Laws

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.

Ath. And hereby, as I think, our lawgiver or ancestor would be shown up as illogical and incapable of speaking consistently with himself, but if, on the other hand, he were to declare the most just life to be the happiest, everyone who heard him would, I suppose, enquire what is the good and charm it contains which is superior to pleasure, for which the lawgiver praises it. For, apart from pleasure, what good could accrue to a just man? Come, tell me, is fair fame and praise from the mouths of men and gods a noble and good thing, but unpleasant, while ill-fame is the opposite? By no means, my dear lawgiver, we shall say. And is it unpleasant, but noble and good, neither to injure anyone nor be injured by anyone, while the opposite is pleasant, but ignoble and bad?

Clin. By no means.

Ath. So then the teaching which refuses to separate the pleasant from the just helps, if nothing else, to induce a man to live the holy and just life, so that any doctrine which denies this truth is, in the eyes of the lawgiver, most shameful and most hateful; for no one would voluntarily consent to be induced to commit an act, unless it involves as its consequence more pleasure than pain. Now distance has the effect of befogging the vision of nearly everybody, and of children especially; but our lawgiver will reverse the appearance by removing the fog,[*]( i.e. the lawgiver will make justice clear and distinct by bringing citizens close up to it: discipline in just actions will give them a near and true view of it, and correct the wrong impression due to distance.) and by one means or another—habituation, commendation, or argument—will persuade people that their notions of justice and injustice are illusory pictures, unjust objects appearing pleasant and just objects most unpleasant to him who is opposed to justice, through being viewed from his own unjust and evil standpoint, but when seen from the standpoint of justice, both of them appear in all ways entirely the opposite.

Clin. So it appears.

Ath. In point of truth, which of the two judgements shall we say is the more authoritative,—that of the worse soul or that of the better.

Clin. That of the better, undoubtedly.

Ath. Undoubtedly, then, the unjust life is not only more base and ignoble, but also in very truth more unpleasant, than the just and holy life.

Clin. It would seem so, my friends, from our present argument.

Ath. And even if the state of the case were different from what it has now been proved to be by our argument, could a lawgiver who was worth his salt find any more useful fiction than this (if he dared to use any fiction at all in addressing the youths for their good), or one more effective in persuading all men to act justly in all things willingly and without constraint?

Clin. Truth is a noble thing, Stranger, and an enduring; yet to persuade men of it seems no easy matter.

Ath. Be it so; yet it proved easy to persuade men of the Sidonian fairy-tale,[*]( About Cadmus; cp. Plat. Rep. 414c.) incredible though it was, and of numberless others.

Clin. What tales?

Ath. The tale of the teeth that were sown, and how armed men sprang out of them. Here, indeed, the lawgiver has a notable example of how one can, if he tries, persuade the souls of the young of anything, so that the only question he has to consider in his inventing is what would do most good to the State, if it were believed; and then he must devise all possible means to ensure that the whole of the community constantly, so long as they live, use exactly the same language, so far as possible, about these matters, alike in their songs, their tales, and their discourses. If you, however, think otherwise, I have no objection to your arguing in the opposite sense.

Clin. Neither of us, I think, could possibly argue against your view.

Ath. Our next subject I must handle myself. I maintain that all the three choirs[*]( At Spartan festivals it was customary to have three choirs—of boys, young men, and older men.) must enchant the souls of the children, while still young and tender, by rehearsing all the noble things which we have already recounted, or shall recount hereafter; and let this be the sum of them: in asserting that one and the same life is declared by the gods to be both most pleasant and most just, we shall not only be saying what is most true, but we shall also convince those who need convincing more forcibly than we could by any other assertion.

Clin. We must assent to what you say.

Ath. First, then, the right order of procedure will be for the Muses’ choir of children to come forward first to sing these things with the utmost vigor and before the whole city; second will come the choir of those under thirty, invoking Apollo Paian[*]( i.e. the Healer. Cp. the medicinal sense of ἐπᾴδειν, enchant, in B4 above. Music is to be a medicine of the soul.) as witness of the truth of what is said, and praying him of grace to persuade the youth. The next singers will be the third choir, of those over thirty and under sixty; and lastly, there were left those who, being no longer able to uplift the song, shall handle the same moral themes in stories and by oracular speech.

Clin. Whom do you mean, Stranger, by these third choristers. For we do not grasp very clearly what you intend to convey about them.

Ath. Yet they are in fact the very people to whom most of our previous discourse was intended to lead up.

Clin. We are still in the dark: try to explain yourself more clearly still.

