Laws

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

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

Meg. Yes.

Ath. Do you then, like Homer,[*](Cp. Hom. Od. 19.178.) say that Minos used to go every ninth year to hold converse with his father Zeus, and that he was guided by his divine oracles in laying down the laws for your cities?

Clin. So our people say. And they say also that his brother Rhadamanthys,—no doubt you have heard the name,—was exceedingly just. And certainly we Cretans would maintain that he won this title owing to his righteous administration of justice in those days.

Ath. Yes, his renown is indeed glorious and well befitting a son of Zeus. And, since you and our friend Megillus were both brought up in legal institutions of so noble a kind, you would, I imagine, have no aversion to our occupying ourselves as we go along in discussion on the subject of government and laws. Certainly, as I am told, the road from Cnosus to the cave[*](The grotto of Dicte on Mt. Ida.) and temple of Zeus is a long one, and we are sure to find, in this sultry weather, shady resting-places among the high trees along the road: in them we can rest ofttimes, as befits our age, beguiling the time with discourse, and thus complete our journey in comfort.

Clin. True, Stranger; and as one proceeds further one finds in the groves cypress-trees of wonderful height and beauty, and meadows too, where we may rest ourselves and talk.

Ath. You say well.

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

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

Clin. Our Cretan customs, Stranger, are, as I think, such as anyone may grasp easily. As you may notice, Crete, as a whole, is not a level country, like Thessaly: consequently, whereas the Thessalians mostly go on horseback, we Cretans are runners, since this land of ours is rugged and more suitable for the practice of foot-running. Under these conditions we are obliged to have light armour for running and to avoid heavy equipment; so bows and arrows are adopted as suitable because of their lightness. Thus all these customs of ours are adapted for war, and, in my opinion, this was the object which the lawgiver had in view when he ordained them all. Probably this was his reason also for instituting common meals: he saw how soldiers, all the time they are on campaign, are obliged by force of circumstances to mess in common, for the sake of their own security. And herein, as I think, he condemned the stupidity of the mass of men in failing to perceive that all are involved ceaselessly in a lifelong war against all States.

Clin.If, then, these practices are necessary in war,—namely, messing in common for safety’s sake, and the appointment of relays of officers and privates to act as guards,— they must be carried out equally in time of peace. For (as he would say) peace, as the term is commonly employed, is nothing more than a name, the truth being that every State is, by a law of nature, engaged perpetually in an informal war with every other State. And if you look at the matter from this point of view you will find it practically true that our Cretan lawgiver ordained all our legal usages, both public and private, with an eye to war, and that he therefore charged us with the task of guarding our laws safely, in the conviction that without victory in war nothing else, whether possession or institution, is of the least value, but all the goods of the vanquished fall into the hands of the victors.

Ath. Your training, Stranger, has certainly, as it seems to me, given you an excellent understanding of the legal practices of Crete. But tell me this more clearly still: by the definition you have given of the well-constituted State you appear to me to imply that it ought to be organized in such a way as to be victorious in war over all other States. Is that so?

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

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

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

Clin. By no means.

Ath. It is the same, you say?

Clin. Yes.

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

Clin. It is.

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

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

Ath. What is your meaning, my admirable sir?

Clin. It is just in this war, my friend, that the victory over self is of all victories the first and best while self-defeat is of all defeats at once the worst and the most shameful. For these phrases signify that a war against self exists within each of us.[*](Cp. Plat. Rep. 430e ff.: Proverbs xiv 32.)

Ath. Now let us take the argument back in the reverse direction. Seeing that individually each of us is partly superior to himself and partly inferior, are we to affirm that the same condition of things exists in house and village and State, or are we to deny it?

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

Ath. Yes.

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

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

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

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

Clin. It would not.

Ath. And, moreover, it would ill beseem you and me to go a-chasing after this form of expression, that if the bad ones conquered the whole of this family and house should be called self-inferior, but self-superior if they were defeated; for our present reference to the usage of ordinary speech is not concerned with the propriety or impropriety of verbal phrases but with the essential rightness or wrongness of laws.

