Ath. Then now I may proceed ?
Cle. By all means.
Ath. What will be the manner of life among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts to others, and whose husbandry, committed to slaves paying a part of the produce, brings them a return sufficient for men living temperately ; who, moreover, have common tables in which the men are placed apart, and near them are the common tables of their families, of their daughters and mothers, which day by day, the officers, male and female, are to inspect — they shall see to the behaviour of the company, and so dismiss them ; after which the presiding magistrate and his attendants shall honour with libations those Gods to whom that day and night are dedicated, and then go home ? To men whose lives are thus ordered, is there no work remaining to be done which is necessary and fitting, but shall each one of them live fattening like a beast ? Such a life is neither just nor honourable, nor can he who lives it fail of meeting his due ; and the due reward of the idle fatted beast is that he should be torn in pieces by some other valiant beast whose fatness is worn down by brave deeds and toil. These regulations, if we duly consider them, will never be exactly carried into execution under present circumstances, nor as long as women and children and houses and all other things are the private property of individuals ; but if we can attain the second-best form of polity, we shall be very well off. And to men living under this second polity there remains a work to be accomplished which is far from being small or insignificant, but is the greatest of all works, and ordained by the appointment of righteous law. For the life which may be truly said to be concerned with the virtue of body and soul is twice, or more than twice, as full of toil and trouble as the pursuit after Pythian and Olympic victories, which debars a man from every employment of life. For there ought to be no bye-work interfering with the greater work of providing the necessary exercise and nourishment for the body, and instruction and education for the soul. Night and day are not long enough for the accomplishment of their perfection and consummation ; and therefore to this end all freemen ought to arrange the way in which they will spend their time during the whole course of the day, from morning till evening and from evening till the morning of the next sunrise. There may seem to be some impropriety in the legislator determining minutely the numberless details of the management of the house, including such particulars as the duty of wakefulness in those who are to be perpetual watchmen of the whole city ; for that any citizen should continue during the whole of any night in sleep, instead of being seen by all his servants, always the first to awake and get up — this, whether the regulation is to be called a law or only a practice, should be deemed base and unworthy of a freeman ; also that the mistress of the house should be awakened by her handmaidens instead of herself first awakening them, is what the slaves, male and female, and the serving-boys, and, if that were possible, everybody and everything in the house should regard as base. If they rise early, they may all of them do much of their public and of their household business, as magistrates in the city, and masters and mistresses in their private houses, before the sun is up. Much sleep is not required by nature, either for our souls or bodies, or for the actions which they perform. For no one who is asleep is good for anything, any more than if he were dead ; but he of us who has the most regard for life and reason keeps awake as long he can, reserving only so much time for sleep as is expedient for health ; and much sleep is not required, if the habit of moderation be once rightly formed. Magistrates in states who keep awake at night are terrible to the bad, whether enemies or citizens, and are honoured and reverenced by the just and temperate, and are useful to themselves and to the whole state.
A night which is passed in such a manner, in addition to all the above-mentioned advantages, infuses a sort of courage into the minds of the citizens. When the day breaks, the time has arrived for youth to go to their schoolmasters. Now neither sheep nor any other animals can live without a shepherd, nor can children be left without tutors, or slaves without masters. And of all animals the boy is the most unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of reason in him not yet regulated ; he is the most insidious, sharp-witted, and insubordinate of animals. Wherefore he must be bound with many bridles ; in the first place, when he gets away from mothers and nurses, he must be under the management of tutors on account of his childishness and foolishness ; then, again, being a freeman, he must be controlled by teachers, no matter what they teach, and by studies ; but he is also a slave, and in that regard any freeman who comes in his way may punish him and his tutor and his instructor, if any of them does anything wrong ; and he who comes across him and does not inflict upon him the punishment which he deserves, shall incur the greatest disgrace ; and let the guardian of the law, who is the director of education, see to him who coming in the way of the offences which we have mentioned, does not chastise them when he ought, or chastises them in a way which he ought not ; let him keep a sharp look-out, and take especial care of the training of our children, directing their natures, and always turning them to good according to the law.