Ath. At the commencement of our discourse we said, if we recollect, that since all young creatures are by nature fiery, they are unable to keep still either body or voice, but are always crying and leaping in disorderly fashion; we said also that none of the other creatures attains a sense of order, bodily and vocal, and that this is possessed by man alone;

Ath. and that the order of motion is called rhythm, while the order of voice (in which acute and grave are blended together) is termed harmony, and to the combination of these two the name choristry is given. We stated also that the gods, in pity for us, have granted to us as fellow-choristers and choir-leaders Apollo and the Muses,—besides whom we mentioned, if we recollect, a third, Dionysus.

Clin. Certainly we recollect.

Ath. The choir of Apollo and that of the Muses have been described, and the third and remaining choir must necessarily be described, which is that of Dionysus.

Clin. How so? Tell us; for at the first mention of it, a Dionysiac choir of old men sounds mighty strange,—if you mean that men over thirty, and even men over fifty and up to sixty, are really going to dance in his honor.

Ath. That is, indeed, perfectly true. It needs argument, I fancy, to show how such a procedure would be reasonable.

Clin. It does.

Ath. Are we agreed about our previous proposals?

Clin. In what respect?

Ath. That it is the duty of every man and child—bond and free, male and female,—and the duty of the whole State, to charm themselves unceasingly with the chants we have described, constantly changing them and securing variety in every way possible, so as to inspire the singers with an insatiable appetite for the hymns and with pleasure therein.

Clin. Assuredly we would agree as to the duty of doing this.

Ath. Then where should we put the best element in the State,—that which by age and judgment alike is the most influential it contains,—so that by singing its noblest songs it might do most good? Or shall we be so foolish as to dismiss that section which possesses the highest capacity for the noblest and most useful songs?

Clin. We cannot possibly dismiss it, judging from what you now say.

Ath. What seemly method can we adopt about it? Will the method be this?

Clin. What?

Ath. Every man as he grows older becomes reluctant to sing songs, and takes less pleasure in doing so; and when compelled to sing, the older he is and the more temperate, the more he will feel ashamed. Is it not so?

Clin. It is.

Ath. Surely, then, he will be more than ever ashamed to get up and sing in the theater, before people of all sorts. Moreover, if old men like that were obliged to do as the choristers do, who go lean and fasting when training their voices for a competition, they would assuredly find singing an unpleasant and degrading task, and they would undertake it with no great readiness.

Clin. That is beyond a doubt.

Ath. How then shall we encourage them to take readily to singing? Shall we not pass a law that, in the first place, no children under eighteen may touch wine at all, teaching that it is wrong to pour fire upon fire either in body or in soul, before they set about tackling their real work, and thus guarding against the excitable disposition of the young? And next, we shall rule that the young man under thirty may take wine in moderation, but that he must entirely abstain from intoxication and heavy drinking. But when a man has reached the age of forty, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysus, above all other gods, inviting his presence at the rite (which is also the recreation) of the elders, which he bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls may lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire. Will not this softer disposition, in the first place, render each one of them more ready and less ashamed to sing chants and incantations (as we have often called them), in the presence, not of a large company of strangers, but of a small number of intimate friends?

Clin. Yes! much more ready.

Ath. So then, for the purpose of inducing them to take a share in our singing, this plan would not be altogether unseemly.

Clin. By no means.

Ath. What manner of song will the men raise? Will it not, evidently, be one that suits their own condition in every case?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. What song, then, would suit godlike men? Would a choric song[*]( i.e. a song suited for singing by a chorus at a festival or other public occasion.)?

Clin. At any rate, Stranger, we and our friends here would be unable to sing any other song than that which we learnt by practice in choruses.

Ath. Naturally; for in truth you never attained to the noblest singing. For your civic organization is that of an army rather than that of city-dwellers, and you keep your young people massed together like a herd of colts at grass:

Ath. none of you takes his own colt, dragging him away from his fellows, in spite of his fretting and fuming, and puts a special groom in charge of him, and trains him by rubbing him down and stroking him and using all the means proper to child-nursing, that so he may turn out not only a good soldier, but able also to manage a State and cities—in short, a man who (as we said at the first) is more of a warrior than the warriors of Tyrtaeus, inasmuch as always and everywhere, both in States and in individuals, he esteems courage as the fourth in order of the virtues, not the first.

Clin. Once again, Stranger, you are—in a sort of a way—disparaging our lawgivers.

Ath. It is not intentionally, my friend, that I do so—if I am doing it but whither the argument leads us, thither, if you please, let us go. If we know of a music that is superior to that of the choirs or to that of the public theaters, let us try to supply it to those men who, as we said, are ashamed of the latter, yet are eager to take a part in that music which is noblest.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath.[*]( The following passage (down to 669 B) deals with the considerations of which a competent judge must take account in the sphere of music and art. He must have regard to three things—correctness (the truth of the copy to the original), moral effect or utility, and charm or pleasure. Though this last, by itself, is no criterion of artistic excellence, it is a natural concomitant (in the mind of the competent judge) when the work of art in question possesses a high degree of both utility and correctness.) Now, in the first place, must it not be true of everything which possesses charm as its concomitant, that its most important element is either this charm in itself, or some form of correctness, or, thirdly, utility? For instance, meat and drink and nutriment in general have, as I say, for concomitant that charm which we should term pleasure; but as regards their correctness and utility, what we call the wholesomeness of each article administered is precisely the most perfect element they contain.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Learning, too, is accompanied by the element of charm, which is pleasure; but that which produces its correctness and utility, its goodness and nobleness, is truth.