Clin. Very true, Stranger.

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

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

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Which of the two would be the better—a judge who destroyed all the wicked among them and charged the good to govern themselves, or one who made the good members govern and, while allowing the bad to live, made them submit willingly to be governed?

Ath.And there is a third judge we must mention (third and best in point of merit),—if indeed such a judge can be found,— who in dealing with a single divided family will destroy none of them but reconcile them and succeed, by enacting laws for them, in securing amongst them thenceforward permanent friendliness.

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

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

Clin. That is true.

Ath. And what of him who brings the State into harmony? In ordering its life would he have regard to external warfare rather than to the internal war, whenever it occurs, which goes by the name of civil strife? For this is a war as to which it would be the desire of every man that, if possible, it should never occur in his own State, and that, if it did occur, it should come to as speedy an end as possible.

Clin. Evidently he would have regard to civil war.

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

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

Ath. And would not the lawgiver do the same?

Clin. Of course.

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

Clin. Assuredly.

Ath. The highest good, however, is neither war nor civil strife—which things we should pray rather to be saved from—but peace one with another and friendly feeling. Moreover, it would seem that the victory we mentioned of a State over itself is not one of the best things but one of those which are necessary. For imagine a man supposing that a human body was best off when it was sick and aged with physic, while never giving a thought to the case of the body that needs no physic at all! Similarly, with regard to the well-being of a State or an individual, that man will never make genuine statesman who pays attention primarily solely to the needs of foreign warfare, nor will he make a finished lawgiver unless he designs his legislation for peace rather than his peace legislation for war.

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

Ath. Very possibly; but we must not now attack them violently, but mildly interrogate them, since both we and your legislators are earnestly interested in these matters. Pray follow the argument closely. Let us take the opinion of Tyrtaeus (an Athenian by birth and afterwards a citizen of Lacedaemon), above all men, was keenly interested in our subject. This is what he says:[*](Tyrt. 12 (Bergk). Tyrtaeus wrote war-songs at Sparta about 880 B.C.)

1. Though a man were the richest of men,

though a man possessed goods in plenty (and he specifies nearly every good there is), if he failed to prove himself at all times most valiant in war, no mention should I make of nor take account of him at all.

Meg. I certainly am.

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

Ath. Come now, let us jointly interrogate this poet somehow on this wise: O Tyrtaeus, most inspired of poets (for assuredly you seem to us both wise and good in that you have eulogized excellently those who excel in war), concerning this matter we three Megillus, Clinias of Cnosus and myself are already in entire accord with you, as we suppose; but we wish to be assured that both we and you are alluding to the same persons. Tell us then: do you clearly recognize, as we do, two distinct kinds of war? In reply to this I suppose that even a much less able man than Tyrtaeus would state the truth, that there are two kinds, the one being that which we all call civil, which is of all wars the most bitter, as we said just now, while the other kind, as I suppose we shall all agree, is that which we engage in when we quarrel with foreigners and aliens—a kind much milder than the former.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Come, then, which kind of warriors, fighting in which kind of war, did you praise so highly, while blaming others? Warriors, apparently, who fight in war abroad. At any rate, in your poems you have said that you cannot abide men who dare not

face the gory fray

1. and smite the foe in close combat.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Yet, brave though these men are, we still maintain that they are far surpassed in bravery by those who are conspicuously brave in the greatest of wars; and we also have a poet for witness,—Theognis (a citizen of Sicilian Megara), who says:

1. In the day of grievous feud, O Cyrnus, the loyal warrior is worth his weight in silver and gold.

with well-planted feet apart,

loyalty in danger,

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

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

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

Ath. In the way that is, as I think, true and proper when talking of a divine hero. That is to say, we should state that he enacted laws with an eye not to some one fraction, and that the most paltry, of goodness, but to goodness as a whole, and that he devised the laws themselves according to classes, though not the classes which the present devisers propound.

