Republic

If a man, then, it seems, who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself[*](Greek idiom achieves an effect impossible to English here, by the shift from the co-ordination of ποιήματα with αὐτός to the treatmnt of it as the object of ἐπιδείξασθαι and the possible double use of the latter as middle with αὐτός and transitive with ποιήματα. Cf. for a less striking example 427 D, Phaedrus 250 B-C.) the poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool, but we ourselves, for our souls’ good, should continue to employ the more austere[*](Cf. from a different point of view Arnold’s The Austerity of Poetry.) and less delightful poet and tale-teller, who would imitate the diction of the good man and would tell his tale in the patterns which we prescribed in the beginning,[*](Cf. 379 A ff.) when we set out to educate our soldiers.We certainly should do that if it rested with us.And now, my friend, said I, we may say that we have completely finished the part of music that concerns speeches and tales. For we have set forth what is to be said and how it is to be said. I think so too, he replied. After this, then, said I, comes the manner of song and tunes? Obviously. And having gone thus far, could not everybody discover what we must say of their character in order to conform to what has already been said? I am afraid that everybody does not include me, laughed Glaucon[*](He laughs at his own mild joke, which Professor Wilamowitz (Platon ii. p. 192) does not understand. Cf. Laws 859 E, Hippias Major 293 A ἢ οὐχ εἷς τῶν ἁπάντων καὶ Ἡρακλῆς ἦν; and in a recent novel, I am afraid everybody does not include me, she smiled.); I cannot sufficiently divine off-hand what we ought to say, though I have a suspicion. You certainly, I presume, said I, have sufficient a understanding of this—that the song[*](The complete song includes words, rhythms, and harmony, that is, a pitch system of high and low notes. Harmony is also used technically of the peculiar Greek system of scales or modes. Cf. Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music.) is composed of three things, the words, the tune, and the rhythm? Yes, said he, that much. And so far as it is words, it surely in no manner differs from words not sung in the requirement of conformity to the patterns and manner that we have prescribed? True, he said. And again, the music and the rhythm must follow the speech.[*](The poets at first composed their own music to fit the words. When, with the further development of music, there arose the practice of distorting the words, as in a mere libretto, it provoked a storm of protest from conservatives in aesthetics and morals.) Of course. But we said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words. We do not. What, then, are the dirge-like modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician. The mixed Lydian,[*](The modes of Greek music are known to the English reader only from Milton’s allusions, his Lap me in soft Lydian airs and, P. L. i. 549 f., his Anon they move in perfect phalanx to the Dorian moodOf flutes and soft recorders; such as rasiedTo highth of noblest temper heroes old. The adaptation of particualr modes, harmonies, or scales to the expression of particular feelings is something that we are obliged to accept on faith. Plato’s statements here were challenged by some later critics, but the majority believed that there was a connection between modes of music and modes of feeling, as Ruskin and many others have in our day. The hard-headed Epicureans and sceptics denied it, as well as the moral significance of music generally.) he said, and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes. These, then, said I, we must do away with. For they are useless even to women[*](Cf. 387 E.) who are to make the best of themselves, let alone to men. Assuredly. But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness and sloth. Yes. What, then, are the soft and convivial modes? There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes that are called lax.

Will you make any use of them for warriors?None at all, he said; but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian. I don’t know[*](Plato, like a lawyer or popular essayist, affects ignorance of the technical details; or perhaps rather he wishes to disengage his main principle from the specialists’ controversy about particular modes of music and their names.) the musical modes, I said, but leave us that mode[*](ἐκείνην may mean, but does not say, Dorian, which the Laches (188 D) pronounces the only true Greek harmony. This long anacoluthic sentence sums up the whole matter with impressive repetition and explicit enumeration of all types of conduct in peace and war, and implied reference to Plato’s doctrine of the two fundamental temperaments, the swift and the slow, the energetic and the mild. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 59, 70, 481.) that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap, in all these conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but voluntary,[*](Cf. Laws 814 E.) either trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him—whether it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and admonition—or contrariwise yielding himself to another who petitioning or teaching him or trying to change his opinions, and in consequence faring according to his wish, and not bearing himself arrogantly, but in all this acting modestly and moderately and acquiescing in the outcome. Leave us these two modes—the forced and the voluntary—that will best imitate the utterances of men failing or succeeding, the temperate, the brave—leave us these. Well, said he, you are asking me to leave none other than those I just spoke of. Then, said I, we shall not need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings or whose compass includes all the harmonies. Not in my opinion, said he. Then we shall not maintain makers of triangles and harps and all other many stringed and poly-harmonic[*](Metaphorically. The many-toned instrumentation of the flutes, as Pindar calls it, Ol. vii. 12, can vie with the most complex and many-stringed lyre of musical innovation.) instruments. Apparently not. Well, will you admit to the city flute-makers and flute-players? Or is not the flute the most many-stringed of instruments and do not the pan-harmonics[*](Cf. 404 D, the only other occurrence of the word in Plato.) themselves imitate it? Clearly, he said. You have left, said I, the lyre and the cither. These are useful[*](Cf. my note on Timaeus 47 C, in A.J.P. vol. x. p. 61.) in the city, and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe on.[*](Ancient critics noted this sentence as an adaptation of sound to sense. Cf. Demetr. Περὶ ἑρμ. 185. The sigmas and iotas may be fancied to suggest the whistling notes of the syrinx. So Lucretius v. 1385 tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum. Cf. on Catullus 61. 13 voce carmina tinnula.) So our argument indicates, he said. We are not innovating, my friend, in preferring Apollo and the instruments of Apollo to Marsyas and his instruments. No, by heaven! he said, I think not. And by the dog,[*](The so-called Rhadamanthine oath to avoid taking the names of the gods in vain. Cf. 592 A, Apology 21 E, Blaydes on Aristophanes Wasps 83.) said I, we have all unawares purged the city which a little while ago we said was wanton.[*](Cf. 372 E. Dummler, Proleg. p. 62, strangely affirms that this is an express retraction of the ἀληθινὴ πόλις. This is to misapprehend Plato’s method. He starts with the indispensable minimum of a simple society, develops it by Herbert Spencer’s multiplication of effects into an ordinary Greek city, then reforms it by a reform of education and finally transforms it into his ideal state by the rule of the philosopher kings. Cf. Introduction p. xiv.) In that we show our good sense, he said. Come then, let us complete the purification.