Clin. Quite so.

Ath. Then how about the imitative arts which produce likenesses? If they succeed in their productions, should not any concomitant pleasure which results therefrom be most properly called charm?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. But, speaking generally, the correctness of these things would be the result not, primarily, of pleasure, but of equality in respect of both quality and quantity.[*]( i.e. a likeness must be equal to its original both in character and size.)

Clin. Excellent.

Ath. Then we shall rightly judge by the criterion of pleasure that object only which, in its effects, produces neither utility nor truth nor similarity, nor yet harm, and which exists solely for the sake of the concomitant element of charm,—which element will best be named pleasure whenever it is accompanied by none of the other qualities mentioned.

Clin. You mean only harmless pleasure.

Ath. Yes, and I say that this same pleasure is also play, whenever the harm or good it does is negligible.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Should we not then assert, as a corollary, that no imitation should be judged by the criterion of pleasure or of untrue opinion, nor indeed should any kind of equality be so judged? The reason why the equal is equal, or the symmetrical symmetrical, is not at all because a man so opines, or is charmed thereby, but most of all because of truth, and least of all for any other reason.

Clin. Most certainly.

Ath. We assert, do we not, that all music is representative and imitative?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. So whenever a man states that pleasure is the criterion of music, we shall decisively reject his statement; and we shall regard such music as the least important of all (if indeed any music is important) and prefer that which possesses similarity in its imitation of the beautiful.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Thus those who are seeking the best singing and music must seek, as it appears, not that which is pleasant, but that which is correct; and the correctness of imitation consists, as we say, in the reproduction of the original in its own proper quantity and quality.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And this is certainly true of music, as everyone would allow,—that all its productions are imitative and representative;[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 655d, above. The music (songs and tunes) of dramatic compositions is specially alluded to.) that much, at least, they would all admit,—poets, audience, and actors alike, would they not?

Clin. They would.

Ath. Now the man who is to judge a poem[*]( Or musical composition.) unerringly must know in each particular case the exact nature of the poem; for if he does not know its essence,—what its intention is and what the actual original which it represents,—then he will hardly be able to decide how far it succeeds or fails in fulfilling its intention.

Clin. Hardly, to be sure.

Ath. And would a man who does not know what constitutes perfection be able to decide as to the goodness or badness of a poem? But I am not making myself quite clear: it might be clearer if I put it in this way—

Clin. In what way?

Ath. As regards objects of sight we have, of course, thousands of representations.

Clin. Yes.

Ath. How, then, if in this class of objects a man were to be ignorant of the nature of each of the bodies represented could he ever know whether it is perfectly executed? What I mean is this: whether it preserves the proper dimensions and the positions of each of the bodily parts, and has caught their exact number and the proper order in which one is placed next another, and their colors and shapes as well,—or whether all these things are wrought in a confused manner. Do you suppose that anyone could possibly decide these points if he were totally ignorant as to what animal was being represented?

Clin. How could he?

Ath. Well, suppose we should know that the object painted or moulded is a man, and know that art has endowed him with all his proper parts, colors, and shapes,—is it at once inevitable that the person who knows this can easily discern also whether the work is beautiful, or wherein it is deficient in beauty?

Clin. If that were so, Stranger, practically all of us would know what animals are beautiful.

Ath. You are quite right. In regard, then, to every representation—whether in painting, music or any other art—must not the judicious critic possess these three requisites: first, a knowledge of the nature of the original; next, a knowledge of the correctness of the copy; and thirdly, a knowledge of the excellence with which the copy is executed?

Clin. It would seem so, certainly.