Ath.For everyone now brings forward and devises just the class which he needs: one man deals with inheritances and heiresses, another with cases of battery, and so on in endless variety. But what we assert is that the devising of laws, when rightly conducted, follows the procedure which we have now commenced. Indeed, I greatly admire the way you opened your exposition of the laws; for to make a start with goodness and say that that was the aim of the lawgiver is the right way. But in your further statement that he legislated wholly with reference to a fraction of goodness, and that the smallest fraction, you seemed to me to be in error, and all this latter part of my discourse was because of that. What then is the manner of exposition I should have liked to have heard from you? Shall I tell you?

Clin. Yes, by all means.

Ath.O Stranger (thus you ought to have said), it is not for nothing that the laws of the Cretans are held in superlatively high repute among all the Hellenes. For they are true laws inasmuch as they effect the well-being of those who use them by supplying all that are good. Now goods are of two kinds, human and divine; and the human goods are dependent on the divine, and he who receives the greater acquires also the less, or else he is bereft of both. The lesser goods are those of which health ranks first, beauty second; the third is strength, in running and all other bodily exercises; and the fourth is wealth—no blind god Plutus, but keen of sight, provided that he has wisdom for companion. And wisdom, in turn, has first place among the goods that are divine, and rational temperance of soul comes second; from these two, when united with courage, there issues justice, as the third; and the fourth is courage. Now all these are by nature ranked before the human goods, and verily the law-giver also must so rank them. Next, it must be proclaimed to the citizens that all the other instructions they receive have these in view; and that, of these goods themselves, the human look up to the divine, and the divine to reason as their chief. And in regard to their marriage connections, and to their subsequent breeding and rearing of children, male and female, both during youth and in later life up to old age, the lawgiver must supervise the citizens, duly apportioning honor and dishonor;

Ath.and in regard to all their forms of intercourse he must observe and watch their pains and pleasures and desires and all intense passions, and distribute praise and blame correctly by the means of the laws themselves. Moreover, in the matter of anger and of fear, and of all the disturbances which befall souls owing to misfortune, and of all the avoidances thereof which occur in good-fortune, and of all the experiences which confront men through disease or war or penury or their opposites,— in regard to all these definite instruction must be given as to what is the right and what the wrong disposition in each case. It is necessary, in the next place, for the law-giver to keep a watch on the methods employed by the citizens in gaining and spending money, and to supervise the associations they form with one another, and the dissolutions thereof, whether they be voluntary or under compulsion; he must observe the manner in which they conduct each of these mutual transactions, and note where justice obtains and where it is lacking. To those that are obedient he must assign honors by law, but on the disobedient he must impose duly appointed penalties. Then finally, when he arrives at the completion of the whole constitution, he has to consider in what manner in each case the burial of the dead should be carried out, and what honors should be assigned to them. This being settled, the framer of the laws will hand over all his statutes to the charge of Wardens—guided some by wisdom, others by true opinion—to the end that Reason, having bound all into one single system, may declare them to be ancillary neither to wealth nor ambition, but to temperance and justice. In this manner, Strangers, I could have wished (and I wish it still) that you had fully explained how all these regulations are inherent in the reputed laws of Zeus and in those of the Pythian Apollo which were ordained by Minos and Lycurgus, and how their systematic arrangement is quite evident to him who, whether by art or practice, is an expert in law, although it is by no means obvious to the rest of us.

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

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

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

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

Meg. Yes.

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

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

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

Meg. The fourth also I may attempt to state: it is the training, widely prevalent amongst us, in hardy endurance of pain, by means both of manual contests and of robberies carried out every time at the risk of a sound drubbing; moreover, the Crypteia,[*]( Or Secret Service. Young Spartans policed the country to suppress risings among the Helots.) as it is called, affords a wonderfully severe training in hardihood, as the men go bare-foot in winter and sleep without coverlets and have no attendants, but wait on themselves and rove through the whole countryside both by night and by day. Moreover in our games,[*]( The Naked Games, held about midsummer.) we have severe tests of endurance, when men unclad do battle with the violence of the heat,—and there are other instances so numerous that the recital of them would be well-nigh endless.

