Laws

Ath. That any citizen, indeed, should spend the whole of any night in sleep, instead of setting an example to his household by being himself always the first to awaken and rise—such a practice must be counted by all a shameful one, unworthy of a free man, whether it be called a custom or a law. Moreover, that the mistress of a house should be awakened by maids, instead of being herself the first to wake up all the others—this is a shameful practice; and that it is so all the servants must declare to one another—bondman and bondmaid and boy, yea, even (were it possible) every stone in the house. And, when awake by night, they must certainly transact a large share of business, both political and economical, the magistrates in the city, and the masters and mistresses in their own houses. For much sleep is not naturally suitable either to our bodies or souls, nor yet to employment on any such matters. For when asleep no man is worth anything, any more than if he were dead: on the contrary, every one of us who cares most greatly for life and thought keeps awake as long as possible, only reserving so much time for sleep as his health requires— and that is but little, once the habit is well formed. And rulers that are watchful by night in cities are a terror to evil-doers, be they citizens or enemies, but objects of respect and admiration to the just and temperate; and they confer benefit alike on themselves and on the whole State. The night, if spent in this way, will—in addition to all the other benefits described—lend greater fortitude to the souls of all who reside in these States. With the return of daylight the children should go to their teachers; for just as no sheep or other witless creature ought to exist without a herdsman, so children cannot live without a tutor, nor slaves without a master. And, of all wild creatures, the child is the most intractable; for in so far as it, above all others, possesses a fount of reason that is as yet uncurbed, it is a treacherous, sly and most insolent creature. Wherefore the child must be strapped up, as it were, with many bridles—first, when he leaves the care of nurse and mother, with tutors, to guide his childish ignorance, and after that with teachers of all sorts of subjects and lessons, treating him as becomes a freeborn child. On the other hand, he must be treated as a slave;[*](The child is of two-fold nature,—semi-rational; as such he needs a double bridle, that of instruction (proper to free men), and that of chastisement (proper to slaves).) and any free man that meets him shall punish both the child himself and his tutor or teacher, if any of them does wrong.

Ath. And if anyone thus meets them and fails to punish them duly, he shall, in the first place, be liable to the deepest degradation; and the Law-warden who is chosen as president over the children shall keep his eye on the man who has met with the wrong-doings mentioned and has failed either to inflict the needed punishment at all, or else to inflict it rightly. Moreover, this Law-warden shall exercise special supervision, with a keen eye, over the rearing of the children, to keep their growing natures in the straight way, by turning them always towards goodness, as the laws direct. But how is the law itself to give an adequate education to this Law-warden of ours? For, up to the present, the law has not as yet made any clear or adequate statement: it has mentioned some things, but omitted others. But in dealing with this warden it must omit nothing, but fully expound every ordinance that he may be both expositor and nurturer to the rest. Matters of choristry of tunes and dancing, and what types are to be selected, remodelled, and consecrated—all this has already been dealt with;[*](Plat. Laws 799a ff., Plat. Laws 802a.) but with regard to the kind of literature that is written but without meter we have never put the question—O excellent supervisor of children, of what sort ought this prose to be, and in what fashion are your charges to deal with it? You know from our discourse[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 796a.) what are the military exercises they ought to learn and to practice, but the matters that have not as yet, my friend, been fully declared to you by the lawgiver are these—first, literature, next, lyre-playing; also arithmetic, of which I said that there ought to be as much as everyone needs to learn for purposes of war, house-management and civic administration; together with what it is useful for these same purposes to learn about the courses of the heavenly bodies—stars and sun and moon—in so far as every State is obliged to take them into account. What I allude to is this—the arranging of days into monthly periods, and of months into a year, in each instance, so that the seasons, with their respective sacrifices and feasts, may each be assigned its due position by being held as nature dictates, and that thus they may create fresh liveliness and alertness in the State, and may pay their due honors to the gods, and may render the citizens more intelligent about these matters. These points, my friend, have not all as yet been explained to you sufficiently by the lawgiver. Now attend carefully to what is next to be said. In the first place, you are, as we said, insufficiently instructed as yet concerning letters. The point we complain of is this—that the law has not yet told you clearly whether the man who is to be a good citizen must pursue this study with precision, or neglect it altogether; and so likewise with regard to the lyre. That he must not neglect them we now affirm.