Ath. Let us not hesitate, then, to mention the point wherein lies the difficulty of music. Just because it is more talked about than any other form of representation, it needs more caution than any. The man who blunders in this art will do himself the greatest harm, by welcoming base morals; and, moreover, his blunder is very hard to discern, inasmuch as our poets are inferior as poets to the Muses themselves.[*]( In what follows, the main features censured are—incongruity, when the words, tunes and gestures of an acted piece of music are out of harmony; senselessness, when tunes and gestures are divorced from words; barbarousness, when the thing represented is paltry or uncouth (such as a duck’s quack); virtuosity, when the performer makes a display of the control he has over his limbs and instruments, like a mountebank or contortionist. All these are marks of bad music from the point of view of the educationist and statesman, since they are neither correct nor morally elevating.) For the Muses would never blunder so far as to assign a feminine tune and gesture to verses composed for men, or to fit the rhythms of captives and slaves to gestures framed for free men, or conversely, after constructing the rhythms and gestures of free men, to assign to the rhythms a tune or verses of an opposite style. Nor would the Muses ever combine in a single piece the cries of beasts and men, the clash of instruments, and noises of all kinds, by way of representing a single object; whereas human poets, by their senselessness in mixing such things and jumbling them up together, would furnish a theme for laughter to all the men who, in Orpheus’ phrase, have attained the full flower of joyousness. For they behold all these things jumbled together, and how, also, the poets rudely sunder rhythm and gesture from tune, putting tuneless words into meter, or leaving time and rhythm without words, and using the bare sound of harp or flute, wherein it is almost impossible to understand what is intended by this wordless rhythm and harmony, or what noteworthy original it represents.

Ath. Such methods, as one ought to realize, are clownish in the extreme in so far as they exhibit an excessive craving for speed, mechanical accuracy, and the imitation of animals’ sounds, and consequently employ the pipe and the harp without the accompaniment of dance and song; for the use of either of these instruments by itself is the mark of the mountebank or the boor. Enough, then, of that matter: now as to ourselves. What we are considering is, not how those of us who are over thirty years old, or beyond fifty, ought not to make use of the Muses, but how they ought to do so. Our argument already indicates, I think, this result from our discussion,—that all men of over fifty that are fit to sing ought to have a training that is better than that of the choric Muse. For they must of necessity possess knowledge and a quick perception of rhythms and harmonies; else how shall a man know which tunes are correct?

Clin. Obviously he cannot know this at all.

Ath. It is absurd of the general crowd to imagine that they can fully understand what is harmonious and rhythmical, or the reverse, when they have been drilled to sing to the flute or step in time; and they fail to comprehend that, in doing each of these things, they do them in ignorance. But the fact is that every tune which has its appropriate elements is correct, but incorrect if the elements are inappropriate.

Clin. Undoubtedly.

Ath. What then of the man who does not know in the least what the tune’s elements are? Will he ever know about any tune, as we said, that it is correct?

Clin. There is no possible means of his doing so.

Ath. We are now once more, as it appears, discovering the fact that these singers of ours (whom we are now inviting and compelling, so to say, of their own free will to sing) must almost necessarily be trained up to such a point that every one of them may be able to follow both the steps[*]( i.e. dance-steps and gestures: chords nearly equals notes, with which the steps should keep time.) of the rhythms and the chords of the tunes, so that, by observing the harmonies and rhythms, they may be able to select those of an appropriate kind, which it is seemly for men of their own age and character to sing, and may in this wise sing them, and in the singing may not only enjoy innocent pleasure themselves at the moment, but also may serve as leaders to the younger men in their seemly adoption of noble manners. If they were trained up to such a point, their training would be more thorough than that of the majority, or indeed of the poets themselves.

Ath. For although it is almost necessary for a poet to have a knowledge of harmony and rhythm, it is not necessary for him to know the third point also—namely, whether the representation is noble or ignoble[*]( i.e. the composer, as such, is not concerned with the moral (or psychological) effect of the piece.); but for our older singers a knowledge of all these three points is necessary, to enable them to determine what is first, what second in order of nobility; otherwise none of them will ever succeed in attracting the young to virtue by his incantations. The primary intention of our argument, which was to demonstrate that our defence of the Dionysiac chorus was justifiable, has now been carried out to the best of our ability. Let us consider if that is really so. Such a gathering inevitably tends, as the drinking proceeds, to grow ever more and more uproarious; and in the case of the present day gatherings that is, as we said at the outset, an inevitable result.

Clin. Inevitable.

Ath. Everyone is uplifted above his normal self, and is merry and bubbles over with loquacious audacity himself, while turning a deaf ear to his neighbors, and regards himself as competent to rule both himself and everyone else.

Clin. To be sure.

Ath. And did we not say that when this takes place, the souls of the drinkers turn softer, like iron, through being heated, and younger too; whence they become ductile, just as when they were young, in the hands of the man who has the skill and the ability to train and mould them. And now, even as then, the man who is to mould them is the good legislator; he must lay down banqueting laws, able to control that banqueter who becomes confident and bold and unduly shameless, and unwilling to submit to the proper limits of silence and speech, of drinking and of music, making him consent to do in all ways the opposite,— laws able also, with the aid of justice, to fight against the entrance of such ignoble audacity, by bringing in that most noble fear which we have named modesty and shame.

Clin. That is so.

Ath. And as law-wardens of these laws and cooperators therewith, there must be sober and sedate men to act as commanders over the un-sober; for to fight drunkenness without these would be a more formidable task than to fight enemies without sedate leaders. Any man who refuses willingly to obey these men and the officers of Dionysus (who are over sixty years of age) shall incur as much disgrace as the man who disobeys the officers of Ares, and even more.

