Ath. The next suggestion which I have to offer is, that all our three choruses shall sing to the young and tender souls of children, reciting in their strains all the noble thoughts of which we have already spoken, or are about to speak ; and the sum of them shall be, that the life which is by the Gods deemed to be the happiest is also the best ; — we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth ; and the minds of our young disciples will be more likely to receive these words of ours than any others which we might address to them.
Cle. I assent to what you say.
Ath. First will enter in their natural order the sacred choir composed of children, which is to sing lustily the heaven-taught lay to the whole city. Next will follow the choir of young men under the age of thirty, who will call upon the God Paean to testify to the truth of their words, and will pray him to be gracious to the youth and to turn their hearts. Thirdly, the choir of elder men, who are from thirty to sixty years of age, will also sing. There remain those who are too old to sing, and they will tell stories, illustrating the same virtues, as with the voice of an oracle.
Cle. Who are those who compose the third choir, Stranger ? for I do not clearly understand what you mean to say about them.
Ath. And yet almost all that I have been saying has said with a view to them.
Cle. Will you try to be a little plainer ?
Ath. I was speaking at the commencement of our discourse, as you will remember, of the fiery nature of young creatures : I said that they were unable to keep quiet either in limb or voice, and that they called out and jumped about in a disorderly manner ; and that no other animal attained to any perception of order, but man only. Now the order of motion is called rhythm, and the order of the voice, in which high and low are duly mingled, is called harmony ; and both together are termed choric song. And I said that the Gods had pity on us, and gave us Apollo and the Muses to be our playfellows and leaders in the dance ; and Dionysus, as I dare say that you will remember, was the third.
Cle. I quite remember.
Ath. Thus far I have spoken of the chorus of Apollo and the Muses, and I have still to speak of the remaining chorus, which is that of Dionysus.
Cle. How is that arranged ? There is something strange, at any rate on first hearing, in a Dionysiac chorus of old men, if you really mean that those who are above thirty, and may be fifty, or from fifty to sixty years of age, are to dance in his honour.
Ath. Very true ; and therefore it must be shown that there is good reason for the proposal.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Are we agreed thus far ?
Cle. About what ?
Ath. That every man and boy, slave and free, both sexes, and the whole city, should never cease charming themselves with the strains of which we have spoken ; and that there should be every sort of change and variation of them in order to take away the effect of sameness, so that the singers may always receive pleasure from their hymns, and may never weary of them ?
Cle. Every one will agree.
Ath. Where, then, will that best part of our city which, by reason of age and intelligence, has the greatest influence, sing these fairest of strains, which are to do so much good ? Shall we be so foolish as to let them off who would give us the most beautiful and also the most useful of songs ?
Cle. But, says the argument, we cannot let them off.
Ath. Then how can we carry out our purpose with decorum ? Will this be the way ?
Cle. What ?
Ath. When a man is advancing in years, he is afraid and reluctant to sing ; — he has no pleasure in his own performances ; and if compulsion is used, he will be more and more ashamed, the older and more discreet he grows ; — is not this true ?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Well, and will he not be yet more ashamed if he has to stand up and sing in the theatre to a mixed audience ? — and if moreover when he is required to do so, like the other choirs who contend for prizes, and have been trained under a singing master, he is pinched and hungry, he will certainly have a feeling of shame and discomfort which will make him very unwilling to exhibit.
Cle. No doubt.
Ath. How, then, shall we reassure him, and get him to sing ? Shall we begin by enacting that boys shall not taste wine at all until they are eighteen years of age ; we will tell them that fire must not be poured upon fire, whether in the body or in the soul, until they begin to go to work — this is a precaution which has to be taken against the excitableness of youth ; — afterwards they may taste wine in moderation up to the age of thirty, but while a man is young he should abstain altogether from intoxication and from excess of wine ; when, at length, he has reached forty years, after dinner at a public mess, he may invite not only the other Gods, but Dionysus above all, to the mystery and festivity of the elder men, making use of the wine which he has given men to lighten the sourness of old age ; that in age we may renew our youth, and forget our sorrows ; and also in order that the nature of the soul, like iron melted in the fire, may become softer and so more impressible. In the first place, will not any one who is thus mellowed be more ready and less ashamed to sing — I do not say before a large audience, but before a moderate company ; nor yet among strangers, but among his familiars, and, as we have often said, to chant, and to enchant ?
Cle. He will be far more ready.
Ath. There will be no impropriety in our using such a method of persuading them to join with us in song.
Cle. None at all.
Ath. And what strain will they sing, and what muse will they hymn ? The strain should clearly be one suitable to them.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And what strain is suitable for heroes ? Shall they sing a choric strain ?
Cle. Truly, Stranger, we of Crete and Lacedaemon know no strain other than that which we have learnt and been accustomed to sing in our chorus.
Ath. I dare say ; for you have never acquired the knowledge of the most beautiful kind of song, in your military way of life, which is modelled after the camp, and is not like that of dwellers in cities ; and you have your young men herding and feeding together like young colts. No one takes his own individual colt and drags him away from his fellows against his will, raging and foaming, and gives him a groom to attend to him alone, and trains and rubs him down privately, and gives him the qualities in education which will make him not only a good soldier, but also a governor of a state and of cities. Such an one, as we said at first, would be a greater warrior than he of whom Tyrtaeus sings ; and he would honour courage everywhere, but always as the fourth, and not as the first part of virtue, either in individuals or states.
Cle. Once more, Stranger, I must complain that you depreciate our lawgivers.
Ath. Not intentionally, if at all, my good friend ; but whither the argument leads, thither let us follow ; for if there be indeed some strain of song more beautiful than that of the choruses or the public theatres, I should like to impart it to those who, as we say, are ashamed of these, and want to have the best.
Cle. Certainly.