Ath. For the study of letters, about three years is a reasonable period for a child of ten years old; and for lyre-playing, he should begin at thirteen and continue at it for three years. And whether he likes or dislikes the study, neither the child nor his father shall be permitted either to cut short or to prolong the years of study contrary to the law; and anyone who disobeys shall be disqualified for the school honors which we shall mention presently.[*](Cp.Plat. Laws 832e.) And, during these periods, what are the subjects which the children must learn and the teachers teach—this you yourself must learn first. They must work at letters sufficiently to be able to read and write. But superior speed or beauty of handwriting need not be required in the case of those whose progress within the appointed period is too slow. With regard to lessons in reading, there are written compositions not set to music, whether in meter or without rhythmical divisions—compositions merely uttered in prose, void of rhythm and harmony; and some of the many composers of this sort have bequeathed to us writings of a dangerous character. How will you deal with these, O my most excellent Law-wardens? Or what method of dealing with them will the lawgiver rightly ordain? He will be vastly perplexed, I verily believe.

Clin. What does this mean, Stranger? Evidently you are addressing yourself, and are really perplexed.

Ath. You are right in your supposition, Clinias. As you are my partners in this investigation of laws, I am bound to explain to you both what seems easy and what hard.

Clin. Well, what is it about them that you are now alluding to, and what has come over you?

Ath. I will tell you: it is no easy matter to gainsay tens of thousands of tongues.

Clin. Come now,—do you believe that the points in which our previous conclusions about laws contradicted ordinary opinion were few and trifling?

Ath. Your observation is most just. I take it that you are bidding me, now that the path which is abhorrent to many is attractive to others possibly not less numerous (or if less numerous, certainly not less competent),—you are, I say, bidding me adventure myself with the latter company and proceed boldly along the path of legislation marked out in our present discourse, without flinching.

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. Then I will not flinch. I verily affirm that we have composers of verses innumerable—hexameters, trimeters, and every meter you could mention,—some of whom aim at the serious, others at the comic; on whose writings, as we are told by our tens of thousands of people, we ought to rear and soak the young, if we are to give them a correct education, making them, by means of recitations, lengthy listeners and large learners, who learn off whole poets by heart. Others there are who compile select summaries of all the poets, and piece together whole passages, telling us that a boy must commit these to memory and learn them off if we are to have him turn out good and wise as a result of a wide and varied range of instruction.[*](Cp. Heraclitus’s saying (Frag. 16):πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει; and the contempt shown for the versatile smatterer in Phaedrus 275 A (πολυήκοοι . . . δοξόσοφοι γεγονότες ἀντὶ σοφῶν).) Would you have me now state frankly to these poets what is wrong about their declarations and what right?

Clin. Of course.

Ath. What single statement can I make about all these people that will be adequate? This, perhaps,—in which everyone will agree with me,—that every poet has uttered much that is well, and much also that is ill; and this being so, I affirm that a wide range of learning involves danger to children.

Clin. What advice then would you give the Law-warden?

Ath. About what?

Clin. About the pattern by which he should be guided in respect of the particular subjects which he permits or forbids all the children to learn. Tell us, and without scruple.

Ath. My good Clinias, I have had, it would seem, a stroke of luck.

Clin. How so?

Ath. In the fact that I am not wholly at a loss for a pattern. For in looking back now at the discussions which we have been pursuing from dawn up to this present hour—and that, as I fancy, not without some guidance from Heaven—it appeared to me that they were framed exactly like a poem. And it was not surprising, perhaps, that there came over me a feeling of intense delight when I gazed thus on our discourses all marshalled, as it were, in close array; for of all the many discourses which I have listened to or learnt about, whether in poems or in a loose flood of speech like ours, they struck me as being not only the most adequate, but also the most suitable for the ears of the young. Nowhere, I think, could I find a better pattern than this to put before the Law-warden who is educator, that he may charge the teachers to teach the children these discourses of ours, and such as resemble and accord with these; and if it should be that in his search he should light on poems of composers, or prose-writings, or merely verbal and unwritten discourses, akin to these of ours, he must in no wise let them go, but get them written down.

Ath. In the first place, he must compel the teachers themselves to learn these discourses, and to praise them, and if any of the teachers fail to approve of them, he must not employ them as colleagues; only those who agree with his praise of the discourses should he employ, and entrust to them the teaching and training of the youth. Here and herewith let me end my homily concerning writing-masters and writings.

Clin. Judged by our original intention, Stranger, I certainly do not think that we have diverged from the line of argument we intended; but about the matter as a whole it is hard, no doubt, to be sure whether or not we are right.