But how can our law sufficiently train the director of education. himself ; for as yet all has been imperfect, and nothing has been said either clear or satisfactory ? Now, as far as possible, the law ought to leave nothing to him, but to explain everything, that he may be an interpreter and tutor to others. About dances and music and choral strains, I have already spoken both to the character of the selection of them, and the manner in which they are to be amended and consecrated. But we have not as yet spoken, O illustrious guardian of education, of the manner in which your pupils are to use those strains which are written in prose, although you have been informed what martial strains they are to learn and practise ; what relates in the first place to the learning of letters, and secondly, to the lyre, and also to calculation, which, as we were saying, is needful for them all to learn, and any other things which are required with a view to war and the management of house and city, and, looking to the same object, what is useful in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies — the stars and sun and moon, and the various regulations about these matters which are necessary for the whole state — I am speaking of the arrangements of ; days in periods of months, and of months in years, which are to be observed, in order that seasons and sacrifices and festivals may have their regular and natural order, and keep the city alive and awake, the Gods receiving the honours due to them, and men having a better understanding about them : all these things, O my friend, have not yet been sufficiently declared to you by the legislator. Attend, then, to what I am now going to say : — We were telling you, in the first place, that you were not sufficiently informed about letters, and the objection was to this effect — that you were never told whether he who was meant to be a respectable citizen should apply himself in detail to that sort of learning, or not apply himself at all ; and the same remark holds good of the study of the lyre. But now we say that he ought to attend to them. A fair time for a boy of ten years old to spend in letters is three years ; the age of thirteen is the proper time for him to begin to handle the lyre, and he may continue at this for another three years, neither more nor less, and whether his father or himself like or dislike the study, he is not to be allowed to spend more or less time in learning music than the law allows. And let him who disobeys the law be deprived of those youthful honours of which we shall hereafter speak. Hear, however, first of all, what the young ought to learn in the early years of life, and what their instructors ought to teach them. They ought to be occupied with their letters until they are to read and write ; but the acquisition of perfect beauty or quickness in writinig, if nature has not stimulated them to acquire these accomplishments in the given number of years, they should let alone. And as to the learning of compositions committed to writing which are not set to the lyre, whether metrical or without rhythmical divisions, compositions in prose, as they are termed, having no rhythm or harmony — seeing how dangerous are the writings handed down to us by many writers of this class — what will you do with them, O most excellent guardians of the law ? or how can the lawgiver rightly direct you about them ? I believe that he will be in great difficulty.
Cle. What troubles you, Stranger ? and why are you so perplexed in your mind ?
Ath. You naturally ask, Cleinias, and to you and Megillus, who are my partners in the work of legislation, I must state the more difficult as well as the easier parts of the task.
Cle. To what do you refer in this instance ?
Ath. I will tell you. There is a difficulty in opposing many myriads of mouths.
Cle. Well, and have we not already opposed the popular voice in many important enactments ?
Ath. That is quite true ; and you mean to imply, that the road which we are taking may be disagreeable to some but is agreeable to as many others, or if not to as many, at any rate to persons not inferior to the others, and in company with them you bid me, at whatever risk, to proceed along the path of legislation which has opened out of our present discourse, and to be of good cheer, and not to faint.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And I do not faint ; I say, indeed, that we have a great many poets writing in hexameter, trimeter, and all sorts of measures — some who are serious, others who aim only at raising a laugh — and all mankind declare that the youth who are rightly educated should be brought up in them and saturated with them ; some insist that they should be constantly hearing them read aloud, and always learning them, so as to get by heart entire poets ; while others select choice passages and long speeches, and make compendiums of them, saying that these ought to be committed to memory, if a man is to be made good and wise by experience and learning of many things. And you want me now to tell them plainly in what they are right and in what they are wrong.
Cle. Yes, I do. Ath. But how can I in one word rightly comprehend all of them ? I am of opinion, and, if I am not mistaken, there is a general agreement, that every one of these poets has said many things well and many things the reverse of well ; and if this be true, then I do affirm that much learning is dangerous to youth.
Cle. How would you advise the guardian of the law to act ?
Ath. In what respect ?
Cle. I mean to what pattern should he look as his guide in permitting the young to learn some things and forbidding them to learn others. Do not shrink from answering.
Ath. My good Cleinias, I rather think that I am fortunate.
Cle. How so ?
Ath. I think that I am not wholly in want of a pattern, for when I consider the words which we have spoken from early dawn until now, and which, as I believe, have been inspired by Heaven, they appear to me to be quite like a poem. When I reflected upon all these words of ours. I naturally felt pleasure, for of all the discourses which I have ever learnt or heard, either in poetry or prose, this seemed to me to be the justest, and most suitable for young men to hear ; I cannot imagine any better pattern than this which the guardian of the law who is also the director of education can have. He cannot do better than advise the teachers to teach the young these words and any which are of a like nature, if he should happen to find them, either in poetry or prose, or if he come across unwritten discourses akin to ours, he should certainly preserve them, and commit them to writing. And, first of all, he shall constrain the teachers themselves to learn and approve them, and any of them who will not, shall not be employed by him, but those whom he finds agreeing in his judgment, he shall make use of and shall commit to them the instruction and education of youth. And here and on this wise let my fanciful tale about letters and teachers of letters come to an end.
Cle. I do not think, Stranger, that we have wandered out of the proposed limits of the argument ; but whether we are right or not in our whole conception, I cannot be very certain.
Ath. The truth, Cleinias, may be expected to become clearer when, as we have often said, we arrive at the end of the whole discussion about laws.
Cle. Yes.
Ath. And now that we have done with the teacher of letters, the teacher of the lyre has to receive orders from us.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. I think that we have only to recollect our previous discussions, and we shall be able to give suitable regulations touching all this part of instruction and education to the teachers of the lyre.