Clin. Quite right.

Ath. If such was the character of the drinking and of the recreation, would not such fellow-drinkers be the better for it, and part from one another better friends than before, instead of enemies, as now? For they would be guided by laws in all their intercourse, and would listen to the directions given to the un-sober by the sober.

Clin. True, if it really were of the character you describe.

Ath. Then we must no longer, without qualification, bring that old charge against the gift of Dionysus, that it is bad and unworthy of admittance into a State. Indeed, one might enlarge considerably on this subject; for the greatest benefit that gift confers is one which one hesitates to declare to the multitude, since, when declared, it is misconceived and misunderstood.

Clin. What is that?

Ath. There is a secret stream of story and report to the effect that the god Dionysus was robbed of his soul’s judgment by his stepmother Hera, and that in vengeance therefor he brought in Bacchic rites and all the frenzied choristry, and with the same aim bestowed also the gift of wine. These matters, however, I leave to those who think it safe to say them about deities[*]( i.e. the frenzied motion ascribed to Dionysus is, rather a natural instinct exhibited in all child-life, and D. helps to reduce it to rhythm.); but this much I know,—that no creature is ever born in possession of that reason, or that amount of reason, which properly belongs to it when fully developed; consequently, every creature, during the period when it is still lacking in its proper intelligence, continues all in a frenzy, crying out wildly, and, as soon as it can get on its feet, leaping wildly. Let us remember how we said that in this we have the origin of music and gymnastic.[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 653d ff.)

Clin. We remember that, of course.

Ath. Do we not also remember how we said that from this origin there was implanted in us men the sense of rhythm and harmony, and that the joint authors thereof were Apollo and the Muses and the god Dionysus?

Clin. Certainly we remember.

Ath. Moreover, as to wine, the account given by other people apparently is that it was bestowed on us men as a punishment, to make us mad; but our own account, on the contrary, declares that it is a medicine given for the purpose of securing modesty of soul and health and strength of body.

Clin. You have recalled our account admirably, Stranger.

Ath. We may say, then, that the one half of the subject of choristry has now been disposed of. Shall we proceed at once to deal with the other half in whatever way seems best, or shall we leave it alone?

Clin. What halves do you mean? How are you dividing the subject?

Ath. In our view, choristry as a whole is identical with education as a whole; and the part of this concerned with the voice consists of rhythms and harmonies.

Clin. Yes.

Ath. And the part concerned with bodily motion possesses, in common with vocal motion, rhythm; besides which it possesses gesture as its own peculiar attribute, just as tune is the peculiar attribute of vocal motion.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Now the vocal actions which pertain to the training of the soul in excellence we ventured somehow to name music.

Clin. And rightly so.

Ath. As regards the bodily actions which we called playful dancing,—if such action attains to bodily excellence, we may term the technical guidance of the body to this end gymnastic.

Clin. Quite rightly.

Ath. As to music, which was referred to when we said a moment ago that the one half of choristry had been described and disposed of,—let us say the same of it now; but as to the other half, are we to speak about it, or what are we to do?

Clin. My good sir, you are conversing with Cretans and Lacedaemonians, and we have discussed the subject of music; what reply, then, to your question do you suppose that either of us will make, when the subject left still untouched is gymnastic?

Ath. You have given me a pretty clear answer, I should say, in putting this question; although it is a question, I understand it to be also (as I say) an answer—or rather, an actual injunction to give a full account of gymnastic.

Clin. You have grasped my meaning excellently: please do so.

Ath. Do it I must; and indeed it is no very hard task to speak of things well known to you both. For you are far better acquainted with this art than with the other.

Clin. That is about true.

Ath. The origin of the play[*]( i.e. playful motion, or dancing, as contrasted with music (or harmony) which springs from the tendency to cry outc.) we are speaking of is to be found in the habitual tendency of every living creature to leap; and the human creature, by acquiring, as we said, a sense of rhythm, generated and brought forth dancing; and since the rhythm is suggested and awakened by the tune, the union of these two brought forth choristry and play.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Of choristry we have already discussed the one part, and we shall next endeavor to discuss the other part.

Clin. By all means.

Ath. But, if you both agree, let us first put the finishing stroke to our discourse on the use of drink.

Clin. What, or what kind of, finish do you mean?

Ath. If a State shall make use of the institution now mentioned in a lawful and orderly manner, regarding it in a serious light and practising it with a view to temperance, and if in like manner and with a like object, aiming at the mastery of them, it shall allow indulgence in all other pleasures,—then they must all be made use of in the manner described.