For upon harmonies would follow the consideration of rhythms: we must not pursue complexity nor great variety in the basic movements,[*](Practically the feet.) but must observe what are the rhythms of a life that is orderly and brave, and after observing them require the foot and the air to conform to that kind of man’s speech and not the speech to the foot and the tune. What those rhythms would be, it is for you to tell us as you did the musical modes.Nay, in faith, he said, I cannot tell. For that there are some three forms[*](According to the ancient musicians these are the equal as e.g. in dactyls (–⏑⏑), spondees (––) and anapests (⏑⏑–), where the foot divides into two equal quantities; the 3/2 ratio, as in the so-called cretic (⏑–⏑); the 2/1 as in the iamb (⏑–) and trochee (–⏑). Cf. Aristid. Quint. i. pp. 34-35.) from which the feet are combined, just as there are four[*](Possibly the four notes of the tetrachord, but there is no agreement among experts. Cf. Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music.) in the notes of the voice whence come all harmonies, is a thing that I have observed and could tell. But which are imitations of which sort of life, I am unable to say.[*](Modern psychologists are still debating the question.) Well, said I, on this point we will take counsel with Damon,[*](The Platonic Socrates frequently refers to Damon as his musical expert. Cf. Laches 200 B, 424 C, Alc. I. 118 C.) too, as to which are the feet appropriate to illiberality, and insolence or madness or other evils, and what rhythms we must leave for their opposites; and I believe I have heard him obscurely speaking[*](There is a hint of satire in this disclaimer of expert knowledge. Cf. 399 A. There is no agreement among modern experts with regard to the precise form of the so-called enoplios. Cf. my review of Herkenrath’s Der Enoplios, Class. Phil . vol. iii. p. 360, Goodell, Chapters on Greek Metric, pp. 185 and 189, Blaydes on Aristophanes Nubes 651.) of a foot that he called the enoplios, a composite foot, and a dactyl and an heroic[*](Possibly foot, possibly rhythm. δάκτυλον seems to mean the foot, while ἡρῷος is the measure based on dactyls but admitting spondees.) foot, which he arranged, I know not how, to be equal up and down[*](ἄνω καὶ κάτω is an untranslatable gibe meaning literally and technically the upper and lower half of the foot, the arsis and thesis, but idiomatically meaning topsy-turvy. There is a similar play on the idiom in Philebus 43 A and 43 B.) in the interchange of long and short,[*](Literally becoming or issuing in long and short, long, that is, when a spondee is used, short when a dactyl.) and unless I am mistaken he used the term iambic, and there was another foot that he called the trochaic, and he added the quantities long and short. And in some of these, I believe, he censured and commended the tempo of the foot no less than the rhythm itself, or else some combination of the two; I can’t say. But, as I said, let this matter be postponed for Damon’s consideration. For to determine the truth of these would require no little discourse. Do you think otherwise? No, by heaven, I do not. But this you are able to determine—that seemliness and unseemliness are attendant upon the good rhythm and the bad. Of course. And, further,[*](Plato, as often, employs the forms of an argument proceeding by minute links to accumulate synonyms in illustration of a moral or aesthetic analogy. He is working up to the Wordsworthian thought that order, harmony, and beauty in nature and art are akin to these qualities in the soul.) that good rhythm and bad rhythm accompany, the one fair diction, assimilating itself thereto, and the other the opposite, and so of the apt and the unapt, if, as we were just now saying, the rhythm and harmony follow the words and not the words these. They certainly must follow the speech, he said. And what of the manner of the diction, and the speech? said I. Do they not follow and conform to the disposition of the soul? Of course. And all the rest to the diction? Yes. Good speech, then, good accord, and good grace, and good rhythm wait upon good disposition, not that weakness of head which we euphemistically style goodness of heart, but the truly good and fair disposition of the character and the mind.[*](Plato recurs to the etymological meaning of εὐήθεια. Cf. on 343 C.) By all means, he said. And must not our youth pursue these everywhere[*](The Ruskinian and Wordsworthian generalization is extended from music to all the fine arts, including, by the way, architecture (οἰκοδομία), which Butcher (Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry, p. 138) says is ignored by Plato and Aristotle.) if they are to do what it is truly theirs to do[*](Their special task is to cultivate true εὐήθεια in their souls. For τὸ αὑτῶν πράττειν here Cf. 443 C-D.)? They must indeed.

And there is surely much of these qualities in painting and in all similar craftsmanship[*](The following page is Plato’s most eloquent statement of Wordsworth’s, Ruskin’s, and Tennyson’s gospel of beauty for the education of the young. He repeats it in Laws 668 B. Cf. my paper on Some Ideals of Education in Plato’s Republic, Educational Bi-monthly, vol. ii. (1907-1908) pp. 215 ff.)—weaving is full of them and embroidery and architecture and likewise the manufacture of household furnishings and thereto the natural bodies of animals and plants as well. For in all these there is grace or gracelessness. And gracelessness and evil rhythm and disharmony are akin to evil speaking and the evil temper but the opposites are the symbols and the kin of the opposites, the sober and good disposition.Entirely so, he said. Is it, then, only the poets that we must supervise and compel to embody in their poems the semblance of the good character or else not write poetry among us, or must we keep watch over the other craftsmen, and forbid them to represent the evil disposition, the licentious, the illiberal, the graceless, either in the likeness of living creatures or in buildings or in any other product of their art, on penalty, if unable to obey, of being forbidden to practise their art among us, that our guardians may not be bred among symbols of evil, as it were in a pasturage of poisonous herbs, lest grazing freely and cropping from many such day by day they little by little and all unawares accumulate and build up a huge mass of evil in their own souls. But we must look for those craftsmen who by the happy gift of nature are capable of following the trail of true beauty and grace, that our young men, dwelling as it were in a salubrious region, may receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings from wholesome places health, and so from earliest childhood insensibly guide them to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with beautiful reason. Yes, he said, that would be far the best education for them. And is it not for this reason, Glaucon, said I, that education in music is most sovereign,[*](Schopenhauer, following Plato, adds the further metaphysical reason that while the other arts imitate the external manifestations of the universal Will, music represents the Will itself.) because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary?

And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste[*](Cf. 362 B, 366 C, 388 A, 391 E, and Ruskin’s paradox that taste is the only morality.) rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but when reason came[*](Cf. Laws 653 B-C, where Plato defines education by this principle. Aristotle virtually accepts it (Ethics ii. 3. 2). The Stoics somewhat pedantically laid it down that reason entered into the youth at the age of fourteen.) the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her.I certainly think, he said, that such is the cause of education in music. It is, then, said I, as it was when we learned our letters and felt that we knew them sufficiently only when the separate letters did not elude us, appearing as few elements in all the combinations that convey them, and when we did not disregard them in small things or great[*](Plato often employs letters or elements (στοιχεῖα) to illustrate the acquisition of knowledge (Theaetetus 206 A), the relation of elements to compounds, the principles of classification (Philebus 18 C, Cratylus 393 D), and the theory of ideas (Politicus 278 A. Cf. Isocrates xiii. 13, Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 4. 7, Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit, ii. pp. 23 f., 348 f., Cicero De or. ii. 130).) and think it unnecessary to recognize them, but were eager to distinguish them everywhere, in the belief that we should never be literate and letter-perfect till we could do this. True. And is it not also true that if there are any likenesses[*](It is of course possible to contrast images with the things themselves, and to speak of forms or species without explicit allusion to the metaphysical doctrine of ideas. But on the other hand there is not the slightest reason to assume that the doctrine and its terminology were not familiar to Plato at the time when this part of the Republic was written. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 31 ff., 35. Statistics of the use of εἶδος and ἰδέα (Peiper’s Ontologica Platonica, Taylor, Varia Socratica, Wilamowitz, Platon, ii. pp. 249-253), whatever their philological interest, contribute nothing to the interpretation of Plato’s thought. Cf. my De Platonis Idearum Doctrina, pp. 1, 30, and Class Phil . vol. vi. pp. 363-364. There is for common sense no contradiction or problem in the fact that Plato here says that we cannot be true musicians till we recognize both the forms and all copies of, or approximations to, them in art or nature, while in Book X (601) he argues that the poet and artist copy not the idea but its copy in the material world.) of letters reflected in water or mirrors, we shall never know them until we know the originals, but such knowledge belongs to the same art and discipline[*](Plato, like all intellectuals, habitually assumes that knowledge of principles helps practice. Cf. Phaedrus 259 E, 262 B, and 484 D, 520 C, 540 A.)? By all means. Then, by heaven, am I not right in saying that by the same token we shall never be true musicians, either— neither we nor the guardians that we have undertaken to educate—until we are able to recognize the forms of soberness, courage, liberality,[*](Liberality and high-mindedness, or rather, perhaps, magnificence, are among the virtues defined in Aristotle’s list (Eth. Nic. 1107 b 17), but are not among the four cardinal virtues which the Republic will use in Book IV. in the comparison of the indivdual with the state.) and high-mindedness and all their kindred and their opposites, too, in all the combinations that contain and convey them, and to apprehend them and their images wherever found, disregarding them neither in trifles nor in great things, but believing the knowledge of them to belong to the same art and discipline? The conclusion is inevitable, he said. Then, said I, when there is a coincidence[*](Symposium 209 B τὸ συναμφότερον, 210 C, Wilamowitz, vol. ii. p. 192.) of a beautiful disposition in the soul and corresponding and harmonious beauties of the same type in the bodily form—is not this the fairest spectacle for one who is capable of its contemplation[*](Music and beauty lead to the philosophy of love, more fully set forth in the Phaedrus and Symposium, and here dismissed in a page. Plato’s practical conclusion here may be summed up in the Virgilian line (Aeneid v. 344): Gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus.)? Far the fairest. And surely the fairest is the most lovable. Of course. The true musician, then, would love by preference persons of this sort; but if there were disharmony he would not love this. No, he said, not if there was a defect in the soul; but if it were in the body he would bear with it and still be willing to bestow his love. I understand, I said, that you have or have had favorites of this sort and I grant your distinction. But tell me this—can there be any communion between soberness and extravagant pleasure[*](Extravagant pleasure is akin to madness. Cf. Philebus 47 A-C, Phaedo 83 C-D.)? How could there be, he said, since such pleasure puts a man beside himself no less than pain? Or between it and virtue generally?