Ath. That, Clinias, (as we have often said) will probably become clearer of itself[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 799d.) when we arrive at the end of our whole exposition concerning laws.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. After the writing-master, must we not address the lyre-master next?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. When assigning to the lyre-masters their proper duties in regard to the teaching and general training in these subjects, we must, as I think, bear in mind our previous declarations.[*](Plat. Laws 664e., Plat. Laws 679a.)

Clin. Declarations about what?

Ath. We said, I fancy, that the sixty-year-old singers of hymns to Dionysus ought to be exceptionally keen of perception regarding rhythms and harmonic compositions, in order that when dealing with musical representations of a good kind or a bad, by which the soul is emotionally affected, they may be able to pick out the reproductions of the good kind and of the bad, and having rejected the latter, may produce the other in public, and charm the souls of the children by singing them, and so challenge them all to accompany them in acquiring virtue by means of these representations.

Clin. Very true.

Ath. So, to attain this object, both the lyre-master and his pupil must use the notes of the lyre, because of the distinctness of its strings, assigning to the notes of the song notes in tune with them;[*](i.e. the notes of the instrument must be in accord with those of the singer’s voice. The tune, as composed by the poet, is supposed to have comparatively few notes, to be in slowish time, and low down in the register; whereas the complicated variation, which he is condemning, has many notes, is in quick time, and high up in the register. (England.)) but as to divergence of sound and variety in the notes of the harp, when the strings sound the one tune and the composer of the melody another, or when there results a combination of low and high notes, of slow and quick time, of sharp and grave, and all sorts of rhythmical variations are adapted to the notes of the lyre,—no such complications should be employed in dealing with pupils who have to absorb quickly, within three years, the useful elements of music. For the jarring of opposites with one another impedes easy learning; and the young should above all things learn easily, since the necessary lessons imposed upon them are neither few nor small,—which lessons our discourse will indicate in time as it proceeds.

Ath. So let our educator regulate these matters in the manner stated. As regards the character of the actual tunes and words which the choir-masters ought to teach, all this we have already[*](Plat. Laws 799a., Plat. Laws 802a.) explained at length. We stated that in each case they should be adapted to a suitable festival and dedicated, and thus prove a benefit to the States, by furnishing them with felicitous enjoyment.

Clin. This, too, you have explained truly.

Ath. Yes, most truly. These matters also let the man who is appointed our Director of Music take over and supervise, with the help of kindly fortune; and let us supplement our former statements concerning dancing and bodily gymnastics in general. Just as, in the case of music, we have supplied the regulations about tuition that were missing, so also let us now do in the case of gymnastics. Shall we not say that both girls and boys must learn both dancing and gymnastics?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. Then for their practices it would be most proper that boys should have dancing-masters, and girls mistresses.

Clin. I grant it.

Ath. Let us once more summon the man who will have most of these duties to perform, the Director of the Children,—who, in supervising both music and gymnastic, will have but little time to spare.

Clin. How will he be able, at his age, to supervise so many affairs?

Ath. Quite easily. For the law has granted him, and will continue to grant him, such men or women as he wishes to take to assist him in this task of supervision: he will know himself the right persons to choose, and he will be anxious to make no blunder in these matters, recognizing the greatness of his office and wisely holding it in high respect, and holding also the rational conviction that, when the young have been, and are being, well brought up, all goes swimmingly, but otherwise—the consequences are such as it is wrong to speak of, nor will we mention them, in dealing with a new State, out of consideration for the over-superstitious.[*](i.e. they would regard the mere mention of possible evil (esp. in connection with anything new-born) as of ill-omen.) Concerning these matters also, which relate to dancing and gymnastic movements, we have already spoken at length.[*](Plat. Laws 795d.) We are establishing gymnasia and all physical exercises connected with military training,—the use of the bow and all kinds of missiles, light skirmishing and heavy-armed fighting of every description, tactical evolutions, company-marching, camp-formations, and all the details of cavalry training.

Ath. In all these subjects there should be public instructors, paid by the State; and their pupils should be not only the boys and men in the State, but also the girls and women who understand all these matters—being practiced in all military drill and fighting while still girls and, when grown to womanhood, taking part in evolutions and rank-forming and the piling and shouldering of arms,— and that, if for no other reason, at least for this reason, that, if ever the guards of the children and of the rest of the city should be obliged to leave the city and march out in full force, these women should be able at least to take their place; while if, on the other hand—and this is quite a possible contingency—an invading army of foreigners, fierce and strong, should force a battle round the city itself, then it would be a sore disgrace to the State if its women were so ill brought up as not even to be willing to do as do the mother-birds, which fight the strongest beasts in defence of their broods, but, instead of facing all risks, even death itself, to run straight to the temples and crowd all the shrines and holy places, and drown mankind in the disgrace of being the most craven of living creatures.

