and sleeping without bedding, looking after themselves without servants, and roaming the whole country by night and by day. Then again at the Gymnopaidiai we have terrible trials of endurance, as they contend with the force of the stifling heat; and a great many other things, almost more than one could ever finish describing.note

AthenianWell said, Spartan stranger. But come, what are we to take courage to be? Simply a fight against fears 633d and pains and nothing more? Or also against longings and pleasures and certain dangerous, fawning enticements, which turn to wax the spirits even of those who think themselves above such things?

MegillusI think the latter: against all of them.

AthenianWell, if we remember what was said earlier, our friend here spoke of a city, and a man, as inferior to itself. Didn’t he, stranger from Knossos?

CliniasHe certainly did.

AthenianNow, then, do we call bad the man who is inferior to pains, or also the one who is inferior to pleasures?

CliniasMore, it seems to me, the one inferior to pleasures. We all, I think, are more inclined to say that the man overcome by pleasures is shamefully “inferior to himself” than the one overcome by pains.

AthenianSurely, then, the lawgivers of Zeus and of Pythian Apollo haven’t legislated a lame courage, able to resist only on the left, but powerless against the charming, flattering things on the right? Or against both?

CliniasAgainst both, I’d say.

AthenianThen let’s say again: what practices do you have in your two cities that give a taste of pleasures, and don’t avoid them—just as they didn’t avoid pains—but lead people into the thick of them, and by compulsion and by persuasion, through honors, make them master 634b them? Where in your laws is this same arrangement made with respect to pleasures? Let it be said what it is that, among you, makes the same men courageous alike in the face of pains and of pleasures, defeating what they ought to defeat and never inferior to the enemies that are closest to them and most dangerous.

MegillusWell, stranger, though I had many laws to cite that are ranged against pains, I might not 634c be so well supplied in the case of pleasures, if I had to speak of large and conspicuous categories; but in small matters I might perhaps be well supplied.

CliniasNor could I myself make any such thing equally evident in the laws of Crete.

AthenianBest of strangers, that’s no wonder at all. But if one of us finds fault with anything in the laws of the others’ homelands, out of a wish to see what is true and at the same time what is best, let’s take it from one another not harshly but gently.

CliniasYou’re right, Athenian stranger; we must do as you say.

AthenianYes, Clinias, for the other way would not become men of our age.

CliniasNo, it wouldn’t.

AthenianWhether someone is right or wrong in criticizing the Spartan and Cretan constitutions would be another question. But what most people say about them I might perhaps be better placed to report than either of you. With you, if your laws are even moderately well made, one of your finest laws would be the one that forbids any of the young to inquire which of the laws are good 634e and which are not good, but requires all of them to agree with one voice, from one mouth, that all are well established, since gods established them; and if anyone says otherwise, they’re not to put up with hearing it at all. And if an old man has some thought about anything among you, he’s to make remarks of this kind to an official or someone of his own age, with no young person present.

CliniasVery true, stranger. Like a seer, 635a though far from the thinking of the man who laid them down in those days, you seem to me to have made a fair guess at it now, and to be speaking very truly.

AthenianWell, now there are no young people here, and we ourselves have been exempted by the lawgiver because of our age. So we’d do nothing out of tune if we discussed these very things, just ourselves, among ourselves?

CliniasThat’s so. So don’t hold back at all from criticizing our laws. There’s no dishonor in recognizing something that isn’t good; rather, it leads to a cure 635b for anyone who takes what’s said not with resentment but with goodwill.

AthenianGood. But I shan’t speak as someone criticizing your laws yet—not before I’ve examined them securely, as best I can—but rather as someone who is puzzled. Your lawgiver alone, of all the Greeks and non-Greeks we know of, ordered you to keep away from the greatest pleasures and amusements and not to taste them. But when it came to pains and fears, which we’ve just gone through, he thought that if someone avoided them all the way through from childhood, 635c then when he came up against unavoidable toils and fears and pains, he would run from those who had been trained in them and become their slave.note

CliniasIt does seem so to us, somehow, as the argument is being made. But to be persuaded straightaway and easily about matters of such importance might be more the mark of young and foolish people.

AthenianWell, suppose we went on to the next of the things we set out to discuss, Clinias and Spartan stranger—after courage, let’s speak about moderation. What difference shall we find between these constitutions and those of people governed at random, 636a as we did just now with regard to war?

MegillusHardly an easy thing. And yet the common meals and the athletic training seem to have been well devised for both.

AthenianIt does seem hard, strangers, for things to do with constitutions to be beyond dispute in practice as well as in theory. It looks as though it’s like with bodies: you can’t prescribe a single regimen for a single body without its appearing to harm our bodies in some ways 636b and to benefit them in others. So too these athletic exercises and common meals now benefit cities in many other ways, but they’re dangerous where civil strife is concerned—as the young men of Miletus, Boeotia and Thurii show. And in particular, this practice seems to have corrupted an ancient custom, one in accord with nature, concerning sexual pleasures, a custom that holds not only for human beings but for animals too.

MegillusThat’s well said, somehow, stranger; yet we’re at a loss what to say in reply. Still, it seems to me that the lawgiver in Sparta is right to order us to avoid pleasures. As for the laws in Knossos, our friend here will come to their defense, if he wishes.

AthenianSpartan stranger, all such things are praiseworthy where there’s some endurance in them; but where they’re relaxed, 637c they’re rather foolish. Someone from our side could quickly catch you out in return, pointing to the laxity of your women. To all such charges—in Tarentum, with us, and with you as well—there’s one answer that seems to clear them of being bad and show them to be right. Anyone will answer a stranger who is astonished at seeing what is unfamiliar to him: “Don’t be astonished, stranger: this is our law; perhaps yours about these same matters 637d is different.” But our discussion now, my friends, is not about the rest of mankind, but about the badness and virtue of the lawgivers themselves.

MegillusMy good friend, we put all of them to flight whenever we take up arms.

AthenianMy excellent friend, don’t say that. There have been many flights and pursuits whose causes can’t be traced, and there will be more. So we’d never be stating a clear standard, but a disputable one, about which practices are good and which are not, if we cited victory and defeat in battle. After all, larger cities defeat smaller ones 638b in battle and enslave them—the Syracusans did so to the Locrians, who seem to have been the best-governed people in that region, and the Athenians to the Ceans; and we could find countless other cases like these. Instead, let’s try to persuade ourselves by discussing each practice on its own terms, and leave victories and defeats out of account for now, and say that this kind of thing is good and that kind is not. But first listen to me on how one should examine what is beneficial and what is not in these very matters.note

MegillusWhat do you mean?

AthenianIt seems to me that all those who take up some practice in discussion, and set out to blame it or praise it as soon as it’s mentioned, go about it quite wrongly. It’s as if, when someone praised wheat as a good food, someone else immediately blamed it, without finding out about its preparation or its serving: in what way, to whom, with what, in what condition, and how people serve it. That seems to me 638d to be just what we’re doing in our discussion now. Hearing only this much about drunkenness, some of us immediately blame it and others praise it, and quite absurdly. Each side praises by calling on witnesses and supporters: some of us think we’re saying something decisive because we produce many of them, others because we see those who don’t use it winning their battles. And this too is disputed between us.

MegillusWell, if we have a correct way of examining such things, 639a we mustn’t shrink from hearing it.

AthenianThen let’s look at it somehow like this. Suppose someone praised the keeping of goats, and said the animal itself is a fine thing to own; and someone else, who had seen goats grazing without a goatherd and doing damage on cultivated land, found fault with the whole business, and likewise blamed every herd he’d seen without a keeper or with bad keepers. Would we think that such a person’s blame would ever be sound about anything at all?

MegillusHow could it be?

AthenianIs a commander on board ship a good one if 639b he has seafaring knowledge alone, whether he gets seasick or not? Or what would we say?

MegillusNot at all, not if on top of his skill he also has this affliction you mention.

AthenianWhat about the commander of an army? If he has military knowledge, is he fit to command, even if he’s a coward and gets seasick in dangers, drunk with fear?

MegillusHow could he be?

AthenianAnd if he both lacks the skill and is a coward?

MegillusYou’re describing someone utterly worthless—a commander not of men at all, but of a pack of the feeblest women.

AthenianAnd what about someone who praises or blames any association whatever that naturally has a leader and, with him, is beneficial, when he has never seen it associating properly under its leader, but always either without a leader or with bad leaders? Do we suppose that observers of such associations, when they’re like this, will ever blame or praise anything usefully?

MegillusHow could they, when they’ve never seen or taken part in 639d any such association conducted properly?

AthenianWait, then. Among the many kinds of association, would we count drinking companions and drinking parties as one kind of gathering?

MegillusVery much so.

AthenianNow has anyone ever yet seen one of these conducted properly? You two can easily answer that you’ve never seen one at all—it’s not native to you, nor lawful. But I’ve come across many, in many places, and have moreover inquired about practically all of them; and I’ve hardly seen or heard of one conducted properly 639e as a whole—perhaps some small parts here and there, but most of them, practically in their entirety, gone wrong.

CliniasHow do you mean, stranger? Say it more clearly still. For we, as you said, through inexperience of such things, even if we came across 640a them, might perhaps not recognize straightaway what’s being done properly in them and what isn’t.

AthenianThat’s reasonable. But try to learn as I explain. You understand that in all gatherings, and in partnerships for any activity whatever, it’s right that each of them should everywhere have a leader?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianAnd we said just now that the leader of fighting men must be courageous.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianNow the courageous man is less thrown into confusion by fears than cowards are.

CliniasThat’s so as well.

AthenianAnd if there were some way to put a general in charge of an army who was not afraid or confused at all, wouldn’t we do it by every means?

CliniasVery much so.

AthenianBut now we’re not talking about a man who will lead an army in encounters of enemy with enemy in war, but about friends sharing goodwill with friends in peace.

CliniasRight.

AthenianAnd such a gathering, if it’s going to involve drinking, isn’t free of confusion, is it?

CliniasHow could it be? Quite the opposite, I think.

AthenianSo in the first place these people need a leader too?

CliniasOf course—more than anything.

AthenianThen must we provide them with a leader who is free of confusion, if that’s possible?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianAnd where a gathering is concerned, it seems, he must be wise; for he becomes the guardian of the friendship 640d that already exists among them, and also sees to it that it will grow greater through the gathering.

CliniasVery true.

AthenianSo we must appoint a sober and wise leader over drinkers, and not the opposite? A drunk and young leader of drunks, who isn’t wise, would be very lucky if he didn’t do some great harm.

CliniasExtremely lucky.

AthenianSo if someone found fault with these gatherings when they’re conducted in cities as properly as possible, attacking 640e the thing itself, perhaps he might be right to find fault. But if someone reviles the practice after seeing it done as badly as it could possibly be, then first, clearly he doesn’t know that this is being done improperly; and second, anything at all will look bad when it’s done this way, without a sober master and leader. Or don’t you realize that a drunken helmsman, and anyone in charge of anything, 641a overturns everything—ships or chariots or an army, or whatever he’s steering?

CliniasThat’s entirely true, stranger. But tell us what comes next: if this custom of drinking were practiced properly, what good would it do us? Take what we were saying just now: if an army got proper leadership, victory in war would come to those who followed, and that’s no small good; 641b and so with the rest. But when a drinking party is properly supervised, what great benefit would come to individuals or to the city?

AthenianWell, when one child, or one chorus, is properly supervised, what great benefit would we say comes to the city? Or, asked that question, wouldn’t we say that from one the city would get only a small benefit? But if you ask in general what great benefit the city gets from the education of those it educates, it isn’t hard to say that, if they’re well educated, they’d become good men, and being such 641c they’d do everything else well, and would even defeat their enemies in battle. So education brings victory too, while victory sometimes brings lack of education. For many who have grown more arrogant through victories in war have, through their arrogance, been filled with countless other evils. And education has never yet proved a Cadmean victory, whereas victories of that kind have often come to human beings, and will again.note

CliniasYou seem to us, my friend, to be saying that the shared pastime 641d over wine makes a large contribution to education, if it’s done properly.