Ath. Splendid, O Stranger of Lacedaemon! But come now, as to courage, how shall we define it? Shall we define it quite simply as battling against fears and pains only, or as against desires also and pleasures, with their dangerous enticements and flatteries, which melt men’s hearts like wax—even men most reverenced in their own conceit.

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

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

Clin. Most certainly.

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

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

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

Clin. On both sides, as I would maintain.

Ath. Let us, then, mention once more the State institutions in both your countries which give men a taste of pleasures instead of shunning them,—just as they did not shun pains but plunged their citizens into the midst of them and so compelled them, or induced them by rewards, to master them. Where, pray, in your laws is the same policy adopted in regard to pleasures? Let us declare what regulation of yours there is which causes the same men to be courageous toward pains and pleasures alike, conquering where they ought to conquer and in no wise worsted by their nearest and most dangerous enemies.

Meg. Although, Stranger, I was able to mention a number of laws that dealt with mastery over pains, in the case of pleasures I may not find it equally easy to produce important and conspicuous examples; but I might perhaps furnish some minor instances.

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

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

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

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

Clin. Ill indeed.

Ath. Whether men are right or wrong in their censures of the Laconian polity and the Cretan—that is another story; anyhow, what is actually said by most men I, probably, am in a better position to state than either of you. For in your case (your laws being wisely framed) one of the best of your laws will be that which enjoins that none of the youth shall inquire which laws are wrong and which right, but all shall declare in unison, with one mouth and one voice, that all are rightly established by divine enactment, and shall turn a deaf ear to anyone who says otherwise; and further, that if any old man has any stricture to pass on any of your laws, he must not utter such views in the presence of any young man, but before a magistrate or one of his own age.

Clin. A very sound observation, Stranger; and just like a diviner, far away though you are from the original lawgiver, you have fairly spotted, as I think, his intention, and described it with perfect truth.

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

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

Ath. Good! But until I have investigated your laws as carefully as I can I shall not censure them but rather express the doubts I feel. You alone of Greeks and barbarians, so far as I can discover, possess a lawgiver who charged you to abstain from the greatest of pleasures and amusements and taste them not; but concerning pains and fears, as we said before, he held the view that anyone who shuns them continuously from childhood onward, when confronted with unavoidable hardships and fears and pains, will be put to flight by the men who are trained in such things, and will become their slave. Now I presume that this same lawgiver should have held the same view about pleasures as well, and should have argued with himself that, if our citizens grow up from their youth unpracticed in the greatest pleasures, the consequence must be that, when they find themselves amongst pleasures without being trained in the duty of resisting them and of refusing to commit any disgraceful act, because of the natural attraction of pleasures, they will suffer the same fate as those who are worsted by fears: they will, that is to say, in another and still more shameful fashion be enslaved by those who are able to hold out amidst pleasures and those who are versed in the art of pleasure,—people who are sometimes wholly vicious: thus their condition of soul will be partly enslaved and partly free, and they will not deserve to be called, without qualification, free men and men of courage. Consider, then, whether you at all approve these remarks of mine.

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

Ath. Well then, O Clinias, and thou, Stranger of Lacedaemon, suppose we discuss the second of the subjects we proposed, and take temperance next after courage: shall we discover any point in which these polities are superior to those framed at random, as we found just now in regard to their military organization?

