Laws

Ath.just as, when people suffer from bodily ailments and infirmities, those whose office it is try to administer to them nutriment that is wholesome in meats and drinks that are pleasant, but unwholesome nutriment in the opposite, so that they may form the right habit of approving the one kind and detesting the other. Similarly in dealing with the poet, the good legislator will use noble and laudable phrases to persuade him—and, failing persuasion, he will compel him—to portray by his rhythms the gestures, and by his harmonies the tunes, of men who are temperate, courageous, and good in all respects, and thereby to compose poems aright.

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

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

Clin. Certainly.

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

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

Ath. Come now, let us come to an understanding on this matter. In all education and music in your countries, is not this your teaching? You oblige the poets to teach that the good man, since he is temperate and just, is fortunate and happy, whether he be great or small, strong or weak, rich or poor; whereas, though he be richer even

than Cinyras or Midas,

Ath.Your poet says—if he speaks the truth—I would spend no word on the man, and hold him in no esteem, who without justice performs or acquires all the things accounted good; and again he describes how the just man drives his spear against the foe at close quarters, whereas the unjust man dares not to look upon the face of bloody death, nor does he outpace in speed of foot the north wind out of Thrace, nor acquire any other of the things called good. For the things which most men call good are wrongly so described. Men say that the chief good is health, beauty the second, wealth the third; and they call countless other things goods—such as sharpness of sight and hearing, and quickness in perceiving all the objects of sense; being a king, too, and doing exactly as you please; and to possess the whole of these goods and become on the spot an immortal, that, as they say, is the crown and top of all felicity. But what you and I say is this,—that all these things are very good as possessions for men who are just and holy, but for the unjust they are (one and all, from health downwards) very bad; and we say too that sight and hearing and sensation and even of itself are very great evils for the man endowed with all the so-called goods, but lacking in justice and all virtue, if he is immortal forever, but a lesser evil for such a man if he survives but a short time. This, I imagine, is what you (like myself) will persuade or compel your poets to teach, and compel them also to educate your youth by furnishing them with rhythms and harmonies in consonance with this teaching. Am I not right? Just consider: what I assert is that what are called evils are good for the unjust, but evil for the just, while the so-called goods are really good for the good, but bad for the bad. Are you in accord with me, then,—that was my question,—or how stands the matter?

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

Ath. Take the case of a man who has health and wealth and absolute power in perpetuity,—in addition to which I bestow on him, if you like, matchless strength and courage, together with immortality and freedom from all the other evils so called,—but a man who has within him nothing but injustice and insolence: probably I fail to convince you that the man who lives such a life is obviously not happy but wretched?

Clin. Quite true.

Ath. Well, then, what ought I to say next? Do you not think that if a man who is courageous, strong, beautiful, and rich, and who does exactly as he likes all his life long, is really unjust and insolent, he must necessarily be living a base life? Probably you will agree at any rate to call it base?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. And also a bad life[*](κακῶς ζῆν, to live badly may mean either to live wickedly or to live wretchedly: Clinias takes it in this latter sense.)?

Clin. We would not go so far as to admit that.

Ath. Well, would you admit the epithets unpleasant and unprofitable to himself?

Clin. How could we agree to such further descriptions?

Ath.How? do you ask? Only (as it seems, my friend) if some god were to grant us concord, since at present we are fairly at discord one with another. In my opinion these facts are quite indisputable even more plainly so, my dear Clinias, than the fact that Crete is an island; and were I a legislator, I should endeavor to compel the poets and all the citizens to speak in this sense; and I should impose all but the heaviest of penalties on anyone in the land who should declare that any wicked men lead pleasant lives, or that things profitable and lucrative are different from things just; and there are many other things contrary to what is now said, as it seems, by Cretans and Lacedaemonians,—and of course by the rest of mankind,—which I should persuade my citizens to proclaim. For, come now, my most excellent sirs, in the name of Zeus and Apollo, suppose we should interrogate those very gods themselves who legislated for you, and ask: Is the most just life the most pleasant; or are there two lives, of which the one is most pleasant, the other most just? If they replied that there were two, we might well ask them further, if we were to put the correct question; Which of the two ought one to describe as the happier, those that live the most just or those that live the most pleasant life? If they replied, Those that live the most pleasant life, that would be a monstrous statement in their mouths. But I prefer not to ascribe such statements to gods, but rather to ancestors and lawgivers: imagine, then, that the questions I have put have been put to an ancestor and lawgiver, and that he has stated that the man who lives the most pleasant life is the happiest. In the next place I would say to him this: O father, did you not desire me to live as happily as possible? Yet you never ceased bidding me constantly to live as justly as possible.