AthenianCertainly.

CliniasCould you, then, go on to say how what you’ve just said is true?

AthenianTo insist firmly that this is how things are, stranger, when many dispute it, is for a god to do. But if I have to say how it looks to me, I don’t at all begrudge it, since we’ve set out to discuss laws and constitutions now.

CliniasThat’s just what we’re trying to do: to learn your view about the matters 641e now in dispute.

AthenianThen this is what we must do: you must try to learn and I to explain, somehow or other, and we must both strain at the argument together. But first listen to this. All the Greeks assume that our city is fond of talk and talks a great deal, while Sparta is brief in speech, and Crete cultivates much thought rather than much talk. 642a So I’m wary of giving you the impression that I’m saying a great deal about a small thing—drunkenness, a small matter—by laying out a very long argument to clear it up. But setting it right according to its nature could never be grasped clearly or adequately in argument without the correctness of music, and music could never be grasped without education as a whole; and these call for a great deal of talk.

MegillusAthenian stranger, perhaps you don’t know that our family happens to be the proxenos of your city. And perhaps it’s the same for all children: once they hear that they’re proxenoi of some city, a goodwill toward that city sinks into each of us proxenoi straight from childhood, as though it were a second homeland after our own. And that’s just what has happened to me now.note

CliniasAnd for my part, stranger, once you’ve heard and taken in my story too, speak confidently and say as much as you wish. You may have heard that Epimenides, an inspired man, was born here; he was a relative of ours. Ten years before the Persian Wars, he came to you in accordance with the god’s oracle and performed certain sacrifices 642e that the god had ordained. And when the Athenians were afraid of the Persian expedition, he told them that the Persians would not come for ten years, and that when they did come, they would go away having achieved none of what they hoped, and having suffered more harm than they had done. At that time our ancestors became guest-friends of yours, and ever since then I and my 643a family have felt goodwill toward you.note

AthenianWell, then, you’d be ready to listen, it seems. As for me, I’m ready enough to want to, but being able to isn’t at all easy. Still, I must try. First, then, for the sake of the argument, let’s define what education is and what power it has. For we say that the argument we’ve now taken in hand must travel by way of education until it arrives at the god.note

CliniasBy all means let’s do that, if it suits you.

AthenianThen as I say what one ought to say education is, see whether you like what’s said.

CliniasGo ahead.

AthenianI say—and I claim—that anyone who is going to be good at anything at all must practice that very thing from childhood on, in play and in earnest, amid everything that belongs to it. For example, one who is going to be a good farmer, or a good builder, should play, the one at building some children’s 643c houses, the other at farming; and whoever is raising each of them should provide each with small tools, imitations of the real ones. In particular, they should learn beforehand whatever it’s necessary to have learned beforehand—a carpenter, for instance, measuring or using the rule, a soldier riding a horse in play or doing something else of the sort. And through their games one should try to turn the children’s pleasures and desires toward the place where they must arrive and find their goal.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianThen let’s not leave what we’re calling education undefined either. As things are, when we criticize or praise the upbringing of particular people, we say that one of us is educated 643e and another uneducated—sometimes of people who are extremely well educated in shopkeeping and shipping and other such trades. But our present account, it seems, isn’t the talk of people who think those things are education. It’s about education in virtue from childhood, which makes a person desire and passionately love to become a complete citizen, one who knows how to rule and be ruled with justice.

CliniasRight, and we agree with what you say.

AthenianAnd long ago we agreed that those able to rule themselves are good, and those who aren’t are bad.

CliniasQuite right.

AthenianThen let’s take up again, more clearly, what exactly 644c we mean by this. And bear with me if I use an image, in case I can somehow make this sort of thing clear to you.

CliniasJust say it.

AthenianWell, shall we suppose that each of us is one person?

CliniasYes.

AthenianBut that each has within himself two counselors, opposed to each other and senseless, which we call pleasure and pain?

CliniasThat’s so.

AthenianAnd besides these two, opinions about what’s to come, whose common name is expectation. In particular, fear is the expectation 644d of pain, and confidence the expectation of its opposite. And over all of these is calculation about which of them is better or worse—and calculation, when it becomes the common decision of a city, has been named law.

CliniasI’m only just about following—but go on to what comes next as though I were.

MegillusThe same thing is happening to me too.

CliniasWell said. Let’s carry through whatever proves worthy of our present conversation.

AthenianTell me, then: when we give drink to this puppet, what sort of thing do we make of it?

CliniasWhat do you have in view when you ask that?

AthenianNothing in particular yet—just what sort of thing this one becomes, in general, when combined with that. I’ll try to say still more clearly what I mean. I’m asking this: does drinking wine make pleasures and pains and angers and loves more intense?

CliniasMuch more.

AthenianAnd what about perceptions and memories and opinions and wisdom? Do they become more intense in the same way? Or do they desert a man entirely, once he’s had his fill of drink?

CliniasYes, they desert him entirely.

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

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianSo at that point he’d have the least mastery over himself.

CliniasThe least.

AthenianAnd such a man, we say, is at his very worst?

CliniasBy far.

AthenianSo it seems it’s not only the old man who becomes a child twice over, but the drunk as well.

CliniasExcellently put, stranger.

AthenianThen is there any argument that will try to persuade us that we should taste this practice, rather than flee it with all our might, as far as we can?

CliniasIt seems there is. You say so, at any rate, and you were ready to give it just now.

AthenianYou remember correctly. And I’m ready now, since you both said you’d be eager to listen.

CliniasOf course we’ll listen—if for no other reason, then for the wonder and strangeness of it: that a human being should ever deliberately throw himself into every kind of degradation.

AthenianOf the soul, you mean, don’t you?

CliniasYes.

AthenianWell then, my friend, what about the body’s degradation—into thinness, ugliness and weakness? Would we be surprised if someone ever 646c came to such a state deliberately?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianWell then: those who walk off to the doctor’s to take medicine—do we suppose they don’t know that a little later, and for many days, their bodies will be in a state that, if they were to stay that way for good, they’d refuse to go on living? Or don’t we know that those who go off to the gymnasiums to exert themselves become weak for the moment?

CliniasWe know all that.

AthenianAnd that they go willingly, for the sake of the benefit that follows?

CliniasVery true.

AthenianThen shouldn’t we think about the other practices in the same way?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianThen we must think about spending time over wine in the same way too, if it’s possible to think of it rightly as one of them.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianSo if it turns out to bring us some benefit no smaller than the body’s training does, it at least beats physical exercise at the outset, in that the one involves pain and the other doesn’t.

CliniasYou’re right—though I’d be surprised if we could discover anything of the kind in it.

AthenianThat, it seems, is exactly what we must now try to explain. Tell me: can we discern two kinds of fear that are nearly opposite?

CliniasWhat kinds?

AthenianThese: we fear evils, I suppose, when we expect them to happen.

CliniasYes.

AthenianAnd we often fear opinion, thinking we’ll be thought bad if we do or say something that isn’t fine. And this fear 647a we call—we do, and I think everyone does—shame.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianThose are the two fears I meant. The second of them is opposed to pains and to the other fears, and it’s also opposed to the most numerous and greatest pleasures.

CliniasQuite right.

AthenianThen doesn’t the lawgiver, and everyone who’s worth anything at all, hold this fear in the highest honor? Doesn’t he call it modesty, and give the confidence opposed to it the name of shamelessness, 647b and regard it as the greatest evil for everyone, in private and in public?

CliniasYou’re right.

AthenianAnd doesn’t this fear keep us safe in many other important ways—and, taken point for point, is there anything that secures victory and safety in war for us as effectively? For there are two things that produce victory: confidence toward the enemy, and fear of disgrace in the eyes of friends.

CliniasThat’s so.

AthenianSo each of us must become both fearless and fearful. 647c And we’ve distinguished what each is for.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianAnd when we want to make someone fearless in the face of many sorts of fear, we do it by leading him into fear, with the help of law.

CliniasIt seems so.

AthenianAnd what about when we try to make someone fearful in the right way? Mustn’t we make him win by pitting him against shamelessness and training him to fight against his own pleasures? Or is it that he must fight against the cowardice within him and 647d conquer it in order to become complete in courage, and that anyone at all who’s inexperienced and untrained in such contests wouldn’t become even half of what he might be in virtue—and yet he’ll be perfectly moderate without having fought through and conquered, by argument, action and skill, in play and in earnest, the many pleasures and desires that urge him toward shamelessness and wrongdoing, but simply by never having encountered any of them?

CliniasThat, at least, wouldn’t be reasonable.

AthenianWell then: is there some drug for fear that a god has given human beings, such that the more of it someone is willing to drink, the more unfortunate he believes himself to become with every drink, and the more he fears everything present and to come 648a for himself, until at last the bravest of men is in utter terror—but when he’s slept it off and is rid of the drink, he becomes his usual self again every time?

CliniasAnd what drink like that could we say has ever existed among human beings, stranger?

AthenianNone. But if one had turned up from somewhere, would it have been of any use to a lawgiver for courage? We could very well have talked to him about it, for example, like this. Come, lawgiver, whether you’re legislating for Cretans or for anyone else: first of all, 648b would you welcome being able to test your citizens for courage and cowardice?

CliniasAnyone would say yes, clearly.

AthenianAnd would you want to do it safely and without great risks, or the opposite?

CliniasEveryone will agree to that too—safely.

AthenianAnd would you use it by leading them into these fears and testing them while they’re under their influence, so as to compel them to become fearless, 648c encouraging, admonishing and honoring them—and dishonoring anyone who wouldn’t obey you and be in every respect the sort of person you prescribed? And would you let the one who trained himself well and bravely go unpunished, but impose a penalty on the one who did badly? Or would you not use it at all, though you had nothing else against the drink?

CliniasAnd how could he not use it, stranger?

AthenianIn any case, my friend, compared with what we have now, the training would be wonderfully easy, whether for one at a time, or a few, or as many at once 648d as one liked. Suppose someone, putting shame first and thinking he oughtn’t to be seen before he’s in good shape, trained against his fears alone and in solitude, providing himself with nothing but drink instead of endless trouble: he’d be doing something right. Or suppose someone, trusting that he’s well prepared by nature and practice, didn’t hesitate to train in company with many fellow drinkers and to show off his power of outrunning and mastering the inevitable 648e change the drink brings—so that, thanks to his virtue, he made not even one serious slip into unseemliness and wasn’t altered—and left before reaching the last cup, fearing the defeat that drink inflicts on every man: he too would be doing something right.

CliniasYes—such a man, acting that way, would be moderate too, stranger.

AthenianThen let’s speak to the lawgiver again, like this. Well, lawgiver, as for fear, no god has given human beings any such drug, you might say, nor have we devised one ourselves—for I don’t count sorcerers among the guests at our feast. But for fearlessness, and for excessive and ill-timed confidence where one shouldn’t have it, is there a drink, or what do we say?

CliniasThere is, he’ll say, I suppose—meaning wine.

AthenianAnd doesn’t this have the opposite effect to the one we described just now? First, as soon as a man drinks it, it makes him more cheerful 649b than before, and the more of it he tastes, the more he’s filled with good hopes and a sense of his own power. And in the end such a man becomes full of complete freedom of speech, as if he were wise, and of liberty, and of complete fearlessness, so that he’ll say anything without hesitation, and do anything too. Everyone would grant us this, I think.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianThen let’s recall this: we said there were two things in our souls that must be cultivated—one so that we may be as 649c confident as possible, and the other, the opposite, so that we may be as fearful as possible.

CliniasThe ones you said belonged to modesty, we believe.

AthenianYou remember well. And since courage and fearlessness must be practiced amid fears, we must consider whether the opposite quality would need to be cultivated amid the opposite conditions.