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

Ath. In truth, Strangers, it seems a difficult thing for State institutions to be equally beyond criticism both in theory and in practice. Their case resembles that of the human body, where it seems impossible to prescribe any given treatment for each case without finding that this same prescription is partly beneficial and partly injurious to the body. So these common meals, for example, and these gymnasia, while they are at present beneficial to the States in many other respects, yet in the event of civil strife they prove dangerous (as is shown by the case of the youth of Miletus, Bocotia and Thurii);[*]( Plato here ascribes the revolutions which occurred in these places to the intensive military training of the youth. Thurii was a Greek town in S. Italy, an off-shoot of Syhsris.) and, moreover, this institution, when of old standing, is thought to have corrupted the pleasures of love which are natural not to men only but also natural to beasts. For this your States are held primarily responsible, and along with them all others that especially encourage the use of gymnasia. And whether one makes the observation in earnest or in jest, one certainly should not fail to observe that when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature, but contrary to nature when male mates with male or female with female, and that those first guilty of such enormities were impelled by their slavery to pleasure. And we all accuse the Cretans of concocting the story about Ganymede. Because it was the belief that they derived their laws from Zeus, they added on this story about Zeus in order that they might be following his example in enjoying this pleasure as well. Now with the story itself we have no more concern; but when men are investigating the subject of laws their investigation deals almost entirely with pleasures and pains, whether in States or in individuals. These are the two fountains which gush out by nature’s impulse; and whoever draws from them a due supply at the due place and time is blessed—be it a State or an individual or any kind of creature; but whosoever does so without understanding and out of due season will fare contrariwise.

Meg. What you say, Stranger, is excellent, I suppose; nonetheless I am at a loss to know what reply I should make to it. Still, in my opinion, the Lacedaemonian lawgiver was right in ordaining the avoidance of pleasures, while as to the laws of Cnosus—our friend Clinias, if he thinks fit, will defend them. The rules about pleasures at Sparta seem to me the best in the world. For our law banished entirely from the land that institution which gives the most occasion for men to fall into excessive pleasures and riotous and follies of every description; neither in the country nor in the cities controlled by Spartiates is a drinking-club to be seen nor any of the practices which belong to such and foster to the utmost all kinds of pleasure. Indeed there is not a man who would not punish at once and most severely any drunken reveller he chanced to meet with, nor would even the feast of Dionysus serve as an excuse to save him—a revel such as I once upon a time witnessed on the wagons[*](At the Feast of Dionysus in Athens it was customary for revellers mounted on wagons to indulge in scurrilous language during the processions.) in your country; and at our colony of Tarentum, too, saw the whole city drunk at the Dionysia. But with us no such thing is possible.

Ath. O Stranger of Lacedaemon, all such indulgences are praiseworthy where there exists a strain of firm moral fiber, but where this is relaxed they are quite stupid. An Athenian in self-defence might at once retaliate by pointing to the looseness of the women in your country. Regarding all such practices, whether in Tarentum, Athens or Sparta, there is one answer that is held to vindicate their propriety. The universal answer to the stranger who is surprised at seeing in a State some unwonted practice is this: Be not surprised, O Stranger: such is the custom with us: with you, perhaps, the custom in these matters is different. But, my dear Sirs, our argument now is not concerned with the rest of mankind but with the goodness or badness of the lawgivers themselves. So let us deal more fully with the subject of drunkenness in general for it is a practice of no slight importance, and it requires no mean legislator to understand it. I am now referring not to the drinking or non-drinking of wine generally, but to drunkenness pure and simple, and the question is—ought we to deal with it as the Scythians and Persians do and the Carthaginians also, and Celts, Iberians and Thracians, who are all warlike races, or as you Spartans do; for you, as you say, abstain from it altogether, whereas the Scythians and Thracians, both men and women, take their wine neat and let it pour down over their clothes, and regard this practice of theirs as a noble and splendid practice; and the Persians indulge greatly in these and other luxurious habits which you reject, albeit in a more orderly fashion than the others.