By no means.But is there between pleasure and insolence and licence?Most assuredly.Do you know of greater or keener pleasure than that associated with Aphrodite?I don’t, he said, nor yet of any more insane. But is not the right love a sober and harmonious love of the orderly and the beautiful? It is indeed, said he. Then nothing of madness, nothing akin to licence, must be allowed to come nigh the right love? No. Then this kind of pleasure may not come nigh, nor may lover and beloved who rightly love and are loved have anything to do with it? No, by heaven, Socrates, he said, it must not come nigh them. Thus, then, as it seems, you will lay down the law in the city that we are founding, that the lover may kiss[*](Cf. 468 B-C.) and pass the time with and touch the beloved as a father would a son, for honorable ends, if he persuade him. But otherwise he must so associate with the objects of his care that there should never be any suspicion of anything further, on penalty of being stigmatized for want of taste and true musical culture. Even so, he said. Do you not agree, then, that our discourse on music has come to an end? It has certainly made a fitting end, for surely the end and consummation of culture be love of the beautiful. I concur, he said. After music our youth are to be educated by gymnastics? Certainly. In this too they must be carefully trained from boyhood through life, and the way of it is this, I believe; but consider it yourself too. For I, for my part, do not believe that a sound body by its excellence makes the soul good, but on the contrary that a good soul by its virtue renders the body the best that is possible.[*](The dependence of body on soul, whether in a mystical, a moral, or a medical sense, is a favorite doctrine of Plato and the Platonists. Cf. Charmides 156-157, Spenser, An Hymn in Honour of Beauty: For of the soul the body form doth take,For soul is form, and doth the body make, and Shelley, The Sensitive Plant: A lady, the wonder of her kind,Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind,Which dilating had moulded her mien and her motionLike a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean. Cf. also Democr. fr. B. 187 Diels.) What is your opinion? I think so too. Then if we should sufficiently train the mind and turn over to it the minutiae of the care of the body, and content ourselves with merely indicating the norms or patterns, not to make a long story of it, we should acting rightly? By all means. From intoxication[*](Cf. 398 E. There is no contradiction between this and the half-serious proposal of the Laws to use supervised drinking-bouts as a safe test of character (Laws 641).) we said that they must abstain. For a guardian is surely the last person in the world to whom it is allowable to get drunk and not know where on earth he is. Yes, he said, it would absurd that a guardian[*](γε emphasizes what follows from the very meaning of the word. Cf. 379 B, 389 B, 435 A.) should need a guard. What next about their food? These men are athletes in the greatest of contests,[*](Cf. 543 B, 621 D, Laches 182 A, Laws 830 A, Demosthenes xxv. 97 ἀθληταὶ τῶν καλῶν ἔργων.) are they not? Yes.

Is, then, the bodily habit of the athletes we see about us suitable for such?Perhaps.Nay, said I, that is a drowsy habit and precarious for health. Don’t you observe that they sleep away their lives,[*](Cf. Ἐράσται 132 C καθεύδων πάντα τὸν βίον. Xenophanes, Euripides, Aristotle, and the medical writers, like Plato, protest against the exaggerated honor paid to athletes and the heavy sluggishness induced by overfeeeding and overtraining.) and that if they depart ever so little from their prescribed regimen these athletes are liable to great and violent diseases? I do. Then, said I, we need some more ingenious form of training for our athletes of war, since these must be as it were sleepless hounds, and have the keenest possible perceptions of sight and hearing, and in their campaigns undergo many changes[*](Laws 797 D. Cf. 380 E. Aristotle’s comment on μεταβολή, Eth. Nic. 1154 b 28 ff., is curiously reminiscent of Plato, including the phrase ἁπλῆ οὐδ’ ἐπιεικής.) in their drinking water, their food, and in exposure to the heat of the sun and to storms,[*](Perhaps in the context cold.) without disturbance of their health. I think so. Would not, then, the best gymnastics be akin to the music that we were just now describing? What do you mean? It would be a simple and flexible[*](Literally equitable, if we translate ἐπιεικής by its later meaning, that is, not over-precise or rigid in conformity to rule. Adam is mistaken in saying that ἐπιεικής is practically synonymous with ἀγαθή. It sometimes is, but not here. Cf. Plutarch, De san. 13 ἀκριβὴς . . . καὶ δι’ ὄνυχος.) gymnastic, and especially so in the training for war. In what way? One could learn that, said I, even from Homer.[*](So Laws 706 D. The καί is perhaps merely idiomatic in quotation.) For you are aware that in the banqueting of the heroes on campaign he does not feast them on fish,[*](Homer’s ignoring of fish diet, except in stress of starvation, has been much and idly discussed both in antiquity and by modern scholars. Modern pseudo-science has even inferred from this passage that Plato placed a taboo on fish, though they are at the sea-side on the Hellespont, which Homer calls fish-teeming, Iliad ix. 360.) nor on boiled meat, but only on roast, which is what soldiers could most easily procure. For everywhere, one may say, it is of easier provision to use the bare fire than to convey pots and pans[*](Cf. Green, History of English People, Book II. chap. ii., an old description of the Scotch army: They have therefore no occasion for pots and pans, for they dress the flesh of the cattle in their skins after they have flayed them, etc. But cf. Athenaeus, i. 8-9 (vol. i. p. 36 L.C.L.), Diogenes Laertius viii. 13 ὥστε εὐπορίστους αὐτοῖς εἶναι τὰς τροφάς.) along. Indeed it is. Neither, as I believe, does Homer ever make mention of sweet meats. Is not that something which all men in training understand—that if one is to keep his body in good condition he must abstain from such things altogether? They are right, he said, in that they know it and do abstain. Then, my friend, if you think this is the right way, you apparently do not approve of a Syracusan table[*](Proverbial, like the Corinthian maid and the Attic pastry. Cf. Otto, Sprichw. d. Rom. p. 321, Newman, Introduction to Aristotle’s Politics, p. 302. Cf. also Phaedrus 240 B.) and Sicilian variety of made dishes. I think not. You would frown, then, on a little Corinthian maid as the chère amie of men who were to keep themselves fit? Most certainly. And also on the seeming delights of Attic pastry? Inevitably. In general, I take it, if we likened that kind of food and regimen to music and song expressed in the pan-harmonic mode and in every variety of rhythm it would be a fair comparison. Quite so. And here variety engendered licentiousness, did it not, but here disease? While simplicity in music begets sobriety in the souls, and in gymnastic training it begets health in bodies. Most true, he said.