CliniasThat’s likely, at any rate.

AthenianSo it seems that in the conditions that by nature make us especially confident and bold, we’d need to practice being as little shameless and as little full of boldness 649d as possible, and being afraid ever to dare to say or suffer or do anything shameful at all.

CliniasIt seems so.

AthenianAnd aren’t these all the things in which we’re like that: anger, love, arrogance, ignorance, greed, cowardice, and also things like wealth, beauty, strength, and everything else that intoxicates us with pleasure and drives us out of our minds? For taking a test of these, first, and then for practicing, what cheaper and more harmless pleasure than testing and play over wine 649e can we name, and what better suited—provided it’s done with some care? Let’s consider. Take a peevish and savage soul, the source of countless injustices: is it riskier to test it by entering into contracts with it, at our own peril 650a in them, or by keeping its company at a festival of Dionysus? Or to test a soul overcome by sexual desire by entrusting to it our own daughters and sons and wives, and so to observe the character of a soul by risking what’s dearest to us?

CliniasThat’s true, anyway.

AthenianSo this would be one of the most useful things: to know the natures and dispositions of souls, for the art whose business it is to care for them. And that art, we say, I believe, is politics. Isn’t it?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianNext, it seems, we must consider this about it: whether its only good is this—seeing what our natures are like—or whether the right use of drinking together also holds some benefit of great size, worth serious attention. What do we say, then? It does hold one, as the argument seems to want to indicate. But where and how, let’s hear, paying 652b close attention, so that we don’t somehow get tripped up by it.

CliniasTell us, then.

AthenianWell, I want to recall again what 653a we say right education is. For its preservation, as I now conjecture, lies in this practice, when it’s properly conducted.

CliniasThat’s a large claim.

AthenianWell, I say that the first childish perceptions of children are pleasure and pain, and that these are where virtue and vice first come to the soul. As for wisdom and firm true opinions, a man is fortunate if they come to him even by old age. In any case, a person is complete when he possesses these and all the goods 653b they contain.

CliniasYes, stranger: both what you said about education before and what you’re saying now seem right to us.

AthenianGood. Now these rightly trained pleasures and pains, which are education, slacken in human beings and are largely corrupted in the course of life. But the gods, 653d pitying the human race, born to toil, ordained as rests from its labors the round of festivals in honor of the gods, and gave us the Muses, and Apollo their leader, and Dionysus as fellow celebrants, so that people might set their upbringing right again through the nurture they receive at festivals in the company of gods. We must see, then, whether the account now being sung to us is true to nature, or what. It says that practically every young creature is unable to keep its body or its voice still, 653e but is always trying to move and cry out—some leaping and skipping, as if dancing with pleasure and playing, others uttering every sort of sound.

CliniasYes.

AthenianThen for us the uneducated person will be the one untrained in choral performance, and 654b we must count the educated person as the one adequately trained in it?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianAnd choral performance as a whole is dance and song.

CliniasNecessarily.

AthenianSo the finely educated person would be able to sing and dance finely.

CliniasIt seems so.

AthenianLet’s see, then, what it is we’re now saying.

CliniasWhat’s that?

Athenian“He sings finely,” we say, “and dances finely.” Should 654c we add “if he sings fine things and dances fine things,” or not?

CliniasLet’s add it.

AthenianAnd what about someone who takes fine things to be fine and shameful things shameful, and treats them accordingly? Will such a person be better educated for us in choral performance and music than one who can adequately render with body and voice, on each occasion, what he conceives to be fine, but doesn’t delight in fine things or hate what isn’t fine? Or than the one who can’t quite get it right with voice and 654d body, or in conception, but gets it right in pleasure and pain, welcoming whatever is fine and disliking whatever isn’t?

CliniasThe difference in education you’re describing is enormous, stranger.

AthenianThen if the three of us know what’s fine in song and dance, we also know rightly who is educated and who is uneducated. But if we don’t know this, we won’t know whether there’s any safeguard of education, or where we could ever 654e recognize it. Isn’t that so?

CliniasIt is.

AthenianSo next we must track these things down like hounds on a scent: fine posture, melody, song and dance. If they slip away from us and escape, any further talk of ours about right education, Greek or non-Greek, will be pointless.

CliniasYes.

AthenianVery well. What should we say a fine posture or melody is? Come: when a brave soul and 655a a cowardly one are gripped by the same hardships, in equal measure, do their postures and utterances turn out alike?

CliniasHow could they, when even their complexions don’t?

AthenianWell said, my friend. But in music there are postures and melodies, since music has to do with rhythm and harmony; so one can correctly call a melody or posture rhythmic or harmonious, but not, using the choirmasters’ metaphor, well-colored. But there is a posture or melody of the coward and of the brave man, and 655b it’s correct to call those of the brave fine and those of cowards shameful. And so that we don’t run into a long speech about all this, let’s simply say that all postures and melodies that belong to virtue of soul or body—to virtue itself or to some image of it—are fine, and those belonging to vice are just the opposite.

CliniasYour proposal is right; let that be our answer for now.

AthenianHere’s another point. Do we all enjoy all choral performances 655c equally, or far from it?

CliniasVery far from it.

AthenianThen what shall we say leads us astray? Is it that the same things aren’t fine for all of us, or that they are the same but don’t seem to be? For surely no one will say that the choral performances of vice are finer than those of virtue, or that he himself enjoys the postures of wickedness while other people enjoy a Muse opposed to it. And yet most people say that the correctness of music 655d lies in its power to provide pleasure to souls. But that’s intolerable, and quite impious even to say. Something else is more likely leading us astray.

CliniasWhat?

AthenianChoral performances are imitations of characters, set in actions and fortunes of every kind, with each performer going through them in character and imitation. So those to whom the words or songs or dancing, of whatever kind, are congenial, whether by 655e nature or by habit or both, necessarily enjoy them, praise them and call them fine; while those to whom they run counter to nature or character or some habit can neither enjoy nor praise them, and call them shameful.

CliniasQuite right.

AthenianThen does the person who enjoys the postures or melodies of wickedness suffer any harm, or do those who take their pleasure in the opposite ones gain any benefit?

CliniasProbably.

AthenianOnly probably? Isn’t it necessarily the same as when someone keeps company with the base characters of bad people and doesn’t hate them, but welcomes and enjoys them, and censures them only half in play, dimly aware, as in a dream, of his own wickedness? In that case, surely, whoever enjoys either kind must necessarily come to resemble what he enjoys, even if he’s ashamed to praise it. And yet what greater good or evil could we say necessarily comes to us than that?

CliniasNone, I think.

AthenianThen where laws are, or will in future be, well laid down concerning education and play in the arts of the Muses, do we suppose poets will be free to take whatever pleases the poet himself in composing—in rhythm or melody or words—and teach it to the children and young people of law-abiding citizens in the choruses, whatever it happens to produce, virtue or wickedness?

CliniasThat certainly makes no sense. How could it?

AthenianYet as things are, it’s allowed in practically every city—except in Egypt.

CliniasAnd how do you say such things have been regulated by law in Egypt?

AthenianIt’s a marvel even to hear. Long ago, it seems, they recognized this principle we’re stating now: that the young in cities must make fine postures and fine melodies their habitual practice. They prescribed these, and displayed in their temples which they are and what they’re like; 656e and neither painters nor anyone else who makes postures or anything of the kind was allowed to innovate or to devise anything other than the traditional forms—nor are they now, either in these arts or in music as a whole. If you look, you’ll find that things painted or carved there ten thousand years ago—and I don’t mean “ten thousand” loosely, but literally—are 657a neither finer nor uglier than what’s made today, but are worked with the same art.

CliniasThat’s amazing.

AthenianSay rather, supremely worthy of a lawgiver and a statesman. You’d find other things there that are poor. But this about music is true and worth pondering: that it was possible, after all, to legislate firmly about such things and confidently fix in law melodies that have a natural correctness. That would be the work of a god or some divine man—and in fact they say there that the melodies preserved for this long 657b time are compositions of Isis. So, as I was saying, if someone could grasp their correctness in any way at all, he should confidently bring them under law and order. For the pursuit of pleasure and pain, always seeking to use new music, hasn’t much power to corrupt choral performance once it’s consecrated, by deriding it as old-fashioned. There, at any rate, it seems to have been quite unable to corrupt it—quite the opposite.note

CliniasFrom what you’ve just said, that seems to be how things are.

AthenianThen can we confidently say that the right use of music, and of play with choral performance, is something like this? We rejoice when we think we’re doing well, and whenever we rejoice, we think in turn that we’re doing well? Isn’t that so?

CliniasIt is.

AthenianAnd in that state, rejoicing, we can’t keep still.

CliniasThat’s so.

AthenianNow aren’t our young people ready to dance themselves, while we older ones think it fitting to pass our time watching them, enjoying their play and festivity, now that our own nimbleness is leaving us? Missing it and cherishing it, we set up contests for those best able to reawaken us, through memory, to our youth.

CliniasVery true.

AthenianThen do we suppose that what most people now say 657e about festival-goers is completely empty—that the one who gives us the most delight and enjoyment should be considered wisest and judged the winner? For since we give ourselves up to play on such occasions, the one who makes the most people enjoy themselves the most should be honored most and, as I said just now, carry off the prize. 658a Isn’t that rightly said, and wouldn’t it be rightly done, if things went that way?

CliniasPerhaps.

AthenianBut, my good friend, let’s not judge such a thing hastily. Let’s divide it into its parts and look at it in some such way as this. Suppose someone set up a contest, just like that, without specifying whether it was athletic or musical or equestrian, but gathered everyone in the city and announced, offering prizes, that anyone who wished should come and compete in giving pleasure, 658b and nothing else; and that whoever delighted the spectators most, with no rules as to how, and did this better than anyone, and was judged the most pleasing of the competitors, should win. What do we think would come of this proclamation?

CliniasIn what respect?

AthenianProbably one would present an epic recitation, as Homer did, another a song to the lyre, one a tragedy, another a comedy; and it wouldn’t be surprising if someone 658c thought he’d have the best chance of winning with a puppet show. When these and countless other competitors turned up, could we say who would rightly win?note

CliniasA strange question. Who could answer that as if he knew, before he’d heard them and listened to each of the contestants with his own ears?

AthenianWell then, do you two want me to give you the strange answer?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianIf the very small children were the judges, they’ll pick the one presenting the puppet show, won’t they?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianAnd if the older children, the one with the comedies. Tragedy will be chosen by educated women, young men, and perhaps pretty much the majority of everyone.

CliniasPerhaps so.

AthenianBut a rhapsode giving a fine performance of the Iliad and the Odyssey, or something of Hesiod’s—we old men would probably enjoy hearing him most and declare him the winner by a long way. So who would rightly be the winner? That’s the next question, isn’t it?

CliniasYes.

AthenianClearly you and I have to say that those chosen by men of our age would rightly win. For our taste seems to us by far the best of any now found in cities anywhere.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianThen I too grant the many this much: music should be judged by pleasure—but not the pleasure of just anyone. Rather, the finest Muse is pretty much the one that delights the best and adequately educated, and above all 659a the one that delights the one man who excels in virtue and education. That’s why we say the judges of these things need virtue: they must have a share of wisdom in general, and of courage in particular.

CliniasWhat?

AthenianIt seems to me that for the third or fourth time our argument has come round 659d to the same point: that education is the drawing and leading of children toward the principle declared right by the law and agreed, from experience, by the most reasonable and oldest to be truly right. So that the child’s soul may not grow used to feeling pleasure and pain contrary to the law and to those the law has persuaded, but may follow along, pleased and pained by the same things as the 659e old man—for this reason what we call songs have now become, in truth, incantations for souls, earnestly designed to produce the harmony we’re speaking of. But because the souls of the young can’t bear earnestness, they’re called play and songs and treated as such. It’s just as with people who are ill and in poor bodily health: those who look after them try to give them wholesome nourishment in pleasant foods and 660a drinks, and harmful nourishment in unpleasant ones, so that they’ll welcome the one and rightly grow used to hating the other.note

CliniasWell, by Zeus, stranger, do you think that’s how they compose now in other cities? As far as I can see, apart from us and the Spartans, I don’t know of what you’re describing being practiced anywhere. Instead there are always novelties in dancing and all the rest of music, changed not by laws but by some disorderly pleasures, which are very far from staying the same and constant, as 660c you explain they do in Egypt—they’re never the same.