Clin. By Heaven, Stranger, if ever this took place in a city, it would be a most unseemly thing, apart from the mischief of it.

Ath. Shall we, then, lay down this law,—that up to the point stated women must not neglect military training, but all citizens, men and women alike, must pay attention to it?

Clin. I, for one, agree.

Ath. As regards wrestling, some points have been explained;[*](Plat. Laws 795d, Plat. Laws 795e.) but we have not explained what is, in my opinion, the most important point, nor is it easy to express it in words without the help of a practical illustration. This point, then, we shall decide about[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 832e.) when word accompanied by deed can clearly demonstrate this fact, among the others mentioned,—that wrestling of this kind is of all motions by far the most nearly allied to military fighting; and also that it is not the latter that should be learned for the sake of the former, but, on the contrary, it is the former that should be practiced for the sake of the latter.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 803d.)

Clin. There, at any rate, you are right.

Ath. For the present let this suffice as an account of the functions of the wrestling-school. Motion of the whole body, other than wrestling, has for its main division what may be rightly termed dancing[*](Here a wide term, embracing all kinds of bodily gestures and posturing.); and we ought to consider it as consisting of two kinds,—the one representing the solemn movement of beautiful bodies, the other the ignoble movement of ugly bodies; and of these again there are two subdivisions.

Ath. Of the noble kind there is, on the one hand, the motion of fighting, and that of fair bodies and brave souls engaged in violent effort; and, on the other hand, there is the motion of a temperate soul living in a state of prosperity and moderate pleasures; and this latter kind of dancing one will call, in accordance with its nature, pacific. The warlike division, being distinct from the pacific, one may rightly term pyrrhiche[*](The technical name for a war-dance (polka) in quick time (possibly connected by P. with πῦρ, πυρετός)); it represents modes of eluding all kinds of blows and shots by swervings and duckings and side-leaps upward or crouching; and also the opposite kinds of motion, which lead to active postures of offence, when it strives to represent the movements involved in shooting with bows or darts, and blows of every description. In all these cases the action and the tension of the sinews are correct when there is a representation of fair bodies and souls in which most of the limbs of the body are extended straight: this kind of representation is right, but the opposite kind we pronounce to be wrong. In pacific dancing, the point we must consider in every case is whether the performer in his dances keeps always rightly, or improperly, to the noble kind of dancing, in the way that befits law-abiding men. So, in the first place, we must draw a line between questionable dancing and dancing that is above question. All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in drunken imitations of Pans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they call them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation,—all this class of dancing cannot easily be defined either as pacific or as warlike, or as of any one distinct kind. The most correct way of defining it seems to me to be this— to separate it off both from pacific and from warlike dancing, and to pronounce that this kind of dancing is unfitted for our citizens: and having thus disposed of it and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and pacific kinds which do beyond question belong to us. That of the unwarlike Muse, in which men pay honor to the gods and the children of the gods by dances, will consist, broadly speaking, of all dancing performed under a sense of prosperity: of this we may make two subdivisions— the one being of a more joyful description, and proper to men who have escaped out of toils and perils into a state of bliss,—and the other connected rather with the preservation and increase of pre-existent blessings, and exhibiting, accordingly, joyousness of a less ardent kind.