And when licentiousness and disease multiply in a city, are not many courts of law and dispensaries opened, and the arts of chicane[*](δικανική: more contemptuous than δικαστική.) and medicine give themselves airs when even free men in great numbers take them very seriously?How can they help it? he said. Will you be able to find a surer proof of an evil and shameful state of education in a city than the necessity of first-rate physicians and judges, not only for the base and mechanical, but for those who claim to have been bred in the fashion of free men? Do you not think it disgraceful and a notable mark of bad breeding to have to make use of a justice imported from others, who thus become your masters and judges, from lack of such qualities in yourself[*](I have given the sense. The contruction is debated accordingly as we read ἀπορία or ἀπορίᾳ. Cf. Phaedrus 239 D, of the use of cosmetics, χήτει οἰκείων. The καί with ἀπορίᾳ is awkward or expresses the carelessness of conversation.)? The most shameful thing in the world. Is it? said I, or is this still more shameful[*](Plato likes to emphasize by pointing to a lower depth or a higher height beyond the superlative.)—when a man only wears out the better part of his days in the courts of law as defendant or accuser, but from the lack of all true sense of values[*](There is no exact English equivalent for ἀπειροκαλία, the insensitiveness to the καλόν of the banausic, the nouveau riche and the Philistine.) is led to plume himself on this very thing, as being a smart fellow to put over an unjust act and cunningly to try every dodge and practice,[*](The phrasing of this passage recalls passages of Aristophanes’ Clouds, and the description of the pettifogging lawyer and politician in the Theaetetus 172 E. Cf. 519, also Euthydemus 302 B, and Porphyry, De abstinentia, i. 34. The metaphors are partly from wrestling.) every evasion, and wriggle[*](Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Knights 263.) out of every hold in defeating justice, and that too for trifles and worthless things, because he does not know how much nobler and better it is to arrange his life so as to have no need[*](Cf. Gorgias 507 D, Thucydides iii. 82, Isocrates Antidosis 238, Antiphanes, fr. 288 Kock ὁ μηδὲν ἀδικῶν οὐδενὸς δεῖται νόμου.) of a nodding juryman? That is, said he, still more shameful than the other. And to require medicine, said I, not merely for wounds or the incidence of some seasonal maladies, but, because of sloth and such a regimen as we described, to fill one’s body up with winds and humors like a marsh and compel the ingenious sons of Aesculapius to invent for diseases such names as fluxes and flatulences—don’t you think that disgraceful?[*](Plato ridicules the unsavory metaphors required to describe the effects of auto-intoxication. There is a similar bit of somewhat heavier satire in Spencer’s Social Statics, 1868, p. 32: Carbuncled noses, cadaverous faces, foetid breaths, and plethoric bodies meet us at every turn; and our condolences are prepetually asked for headaches, flatulences, nightmare, heartburn, and endless other dyspeptic symptoms.) Those surely are, he said, new-fangled and monstrous strange names of diseases. There was nothing of the kind, I fancy, said I, in the days of Aesculapius. I infer this from the fact that at Troy his sons did not find fault with the damsel who gave to the wounded Eurypylus[*](Plato is probably quoting from memory. In our text, Iliad xi. 624, Hecamede gives the draught to Machaon and Nestor as the Ion (538 B) correctly states.) to drink a posset of Pramnian wine plentifully sprinkled with barley and gratings of cheese, inflammatory ingredients of a surety, nor did they censure Patroclus, who was in charge of the case.

It was indeed, said he, a strange potion for a man in that condition. Not strange, said I, if you reflect that the former Asclepiads made no use of our modern coddling[*](This coddling treatment of disease, which Plato affects to reprobate here, he recommends from the point of view of science in the Timaeus (89 C): διὸ παιδαγωγεῖν δεῖ διαίταις, etc. Cf. Euripides Orestes 883; and even in the Republic 459 C.) medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But Herodicus[*](Cf. Protagoras 316 E, Phaedrus 227 D. To be distinguished from his namesake, the brother of Gorgias in Gorgias 448 B. Cf. Cope on Aristotle Rhet. i. 5, Wilamowitz-Kiessling, Phil. Unt. xv. p. 220, Juthner, Philostratus uber Gymnastik, p. 10.) was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended gymnastics and medicine, for the torment first and chiefly of himself and then of many successors. How so? he said. By lingering out his death, said I; for living in perpetual observance of his malady, which was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through his days unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if he departed a whit from his fixed regimen, and struggling against death by reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age.[*](Cf. Macaulay on Mitford’s History of Greece: It (oligarchical government) has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with a hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every breath; it lets blood for every inflammation; and this, without ever enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags out its existence to a doting and debilitated old age. That Macaulay here is consciously paraphrasing Plato is apparent from his unfair use of the Platonic passage in his essay on Bacon. Cf. further Euripides Supp. 1109-1113; Seneca on early medicine, Epistles xv. 3 (95) 14 ff., overdoes both Spencer and Macaulay. Cf. Rousseau, Emile, Book I.: Je ne sais point apprendre à vivre à qui ne songe qu’à s’empêcher de mourir; La Rochefoucauld (Max. 282): C’est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime.) A noble prize[*](The pun γήρας and γέρας is hardly translatable. Cf. Pherecydes apud Diogenes Laertius i. 119 χθονίῃ δὲ ὄνομα ἐγένετο Γῆ, ἐπειδὴ αὐτῇ Ζὰς γῆν γέρας διδοῖ (vol. i. p. 124 L.C.L.). For the ironical use of καλόν cf. Euripides Cyclops 551, Sappho, fr. 53 (58).) indeed for his science, he said. The appropriate one, said I, for a man who did not know that it was not from ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that Aesculapius did not discover it to his descendants, but because he knew that for all well-governed peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform, and no one has leisure to be sick[*](Cf. Plutarch, De sanitate tuenda 23, Sophocles, fr. 88. 11 (?), Lucian, Nigrinus 22, differently; Hotspur’s, Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick?) and doctor himself all his days. And this we absurdly enough perceive in the case of a craftsman, but don’t see in the case of the rich and so-called fortunate. How so? he said. A carpenter, said I, when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug which will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by purging[*](For ἢ κάτω cf. Chaucer, Ne upward purgative ne downward laxative.) or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathings[*](Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 439.) about the head and their accompaniments, he hastily says that he has no leisure to be sick and that such a life of preoccupation with his illess and neglect of the work that lies before him isn’t worth living. And thereupon he bids farewell to that kind of physician, enters upon his customary way of life, regains his health, and lives attending to his affairs—or, if his body is not equal to strain, he dies and is freed from all his troubles.[*](This alone marks the humor of the whole passage, which Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon seems to miss. Cf. Aristophanes Acharnians 757;Apology 41 D.) For such a man, he said, that appears to be the right use of medicine.