AthenianExcellent, Clinias. If I seemed to you to be describing what you mention as what happens now, I wouldn’t be surprised if that came of my not saying clearly what I mean. I was speaking of what I want to happen in music, and perhaps I put it in such a way that you thought I meant that. For railing against things that are incurable and have gone far astray is never pleasant, 660d though it’s sometimes necessary. But since you share this view, tell me: do you say such things happen among you and the Spartans here more than among the other Greeks?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianAnd what if they happened that way among the others too? Would we say things would be better that way than as they happen now?

CliniasVery much better, I should think, if they were done as they are among the Spartans and among us, and moreover as you said just now they ought to be.

AthenianCome, then, let’s reach agreement on this for now. Among 660e you, in all your education and music, isn’t this what’s said? You compel the poets to say that the good man, being moderate and just, is happy and blessed, whether he’s big and strong or small and weak, rich or not; but if he’s richer than Cinyras and Midas yet unjust, he’s wretched and lives in misery.note

CliniasIn some respects we seem to, I think, but in others not at all.

AthenianTake a man who has health and wealth and absolute power his whole life long—and I’ll add for you outstanding strength 661e and courage, along with immortality, and none of the so-called evils ever befalling him—but who has injustice and arrogance within him, and only that. Perhaps I’m failing to persuade you that a man living like that is plainly not happy but wretched?

CliniasThat’s very true.

AthenianVery well. What should we say next? A man who is brave and strong and handsome and rich, and 662a does whatever he desires all his life—if he were unjust and arrogant, don’t you think he’d necessarily live shamefully? Or would you perhaps grant this much, at least: shamefully?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianAnd what about badly, too?

CliniasWe wouldn’t grant that so readily.

AthenianAnd what about unpleasantly, and to his own disadvantage?

CliniasAnd how could we grant that as well?

AthenianHow? Only if some god, it seems, my friends, would grant us harmony, since at present we’re practically singing out of tune with each other. To me, my dear Clinias, these things seem as necessarily true as Crete is plainly an island. And if I were a lawgiver, I’d try to compel the poets and everyone in the city to speak accordingly; and I’d impose very nearly the greatest penalty on anyone in the land who said that some 662c people are wicked but live pleasantly, or that some things are profitable and lucrative while others are more just. And there are many other things, different from what the Cretans and Spartans, it seems, and doubtless the rest of mankind now say, that I’d persuade my citizens to say.

CliniasHow could it be?

AthenianSo the account that doesn’t separate the pleasant from the just 663b and the good and fine is persuasive, if nothing else, in getting someone to want to live the holy and just life; so that for a lawgiver the most shameful and hostile of all accounts is one that denies these things are so. For no one would willingly be persuaded to do something that doesn’t bring him more enjoyment than pain.

CliniasIt appears so.

AthenianWhich judgment shall we say has the more authoritative claim to truth: that of the worse soul or that of the better?

CliniasThat of the better, necessarily.

AthenianThen necessarily the unjust life is not only more shameful and more wretched than the just and holy life, but in truth more unpleasant as well.

CliniasIt looks that way, at least by our present argument, my friends.

AthenianBut even if this weren’t so, as the argument has now proved it is, could a lawgiver worth anything at all—if he ever dared to lie to the young for their good—have told a lie more profitable than this, 663e or more able to make everyone do everything just, not by force but willingly?

CliniasTruth is a fine thing, stranger, and lasting; but it doesn’t seem easy to persuade people of it.

AthenianWell, the Sidonian’s tale was easy to persuade people of, implausible as it was—and countless others.

CliniasWhich?

AthenianThat once upon a time teeth were sown and armed men sprang up from them. And yet this is a great example for the lawgiver that 664a the souls of the young can be persuaded of anything one tries to persuade them of. So all he need do is look for and discover what belief would do a city the greatest good, and find every means to ensure that such a community, as a whole, says one and the same thing about these matters as far as possible, always, all life long, in songs and stories and arguments. But if you see things otherwise, there’s nothing to stop you disputing the argument.note

CliniasNo, I don’t think either of us could dispute it.

AthenianThen it would be my turn to say what comes next. I say that all three of our choruses must sing their charms over the souls of the children while they’re still young and tender, saying all the other fine things we’ve gone through and may still go through; but let the sum of it be this: that the same life is declared by the gods to be both most pleasant and best. In saying this 664c we’ll be saying what is most true, and at the same time we’ll persuade those we need to persuade better than if we put it any other way.

CliniasI have to grant what you say.

AthenianFirst, then, the Muses’ chorus of children would most properly come on first, to sing these things publicly with all earnestness to the whole city. Second would come the chorus of those up to thirty years old, calling on Paean to witness the truth of what they say, and praying that he be gracious to the young and 664d win them over. Then there must be a third group to sing as well, those over thirty up to sixty. Those past that age—since they can no longer carry a song—are left to tell stories about these same characters, by divine utterance.note

CliniasAnd who are these third choruses you mean, stranger? We don’t quite see clearly what you’re trying to say about them.

AthenianWell, they’re pretty much the ones for whose sake most of what we said earlier was said.

CliniasWe still haven’t understood. Try to explain it even more clearly.

AthenianAt the beginning of our discussion, if we remember, we said that the nature of all the young is fiery and can’t keep still, either in body or in voice, but is always making disorderly noises and leaping about; and that no other animal has any sense of order in either of these, but human nature alone has it. Order in movement 665a has the name rhythm, while order in the voice, where high and low are blended together, is called harmony, and the two together are called choral performance. And we said that the gods, taking pity on us, had given us Apollo and the Muses as our fellow dancers and chorus leaders—and a third as well, we said, if we remember: Dionysus.

CliniasOf course we remember.

AthenianWell, the chorus of Apollo and the Muses 665b has been discussed. The third and remaining chorus must be said to be the chorus of Dionysus.

CliniasHow so? Explain. A chorus of old men for Dionysus would sound very strange, at least to someone hearing of it for the first time—if men over thirty, and even over fifty, up to sixty, are really going to dance for him.

AthenianThat’s very true. So an argument is needed on this point, I think, to show how this would be reasonable if it happened.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianWell, do we agree about what came before?

CliniasAbout what?

AthenianThat every man and child, free and slave, female and male—the whole city, singing to the whole city—must never stop chanting to itself the things we’ve gone through, like a charm, always varying them in one way or another and giving them every kind of diversity, so that the singers feel an insatiable appetite for the hymns and pleasure in them.

CliniasHow could anyone not agree that this is how things should be done?

AthenianThen where would this best part of our city, which by age and wisdom alike is the most persuasive group in it, accomplish the greatest good by singing the finest songs? Or shall we be so foolish as to leave out the group that would have the most authority over the finest and most beneficial songs?

CliniasNo, leaving it out is impossible, given what we’re now saying.

AthenianThen how could this be done fittingly? See if it would work like this.

CliniasLike what?

AthenianEveryone, surely, as he grows older, becomes full of reluctance about 665e singing. He takes less pleasure in doing it, and if he’s made to do it he’d feel more embarrassed—and the older and more moderate he becomes, the more so. Isn’t that right?

CliniasIt is.

AthenianThen he’d be even more embarrassed to stand up and sing in a theater in front of all kinds of people. And if men like this were forced to sing like the choruses that compete for victory, lean and hungry from voice training, wouldn’t they do it with no enthusiasm, singing without pleasure and with a lot of embarrassment?

CliniasThat follows absolutely.

AthenianHow, then, shall we encourage them to be eager to sing? Won’t we make a law, first, that children up to eighteen must not taste wine at all? We’ll teach them that one mustn’t channel fire onto fire, into both body and soul, before setting out to undertake one’s labors, and so guard against the frenzied disposition of the young. After that, a young man may taste wine in moderation up to 666b thirty, but must keep entirely away from drunkenness and heavy drinking. And when he reaches forty, after feasting at the common meals, he may call on the other gods, and in particular invite Dionysus to the rite and recreation of the older men, which the god gave to human beings, in the form of wine, as a remedy against the harshness of old age. By it we grow young again, and through forgetting our low spirits the character of the soul becomes softer instead of 666c harder, as iron does when put into the fire, and so easier to mold. Isn’t that so?

CliniasMuch more willing.

AthenianAs a way of leading them on to take part in our singing, then, this method would hardly be 666d unseemly at all.

CliniasNot at all.

AthenianBut what kind of song will the men sing? What music? Obviously it has to be one that suits them, doesn’t it?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianWhat would suit godlike men, then? Would the choral kind?

CliniasWell, stranger, Megillus here and I, at any rate, couldn’t sing any other song than the one we learned in the choruses and got used to singing.

AthenianNaturally. The fact is, you’ve never gotten hold of the 666e finest song. Your constitution is that of an army camp, not of people settled in cities. You keep your young men in a herd, like colts grazing together in a drove. Not one of you takes his own colt, drags it away from its herdmates—however wild and resentful it gets—sets a private groom over it, and educates it, grooming and taming it and giving it everything that belongs to the rearing of a child. That way it would become not only a good 667a soldier but someone able to manage a city and towns—the man we said at the beginning is more of a warrior than Tyrtaeus’ warriors, since always and everywhere, in private individuals and the whole city alike, he values courage as the fourth possession of virtue, not the first.

CliniasI don’t know how it is, stranger, that you’re belittling our lawgivers yet again.

AthenianIf I’m doing that, my good friend, it isn’t because I’m intent on it. Let’s go wherever the argument carries us, if you’re willing. If we have music finer than that of the choruses and 667b of the public theaters, let’s try to offer it to these men who, we say, are embarrassed by that kind but are looking for the finest kind to share in.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianWell, first, mustn’t this hold of everything that has some charm attached to it: that its most important feature is either this charm alone, or some kind of correctness, or, third, benefit? I mean, for example, that eating and drinking and nourishment in general have charm attached to them, which we’d call pleasure. But 667c as for their correctness and benefit, what we call the healthiness of what’s served on each occasion is exactly that, and is what is most correct in them.

CliniasAbsolutely.

AthenianAnd learning, too, is accompanied by the element of charm, pleasure; but what produces its correctness and benefit, its goodness and fineness, is truth.

CliniasThat’s so.

AthenianWhat about the arts of image-making, which produce likenesses? 667d If they accomplish this, wouldn’t it be most just to call the pleasure that arises in them as an accompaniment, if it does arise, charm?

CliniasYes.

AthenianBut the correctness of such things would be produced, broadly speaking, by equality—in size and in quality—rather than by pleasure.

CliniasWell put.

AthenianThen wouldn’t the only thing correctly judged by pleasure be what produces neither any benefit nor truth nor likeness, 667e nor again any harm, but comes about solely for the sake of what accompanies the others—the charm, which one could best call pleasure when none of these things follows along with it?

CliniasYou mean harmless pleasure only.

AthenianYes, and I call this same thing play, too, when it does neither harm nor good worth taking seriously or talking about.

CliniasVery true.

AthenianSo wouldn’t we say, on the basis of what we’re saying now, that no imitation should be judged by pleasure or by untrue 668a opinion—nor, of course, any equality either? For what is equal isn’t equal, nor is what is proportionate proportionate at all, because someone thinks so or because someone enjoys it. It should be judged by truth above all, and by nothing else whatever.

CliniasAbsolutely.