Ath. Under these conditions every man moves his body more violently when his joys are greater, less violently when they are smaller; also, he moves it less violently when he is more sedate and better trained in courage, but when he is cowardly and untrained in temperance, he indulges in greater and more violent changes of motion; and in general, no one who is using his voice, whether in song or in speech, is able to keep his body wholly at rest. Hence, when the representation of things spoken by means of gestures arose, it produced the whole art of dancing. In all these instances, one man of us moves in tune with his theme, another out of tune. Many of the names bestowed in ancient times are deserving of notice and of praise for their excellence and descriptiveness: one such is the name given to the dances of men who are in a prosperous state and indulge in pleasures of a moderate kind: how true and how musical was the name so rationally bestowed on those dances by the man (whoever he was) who first called them all Emmeleiai,[*](A decorous, stately dance (minuet).) and established two species of fair dances—the warlike, termed pyrrhiche, and the pacific, termed emmeleia—bestowing on each its appropriate and harmonious name. These dances the lawgiver should describe in outline, and the Law-warden should search them out and, having investigated them, he should combine the dancing with the rest of the music, and assign what is proper of it to each of the sacrificial feasts, distributing it over all the feasts; and when he has thus consecrated all these things in due order, he should thenceforth make no change in all that appertains to either dancing or singing, but this one and the same city and body of citizens should continue in one and the same way, enjoying the same pleasures and living alike in all ways possible, and so pass their lives happily and well. What concerns the actions of fair and noble souls in the matter of that kind of choristry which we have approved as right has now been fully discussed. The actions of ugly bodies and ugly ideas and of the men engaged in ludicrous comic-acting, in regard to both speech and dance, and the representations given by all these comedians—all this subject we must necessarily consider and estimate. For it is impossible to learn the serious without the comic, or any one of a pair of contraries without the other, if one is to he a wise man; but to put both into practice is equally impossible, if one is to share in even a small measure of virtue; in fact, it is precisely for this reason that one should learn them,—in order to avoid ever doing or saying anything ludicrous, through ignorance, when one ought not; we will impose such mimicry on slaves and foreign hirelings, and no serious attention shall ever be paid to it, nor shall any free man or free woman be seen learning it, and there must always be some novel feature in their mimic shows.[*](i.e. lest the public taste should be debased by the repeated exhibition of any one piece of vulgarity.)

Ath. Let such, then, be the regulations for all those laughable amusements which we all call comedy, as laid down both by law and by argument. Now as to what are called our serious poets, the tragedians,—suppose that some of them were to approach us and put some such question as this,—O Strangers, are we, or are we not, to pay visits to your city and country, and traffic in poetry? Or what have you decided to do about this? What would be the right answer to make to these inspired persons regarding the matter? In my judgment, this should be the answer,[*](Cp.Plat. Rep. 398a, Plat. Rep. 398b.)—Most excellent of Strangers, we ourselves, to the best of our ability, are the authors of a tragedy at once superlatively fair and good; at least, all our polity is framed as a representation of the fairest and best life, which is in reality, as we assert, the truest tragedy. Thus we are composers of the same things as yourselves, rivals of yours as artists and actors of the fairest drama, which, as our hope is, true law, and it alone, is by nature competent to complete. Do not imagine, then, that we will ever thus lightly allow you to set up your stage beside us in the marketplace, and give permission to those imported actors of yours, with their dulcet tones and their voices louder than ours, to harangue women and children and the whole populace, and to say not the same things as we say about the same institutions, but, on the contrary, things that are, for the most part, just the opposite. In truth, both we ourselves and the whole State would be absolutely mad, were it to allow you to do as I have said, before the magistrates had decided whether or not your compositions are deserving of utterance and suited for publication. So now, ye children and offspring of Muses mild, do ye first display your chants side by side with ours before the rulers; and if your utterances seem to be the same as ours or better, then we will grant you a chorus,[*](i.e. grant you leave to stage your play.) but if not, my friends, we can never do so. Let such, then, be the customs ordained to go with the laws regarding all choristry and the learning thereof—keeping distinct those for slaves and those for masters,—if you agree.

Clin. Of course we now agree to it.

Ath. There still remain, for the freeborn, three branches of learning: of these the first is reckoning and arithmetic; the second is the art of measuring length and surface and solid; the third deals with the course of the stars, and how they naturally travel in relation to one another. All these sciences should not be studied with minute accuracy by the majority of pupils, but only by a select few—and who these are we shall say when we have come near the end,—since that will be the proper place:[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 962c, Plat. Laws 965a.) but for the bulk of the pupils, while it would be shameful for most of them not to understand all those parts of them that are most truly termed necessary, yet it is not easy nor even at all possible for every student to go into them minutely. The necessary part of them it is impossible to reject, and probably this is what was in the mind of the original author of the proverb,[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 741a.) Not even God will ever be seen fighting against Necessity,—meaning by this, I suppose, all kinds of necessity that are divine, since in relation to human necessities (to which most people apply the saying when they quote it) it is of all sayings far and away the most fatuous.

Clin. What necessities then, Stranger, belong to these sciences, that are not of this sort, but divine?

