LAWS – BOOK II
At the beginning of the second book the subject of pleasure leads to education, which in the early years of life is wholly a discipline imparted by the means of pleasure and pain. The discipline of pleasure is implanted chiefly by the practice of the song and the dance. Of these the forms should be fixed, and not allowed to depend on the fickle breath of the multitude. There will be choruses of boys, girls, and grown-up persons, and all will be heard repeating the same strain, that ‘virtue is happiness.’ One of them will give the law to the rest; this will be the chorus of aged minstrels, who will sing the most beautiful and the most useful of songs. They will require a little wine, to mellow the austerity of age, and make them amenable to the laws.