Ath. But if, on the other hand, this institution is regarded in the light of play, and if anyone that likes is to be allowed to drink whenever he likes and with any companions he likes, and that in conjunction with all sorts of other institutions,—then I would refuse to vote for allowing such a State or such an individual ever to indulge in drink, and I would go even beyond the practice of the Cretans and Lacedaemonians[*]( Cp. Plat. Laws 1.637a, 637b.); and to the Carthaginian law, which ordains that no soldier on the march should ever taste of this potion, but confine himself for the whole of the time to water-drinking only, I would add this, that in the city also no bondsman or bondsmaid should ever taste of it; and that magistrates during their year of office, and pilots and judges while on duty, should taste no wine at all; nor should any councillor, while attending any important council; nor should anyone whatever taste of it at all, except for reasons of bodily training or health, in the daytime; nor should anyone do so by night—be he man or woman—when proposing to procreate children. Many other occasions, also, might be mentioned when wine should not be drunk by men who are swayed by right reason and law. Hence, according to this argument, there would be no need for any State to have a large number of vineyards; and while all the other agricultural products, and all the foodstuffs, would be controlled, the production of wine especially would be kept within the smallest and most modest dimensions. Let this, then, Strangers, if you agree, be the finishing stroke which we put to our discourse concerning wine.

Clin. Very good; we quite agree.

Ath. So much for that, then! Now, what are we to say about the origin of government? Would not the best and easiest way of discerning it be from this standpoint?

Clin. What standpoint?

Ath. That from which one should always observe the progress of States as they move towards either goodness or badness.

Clin. What point is that?

Ath. The observation, as I suppose, of an infinitely long period of time and of the variations therein occurring.

Clin. Explain your meaning.

Ath. Tell me now: do you think you could ever ascertain the space of time that has passed since cities came into existence and men lived under civic rule?

Clin. Certainly it would be no easy task.

Ath. But you can easily see that it is vast and immeasurable?

Clin. That I most certainly can do.

Ath. During this time, have not thousands upon thousands of States come into existence, and, on a similar computation, just as many perished? And have they not in each case exhibited all kinds of constitutions over and over again? And have they not changed at one time from small to great, at another from great to small, and changed also from good to bad and from bad to good?

Clin. Necessarily.

Ath. Of this process of change let us discover, if we can, the cause; for this, perhaps, would show us what is the primary origin of constitutions, as well as their transformation.

Clin. You are right; and we must all exert ourselves,—you to expound your view about them, and we to keep pace with you.

Ath. Do you consider that there is any truth in the ancient tales?

Clin. What tales?

Ath. That the world of men has often been destroyed by floods, plagues, and many other things, in such a way that only a small portion of the human race has survived.

Clin. Everyone would regard such accounts as perfectly credible.

Ath. Come now, let us picture to ourselves one of the many catastrophes,—namely, that which occurred once upon a time through the Deluge.[*](Deucalion’s Flood: cp. Polit. 270 C.)

Clin. And what are we to imagine about it?

Ath. That the men who then escaped destruction must have been mostly herdsmen of the hills, scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops.

Clin. Evidently.

Ath. Moreover, men of this kind must necessarily have been unskilled in the arts generally, and especially in such contrivances as men use against one another in cities for purposes of greed and rivalry and all the other villainies which they devise one against another.

Clin. It is certainly probable.

Ath. Shall we assume that the cities situated in the plains and near the sea were totally destroyed at the time?

Clin. Let us assume it.

Ath. And shall we say that all implements were lost, and that everything in the way of important arts or inventions that they may have had,—whether concerned with politics or other sciences,— perished at that time? For, supposing that things had remained all that time ordered just as they are now, how, my good sir, could anything new have ever been invented?

Clin. Do you mean that these things were unknown to the men of those days for thousands upon thousands of years, and that one or two thousand years ago some of them were revealed to Daedalus, some to Orpheus, some to Palamedes, musical arts to Marsyas and Olympus, lyric to Amphion, and, in short, a vast number of others to other persons—all dating, so to say, from yesterday or the day before?

Ath. Are you aware, Clinias, that you have left out your friend who was literally a man of yesterday?

Clin. Is it Epimenides[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 642d.) you mean?

Ath. Yes, I mean him. For he far outstripped everybody you had, my friend, by that invention of his of which he was the actual producer, as you Cretans say, although Hesiod[*](Hes. WD 640f. νήπιοι, οὐδὲ ἴασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντός, οὐδʼ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγʼ ὄνειαρ. Hesiod’s allusion to the great virtue residing in mallow and asphodel is supposed to have suggested to Epimenides his invention of a herbal concoction, or elixir of life.) had divined it and spoken of it long before.

Clin. We do say so.

Ath. Shall we, then, state that, at the time when the destruction took place, human affairs were in this position: there was fearful and widespread desolation over a vast tract of land; most of the animals were destroyed, and the few herds of oxen and flocks of goats that happened to survive afforded at the first but scanty sustenance to their herdsmen?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. And as to the matters with which our present discourse is concerned—States and statecraft and legislation,—do we think they could have retained any memory whatsoever, broadly speaking, of such matters?