AthenianNow we say that all music is image-making and imitative, don’t we?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianSo when anyone says music is judged by pleasure, we should least of all accept his claim, and least of all should we seek out that kind 668b as serious music, if there ever is any such thing. We should seek the kind that has likeness to its model in imitating the beautiful.

CliniasVery true.

AthenianAnd so these men who are looking for the finest song and music must look, it seems, not for music that is pleasant but for music that is correct. For the correctness of imitation, as we say, lay in rendering the thing imitated as it was, in size and in quality.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianAnd everyone would agree about music, at any rate, that all its compositions are imitation 668c and representation. Wouldn’t all poets, audiences and actors agree on this?

CliniasThey certainly would.

AthenianThen it seems that anyone who isn’t going to go wrong about each composition has to know what it is. For if he doesn’t know its essence—what it means and what it is actually an image of—he’ll hardly be able to tell whether its intention is correct or mistaken.

CliniasHardly. Of course not.

AthenianAnd would someone who doesn’t know what is correct ever be able to tell what is good and what is bad? But I’m not putting this very clearly; maybe it can be put more clearly like this.

CliniasHow?

AthenianThere are, of course, countless likenesses that address our sight.

CliniasYes.

AthenianWell then, what if someone, here too, didn’t know what each of the imitated bodies is? Would he ever know whether it had been made correctly? I mean something like this: whether it has the right numbers of the body, and the positions of each of the parts, 668e how many there are and which lie next to which in their proper order—and also colors and shapes—or whether all these have been made in a muddle. Do you think anyone could ever tell these things if he had no idea at all what the creature imitated was?

CliniasHow could he?

AthenianAnd what if we knew that the thing painted or sculpted was a human being, and that the art had given it all its own parts 669a and its colors and shapes as well? Is it then necessary that anyone who knows this will also be ready to know the other thing, whether it’s beautiful, or in what respect it may fall short of beauty?

CliniasIf so, stranger, practically all of us would know which living things are beautiful.

AthenianQuite right. Then with regard to every image—in painting, in music, everywhere—mustn’t anyone who’s going to be a sensible judge have these three things? He must know, first, 669b what it is; next, how correctly; and third, how well any given image has been made in words, melodies and rhythms.

CliniasSo it seems, at any rate.

AthenianThen let’s not give up on saying what’s difficult about music. It is celebrated far more than other kinds of images, and so it needs the greatest caution of all. Someone who goes wrong here would be very greatly harmed, 669c since he’d be taking bad characters to his heart; and the error is very hard to detect, because our poets are worse poets than the Muses themselves.

CliniasObviously he can’t.

AthenianThe great mass of people are ridiculous in thinking they know well enough what is harmonious and rhythmical and what isn’t—all those who have been drilled into singing along and marching in rhythm. 670c They don’t reckon with the fact that they do these things without understanding any of them. But every melody, surely, is correct when it has what suits it and faulty when it doesn’t.

CliniasNecessarily.

AthenianWhat about someone who doesn’t even know what it has? Will he ever, as we said, know that it’s correct, in any case whatever?

CliniasHow could he?

AthenianSo it seems that we’re now discovering, once again, that our singers—the ones we’re now calling on and in a way 670d compelling to sing of their own accord—must be educated at least this far: each of them must be able to follow the steps of the rhythms and the notes of the melodies. That way, seeing clearly into harmonies and rhythms, they can pick out the ones that are fitting for men of their age and character to sing, and sing them that way; and in singing, they themselves enjoy harmless pleasures in the moment, and become leaders for the younger ones 670e in welcoming good characters as they should. Educated this far, they would have acquired an education more exact than the one that reaches the general public, and even than that of the poets themselves.

CliniasIt is bound to.

AthenianEveryone is lifted up, lighter than his usual self; he’s cheerful, full of outspokenness and, in that state, deaf to those around him, and he thinks himself fit to rule both himself and everyone else.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianDidn’t we say that when this happens the drinkers’ souls, like iron, grow fiery and become softer and younger, and so easy to lead 671c for someone who is able and knows how to educate and mold them, just as when they were young? And that this molder is the same as then, the good lawgiver? He must have laws for drinking parties—laws able to take the man who grows hopeful and bold and more shameless than he should, and who won’t put up with order or with taking his turn at silence and speech, drinking and music, and make him willing to do the opposite of all this; laws able to send in against the ugly boldness as it enters 671d the finest fear, fighting on the side of justice—the divine fear we’ve named modesty and shame.

CliniasThat’s so.

AthenianAnd the guardians of these laws, working with them, should be the calm and sober, as generals of those who aren’t sober. Without them, battling drunkenness is more dangerous than battling enemies without calm commanders. And anyone who can’t bring himself to obey them and 671e Dionysus’ commanders—the men over sixty—should bear as much disgrace as a man who disobeys the commanders of Ares, or more.

CliniasRight.

AthenianSo if drunkenness were like this, and play like this, wouldn’t such drinking companions benefit, and part from one another better friends than before, and not 672a enemies, as they do now? For they would have spent the whole gathering in accordance with laws, and followed wherever the sober led those who aren’t.

CliniasRight, if it really were as you’re describing it now.

AthenianThen let’s no longer condemn that gift of Dionysus outright, as bad and not fit to be admitted into a city. In fact one could go on to say even more for it. The greatest good it confers, for instance, one hesitates to tell the general public, because people take it the wrong way 672b and misunderstand it when they hear it.

CliniasWhat’s that?

AthenianThere’s a story, a kind of rumor, that trickles around somehow: that this god was robbed of his wits by his stepmother Hera, and that’s why he sends Bacchic frenzies and all manic dancing on us, in revenge—and why he gave us wine, for this very purpose. I leave such things to be said by those who think it safe to say them about gods. But this much 672c I know: no animal is ever born possessing the intelligence, or the amount of it, that it’s meant to have when fully grown. During the time when it doesn’t yet have its proper wisdom, every animal raves and cries out without any order, and as soon as it can get itself up, it leaps about without order again. And let’s recall that we said these were the origins of music and gymnastics.note

CliniasWe remember, of course.

AthenianAnd also that we said this origin had given us humans the perception of rhythm and harmony, 672d and that of the gods Apollo, the Muses and Dionysus were responsible for it?

CliniasOf course.

AthenianAnd what’s more, it seems, the other people’s story says that wine was given to punish humankind, to drive us mad. But the one we’re telling now says, on the contrary, that it’s a remedy given so that the soul may acquire modesty, and the body health and strength.

CliniasYou’ve recalled the argument beautifully, stranger.

AthenianLet’s consider half of choral performance completed, then. The other half we’ll complete, or else leave aside, as we see fit.

CliniasWhat halves do you mean, and how are you dividing them?

AthenianChoral performance as a whole, surely, was for us the whole of education. And one part of it is rhythms and harmonies, the part belonging to the voice.

CliniasYes.

AthenianAnd the part belonging to the movement of the body had rhythm in common with the movement of the voice, but posture as its own. 673a In the other part, the movement of the voice was melody.

CliniasVery true.

AthenianNow the part belonging to the voice, which reaches as far as the soul in education toward virtue, we somehow came to name music.

CliniasQuite rightly.

AthenianAnd the part belonging to the body, which we called the dancing of creatures at play: when such movement extends to the virtue of the body, let’s call the skilled training of the body toward that end gymnastics.

CliniasQuite right.

AthenianAs for music, which we said just now was roughly half of choral performance, gone through and completed, let that stand as said for now. Shall we discuss the other half? Or how and in what way should we proceed?

CliniasMy excellent friend, you’re talking with Cretans and Spartans. We’ve gone through music and have left gymnastics out. What answer do you suppose either of us will give you to that question?

AthenianI’d say that by asking that you’ve pretty much given 673c a clear answer. I understand that this question of yours is at the moment an answer, as I said, and an order besides to complete the subject of gymnastics.

CliniasYou’ve understood perfectly. So go ahead.

AthenianI must. And it isn’t very hard to talk about things you both know well; you have far more experience of this art than of the other.

CliniasThat’s about right.

AthenianWell, the origin of this kind of play, too, is that every animal is by nature 673d given to leaping about. The human animal, as we said, got a sense of rhythm and gave birth to dance; and since melody reminded and awakened rhythm, the two joined together and gave birth to choral performance and play.

CliniasVery true.

AthenianOne part of it, we say, we’ve already gone through; the other we’ll try to go through next.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianBut first let’s put the finishing touch 673e on the use of drunkenness, if you both agree.

CliniasWhat finishing touch? What do you mean?

AthenianIf a city is going to treat the practice we’ve just described as a serious matter and pursue it with laws and order, using it as training for the sake of moderation, and in the same way and on the same principle won’t keep away from the other pleasures either, but will devise means of mastering them, then it should make use of all of them in this way.

CliniasWell said, and we agree.

AthenianSo much, then, for that. But what are we to say was the origin of a constitution? Wouldn’t this be the vantage point from which one could see it most easily and best?

CliniasWhich?

AthenianThe one from which we should always view the progress of cities, too, as they move toward virtue and vice alike.

CliniasAnd which is that?

AthenianI think it’s the vast length of time, stretching without limit, 676b and the changes that happen within it.

CliniasWhat do you mean?

AthenianTell me: since there have been cities and people living as citizens, do you think you could ever work out how great a span of time has passed?

CliniasNo, certainly not easily.

AthenianBut it would be something immense and incalculable?

CliniasVery much so.

AthenianThen haven’t tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of cities come into being in this time, and by the same reckoning 676c no fewer been destroyed? And haven’t they, many times and everywhere, lived under every kind of constitution? Sometimes growing larger from smaller, sometimes smaller from larger, and becoming worse from better and better from worse?

CliniasNecessarily.

AthenianLet’s try, then, if we can, to grasp the cause of this change. Perhaps it would show us the first origin of constitutions and how they change.

CliniasWell said. We must set about it eagerly—you by explaining what you think about them, and we by following along.

CliniasWhich ones?

AthenianThat there have been many destructions of humankind, by floods and diseases and many other things, in which only a small remnant of the human race survived.

CliniasEveryone finds all that quite believable.

AthenianCome, then, let’s consider one of these many: the one that once happened through the flood.

CliniasAnd what should we think about it?

AthenianThat those who escaped the destruction then would have been, more or less, hill shepherds—small embers of the human race kept alive on mountaintops somewhere.

CliniasClearly.

AthenianAnd such people, surely, must have been inexperienced in the arts generally, and especially in the devices that city people use against one another to get the better of each other and win their rivalries, and in all the other mischief they think up against one another.

CliniasLikely enough.

AthenianShall we assume, then, that the cities on the plains and by the sea were utterly destroyed at that time?

CliniasLet’s assume it.

AthenianThen shall we say that all tools were lost, and that whatever worthwhile discoveries there had been in any art—political art or any other kind of wisdom—all of them perished at that time? After all, my excellent friend, if things had stayed for all time just as they’re arranged now, how would anything new ever have been discovered?

CliniasThe point is that all this apparently escaped the people of those times for tens of thousands of years, and it’s only a thousand years, or twice that, since some of it came to light through Daedalus, some through Orpheus, some through Palamedes, musical arts through Marsyas and Olympus, the lyre through Amphion, and a great many other things through others. It all happened, you might say, just yesterday or the day before.note

AthenianIt’s very nice, Clinias, that you’ve left out your friend, the one who was born quite literally yesterday.

CliniasYou don’t mean Epimenides?

AthenianYes, him. With his invention, my friend, he leapt far beyond all the others among you. Hesiod foretold it in words long ago, but he brought it about in deed, as you Cretans say.note

CliniasYes, we do say so.

AthenianThen shall we say that when the destruction happened, human affairs were in this state: there was a vast and fearful emptiness and an enormous quantity of land for the taking; the other animals had perished, and a few herds of cattle, and any stock of goats that happened to survive somewhere—these too few, at first, 678a for herdsmen to live on at that time?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianAnd as for a city, a constitution and legislation, which our discussion has now reached, do we suppose there was any memory of them at all, so to speak?