And is not the reason, I said, that he had a task and that life wasn’t worth acceptance on condition of not doing his work? Obviously, he said. But the rich man, we say, has no such appointed task, the necessity of abstaining from which renders life intolerable. I haven’t heard of any. Why, haven’t you heard that saying of Phocylides,[*](The line of Phocylides is toyed with merely to vary the expression of the thought. Bergk restores it δίζησθαι βιοτήν, ἀρετὴν δ’ ὅταν ᾖ βίος ἤδη, which is Horace’s (Epistles i. 1. 53 f.): Quaerenda pecunia primum est; Virtus post nummos!) that after a man has made his pile he ought to practice virtue? Before, too, I fancy, he said. Let us not quarrel with him on that point, I said, but inform ourselves whether this virtue is something for the rich man to practise, and life is intolerable if he does not, or whether we are to suppose that while valetudinarianism is a hindrance to single-minded attention to carpentry and the other arts, it is no obstacle to the fulfilment of Phocylides’ exhortation. Yes, indeed, he said, this excessive care for the body that goes beyond simple gymnastics[*](In the Gorgias (464 B) ἰατρική is recognized as co-ordinate in the care of the body with γυμναστική. Here, whatever goes beyond the training and care that will preserve the health of a normal body is austerely rejected. Cf. 410 B.) is the greatest of all obstacles. For it is troublesome in household affairs and military service and sedentary offices in the city. And, chief of all, it puts difficulties in the way of any kind of instruction, thinking, or private meditation, forever imagining headaches[*](As Macaulay, Essay on Bacon, puts it: That a valetudinarian . . . who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre’s tales should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timaeus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English schools of wisdom altogether rejected. For the thought cf. Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 12. 6-7.) and dizziness and attributing their origin to philosophy. So that wherever this kind of virtue is practiced[*](Literally virtue is practiced in this way. Cf. 503 D for a similar contrast between mental and other labors. And for the meaning of virtue cf. the Elizabethan: Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds.) and tested it is in every way a hindrance.[*](There is a suggestion of Stoic terminology in Plato’s use of ἐμπόδιος and similar words. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. 2. 4. On the whole passage cf. again Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon, Maximus of Tyre (Duebn.) 10, and the diatribe on modern medicine and valetudinarianism in Edward Carpenter’s Civilization, Its Cause and Cure.) For it makes the man always fancy himself sick and never cease from anguishing about his body. Naturally, he said. Then, shall we not say that it was because Asclepius knew this—that for those who were by nature and course of life sound of body but had some localized disease, that for such, I say, and for this habit he revealed the art of medicine, and, driving out their disease by drugs and surgery, prescribed for them their customary regimen in order not to interfere with their civic duties, but that, when bodies were diseased inwardly and throughout, he did not attempt by diet and by gradual evacuations and infusions to prolong a wretched existence for the man and have him beget in all likelihood similar wretched offspring? But if a man was incapable of living in the established round[*](Cf. Thucydides i. 130.) and order of life, he did not think it worth while to treat him, since such a fellow is of no use either to himself or to the state. A most politic Asclepius you’re telling us of,[*](There is a touch of comedy in the Greek. Cf. Eupolis, fr. 94 Kock ταχὺν λέγεις μέν.) he said.

Obviously, said I, that was his character. And his sons too, don’t you in see that at Troy they approved themselves good fighting-men and practised medicine as I described it? Don’t you remember[*](Cf. the Homeric ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ;) that in the case of Menelaus too from the wound that Pandarus inflicted

They sucked the blood, and soothing simples sprinkled?

But a judge, mark you, my friend, rules soul with soul and it is not allowable for a soul to have been bred from youth up among evil souls and to have grown familiar with them, and itself to have run the gauntlet of every kind of wrong-doing and injustice so as quickly to infer from itself the misdeeds of others as it might diseases in the body, but it must have been inexperienced in evil natures and uncontaminated by them while young, if it is to be truly fair and good and judge soundly of justice. For which cause the better sort seem to be simple-minded in youth and are easily deceived by the wicked, since they do not have within themselves patterns answering to the affections of the bad.That is indeed their experience, he said. Therefore it is, said I, that the good judge must not be a youth but an old man, a late learner[*](ὀψιμαθῆ: here in a favorable sense, but usually an untranslatable Greek word for a type portrayed in a charater of Theophrastus.) of the nature of injustice, one who has not become aware of it as a property in his own soul, but one who has through the long years trained himself to understand it as an alien thing in alien souls, and to discern how great an evil it is by the instrument of mere knowledge and not by experience of his own. That at any rate, he said, appears to be the noblest kind of judge. And what is more, a good one, I said, which was the gist of your question. For he who has a good soul is good. But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil,[*](For this type of character cf. Thucydides iii. 83, and my comments in T.A.P.A. vol. xxiv. p. 79. Cf. Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol: They who raise suspicions on the good on account of the behavior of ill men, are of the party of the latter; Stobaeus ii. p. 46 Βίας ἔφη, οἱ ἀγαθοὶ εὐαπάτητοι, Menander, fr. 845 Kock χρηστοῦ παρ’ ἀνδρὸς μηδὲν ὑπονόει κακόν.) and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart trickster, when he associates with his like does appear to be clever, being on his guard and fixing his eyes on the patterns within himself. But when the time comes for him to mingle with the good and his elders, then on the contrary he appears stupid. He is unseasonably distrustful and he cannot recognize a sound character because he has no such pattern in himself. But since he more often meets with the bad than the good, he seems to himself and to others to be rather wise than foolish. That is quite true, he said. Well then, said I, such a one must not be our ideal of the good and wise judge but the former. For while badness could never come to know both virtue and itself, native virtue through education will at last acquire the science both of itself and badness.[*](Cf. George Eliot, Adam Bede, chap. xiv.: It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension by a good deal of hard experience.) This one, then, as I think, is the man who proves to be wise and not the bad man.[*](Cf. Theaetetus 176 D It is far best not to concede to the unjust that they are clever knaves, for they glory in the taunt. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 21.) And I concur, he said.