Ath. Those, as I believe, which must be practiced and learned by every god, daemon, and hero, if he is to be competent seriously to supervise mankind: a man certainly would be far from becoming godlike if he were incapable of learning the nature of one and of two, and of even and odd numbers in general, and if he knew nothing at all about counting, and could not count even day and night as distinct objects, and if he were ignorant of the circuit of the sun and moon and all the other stars. To suppose, then, that all these studies[*](i.e. arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy: some elementary (necessary) knowledge of all three is indispensable for a through study of one branch of science.) are not necessary for a man who means to understand almost any single one of the fairest sciences, is a most foolish supposition. The first thing we must grasp correctly is this—which of these branches of study must be learnt, and how many, and at what periods, and which of them in conjunction with which, and which by themselves apart from all others, and the method of combining them; this done, and with these studies as introductory, we may proceed to the learning of the rest. For such is the natural order of procedure as determined by Necessity, against whom, as we declare, no god fights now, nor ever will fight.

Clin. Yes, Stranger, this account of yours does seem to be in accord with nature, and true.

Ath. That is indeed the truth of the matter, Clinias; but to give legal enactment to this program of ours is difficult. We will, if you agree, enact this more precisely on a later occasion.

Clin. You appear to us, Stranger, to be scared by the neglect of such studies which is the habit in our countries; but you are wrong to be scared. Do not be deterred on that account, but try to proceed with your statement.

Ath. I am indeed scared about the habit you mention, but I am still more alarmed about the people who take up these very sciences for study, and do so badly.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 886a.) Complete and absolute ignorance of them is never alarming, nor is it a very great evil; much more mischievous is a wide variety of knowledge and learning combined with bad training.

Clin. That is true.

Ath. One ought to declare, then, that the freeborn children should learn as much of these subjects as the innumerable crowd of children in Egypt[*](The Egyptian priests are said to have specially drilled their scholars in arithmetic and geometry—partly with a view to their use in land-mensuration.) learn along with their letters. First, as regards counting, lessons have been invented for the merest infants to learn, by way of play and fun,—modes of dividing up apples and chaplets, so that the same totals are adjusted to larger and smaller groups, and modes of sorting out boxers and wrestlers, in byes and pairs, taking them alternately or consecutively, in their natural order. Moreover, by way of play, the teachers mix together bowls made of gold, bronze, silver and the like, and others distribute them, as I said, by groups of a single kind, adapting the rules of elementary arithmetic to play; and thus they are of service to the pupils for their future tasks of drilling, leading and marching armies, or of household management, and they render them both more helpful in every way to themselves and more alert. The next step of the teachers is to clear away, by lessons in weights and measures, a certain kind of ignorance, both absurd and disgraceful, which is naturally inherent in all men touching lines, surfaces and solids.

Clin. What ignorance do you mean, and of what kind is it?

Ath. My dear Clinias, when I was told quite lately of our condition in regard to this matter, I was utterly astounded myself: it seemed to me to be the condition of guzzling swine rather than of human beings, and I was ashamed, not only of myself, but of all the Greek world.[*](Cp. Plat. Rep. 528c.)

Clin. Why? Tell us what you mean, Stranger.

Ath. I am doing so. But I can explain it better by putting a question. Answer me briefly: you know what a line is?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. And surface?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. And do you know that these are two things, and that the third thing, next to these, is the solid?

Clin. I do.

Ath. Do you not, then, believe that all these are commensurable one with another?

Clin. Yes.

Ath. And you believe, I suppose, that line is really commensurable with line, surface with surface, and solid with solid?

Clin. Absolutely.

Ath. But supposing that some of them are neither absolutely nor moderately commensurable, some being commensurable and some not, whereas you regard them all as commensurable,—what do you think of your mental state with respect to them?

Clin. Evidently it is a sorry state.

Ath. Again, as regards the relation of line and surface to solid, or of surface and line to each other—do not all we Greeks imagine that these are somehow commensurable with one another?

Clin. Most certainly.

Ath. But if they cannot be thus measured by any way or means, while, as I said, all we Greeks imagine that they can, are we not right in being ashamed for them all, and saying to them, O most noble Greeks, this is one of those necessary things which we said[*](Plat. Laws 818a: cp. Aristot. Pol. 1338a.9 ff.) it is disgraceful not to know, although there is nothing very grand in knowing such things.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. In addition to these there are other matters, closely related to them, in which we find many errors arising that are nearly akin to the errors mentioned.

Clin. What are they?

Ath. Problems concerning the essential nature of the commensurable and the incommensurable. For students who are not to be absolutely worthless it is necessary to examine these and to distinguish the two kinds, and, by proposing such problems one to another, to compete in a game that is worthy of them,—for this is a much more refined pastime than draughts for old men.