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

Ath. Say not so, my dear Sir; for there have been, in fact, in the past and there will be in the future many a flight and many a pursuit which are past explaining, so that victory or defeat in battle could never be called a decisive, but rather a questionable, test of the goodness or badness of an institution. Larger States, for example, are victorious in battle over smaller States, and we find the Syracusans subjugating the Locrians, who are reputed to have been the best-governed of the peoples in that part of the world: and the Athenians the Ceians,—and we could find countless other instances of the same kind. So let us leave victories and defeats out of account for the present, and discuss each several institution on its own merits in the endeavor to convince ourselves, and explain in what way one kind is good and another had. And to begin with, listen to my account of the right method of inquiring into the merits and demerits of institutions.

Meg. What is your account of it?

Ath. In my opinion all those who take up an institution for discussion and propose, at its first mention, to censure it or commend it, are proceeding in quite the wrong way. Their action is like that of a man who, when he hears somebody praising cheese as a good food, at once starts to disparage it, without having learnt either its effects or its mode of administration—in what form it should be administered and by whom and with what accompaniments, and in what condition and to people in what condition. This, as it seems to me, is exactly what we are now doing in our discourse. At the first mention of the mere name of drunkenness, straightway we fall, some of us to blaming it, others to praising it; which is most absurd. Each party relies on the aid of witnesses, and while the one party claims that its statement is convincing on the ground of the large number of witnesses produced, the other does so on the ground that those who abstain from wine are seen to be victorious in battle; and then this point also gives rise to a dispute. Now it would not be at all to my taste to go through all the rest of the legal arrangements in this fashion; and about our present subject, drunkenness, I desire to speak in quite another fashion (in my opinion, the right fashion), and I shall endeavor, if possible, to exhibit the correct method for dealing with all such subjects for indeed the view of them adopted by your two States would be assailed and controverted by thousands upon thousands of nations.

Meg. Assuredly, if we know of a right method of investigating these matters, we are bound to give it a ready hearing.

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

Meg. Certainly not.

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

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

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

Meg. Certainly not.

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

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

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

Meg. Certainly not, when the man has never seen nor shared in an institution of the kind that was properly conducted.

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

Meg. Most certainly.

Ath. Now has anyone ever yet beheld this institution rightly conducted? Both of you can easily make answer—Never yet at all, for with you this institution is neither customary nor legal; but I have come across many modes of banqueting in many places, and I have also inquired into nearly all of them, and I have scarcely seen or heard of a single one that was in all points rightly conducted; for if any were right at all, it was only in a few details, and most of them were almost entirely on the wrong lines.

Clin. What do you mean by that, Stranger? Explain yourself more clearly; for since we are (as you observed) without any experience of such institutions, even if we did come across them, we would probably fail to see at once what was right in them and what wrong.

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

Clin. Of course.

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

Clin. Of course.

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

Clin. That is true, too.

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

Clin. Most certainly.

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

Clin. Quite so.

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

Clin. Certainly not; quite the reverse, I imagine.

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

Clin. Undoubtedly—they above all.

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

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Naturally, also, he should be wise about social gatherings. For he has both to preserve the friendliness which already exists among the company and to see that the present gathering promotes it still further.

Clin. Very true.

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

Clin. Uncommonly lucky.

Ath. Suppose, then, that a man were to find fault with such institutions in States where they are managed in the best possible way, having an objection to the institution in itself, he might perhaps be right in doing so but if a man abuses an institution when he sees it managed in the worst way possible, it is plain that he is ignorant, first, of the fact that it is badly conducted, and secondly, that every institution will appear similarly bad when it is carried on without a sober ruler and commander.

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

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

Ath. Well, what great gain should we say would accrue to the State from the right control of one single child or even of one band of children? To the question thus put to us we should reply that the State would benefit but little from one; if, however, you are putting a general question as to what solid advantage the State gains from the education of the educated, then it is quite simple to reply that well-educated men will prove good men, and being good they will conquer their foes in battle, besides acting nobly in other ways. Thus, while education brings also victory, victory sometimes brings lack of education for men have often grown more insolent because of victory in war, and through their insolence they have become filled with countless other vices; and whereas education has never yet proved to be Cadmeian,[*](i.e. involving more loss than gain—a proverbial expression, possibly derived from the fate of the Sparti (sprung from the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus, founder of Thebes) who slew one another: cp. Pyrrhic victory.) the victories which men win in war often have been, and will be, Cadmeian.