CliniasNone whatever.

AthenianSo from those people in that condition came everything we have now—cities and constitutions, arts and laws, and a great deal of wickedness, but a great deal of virtue too?

CliniasWhat do you mean?

AthenianMy remarkable friend, do we suppose that the people of that time, inexperienced in many of the fine things found in cities, and many of the opposite things too, had become perfect in either virtue or vice?

CliniasWell put; we understand what you mean.

AthenianThen as time went on and our race multiplied, everything advanced to the whole present state of things?

CliniasQuite right.

AthenianNot suddenly, it seems likely, but little by little over a very long time.

CliniasThat certainly makes sense.

AthenianFor I think the fear of coming down from the heights into the plains was still ringing in all their ears.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianWouldn’t they have been glad to see one another, because there were so few of them around at that time? But the means of getting to one another, by land or by sea, had pretty much all perished along with the arts. So they weren’t able, I think, to mix with one another very much. For iron 678d and bronze and all the metals had been buried in the upheaval and had disappeared, so that there was no way at all to extract and refine them, and they had little means of cutting timber. Even if some tool had survived in the mountains somewhere, it soon wore out and disappeared, and no others would be made until the art of mining came to humankind again.

CliniasHow could they be?

AthenianHow many generations later do we suppose this happened?

CliniasObviously a great many.

AthenianAnd the arts that need iron and bronze and all such things would have disappeared during that same period, or even longer?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianWhat’s more, faction and war had largely disappeared at that time, for several reasons.

CliniasHow?

AthenianFirst, their isolation made them fond of one another and friendly; and second, food was nothing to fight over. 679a There was no shortage of pasture, except perhaps for some at the beginning, and it was mostly on their flocks that they lived at that time. They weren’t short of milk and meat at all, and by hunting they got themselves food that was neither poor nor scanty. And they were well supplied with clothing, bedding, houses and vessels, both those that go on the fire and those that don’t. For the arts of molding and weaving need no iron whatever, 679b and a god gave these two arts to provide all these things for human beings, so that whenever they fell into such want, the human race might have a means of sprouting and growing again.

CliniasMegillus and I, at any rate, agree that this is so.

AthenianThen shall we say that many generations, living this way, would be less skilled and less learned than those who lived before the flood, and those of today, both in the other arts and in the arts of war—those practiced nowadays on land and at sea, and those practiced within a city alone, called lawsuits and factions, where every device, in word 679e and deed, has been contrived for harming and wronging one another—but more simple, more courageous, and also more moderate and more just in every way? And we’ve already gone through the reason for this.

CliniasYou’re right.

AthenianLet this be said, then, and let everything that follows from it be stated too, for this purpose: so that we can understand what need the people of that time 680a could have had for laws, and who their lawgiver was.

CliniasAnd that’s well said.

AthenianIs it true that they didn’t need lawgivers, and that such a thing wasn’t yet usual in those times? For people born in this part of the cycle don’t yet have writing; they live by following customs and what are called ancestral laws.

CliniasLikely enough.

AthenianBut this is already a kind of constitution.

CliniasWhat kind?

AthenianI think everyone calls the constitution of that time a chieftainship, and it still exists in many places even now, among both Greeks and non-Greeks. Homer, I think, says it was found where the Cyclopes lived, when he says: “They have no assemblies for counsel, no ordinances; / they dwell on the peaks of lofty mountains / in hollow caves, and each lays down the law 680c / for his children and wives, and they pay no heed to one another.”note

CliniasThis poet of yours seems to have been a charming one. We’ve also gone through other things of his, very elegant ones—though not many, since we Cretans don’t make much use of foreign poetry.

MegillusWe, on the other hand, do make use of it, and he seems to be the best of such poets—though the life he describes every time is not Spartan but 680d rather Ionian. But now he does seem to bear good witness to your argument, when he uses myth to trace their ancient condition back to savagery.

AthenianYes, he bears witness to it with us. Let’s take him as evidence that constitutions of this sort do sometimes arise.

CliniasGood.

AthenianDon’t they arise from these people, scattered in single households and by families because of the want that followed the destructions? 680e Among them the eldest rules, because authority for them has come down from father and mother. Following them, like birds, they will form a single flock, governed by their fathers and ruled by the most just of all kingships.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianAfter this, more of them come together in common and make larger cities. They turn first to farming, in the 681a foothills, and build enclosures like dry-stone walls as defenses against wild beasts, making a single large common household in turn.

CliniasThat’s likely how it happened, at any rate.

AthenianWell then, isn’t this likely too?

CliniasWhat?

AthenianAs these settlements grew larger from the smaller, original ones, each of the small ones would be there, family by family, with its eldest as ruler and 681b with certain customs of its own, because they had lived apart from one another. These customs would differ according to the different parents and those who reared them, and would be what they had grown used to regarding the gods and themselves: more orderly among the descendants of the more orderly, braver among those of the braver. And so each group, naturally, would stamp its own preferences on its children and its children’s children, and, as we’re saying, they would come into the larger community with their own laws.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianAnd each group, surely, must have liked its own laws, and the others’ less.

CliniasThat’s so.

AthenianSo it seems we’ve stepped, without noticing, into the beginning of legislation.

CliniasQuite so.

AthenianAt any rate, after this the people who had come together must choose some of their number to act for them all. These would look over the customs of all the groups, pick out those they liked best, and present them for the common good to the leaders who had led the peoples—the 681d kings, as it were—setting them out plainly and giving them the choice. They themselves will be called lawgivers; and once they’ve appointed the rulers, making some kind of aristocracy out of the chieftainships, or even a kingship, they will live under this altered constitution.

CliniasThat would come next, at any rate, and would happen in this way.

AthenianNow let’s go on to describe a third form of constitution that arises, one in which all the kinds and conditions of constitutions, and of cities too, turn out to be combined.

CliniasWhat is that?

AthenianThe one Homer, too, pointed to after the second, when he said the third came about like this. He says, I think: “He founded Dardania, since holy Ilium / was not yet built upon the plain, a city of mortal men, / but they still dwelt on the foothills of Ida, rich in springs.” 682a He speaks these verses, and the ones about the Cyclopes, in a way that is somehow in keeping with the gods and with nature. For the race of poets is divine and inspired when it sings its hymns, and each time, with the help of certain Graces and Muses, it lays hold of many things that really happened.note

CliniasVery much so.

AthenianThen let’s go still further into the story that has come to us now; perhaps it may give some indication of what we’re after. Shouldn’t we?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianIlium was founded, we say, when people moved down from the heights into a large and beautiful plain, on a hill that wasn’t high and had many rivers rushing down from Ida above.

CliniasSo they say, at any rate.

AthenianAnd don’t we suppose this happened a long time after the flood?

CliniasOf course it was a long time.

AthenianAt any rate they seem to have been terribly forgetful at that time of the 682c destruction we’re now talking about, since they placed their city like that, beneath many rivers flowing down from the heights, putting their trust in hills that weren’t very high.

CliniasSo clearly they were separated from that kind of disaster by a very long time.

AthenianAnd many other cities, I think, had already been founded by then, as humanity multiplied.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianAnd they, surely, also marched against Ilium—by sea too, perhaps, since by then everyone was using the sea without fear.

CliniasEvidently.

AthenianAnd the Achaeans stayed for about ten years and then sacked Troy.note

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianDuring this time, the ten years that Ilium was under siege, things went very badly at home for each of the besiegers, with the young men rising up in factions. When the soldiers came back to their own cities and homes, these young men didn’t receive them well or justly, 682e and the result was a great many deaths, murders and exiles. The exiles returned again under a changed name: they were called Dorians instead of Achaeans, because the man who gathered the exiles of that time was Dorieus. And everything from this point on you Spartans tell in your stories and relate in full.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianSo we’ve come back again, as if by divine guidance, to the very point where, at the start of our conversation about laws, we turned aside and stumbled into music and drinking; and the argument is offering us, so to speak, a handhold. For it has arrived at the settlement of Sparta 683a itself, which you said was rightly established, like Crete’s, with sister laws. So this much we gain from our argument’s wandering, having gone through various constitutions and settlements: we’ve observed a first, a second and a third city, following one another, as we think, in their founding across vast stretches of time; and now this fourth city—or nation, if you like—has come before us, one that was being founded once and has now been founded.

MegillusWell, stranger, if some god promised us that if 683c we made a second attempt at examining legislation, we would hear an argument no worse and no shorter than the one we’ve just heard, I for one would go a long way, and today would seem short to me—and yet it is just about the day when the god turns from summer toward winter.note

AthenianThen it seems we must examine these matters.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianLet’s put ourselves, in thought, back in that time when Sparta and Argos and Messene and their 683d dependencies had come firmly under the control of your ancestors, Megillus. What they decided next, as the story goes, was to divide their army into three and found three cities: Argos, Messene and Sparta.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianAnd Temenus became king of Argos, Cresphontes of Messene, and Procles and Eurysthenes of Sparta.note

MegillusOf course.

AthenianAnd everyone at that time swore to come to their aid 683e if anyone tried to destroy their kingship.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianBut when a kingship is overthrown—in the name of Zeus—or when any rule has ever been overthrown, is it by anyone but the rulers themselves? Or did we lay this down just now, when we came across these arguments a little while ago, only to forget it?

MegillusHow could we have?

AthenianThen now we’ll confirm this point more firmly. For having come upon events that actually happened, it seems, we’ve arrived at the same argument, so that we won’t be examining it 684a in the abstract, but in connection with something that happened and has truth to it. What happened was this. Three kingships and the three cities they ruled swore oaths to each other, according to the laws they had laid down to govern both ruling and being ruled. The kings swore not to make their rule harsher as time went on and the line continued; the others swore that, as long as the rulers kept to this, they would never themselves overthrow the kingships nor allow 684b others to attempt it; and that kings would come to the aid of kings who were wronged, and of peoples, and peoples to the aid of peoples who were wronged, and of kings. Isn’t that so?

MegillusIt is.

AthenianThen in establishing the constitutions laid down in the three cities, the greatest advantage was theirs—whether it was the kings who legislated or others?

MegillusWhat advantage?

AthenianThat there would always be two cities to come to the rescue against the one that disobeyed the laws laid down.

MegillusClearly.

AthenianAnd yet most people demand this of lawgivers: that they lay down laws of a kind that the peoples and the masses will accept willingly—as if someone were to demand of trainers or doctors that they treat and cure the bodies in their care pleasantly.

MegillusAbsolutely.

AthenianBut often one should be content if one can produce fit and healthy bodies even with pain that isn’t too great.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianThe people of that time had another advantage, too, and no small one, that made laying down laws easier.

MegillusWhat was that?

AthenianTheir lawgivers didn’t face the greatest of reproaches when they were establishing some equality of property among them. That reproach arises in many other cities when laws are being made, if someone tries to disturb land ownership and cancel debts, seeing that without these steps equality could never be adequately achieved. When a lawgiver tries to disturb anything of this sort, everyone confronts him, 684e telling him not to disturb what must not be disturbed, and curses him for proposing redistributions of land and cancellations of debts, so that anyone who tries is left helpless. But the Dorians had this advantage too, a fine one that roused no resentment: they could divide the land without dispute, and there were no large, long-standing debts.

MegillusTrue.

AthenianThen how on earth, my excellent friends, did their settlement and legislation turn out so badly?

MegillusWhat do you mean? What fault do you find with them?

AthenianThat of the three settlements that came into being, two quickly ruined their constitution and laws, and only one survived: your city’s.

MegillusThat’s not an easy question you’re asking.

AthenianAnd yet this is exactly what we need to look into and examine now, playing at laws the sober game that suits old men, so that we get through our journey painlessly, as we said when 685b we set out.

MegillusOf course. And we should do as you say.

