Republic

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.