Clin. You are implying, my friend, as it seems to us, that the convivial gathering, when rightly conducted, is an important element in education.

Ath. Assuredly.

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

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

Clin. Well, it is precisely your opinion about the questions now in dispute that we are trying to learn.

Ath. Thus, then, we must do,—you must brace yourself in the effort to learn the argument, and I to expound it as best I can. But, first of all, I have a preliminary observation to make: our city, Athens, is, in the general opinion of the Greeks, both fond of talk and full of talk, but Lacedaemon is scant of talk, while Crete is more witty[*](A polite way of alluding to the proverbial mendacity of the Cretans (cp. Ep. Titus i. 12: κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται).) than wordy;

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

Meg. O Stranger of Athens, you are not, perhaps, aware that our family is, in fact, a proxenus[*](A proxenus was a native who acted as official representative of a foreign State.) of your State. It is probably true of all children that, when once they have been told that they are proxeni of a certain State, they conceive an affection for that State even from infancy, and each of them regards it as a second mother-land, next after his own country. That is precisely the feeling I now experience. For through hearing mere children crying out— whenever they, being the Lacedaemonians, were blaming the Athenians for anything or praising them—Your State, Megillus, has done us a bad turn or a good one,—through hearing such remarks, I say, and constantly fighting your battles against those who were thus decrying your State, I acquired a deep affection for it; so that now not only do I delight in your accent, but I regard as absolutely true the common saying that good Athenians are always incomparably good, for they alone are good not by outward compulsion but by inner disposition. Thus, so far as I am concerned, you may speak without fear and say all you please.

Clin. My story, too, Stranger, when you hear it, will show you that you may boldly say all you wish. You have probably heard how that inspired man Epimenides, who was a family connection of ours, was born in Crete; and how ten years[*](Epimenides really lived about 600 B.C.) before the Persian War, in obedience to the oracle of the god, he went to Athens and offered certain sacrifices which the god had ordained; and how, moreover, when the Athenians were alarmed at the Persians’ expeditionary force, he made this prophecy—They will not come for ten years, and when they do come, they will return back again with all their hopes frustrated, and after suffering more woes than they inflict.

Clin. Then our forefathers became guest-friends of yours, and ever since both my fathers and I myself have cherished an affection for Athens.

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

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

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

Clin. Proceed with your statement.

Ath. I will. What I assert is that every man who is going to be good at any pursuit must practice that special pursuit from infancy, by using all the implements of his pursuit both in his play and in his work. For example, the man who is to make a good builder must play at building toy houses, and to make a good farmer he must play at tilling land; and those who are rearing them must provide each child with toy tools modelled on real ones. Besides this, they ought to have elementary instruction in all the necessary subjects,—the carpenter, for instance, being taught in play the use of rule and measure, the soldier taught riding or some similar accomplishment. So, by means of their games, we should endeavor to turn the tastes and desires of the children in the direction of that object which forms their ultimate goal. First and foremost, education, we say, consists in that right nurture which most strongly draws the soul of the child when at play to a love for that pursuit of which, when he becomes a man, he must possess a perfect mastery. Now consider, as I said before, whether, up to this point, you are satisfied with this statement of mine.

Clin. Certainly we are.

Ath. But we must not allow our description of education to remain indefinite. For at present, when censuring or commending a man’s upbringing, we describe one man as educated and another as uneducated, though the latter may often be uncommonly well educated in the trade of a pedlar or a skipper, or some other similar occupation. But we, naturally, in our present discourse are not taking the view that such things as these make up education: the education we speak of is training from childhood in goodness, which makes a man eagerly desirous of becoming a perfect citizen, understanding how both to rule and be ruled righteously.