Clin. No doubt. And, after all, draughts and these studies do not seem to be so very far apart.

Ath. I assert, then, Clinias, that these subjects must be learnt by the young; for they are, in truth, neither harmful nor hard, and when learnt by way of play they will do no damage at all to our State, but will do it good. Should anyone disagree, however, we must listen to him.

Clin. Of course.

Ath. Well then, if this is clearly the case, obviously we shall adopt these subjects; but if it seems clearly to be otherwise, we shall rule them out.

Clin. Yes, obviously.

Ath. Shall we not, then, lay these down as necessary subjects of instruction, so that there may be no gap in our code of laws? Yet we ought to lay them down provisionally—like pledges capable of redemption—apart from the rest of our constitution, in case they fail to satisfy either us who enact them or you for whom they are enacted.

Clin. Yes, that is the right way to lay them down.

Ath. Consider next whether or not we approve of the children learning astronomy.

Clin. Just tell us your opinion.

Ath. About this there is a very strange fact—indeed, quite intolerable.

Clin. What is that?

Ath. We commonly assert that men ought not to enquire concerning the greatest god and about the universe, nor busy themselves in searching out their causes, since it is actually impious to do so; whereas the right course, in all probability, is exactly the opposite.

Clin. Explain yourself.

Ath. My statement sounds paradoxical, and it might be thought to be unbecoming in an old man; but the fact is that, when a man believes that a science is fair and true and beneficial to the State and altogether well-pleasing to God, he cannot possibly refrain any longer from declaring it.[*](Cp. Plat. Laws 779b.)

Clin. That is reasonable; but what science of this kind shall we find on the subject of stars?

Ath. At present, my good sirs, nearly all we Greeks say what is false about those mighty deities, the Sun and Moon.

Clin. What is the falsehood?

Ath. We assert that they, and some other stars along with them, never travel along the same path; and we call them planets.[*](i.e. wanderers.)

Clin. Yes, by Zeus, Stranger, that is true; for I, during my life, have often noticed how Phosphorus and Hesperus and other stars never travel on the same course, but wander all ways; but as to the Sun and Moon, we all know that they are constantly doing this.

Ath. It is precisely for this reason, Megillus and Clinias, that I now assert that our citizens and our children ought to learn so much concerning all these facts about the gods of Heaven as to enable them not to blaspheme about them, but always to speak piously both at sacrifices and when they pray reverently at prayers.

Clin. You are right, provided that, in the first place, it is possible to learn the subject you mention; and provided also that learning will make us correct any mistakes we may be making about them now,—then I, too, agree that a subject of such importance should be learned. This being so, do you make every effort to expound the matter, and we will endeavor to follow you and learn.

Ath. Well, the matter I speak of is not an easy one to learn; nor yet is it altogether difficult and demanding very prolonged study. In proof of this—although I was told of it neither in the days of my youth nor long ago, I may be able to explain it to you in a comparatively short time. Whereas, if it had been a difficult subject, I should never have been able to explain it to you at all—I at my age to you at yours.

Clin. Very true. But what is this science which you describe as marvellous and fitting for the young to learn, and which we are ignorant about? Do try to tell us thus much, at least, about it, with all possible clearness,

Ath. I must try. The opinion, my friends, that the Sun and Moon and the rest of the stars wander is not correct; the truth is precisely the opposite: each of them always travels in a circle one and the same path,—not many paths, although it appears to move along many paths; and the quickest of the stars is wrongly opined to be the slowest, and vice versa.[*](Cp.Plat. Tim. 39d ff.) If these are the real facts and we imagine otherwise,—well, suppose we held a similar notion about horses racing at Olympia, or about long-distance runners, and proclaimed the quickest to be slowest and the slowest quickest, and sang chants lauding the loser as the winner, why, then, the laudations we bestowed on the runners would be neither right nor acceptable, though they were but mortal men. But in the present case, when we commit the same error about gods, do we not think that what would have been ludicrous and wrong there and then is, here and now and in dealing with this subject, by no means ludicrous and assuredly not pleasing to the gods, when concerning gods we repeat a tale that is false?

Clin. Very true, if the facts are as you say.

Ath. Then, if we demonstrate that they really are so, shall all these subjects be learnt up to the point mentioned, and, failing that demonstration, be left alone? Is that to be our agreement?

Clin. Certainly.