Then will you not establish by law in your city such an art of medicine as we have described in conjunction with this kind of justice? And these arts will care for the bodies and souls of such of your citizens as are truly well born, but of those who are not, such as are defective in body they will suffer to die and those who are evil-natured and incurable[*](Only the incurable suffer a purely exemplary and deterrent punishment in this world or the next. Cf. 615 E, Protagoras 325 A, Gorgias 525 C, Phaedo 113 E.) in soul they will themselves[*](ultro, as opposed to ἐάσουσιν.) put to death.This certainly, he said, has been shown to be the best thing for the sufferers themselves and for the state. And so your youths, said I, employing that simple music which we said engendered sobriety will, it is clear, guard themselves against falling into the need of the justice of the court-room. Yes, he said. And will not our musician, pursuing the same trail in his use of gymnastics, if he please, get to have no need of medicine save when indispensable[*](Cf. 405 C. Plato always allows for the limitation of the ideal by necessity.)? I think so. And even the exercises and toils of gymnastics he will undertake with a view to the spirited part of his nature[*](The welfare of the soul is always the prime object for Plato. (Cf. 591 C) But he cannot always delay to correct ordinary speech in this sense. The correction of 376 E here is of course not a change of opinion, and it is no more a criticism of Isocrates, Antidosis 180-185, than it is of Gorgias 464 B, or Soph. 228 E, or Republic 521 E.) to arouse that rather than for mere strength, unlike ordinary athletes, who treat[*](μεταχειρίζονται: this reading of Galen is more idiomatic than the MS. μεταχειριεῖται. Where English says he is not covetous of honor as other men are, Greek says he (is) not as other men are covetous of honor.) diet and exercise only as a means to muscle. Nothing could be truer, he said. Then may we not say, Glaucon, said I, that those who established[*](Plato half seriously attributes his own purposes to the founders. Cf. 405-406 on medicine and Philebus 16 C on dialectics.) an education in music and gymnastics had not the purpose in view that some attribute to them in so instituting, namely to treat the body by one and the soul by the other? But what? he said. It seems likely, I said, that they ordained both chiefly for the soul’s sake. How so? Have you not observed, said I, the effect on the disposition of the mind itself[*](For the thought cf. Euripides Suppl. 882 f. and Polybius’s account of the effect of the neglect of music on the Arcadians (iv. 20).) of lifelong devotion to gymnastics with total neglect of music? Or the disposition of those of the opposite habit? In what respect do you mean? he said. In respect of savagery and hardness or, on the other hand, of softness and gentleness? I have observed, he said, that the devotees of unmitigated gymnastics turn out more brutal than they should be and those of music softer than is good for them. And surely, said I, this savagery is a quality derived from the high-spirited element in our nature, which, if rightly trained, becomes brave, but if overstrained, would naturally become hard and harsh. I think so, he said. And again, is not the gentleness a quality which the philosophic nature would yield? This if relaxed too far would be softer than is desirable but if rightly trained gentle and orderly? That is so. But our requirement, we say,[*](Cf. 375 C. With Plato’s doctrine of the two temperaments cf. the distinction of quick-wits and hard-wits in Ascham’s Schoolmaster. Ascham is thinking of Plato, for he says: Galen saith much music marreth men’s manners; and Plato hath a notable place of the same thing in his book De rep., well marked also and excellently translated by Tully himself.) is that the guardians should possess both natures. It is. And must they not be harmoniously adjusted to one another? Of course.

And the soul of the man thus attuned is sober and brave?Certainly.And that of the ill adjusted is cowardiy and rude?It surely is.Now when a man abandons himself to music to play[*](Cf. 561 C.) upon him and pour[*](Demetrius, Περὶ Ἑρμ. 51, quotes this and the following sentence as an example of the more vivid expression following the less vivid. For the image cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Thesm. 18, Aeschylus Choeph. 451, Shakespeare, CymbelineIII. ii. 59 Love’s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing.) into his soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and dirge-like airs of which we were just now[*](Cf. 398 D-E, where the θρηνώδεις ἁρμονίαι are rejected altogether, while here they are used to illustrate the softening effect of music on a hard temperament. It is misspent ingenuity to harp on such contradictions.) speaking, and gives his entire time to the warblings and blandishments of song, the first result is that the principle of high spirit, if he had it, is softened like iron[*](For images drawn from the tempering of metals cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 612 and Jebb on Sophocles Ajax 650.) and is made useful instead of useless and brittle. But when he continues[*](Cf. Theaetetus 165 E ἐπέχων καὶ οὐκ ἀνιείς, and Blaydes on Aristophanes Peace 1121.) the practice without remission and is spellbound, the effect begins to be that he melts and liquefies[*](Cf. Tennyson’s Molten down in mere uxoriousness (Geraint and Enid ).) till he completely dissolves away his spirit, cuts out as it were the very sinews of his soul and makes of himself a feeble warrior.[*](A familiar Homeric reminiscence (Iliad xvii. 588) quoted also in Symposium 174 C. Cf. Froissart’s un mol chevalier.)Assuredly, he said. And if, said I, he has to begin with a spiritless[*](Etymologically ἄθυμος = deficient in θυμός.) nature he reaches this result quickly, but if high-spirited, by weakening the spirit he makes it unstable, quickly irritated by slight stimuli, and as quickly quelled. The outcome is that such men are choleric and irascible instead of high-spirited, and are peevish and discontented. Precisely so. On the other hand, if a man toils hard at gymnastics and eats right lustily and holds no truck with music and philosophy, does he not at first get very fit and full of pride and high spirit and become more brave and bold than he was? He does indeed. But what if he does nothing but this and has no contact with the Muse in any way, is not the result that even if there was some principle of the love of knowledge in his soul, since it tastes of no instruction nor of any inquiry and does not participate in any discussion or any other form of culture, it becomes feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused or fed nor are its perceptions purified and quickened? That is so, he said. And so such a man, I take it, becomes a misologist[*](A hater of rational discussion, as explained in Laches 188 C, and the beautiful passage in the Phaedo 89 D ff. Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 14. 6 Igitur nobis providendum est ne odio identidem sermonum laboremus. John Morley describes obscurantists as sombre hierophants of misology.) and stranger to the Muses. He no longer makes any use of persuasion by speech but achieves all his ends like a beast by violence and savagery, and in his brute ignorance and ineptitude lives a life of disharmony and gracelessness. That is entirely true, he said.

For these two, then, it seems there are two arts which I would say some god gave to mankind, music and gymnastics for the service of the high-spirited principle and the love of knowledge in them—not for the soul and the body except incidentally, but for the harmonious adjustment of these two principles by the proper degree of tension and relaxation of each.Yes, so it appears, he said. Then he who best blends gymnastics with music and applies them most suitably to the soul is the man whom we should most rightly pronounce to be the most perfect and harmonious musician, far rather than the one who brings the strings into unison with one another.[*](For virtue as music Cf. Phaedo61 A, Laches 188 D, and Iago’s There is a daily music in his life. The perfect musician is the professor of the royal art of Politicus 306-308 ff. which harmonizes the two temperaments, not merely by education, but by elminating extremes through judicious marriages.) That seems likely, Socrates, he said. And shall we not also need in our city, Glaucon, a permanent overseer[*](This epistates is not the director of education of Laws 765 D ff., though of course he or it will control education. It is rather an anticipation of the philosophic rulers, as appears from 497 C-D, and corresponds to the nocturnal council of Laws 950 B ff. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 86, note 650.) of this kind if its constitution is to be preserved? We most certainly shall. Such would be the outlines of their education and breeding. For why[*](γάρ explains τύποι, or outlines. Both in the Republic and the LawsPlato frequently states that many details must be left to subsequent legislation. Cf. Republic 379 A, 400 B-C, 403 D-E, 425 A-E, Laws 770 B, 772 A-B, 785 A, 788 A-B, 807 E, 828 B, 846 C, 855 D, 876 D-E, 957 A, 968 C.) should one recite the list of the dances of such citizens, their hunts and chases with hounds, their athletic contests and races? It is pretty plain that they must conform to these principles and there is no longer any difficulty in discovering them. There is, it may be, no difficulty, he said. Very well, said I; what, then, have we next to determine? Is it not which ones among them[*](αὐτῶν τούτων marks a class within a class. Cf. Class. Phil . vol. vii. (1912) p. 485. 535 A refers back to this passage.) shall be the rulers and the ruled? Certainly. That the rulers must be the elder and the ruled the younger is obvious. It is. And that the rulers must be their best? This too. And do not the best of the farmers prove the best farmers? Yes. And in this case, since we want them to be the best of the guardians, must they not be the best guardians, the most regardful of the state? Yes. They must then to begin with be intelligent in such matters and capable, and furthermore careful[*](The argument proceeds by minute links. Cf. on 338 D.) of the interests of the state? That is so. But one would be most likely to be careful of that which he loved. Necessarily. And again, one would be most likely to love that whose interests he supposed to coincide with his own, and thought that when it prospered, he too would prosper and if not, the contrary. So it is, he said. Then we must pick out from the other guardians such men as to our observation appear most inclined through the entire course of their lives to be zealous to do what they think for the interest of the state, and who would be least likely to consent to do the opposite. That would be a suitable choice, he said. I think, then, we shall have to observe them at every period of life, to see if they are conservators and guardians of this conviction in their minds and never by sorcery nor by force can be brought to expel[*](Cf. Crito 46 B, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 12. 7.) from their souls unawares this conviction that they must do what is best for the state. What do you mean by the expelling? he said.