Clin. By no means.

Ath. So from those men, in that situation, there has sprung the whole of our present order—States and constitutions, arts and laws, with a great amount both of evil and of good?

Clin. How do you mean?

Ath. Do we imagine, my good Sir, that the men of that age, who were unversed in the ways of city life—many of them noble, many ignoble,—were perfect either in virtue or in vice?

Clin. Well said! We grasp your meaning.

Ath. As time went on and our race multiplied, all things advanced—did they not?—to the condition which now exists.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. But, in all probability, they advanced, not all at once, but by small degrees, during an immense space of time.

Clin. Yes, that is most likely.

Ath. For they all, I fancy, felt as it were still ringing in their ears a dread of going down from the highlands to the plains.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And because there were so few of them round about in those days, were they not delighted to see one another, but for the fact that means of transport, whereby they might visit one another by sea or land, had practically all perished along with the arts? Hence intercourse, I imagine, was not very easy. For iron and bronze and all the metals in the mines had been flooded and had disappeared; so that it was extremely difficult to extract fresh metal; and there was a dearth, in consequence, of felled timber. For even if there happened to be some few tools still left somewhere on the mountains, these were soon worn out, and they could not be replaced by others until men had rediscovered the art of metal-working.

Clin. They could not.

Ath. Now, how many generations, do we suppose, had passed before this took place?

Clin. A great many, evidently.

Ath. And during all this period, or even longer, all the arts that require iron and bronze and all such metals must have remained in abeyance?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Moreover, civil strife and war also disappeared during that time, and that for many reasons.

Clin. How so?

Ath. In the first place, owing to their desolate state, they were kindly disposed and friendly towards one another; and secondly, they had no need to quarrel about food. For they had no lack of flocks and herds (except perhaps some of them at the outset), and in that age these were what men mostly lived on: thus they were well supplied with milk and meat, and they procured further supplies of food, both excellent and plentiful, by hunting. They were also well furnished with clothing and coverlets and houses, and with vessels for cooking and other kinds; for no iron is required for the arts of moulding and weaving, which two arts God gave to men to furnish them with all these necessaries, in order that the human race might have means of sprouting and increase whenever it should fall into such a state of distress. Consequently, they were not excessively poor, nor were they constrained by stress of poverty to quarrel one with another; and, on the other hand, since they were without gold and silver, they could never have become rich. Now a community which has no communion with either poverty or wealth is generally the one in which the noblest characters will be formed; for in it there is no place for the growth of insolence and injustice, of rivalries and jealousies. So these men were good, both for these reasons and because of their simple-mindedness, as it is called; for, being simple-minded, when they heard things called bad or good, they took what was said for gospel-truth and believed it. For none of them had the shrewdness of the modern man to suspect a falsehood; but they accepted as true the statements made about gods and men, and ordered their lives by them. Thus they were entirely of the character we have just described.

Clin. Certainly Megillus and I quite agree with what you say.

Ath. And shall we not say that people living in this fashion for many generations were bound to be unskilled, as compared with either the antediluvians or the men of today, and ignorant of arts in general and especially of the arts of war as now practised by land and sea, including those warlike arts which, disguised under the names of law-suits and factions, are peculiar to cities, contrived as they are with every device of word and deed to inflict mutual hurt and injury; and that they were also more simple and brave and temperate, and in all ways more righteous? And the cause of this state of things we have already explained.

Clin. Quite true.

Ath. We must bear in mind that the whole purpose of what we have said and of what we are going to say next is this,—that we may understand what possible need of laws the men of that time had, and who their lawgiver was.

Clin. Excellent.

Ath. Shall we suppose that those men had no need of lawgivers, and that in those days it was not as yet usual to have such a thing? For those born in that age of the world’s history did not as yet possess the art of writing, but lived by following custom and what is called patriarchal law.

Clin. That is certainly probable.

Ath. But this already amounts to a kind of government.

Clin. What kind?

Ath. Everybody, I believe, gives the name of headship to the government which then existed,—and it still continues to exist to-day among both Greeks and barbarians in many quarters.[*](Cp. Aristot. Pol. 1252b 17ff. This headship, which is the hereditary personal authority of the father of a family or chief of a clan, we should term patriarchy.) And, of course, Homer mentions its existence in connection with the household system of the Cyclopes, where he says—

1. No halls of council and no laws are theirs,
2. But within hollow caves on mountain heights
3. Aloft they dwell, each making his own law.

1. For wife and child; of others reck they naught.

Clin. This poet of yours seems to have been a man of genius. We have also read other verses of his, and they were extremely fine; though in truth we have not read much of him, since we Cretans do not indulge much in foreign poetry.