Ath. We may now say that our regulations concerning subjects of education have been completed. The subject of hunting, and similar pursuits, must now be dealt with in a similar manner. The duty laid upon the lawgiver probably goes further than the bare task of enacting laws: in addition to laws, there is something else which falls naturally between advice and law— a thing which has often cropped up in the course of our discussion,[*](Plat. Laws 788a ff., Plat. Laws 793a ff.) as, for example, in connection with the nurture of young children: such matters, we say, should not be left unregulated, but it would be most foolish to regard those regulations as enacted laws. When, then, the laws and the whole constitution have been thus written down, our praise of the citizen who is preeminent for virtue will not be complete when we say that the virtuous man is he who is the best servant of the laws and the most obedient;

Ath. a more complete statement will be this,—that the virtuous man is he who passes through life consistently obeying the written rules of the lawgiver, as given in his legislation, approbation and disapprobation.[*](i.e. for perfect virtue there is required not only obedience to statute law, but also conformity with all the other rules of conduct laid down by the lawgiver in the less rigid form of advice (approbation and disapprobation).) This statement is the most correct way of praising the citizen; and in this way, moreover, the lawgiver must not only write down the laws, but in addition to the laws, and combined with them, he must write down his decisions as to what things are good and what bad; and the perfect citizen must abide by these decisions no less than by the rules enforced by legal penalties. The subject now before us we may adduce as a witness to show more clearly what we mean. Hunting is a large and complex matter, all of which is now generally embraced under this single name. Of the hunting of water-animals there are many varieties, and many of the hunting of fowls; and very many varieties also of hunts of land-animals—not of beasts only, but also, mark you, of men, both in war and often, too, in friendship, a kind of hunt that is partly approved and partly disapproved;[*](Cp.Plat. Soph. 222d ff where ἡ τῶν ἐρώντων θήρα (the lovers’ chase) is mentioned as a sub-species of θηρευτική: and in Symposium 203 D the God of Love is described as a mighty hunter (θηρευτὴς δεινός).) and then there are robberies and hunts carried on by pirates and by bands. When the lawgiver is making laws about hunting, he is necessarily bound to make this point clear, and to lay down minatory directions by imposing regulations and penalties for all these kinds. What then ought to be done about these matters? The lawgiver, for his part, will be right in praising or blaming hunting with an eye to the toils and pursuits of the young; and the young man will be right in listening and obeying, and in allowing neither pleasure nor toil to hinder him, and in holding in greater respect the orders that are sanctioned by praise, and carrying them out, rather than those which are enacted by law under threat of penalties. After these prefatory observations there will follow adequate praise and blame of hunting—praise of the kind which renders the souls of the young better, and blame of the kind which does the opposite. Our next step will be to address the young people with prayer—O friends, would that you might never be seized with any desire or craving for hunting by sea, or for angling, or for ever pursuing water-animals with creels that do your lazy hunting for you, whether you sleep or wake.

Ath.And may no longing for man-hunting by sea and piracy overtake you, and render you cruel and lawless hunters; and may the thought of committing robbery in country or city not so much as cross your minds. Neither may there seize upon any of the young the crafty craving for snaring birds— no very gentlemanly pursuit! Thus there is left for our athletes only the hunting and capture of land-animals. Of this branch of hunting, the kind called night-stalking, which is the job of lazy men who sleep in turn, is one that deserves no praise; nor does that kind deserve praise in which there are intervals of rest from toil, when men master the wild force of beasts by nets and traps instead of doing so by the victorious might of a toil-loving soul. Accordingly, the only kind left for all, and the best kind, is the hunting of quadrupeds with horses and dogs and the hunter’s own limbs, when men hunt in person, and subdue all the creatures by means of their own running, striking and shooting—all the men, that is to say, who cultivate the courage that is divine. Concerning the whole of this subject, the exposition we have now given will serve as the praise and blame; and the law will run thus,—None shall hinder these truly sacred hunters from hunting wheresoever and howsoever they wish; but the night-trapper who trusts to nets and snares no one shall ever allow to hunt anywhere. The fowler no man shall hinder on fallow land or mountain; but he that finds him on tilled fields or on sacred glebes shall drive him off. The fisherman shall be allowed to hunt in all waters except havens and sacred rivers and pools and lakes, but only on condition that he makes no use of muddying juices.[*](i.e. vegetable juices which taint the water and paralyze the fish.) So now, at last, we may say that all our laws about education are complete.

Clin. You may rightly say so.