AthenianWell then, what finer inquiry into laws could we make than one into the laws that ordered these cities? Or what cities could we study with more celebrated or greater foundings?

MegillusIt isn’t easy to name others in their place.

AthenianNow it’s fairly clear that the men of that time meant this arrangement to be an adequate defense not for the Peloponnese alone 685c but for all the Greeks, if any non-Greeks should wrong them—as the people living around Ilium had done back then, when, relying on the power of the Assyrians that had grown up around Ninus, they boldly provoked the war against Troy. For what survived of the form of that empire was still no small thing: just as we now fear the Great King, so people then dreaded that combined power. The capture of Troy the second time 685d had been a great grievance against the Greeks, since Troy was part of the Assyrian empire.note

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianAnd isn’t it likely they also thought it would be secure 686a and would last a long time? They had shared many toils and dangers with one another; they were being organized by a single family, since the kings were brothers; and besides, they had consulted many seers, including the Delphic Apollo.

MegillusHow could it not be likely?

AthenianYet these great expectations flew apart quickly back then, it seems—all except, as we said just now, the small 686b part in your region; and that part has never stopped fighting the other two, right down to the present. Yet if the original plan had come about and united into one, it would have had irresistible power in war.

MegillusOf course.

AthenianSo how did it perish, and in what way? Isn’t it worth examining what fortune it was that destroyed so great and so remarkable an alliance?

MegillusYes—look anywhere else, and you’d hardly find laws 686c or constitutions that preserve great and fine things, or on the contrary ruin them altogether, if you neglected these.

AthenianThen it seems we’ve had the good luck to stumble into an inquiry worth making.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianWell then, my remarkable friend, haven’t we all failed to notice something—all of us human beings, and we ourselves just now? Every time we see some fine thing arise, we think it would have achieved marvels if only 686d someone had known how to use it well in some way. And perhaps our thinking about this very point isn’t correct or in accordance with nature—nor is everyone else’s about everything else they think of in this way.

MegillusWhat do you mean? What should we say this remark of yours is chiefly about?

AthenianMy good man, I was laughing at myself just now. When I looked at this expedition we’re discussing, it struck me as a splendid thing, a marvelous possession to fall into the Greeks’ hands, as I said—if only someone had 686e used it well back then.

MegillusWell, didn’t you say all that well and sensibly, and didn’t we approve?

AthenianPerhaps. But it occurs to me that anyone who sees something great, with a great deal of power and strength, immediately reacts this way: if its owner knew how to use a thing of such a kind and such a size, he’d accomplish many marvels and be happy.

MegillusWell, isn’t that right too? Or what do you say?

AthenianConsider, then, what someone who bestows this praise on each thing is looking at, if he’s to speak correctly. Start with the present case. If the men who organized the army back then had known how to arrange it properly, how would they have hit the mark? Wouldn’t it be by establishing it securely and preserving it for all time, so that they would be free themselves, rule over whomever they wished, and in general among all mankind, 687b Greek and non-Greek, do whatever they and their descendants desired? Isn’t this why they’d praise it?

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianAnd anyone who sees great wealth, or exceptional family honors, or anything of that kind, and says the same things—isn’t he saying it with this in view: that through it he’ll get everything he desires, or most things, and the ones most worth mentioning?

MegillusSo it seems.

AthenianCome then: is there one desire common to all human beings, the one our argument is now bringing to light, as the argument itself claims?

MegillusWhat’s that?

AthenianThat whatever happens should happen as one’s own soul commands—everything, ideally, or failing that, at least human affairs.

MegillusOf course.

AthenianThen since we all want this always, as children and as old men, wouldn’t we necessarily also pray for this very thing our whole lives?

MegillusHow could we not?

AthenianAnd surely we’d join our friends in praying for what they pray for themselves.

MegillusOf course.

AthenianA son is dear to his father—a boy to a man.

MegillusOf course.

AthenianAnd yet many of the things the boy prays to get, the father would pray the gods never to grant as the son prays.

MegillusYou mean when he prays while he’s still young and foolish?

AthenianYes, and also when the father, whether old or a very hotheaded youth, 687e knows nothing of what’s fine and just, and prays with great fervor in a state like the one Theseus was in against Hippolytus, who met his unhappy end—while the son does know. Then, do you think, will the son join his father in his prayer?note

MegillusI understand what you mean. You seem to be saying that one shouldn’t pray or strive for everything to follow one’s own wish, but rather for one’s wish to follow one’s own wisdom; and that this is what a city and each of us should pray and work for: to have intelligence.

AthenianYes. And in particular, that a statesman and lawgiver should always keep this in view when setting down the ordinances of his laws—I’ve just remembered it myself, and I remind you both, if we remember what was said at the start. Your advice was that the good lawgiver should enact all his laws for the sake of war; I said this meant laying down laws with a view to one virtue out of four, 688b whereas one should look to the whole of virtue, and above all to the first, the leader of all virtue—which is wisdom and intelligence and opinion, with love and desire following them.

CliniasTo praise you in words, stranger, would be rather tiresome, but we’ll praise you vigorously in deed: we’ll follow what you say eagerly. That’s where a free man shows most clearly whether he approves or not.

MegillusExcellent, Clinias. Let’s do as you say.

CliniasSo we shall, god willing. Just speak.

AthenianThen let’s say, as we go on down the road of our argument, that it was the greatest ignorance that destroyed that power back then, and that it naturally does the same thing now. So the lawgiver, if this is so, must try to instill as much wisdom as possible in cities, and remove folly as far as he can.

CliniasClearly.

AthenianSo what could rightly be called the greatest ignorance? See whether you two agree with what I say. I set it down as this sort.

CliniasWhat sort?

AthenianWhen someone thinks something is fine or good, and yet doesn’t love it but hates it, while he loves and embraces what he thinks is bad and unjust. This discord between pain and pleasure on the one hand and reasoned judgment on the other I call the utmost ignorance—and the greatest, because it belongs to the mass of the soul; 689b for the part of the soul that feels pain and pleasure is what the common people and the masses are in a city.

CliniasWe follow, my friend, and we agree with what you say.

AthenianThen let this be laid down as decided and declared: citizens who are ignorant in this way must be entrusted with nothing that involves ruling, and must be reproached as ignorant, even if they’re very good at calculation and have worked hard at all the refinements and everything 689d that naturally makes for quickness of mind. Those in the opposite condition must be called wise, even if, as the saying goes, they know neither their letters nor how to swim, and they must be given the offices as the sensible ones. For how, my friends, without concord could even the smallest form of wisdom come about? It can’t. The finest and greatest of concords would most justly be called the greatest wisdom. The man who lives according to reason shares in it, while the one who lacks it will turn out, every time, to be a wrecker of his household and no savior of his city, but quite the opposite, ignorant 689e in these matters.

CliniasYes, let them stand.

AthenianNow in cities, I suppose, there must be rulers and ruled.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianVery well. What claims to rule and to be ruled are there, and how many, in cities large and small, and likewise in households? Isn’t one the claim of father and mother? And in general, wouldn’t it be a proper claim everywhere, that parents rule their offspring?

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianFollowing on from this, that the well-born rule the low-born. And a third comes next: that the older should rule and the younger be ruled.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianA fourth, again, that slaves be ruled and masters rule.

CliniasOf course.

AthenianA fifth, I think, that the stronger rule and the weaker be ruled.

CliniasThat’s a kind of rule there’s no escaping.

AthenianYes, and the most widespread among all living things, and according to nature, as Pindar of Thebes once said. But the greatest claim, it seems, would be the sixth, which bids the ignorant follow and the wise lead 690c and rule. And yet this, most wise Pindar, I’d hardly call contrary to nature. It’s according to nature: the rule of law over willing subjects, not by force.note

CliniasQuite right.

AthenianAnd a seventh kind of rule, which we call dear to the gods and fortunate, we assign by some sort of lottery: we say it’s most just for the one who draws the lot to rule, and for the one who loses to go off and be ruled.

CliniasVery true.

Athenian“You see, lawgiver,” we might say, teasing one of those who take up lawmaking lightly, “how many claims to rule there are, and that they are naturally at odds with one another? We’ve now found a source of civil strife, and you must treat it. But first join us in considering how the kings of Argos and Messene went wrong against these claims, and in what way, so that they destroyed both themselves and the power of the Greeks, 690e marvelous as it was at that time. Wasn’t it by not knowing Hesiod’s very true saying that the half is often more than the whole? When taking the whole is harmful and the half is moderate, then the moderate, he held, is more than the immoderate, since the better is more than the worse.”note

CliniasQuite right.

AthenianThen do we think this condition tends to arise and do its damage first among kings, or among peoples?

CliniasProbably, and usually, it’s a disease of kings, who live arrogantly because of luxury.

AthenianSo isn’t it clear that the kings of that time were the first to catch it: they wanted more than the established laws allowed, and they weren’t in harmony with what they had approved in word and on oath? And this discord, which, as we say, is the greatest ignorance though it seems to be wisdom, destroyed all of that through its false notes and bitter lack of harmony.

CliniasSo it seems.

AthenianVery well. What should the lawgiver of that time have guarded against when he legislated, where this affliction was concerned? Heavens, isn’t it true that now it takes no wisdom to see this, and it isn’t hard to say—but if one could have foreseen it then, whoever did would have been wiser than we are?

MegillusWhat do you mean?

AthenianBy looking at what has happened among you, Megillus, one can now see, and having seen, easily say, what should have happened then.

MegillusSay it still more clearly.

AthenianWell, the clearest way to put it would be this.

MegillusWhat?

AthenianIf you give too much power to something too small for it, neglecting due measure—sails to ships, food to bodies, offices to souls—everything is overturned. Running riot, some run into disease, others into injustice, the offspring of insolence. What are we saying, then? Surely something like this: that there is no mortal soul, my friends, whose nature will ever be able, while young and unaccountable, to bear the greatest power among human beings 691d without its mind filling up with the greatest disease, folly, and without incurring the hatred of its nearest friends. And when that happens it quickly destroys the soul and wipes out all its power. To guard against this by recognizing due measure is the task of great lawgivers. Now as for what happened then, we can make a very reasonable guess, and it seems to have been—

MegillusWhat?

AthenianThat some god was looking after you. Foreseeing the future, he made your line of kings twins 691e out of a single one, and so drew it closer to due measure. And after this some human nature mixed with a divine power, seeing that your rule was still feverish, blended 692a the moderate power of old age with the headstrong strength of birth, by giving the twenty-eight elders an equal vote with the power of the kings in the most important matters. And your third savior, seeing your rule still swelling and spirited, put the power of the ephors on it like a bridle, bringing it close to power assigned by lot. By this reckoning the kingship among you, blended from the right elements and possessing due measure, was preserved itself and became the 692b cause of preservation for the rest.note

CliniasWhat you say is true.

AthenianAt any rate they defended themselves shamefully, Clinias. By “shamefully” I don’t mean that the men of that time didn’t win, and win fine battles on land and at sea. What I call shameful then is this: first, that of those three cities only one defended Greece, while the other two were so badly corrupted that one of them even kept Sparta from coming to Greece’s defense by making war on it with all its might, while the other—the city around Argos, which held first place in the old days 692e of the division—when called on to help fight off the invader, neither listened nor helped.

CliniasWe’ll try to do that when we go back over the arguments. For now, tell us about friendship and wisdom and freedom—what you were going to say the lawgiver 693d should aim at.

AthenianListen, then. There are, as it were, two mothers of constitutions, from which one could rightly say the others have come. One is rightly called monarchy, the other democracy: the Persian race holds the extreme of the first, and we hold the extreme of the second. Nearly all the others, as I said, are variations woven from these. Now it’s essential and necessary to have a share of both, if there is to be freedom and 693e friendship together with wisdom. That’s what our argument means to prescribe, when it says that a city with no share of these could never be well governed.

CliniasHow could it?