I will tell you, said I; it seems to me that the exit of a belief from the mind is either voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary is the departure of the false belief from one who learns better, involuntary that of every true belief. The voluntary, he said, I understand, but I need instruction about the involuntary. How now, said I, don’t you agree with me in thinking that men are unwillingly deprived of good things but willingly of evil? Or is it not an evil to be deceived in respect of the truth and a good to possess truth? And don’t you think that to opine the things that are is to possess the truth? Why, yes, said he, you are right, and I agree that men are unwillingly deprived of true opinions.[*](Cf. on 382 A and Sophist. 228 C, Marcus Aurelius vii. 63.) And doesn’t this happen to them by theft, by the spells of sorcery or by force? I don’t understand now either, he said. I must be talking in high tragic style,[*](The preceding metaphors are in the high-flown, obscure style of tragedy. Cf. Thompson on Meno 76 E, Cratylus 418 D, Aristophanes Frogs, passim, Wilamowitz, Platon, ii. p. 146.) I said; by those who have their opinions stolen from them I mean those who are over-persuaded and those who forget, because in the one case time, in the other argument strips them unawares of their beliefs. Now I presume you understand, do you not? Yes. Well, then, by those who are constrained or forced I mean those whom some pain or suffering compels[*](Cf. Dionysius ὁ μεταθέμενος, who went over from the Stoics to the Cyrenaics because of the pain in his eyes, Diogenes Laertius vii. 166.) to change their minds. That too I understand and you are right. And the victims of sorcery[*](Cf. 584 A γοητεία.) I am sure you too would say are they who alter their opinions under the spell of pleasure or terrified by some fear. Yes, he said: everything that deceives appears to cast a spell upon the mind. Well then, as I was just saying, we must look for those who are the best guardians of the indwelling conviction that what they have to do is what they at any time believe to be best for the state. Then we must observe them from childhood up and propose them tasks in which one would be most likely to forget this principle or be deceived, and he whose memory is sure and who cannot be beguiled we must accept and the other kind we must cross off from our list. Is not that so? Yes. And again we must subject them to toils and pains and competitions in which we have to watch for the same traits. Right, he said. Then, said I, must we not institute a third kind of competitive test with regard to sorcery and observe them in that? Just as men conduct colts to noises and uproar to see if they are liable to take fright, so we must bring these lads while young into fears and again pass them into pleasures, testing them much more carefully than men do gold in the fire, to see if the man remains immune to such witchcraft and preserves his composure throughout, a good guardian of himself and the culture which he has received, maintaining the true rhythm and harmony of his being in all those conditions, and the character that would make him most useful to himself and to the state.

And he who as boy, lad, and man endures the test and issues from it unspoiled we must establish as ruler over our city and its guardian, and bestow rewards upon him in life, and in death the allotment of the supreme honors of burial-rites and other memorials. But the man of the other type we must reject. Such, said I, appears to me, Glaucon, the general notion of our selection and appointment of rulers and guardians as sketched in outline, but not drawn out in detail. I too, he said, think much the same. Then would it not truly be most proper to designate these as guardians in the full sense of the word, watchers against foemen without and friends within, so that the latter shall not wish and the former shall not be able to work harm, but to name those youths whom we were calling guardians just now, helpers and aids for the decrees of the rulers? I think so, he replied. How, then, said I, might we contrive[*](The concept μηχανή or ingenious device employed by a superior intelligence to circumvent necessity or play providence with the vulgar holds a prominent place in Plato’s physics, and is for Rousseau-minded readers one of the dangerous features of his political and educational philosophy. Cf. 415 C, Laws 664 A, 752 C, 769 E, 798 B, 640 B.) one of those opportune falsehoods[*](Cf. 389 B.) of which we were just now[*](389 B f.) speaking, so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city? What kind of a fiction do you mean? said he. Nothing unprecedented, said I, but a sort of Phoenician tale,[*](As was the Cadmus legend of the men who sprang from the dragon’s teeth, which the Greeks believed οὕτως ἀπίθανον ὄν, Laws 663 E. Pater, who translates the passage (Plato and Platonism, p. 223), fancifully suggests that it is a miners’ story. Others read into it an allusion to Egyptian castes. The proverb ψεῦσμα Φοινικικόν (Strabo 259 B) probably goes back to the Phoenician tales of the Odyssey.) something that has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to happen in our day[*](Plato never attempts a Voltairian polemic against the general faith in the supernatural, which he is willing to utilize for ethical ends, but he never himself affirms le surnaturel particulier.) and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable. You act like one who shrinks from telling his thought, he said. You will think that I have right good reason[*](καὶ μάλ’ here as often adds a touch of humorous colloquial emphasis, which our conception of the dignity of Plato does not allow a translator to reproduce.) for shrinking when I have told, I said. Say on, said he, and don’t be afraid. Very well, I will. And yet I hardly know how to find the audacity or the words to speak and undertake to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers and then the rest of the city, that in good sooth[*](Perhaps that so it is that would be better. ὡς ἄρα as often disclaims responsibility for the tale. Plato’s fancy of men reared beneath the earth is the basis of Bulwer-Lytton’s Utopia, The Coming Race, as his use of the ring of Gyges (359 D-360 B) is of H. G. Wells’ Invisible Man.) all our training and educating of them were things that they imagined and that happened to them as it were in a dream; but that in reality at that time they were down within the earth being molded and fostered themselves while their weapons and the rest of their equipment were being fashioned. And when they were quite finished the earth as being their mother[*](The symbolism expresses the Athenian boast of autochthony and Plato’s patriotic application of it, Menexenus 237 E-238 A. Cf. Burgess, Epideictic Literature, University of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology, vol. iii. pp. 153-154; Timaeus 24 C-D, Aeschylus Septem 17, Lucretius ii. 641 f., and Swineburne, Erechtheus: All races but one are as aliens engrafted or sown,Strange children and changelings, but we, O our mother, thine own.) delivered them, and now as if their land were their mother and their nurse they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any attack and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the self-same earth. It is not for nothing,[*](οὐκ ἐτός is comic. Cf. 568 A, and Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 411.) he said, that you were so bashful about coming out with your lie.