Meg. But we Spartans do, and we regard Homer as the best of them; all the same, the mode of life he describes is always Ionian rather than Laconian. And now he appears to be confirming your statement admirably, when in his legendary account he ascribes the primitive habits of the Cyclopes to their savagery.

Ath. Yes, his testimony supports us; so let us take him as evidence that polities of this sort do sometimes come into existence.

Clin. Quite right.

Ath. Did they not originate with those people who lived scattered in separate clans or in single households, owing to the distress which followed after the catastrophes; for amongst these the eldest holds rule, owing to the fact that the rule proceeds from the parents, by following whom they form a single flock, like a covey of birds, and live under a patriarchal government and a kingship which is of all kingships the most just?

Clin. Most certainly.

Ath. Next, they congregate together in greater numbers, and form larger droves; and first they turn to farming on the hill-sides, and make ring-fences of rubble and walls to ward off wild beasts, till finally they have constructed a single large common dwelling.

Clin. It is certainly probable that such was the course of events.

Ath. Well, is not this also probable?

Clin. What?

Ath. That, while these larger settlements were growing out of the original small ones, each of the small settlements continued to retain, clan by clan, both the rule of the eldest and also some customs derived from its isolated condition and peculiar to itself. As those who begot and reared them were different, so these customs of theirs, relating to the gods and to themselves, differed, being more orderly where their forefathers had been orderly, and more brave where they had been brave; and as thus the fathers of each clan in due course stamped upon their children and children’s children their own cast of mind, these people came (as we say) into the larger community furnished each with their own peculiar laws.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And no doubt each clan was well pleased with its own laws, and less well with those of its neighbors.

Clin. True.

Ath. Unwittingly, as it seems, we have now set foot, as it were, on the starting-point of legislation.

Clin. We have indeed.

Ath. The next step necessary is that these people should come together and choose out some members of each clan who, after a survey of the legal usages of all the clans, shall notify publicly to the tribal leaders and chiefs (who may be termed their kings) which of those usages please them best, and shall recommend their adoption. These men will themselves be named legislators, and when they have established the chiefs as magistrates, and have framed an aristocracy, or possibly even a monarchy, from the existing plurality of headships, they will live under the constitution thus transformed.

Clin. The next steps would certainly be such as you describe.

Ath. Let us go on to describe the rise of a third form of constitution, in which are blended all kinds and varieties of constitutions, and of States as well.[*](For this mixed polity of the city of the plain, cp. the description of democracy in Plat. Rep. 557d ff.)

Clin. What form is that?

Ath. The same that Homer himself mentioned next to the second, when he said that the third form arose in this way. His verses run thus—

1. Dardania he founded when as yet
2. The Holy keep of Ilium was not built
3. Upon the plain, a town for mortal folk,
4. But still they dwelt upon the highland slopes
5. Of many-fountained Ida.

Ath. Indeed, these verses of his, as well as those he utters concerning the Cyclopes, are in a kind of unison with the voices of both God and Nature. For being divinely inspired in its chanting, the poetic tribe, with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the truth of history.

Clin. It certainly does.

Ath. Now let us advance still further in the tale that now engages us; for possibly it may furnish some hint regarding the matter we have in view. Ought we not to do so?

Clin. Most certainly.

Ath.Ilium was founded, we say, after moving from the highlands down to a large and noble plain, on a hill of no great height which had many rivers flowing down from Ida above.

Clin. So they say.

Ath. And do we not suppose that this took place many ages after the Deluge?

Clin. Many ages after, no doubt.

Ath. At any rate they seem to have been strangely forgetful of the catastrophe now mentioned, since they placed their city, as described, under a number of rivers descending from the mount, and relied for their safety upon hillocks of no great height.

Clin. So it is evident that they were removed by quite a long interval from that calamity.

Ath. By this time, too, as mankind multiplied, many other cities had been founded.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. And these cities also made attacks on Ilium, probably by sea too, as well as by land, since by this time all made use of the sea fearlessly.

Clin. So it appears.

Ath. And after a stay of ten years the Achaeans sacked Troy.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. Now during this period of ten years, while the siege lasted, the affairs of each of the besiegers at home suffered much owing to the seditious conduct of the young men. For when the soldiers returned to their own cities and homes, these young people did not receive them fittingly and justly, but in such a way that there ensued a vast number of cases of death, slaughter, and exile. So they, being again driven out, migrated by sea; and because Dorieus[*](We do not hear of him elsewhere; and the account here is so vague that it is hard to say what events (or traditions) are alluded to. The usual story is that Dorian invaders drove out the Achaeans from S. Greece (about 900 B.C.)) was the man who then banded together the exiles, they got the new name of Dorians, instead of Achaeans. But as to all the events that follow this, you Lacedaemonians relate them all fully in your traditions.

Meg. Quite true.