AthenianWell, the one embraced monarchy and the other freedom more than it should, and exclusively, so neither has these in due measure. Yours, the Spartan and the Cretan, do better. The Athenians and the Persians were once more or less that way, 694a but less so now. Let’s go through the causes—shall we?

CliniasBy all means, if we mean to finish what we set out to do.

AthenianLet’s hear it, then. When the Persians under Cyrus kept more to the mean between slavery and freedom, first they became free themselves, and then masters of many others. For when the rulers gave the ruled a share of freedom and brought them toward equality, soldiers were friendlier to their generals 694b and offered themselves eagerly in danger. And again, if there was a wise man among them who was able to give counsel, since the king wasn’t jealous but allowed free speech and honored those who could advise on anything, he offered his power of thought for the common good. So everything advanced for them at that time through freedom, friendship, and a sharing of intelligence.

CliniasIt does seem that what you describe happened more or less like that.

AthenianHow then was it lost under Cambyses, and nearly recovered again under Darius? Would you like us to use a sort of divination as we think it through?

CliniasAt least it brings us to the inquiry we’ve set out on.

AthenianThen here is my divination about Cyrus: in other respects he was a good general and loved his country, but he never touched correct education at all, and paid no attention whatever to the management of his household.

CliniasHow are we to take that?

AthenianIt seems he was on campaign from his youth all his life, and handed his children over to the women to raise. They raised them as though they were already happy and blessed from childhood, lacking nothing. They prevented anyone from opposing them in anything, since they were happy enough already, and forced everyone to praise whatever they said or did; and so they raised them to be what you’d expect.

CliniasA fine upbringing you’ve described, it seems!

AthenianA women’s upbringing, rather: royal women who had recently become rich, raising the children without men around, since the men had no leisure because of wars and many dangers.

CliniasThat makes sense.

AthenianTheir father, for his part, was acquiring flocks and herds for them, and many herds of men and of much else besides, 695a but he didn’t realize that the ones he was going to hand all this to were not being trained in their ancestral art. That art was Persian—the Persians being shepherds, children of a rugged land—and it was a hard one, able to make shepherds very tough, able to sleep in the open and stay awake and go on campaign if need be. Instead he let his sons be educated by women and eunuchs 695b in the Median education, corrupted by so-called happiness; and so they became what you’d expect them to become, raised in an upbringing that never rebuked them.

CliniasThat’s what they say, at least, and it seems to have happened roughly like that.

AthenianAnd, as the story goes, the empire came back to the Persians through Darius and the Seven.note

CliniasOf course.

AthenianLet’s watch, then, as we follow the story. Darius was not a king’s son, and had not been brought up in a pampering education. When he came to power, taking it as one of the seven, he divided the empire into seven parts, of which some faint dream-traces remain even now. He saw fit to govern by laying down laws, introducing a kind of common 695d equality, and he made the tribute Cyrus had promised the Persians part of the law, creating friendship and community among all Persians and winning over the Persian people with money and gifts. As a result his armies, loyal to him, won lands no smaller than those Cyrus had left.

MegillusWhat do you mean, stranger?

AthenianCourage is surely one part of virtue?

MegillusOf course.

AthenianThen, having heard the argument, judge for yourself: would you accept as a housemate or neighbor someone very courageous, but not moderate—undisciplined instead?

MegillusHeaven forbid!

AthenianWhat about someone skilled, and wise in his field, but unjust?

MegillusCertainly not.

AthenianBut surely justice doesn’t grow apart from moderation.

MegillusHow could it?

AthenianNor does the man we put forward just now as wise, the one whose pleasures and pains agree with right reasoning and follow it.

MegillusNo indeed.

AthenianLet’s consider this further point too, about the honors given in cities, 696d which ones are correct in each case and which aren’t.

MegillusWhat point?

AthenianWould moderation on its own in a soul, cut off from all the rest of virtue, justly be honored or dishonored?

MegillusI don’t know how to answer.

AthenianAnd that was a moderate answer. If you had given either of the alternatives I asked about, I think you would have struck a false note.

MegillusThen it’s turned out well.

AthenianVery well. Something that’s merely an addition to what receives honor or dishonor 696e would deserve not speech but rather a kind of wordless silence.

MegillusYou seem to me to mean moderation.

AthenianYes. And of the others, the one that benefits us most, together with this addition, would be most correctly honored if honored most, and the second second; and so each one, receiving its honors in the order that follows, would receive them rightly.

MegillusThat’s so.

AthenianWell then, shan’t we say that distributing these, too, is the lawgiver’s business?

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianThen shall we leave it to him to distribute everything, down to each activity and in detail, while we, since we too are in a way enthusiasts for laws, try to divide things three ways and separate out the most important, the second, and the third?

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianWe say, then, it seems, that a city that is to 697b survive and be happy, as far as is humanly possible, must necessarily distribute honors and dishonors correctly. And the correct way is to set as most honorable and first the goods of the soul, provided it has moderation; second, the fine and good things of the body; and third, the things said to concern property and money. If any lawgiver or city steps outside this order, either promoting money to honor 697c or ranking any of the lower things above in honor, it will be doing something neither pious nor statesmanlike. Shall we say this, or what?

MegillusYes, let it be said plainly.

AthenianIt was our examination of the Persian constitution that made us say this at greater length. We find that they became still worse, and the cause, we say, is that by taking too much freedom away from the people and introducing more despotism than was fitting, they destroyed friendship 697d and community in the city.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianSo let this be the end of the subject of the Persians—how they’re badly governed nowadays because of excessive slavery and despotism.

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianNext we must go through the Attic constitution in the same way, and show how complete 698b freedom from all rule is not a little worse than rule by others that has due measure. At the time when the Persians attacked the Greeks—and perhaps almost everyone living in Europe—we had an ancient constitution, with certain offices based on four property classes. A certain reverence was our mistress, and because of it we were willing to live as slaves to the laws of that time. On top of this, the size of the expedition by land and sea struck us with helpless fear 698c and made us still greater slaves to our rulers and our laws; and because of all this a strong friendship with one another came over us.note

MegillusWhat you’ve said is quite right, stranger, and worthy of yourself and your country.

AthenianSo it is, Megillus. And it’s right to speak to you of what happened at that time, since you share by nature in what your forefathers did. But you and Clinias should consider whether what we’re saying has any bearing on legislation. I’m not going through this for the sake of stories, 699e but for the sake of what I’m talking about. You see, in a way the same thing had happened to us as to the Persians: they led their people into total slavery, while we, on the contrary, drove the masses toward total freedom. So how and what we should say from here on, the arguments we’ve already had have in a way prepared well.

MegillusWell said. But try to make what you’re saying clearer still for us.

AthenianI will. Under the old laws, my friends, our people were not master of anything; in a sense they were willing slaves to the laws.

MegillusWhat laws do you mean?

MegillusVery true.

AthenianNext after this freedom would come the unwillingness to be slaves to the rulers; and following this, escaping the rule and admonition of father and mother and elders; and near the end, seeking not to be subject to laws; 701c and at the very end, paying no heed to oaths and pledges or to the gods at all. They display and imitate the so-called ancient nature of the Titans, arriving back at that same condition, and they live a hard life, never free from evils. Now why, once again, have we said all this? It seems to me that each time we must rein in the argument like a horse, and not let it get the bit in its teeth and be carried off by force 701d and, as the proverb says, fall off a donkey. We must ask again what we asked just now: for the sake of what have these things been said?note

MegillusGood.

AthenianWell, they were said for the sake of those points.

MegillusWhich?

AthenianWe said that the lawgiver must legislate aiming at three things: that the city he legislates for be free, a friend to itself, and possess intelligence. That was it, wasn’t it?

MegillusCertainly.

AthenianIt’s for the sake of these that we chose the most despotic constitution and the freest, and are now examining which of them is correctly governed. When we took a certain moderation in each—in the one, of despotism, in the other, of freedom—we saw that they did exceptionally well at that time; but when each carried it to the extreme, the one of slavery and the other of its opposite, it did neither of them any good.

MegillusVery true.

AthenianAnd it was for their sake, too, that we looked at the Dorian army’s settlement, the settlement in the foothills of Dardanus and the one by the sea, and the first people, the survivors of the destruction—and, before that, our earlier discussions of music and drinking, and what came earlier still. All of this has been said in order to see how a city might best be run, and how in private 702b a person might best live his life. But if we’ve achieved anything useful, what test could we set ourselves to prove it, Megillus and Clinias?note

CliniasI think I see one, stranger. It seems that it was by some stroke of luck that we went through all these arguments. For I’ve come to need them just now, and you’ve turned up at just the right moment, and 702c Megillus here too. I won’t hide from you two what’s happening to me; in fact I take it as a kind of omen. Most of Crete is undertaking to found a colony, and has charged the Knossians with managing the matter, and the city of Knossos has handed it to me and nine others. It also tells us to lay down laws, choosing any of the local ones that please us, and any from elsewhere, paying no attention to their being foreign, if they seem better.

AthenianIt’s no war you’re proclaiming, Clinias! Unless Megillus has some objection, you may count on me for everything you have in mind, as far as I’m able.

CliniasGood.

MegillusAnd on me too.

CliniasExcellently said, both of you. So let’s try first to found the city in words.

AthenianCome then, what should we think the city will be like? I’m not asking what its name is now, or what it will have to be called in the future—that might perhaps come from its founding, or from some place, a river or a spring or the gods of the 704b place, lending their name to the newly founded city. What I’m more concerned to ask about it is this: will it be by the sea or inland?

CliniasThe city we were just speaking of, stranger, is about eighty stades from the sea.note

AthenianWell? Are there harbors along that part of the coast, or has it no harbors at all?

CliniasOn the contrary, stranger, it’s as well supplied with harbors there as it could possibly be.

AthenianOh dear, what a thing to say! And what about the country around it? Does it produce everything, or does it lack some things?

CliniasIt lacks almost nothing.

AthenianAnd will there be a neighboring city close by?

CliniasNot really—that’s why it’s being settled. An emigration from the place long ago left this country deserted for longer than anyone can say.

AthenianAnd what about plains, mountains, and forest? How much of each has fallen to our lot?

CliniasIt resembles the rest of Crete in its whole character.

AthenianYou’d call it more rugged than flat, then.

CliniasCertainly.

AthenianThen it wouldn’t be incurable as regards acquiring virtue. If it were going to be on the coast, with good harbors, and not producing everything but short of many things, it would need some great savior and divine lawgivers if it weren’t to have many varied and base characters, being naturally placed like that. As it is, the eighty stades offer some consolation. It does lie nearer the sea than it should, 705a all the more since you say it’s so well supplied with harbors; still, even this is something to be glad of. For the sea’s presence next to a country is pleasant enough from day to day, but in truth it is a very salty and bitter neighbor. It fills the country with commerce and moneymaking through retail trade, breeds shifty and untrustworthy characters in souls, and makes the city untrustworthy and unfriendly both to itself and likewise to the rest of mankind.

CliniasOh, we remember, and we agree that we were right then, and that we’re right now.

AthenianWell, then: how is this region of ours off for timber for shipbuilding?

CliniasThere’s no fir worth mentioning, and no pine either, and not much cypress. You’d find only a little stone pine and plane, which shipwrights always have to use for the inner parts of their ships.

AthenianThat’s another feature of the country’s nature that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

CliniasWhy?

AthenianIt’s good for a city not to be able 705d easily to copy its enemies in their bad ways.

CliniasWhat in our earlier discussion did you have in view when you said that?

AthenianMy dear friend, keep an eye on me by looking back to what was said at the beginning about the Cretan laws aiming at a single thing. You two said that this was war in particular; and I took you up and said that insofar as such established customs aimed at virtue, that was fine, but that they aimed at a part of it and not at the whole, I didn’t 705e quite agree. So now it’s your turn to follow along and keep watch over the legislation we’re drafting, in case I lay down any law that doesn’t tend toward virtue, or toward some part of virtue.