It was quite natural that I should be, I said; but all the same hear the rest of the story. While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation,[*](Cf. 468 E, 547 A, and already Cratylus 394 D, 398 A. Hesiod’s four metals, Works and Days 109-201, symbolize four succcessive ages. Plato’s myth cannot of course be interpreted literally or made to express the whole of his apparently undemocratic theory, of which the biologist Huxley in his essay on Administrative Nihilism says: The lapse of more than 2000 years has not weakened the force of these wise words.) for which reason they are the most precious—but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds,[*](The four classes are not castes, but are species which will generally breed true. Cf. Cratylus 393 B, 394 A.) it may sometimes happen that a golden father would beget a silver son and that a golden offspring would come from a silver sire and that the rest would in like manner be born of one another. So that the first and chief injunction that the god lays upon the rulers is that of nothing else[*](The phrasing of this injunction recalls Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, in fine: I’ll fear no other thingSo sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring. The securing of disinterested capacity in the rulers is the pons asinorum of political theory. Plato constructs his whole state for this end. Cf. Introduction p. xv. Aristotle, Politics 1262 b 27, raises the obvious objection that the transference from class to class will not be an easy matter. But Plato here and in 423 D-E is merely stating emphatically the postulates of an ideal state. He admits that even if established it will some time break down, and that the causes of its failure will lie beyond human ken, and can only be expressed in symbol. See on 546-547.) are they to be such careful guardians and so intently observant as of the intermixture of these metals in the souls of their offspring, and if sons are born to them with an infusion of brass or iron they shall by no means give way to pity in their treatment of them, but shall assign to each the status due to his nature and thrust them out[*](The summary in Timaeus 19 A varies somewhat from this. Plato does not stress the details. Cf. Introduction p. viii.) among the artisans or the farmers. And again, if from these there is born a son with unexpected gold or silver in his composition they shall honor such and bid them go up higher, some to the office of guardian, some to the assistanceship, alleging that there is an oracle[*](Plato’s oracle aptly copies the ambiguity of the bronze men’s answer to Psammetik (Herodotus ii. 152), and admits of both a moral and a literal physical interpretation, like the lame reign against which Sparta was warned. Cf. Xenophon Hellenica iii. 3. 3.) that the state shall then be overthrown when the man of iron or brass is its guardian. Do you see any way of getting them to believe this tale? No, not these themselves, he said, but I do, their sons and successors and the rest of mankind who come after.[*](Plato repeats the thought that since the mass of men can be brought to believe anything by repetition, myths framed for edification are a useful instrument of education and government. Cf. Laws 663 E-664 A.) Well, said I, even that would have a good effect making them more inclined to care for the state and one another. For I think I apprehend your meaning. XXII. And this shall fall out as tradition[*](φήμη, not any particular oracular utterance, but popular belief from mouth to mouth.) guides. But let us arm these sons of earth and conduct them under the leadership of their rulers. And when they have arrived they must look out for the fairest site in the city for their encampment,[*](The Platonic guardians, like the ruling class at Sparta, will live the life of a camp. Cf. Laws 666 E, Isocrates Archedamus.) a position from which they could best hold down rebellion against the laws from within and repel aggression from without as of a wolf against the fold. And after they have encamped and sacrificed to the proper gods[*](Partly from caution, partly from genuine religious feeling, Plato leaves all the details of the cult to Delphi. Cf. 427 B.) they must make their lairs, must they not? Yes, he said. And these must be of a character keep out the cold in winter and be sufficient in summer? Of course. For I presume you are speaking of their houses. Yes, said I, the houses of soldiers[*](For the limiting γε cf. 430 E.) not of money-makers.

What distinction do you intend by that? he said. I will try to tell you, I said. It is surely the most monstrous and shameful thing in the world for shepherds to breed the dogs who are to help them with their flocks in such wise and of such a nature that from indiscipline or hunger or some other evil condition the dogs themselves shall attack the sheep and injure them and be likened to wolves[*](Aristotle’s objection (Politics 1264 a 24) that the Platonic state will break up into two hostile camps, is plagiarized in expression from Plato’s similar censure of existing Greek cities (422 E) and assumes that the enforced disinterestedness, the higher education, and other precautions of the Platonic Republic will not suffice to conjure away the danger to which Plato first calls attention.) instead of dogs. A terrible thing, indeed, he said. Must we not then guard by every means in our power against our helpers treating the citizens in any such way and, because they are the stronger, converting themselves from benign assistants into savage masters? We must, he said. And would they not have been provided with the chief safeguard if their education has really been a good one? But it surely has, he said. That, said I, dear Glaucon, we may not properly affirm,[*](This is not so much a reservation in reference to the higher education as a characteristic refusal of Plato to dogmatize. Cf. Meno 86 B and my paper Recent Platonism in England, A.J.P. vol. ix. pp. 7-8.) but what we were just now saying we may, that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if they are to have what will do most to make them gentle to one another and to their charges. That is right, he said. In addition, moreover, to such an education a thoughtful man would affirm that their houses and the possessions provided for them ought to be such as not to interfere with the best performance of their own work as guardians and not to incite them to wrong the other citizens. He will rightly affirm that. Consider then, said I, whether, if that is to be their character, their habitations and ways of life must not be something after this fashion. In the first place, none must possess any private property[*](Plato’s communism is primarily a device to secure disinterestedness in the ruling class, though he sometimes treats it as a counsel of perfection for all men and states. Cf. Introduction p. xv note a.) save the indispensable. Secondly, none must have any habitation or treasure-house which is not open for all to enter at will. Their food, in such quantities as are needful for athletes of war[*](Cf. 403 E.) sober and brave, they must receive as an agreed[*](Cf. 551 B, Meno 91 B, Thucydides i. 108, G.M.T. 837.) stipend[*](They are worthy of their hire. Cf. on 347 A. It is a strange misapprehension to speak of Plato as careless of the welfare of the masses. His aristocracy is one of social service, not of selfish enjoyment of wealth and power.) from the other citizens as the wages of their guardianship, so measured that there shall be neither superfluity at the end of the year nor any lack.[*](This is precisely Aristophanes’ distinction between beggary and honorable poverty, Plutus 552-553.) And resorting to a common mess[*](As at Sparta. Cf. 458 C, Newman, Introduction to Aristotle’s Politics, p. 334.) like soldiers on campaign they will live together.

Gold and silver, we will tell them, they have of the divine quality from the gods always in their souls, and they have no need of the metal of men nor does holiness suffer them to mingle and contaminate that heavenly possession with the acquisition of mortal gold, since many impious deeds have been done about the coin of the multitude, while that which dwells within them is unsullied. But for these only of all the dwellers in the city it is not lawful to handle gold and silver and to touch them nor yet to come under the same roof[*](As if the accursed and tainted metal were a polluted murderer or temple-robber. Cf. my note on Horace, Odes iii. 2. 27 sub isdem trabibus, Antiphon v. 11.) with them, nor to hang them as ornaments on their limbs nor to drink from silver and gold. So living they would save themselves and save their city.[*](Cf. 621 B-C, and Laws692 A.) But whenever they shall acquire for themselves land of their own and houses and coin, they will be house-holders and farmers instead of guardians, and will be transformed from the helpers of their fellow citizens to their enemies and masters,[*](δεσπόται. Cf. Menexenus 238 E.) and so in hating and being hated,[*](Cf. Laws 697 D in a passage of similar import, μισοῦντες μισοῦνται.) plotting and being plotted against they will pass their days fearing far more and rather[*](more and rather: so 396 D, 551 B.) the townsmen within than the foemen without—and then even then laying the course[*](The image is that of a ship nearing the fatal reef. Cf. Aeschylus, Eumenides 562. The sentiment and the heightened rhetorical tone of the whole passage recalls the last page of the Critias, with Ruskin’s translation and comment in A Crown of Wild Olive.) of near shipwreck for themselves and the state. For all these reasons, said I, let us declare that such must be the provision for our guardians in lodging and other respects and so legislate. Shall we not? By all means, said Glaucon.