Cle. To what do you refer ?
Ath. We were saying, if I remember rightly, that the sixty-year-old choristers of Dionysus were to be specially quick in their perceptions of rhythm and musical composition, that they might be able to distinguish good and bad imitation, that is to say, the imitation of the good or bad soul when under the influence of passion, rejecting the one and displaying the other in hymns and songs, charming the souls of youth, and inviting them to follow and attain virtue by the way of imitation.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. And with this view, the teacher and the learner ought to use the sounds of the lyre, because its notes are pure, the player who teaches and his pupil rendering note for note in unison ; but complexity, and variation of notes, when the strings give one sound and the poet or composer of the melody gives another — also when they make concords and harmonies in which lesser and greater intervals, slow and quick, or high and low notes, are combined — or, again, when they make complex variations of rhythms, which they adapt to the notes of the lyre — all that sort of thing is not suited to those who have to acquire a speedy and useful knowledge of music in three years ; for opposite principles are confusing, and create a difficulty in learning, and our young men should learn quickly, and their mere necessary acquirements are not few or trifling, as will be shown in due course. Let the director of education attend to the principles concerning music which we are laying down. As to the songs and words themselves which the masters of choruses are to teach and the character of them, they have been already described by us, and are the same which, when consecrated and adapted to the different festivals, we said were to benefit cities by affording them an innocent amusement.
Cle. That, again, is true.
Ath. Then let him who has been elected a director of music receive these rules from us as containing the very truth ; and may he prosper in his office ! Let us now proceed to lay down other rules in addition to the preceding about dancing and gymnastic exercise in general. Having said what remained to be said about the teaching of music, let us speak in like manner about gymnastic. For boys and girls ought to learn to dance and practise gymnastic exercises — ought they not ?
Cle. Yes.
Ath. Then the boys ought to have dancing masters, and the girls dancing mistresses to exercise them.
Cle. Very good.
Ath. Then once more let us summon him who has the chief concern in the business, the superintendent of youth [i.e., the director of education] ; he will have plenty to do, if he is to have the charge of music and gymnastic.
Cle. But how will old man be able to attend to such great charges ?
Ath. O my friend, there will be no difficulty, for the law has already given and will give him permission to select as his assistants in this charge any citizens, male or female, whom he desires ; and he will know whom he ought to choose, and will be anxious not to make a mistake, from a due sense of responsibility, and from a consciousness of the importance of his office, and also because he will consider that if young men have been and are well brought up, then all things go swimmingly, but if not, it is not meet to say, nor do we say, what will follow, lest the regarders of omens should take alarm about our infant state. Many things have been said by us about dancing and about gymnastic movements in general ; for we include under gymnastics all military exercises, such as archery, and all hurling of weapons, and the use of the light shield, and all fighting with heavy arms, and military evolutions, and movements of armies, and encampings, and all that relates to horsemanship. Of all these things there ought to be public teachers, receiving pay from the state, and their pupils should be the men and boys in the state, and also the girls and women, who are to know all these things. While they are yet girls they should have practised dancing in arms and the whole art of fighting — when grown-up women, they should apply themselves to evolutions and tactics, and the mode of grounding and taking up arms ; if for no other reason, yet in case the whole military force should have to leave the city and carry on operations of war outside, that those who will have to guard the young and the rest of the city may be equal to the task ; and, on the other hand, when enemies, whether barbarian or Hellenic, come from without with mighty force and make a violent assault upon them, and thus compel them to fight for the possession of the city, which is far from being an impossibility, great would be the disgrace to the state, if the women had been so miserably trained that they could not fight for their young, as birds will, against any creature however strong, and die or undergo any danger, but must instantly rush to the temples and crowd at the altars and shrines, and bring upon human nature the reproach, that of all animals man is the most cowardly !
Cle. Such a want of education, Stranger, is certainly an unseemly thing to happen in a state, as well as a great misfortune.
Ath. Suppose that we carry our law to the extent of saying that women ought not to neglect military matters, but that all citizens, male and female alike, shall attend to them ?
Cle. I quite agree.
Ath. Of wrestling we have spoken in part, but of what I should call the most important part we have not spoken, and cannot easily speak without showing at the same time by gesture as well as in word what we mean ; when word and action combine, and not till then, we shall explain clearly what has been said, pointing out that of all movements wrestling is most akin to the military art, and is to be pursued for the sake of this, and not this for the sake of wrestling.
Cle. Excellent.
Ath. Enough of wrestling ; we will now proceed to speak of other movements of the body. Such motion may be in general called dancing, and is of two kinds : one of nobler figures, imitating the honourable, the other of the more ignoble figures, imitating the mean ; and of both these there are two further subdivisions. Of the serious, one kind is of those engaged in war and vehement action, and is the exercise of a noble person and a manly heart ; the other exhibits a temperate soul in the enjoyment of prosperity and modest pleasures, and may be truly called and is the dance of peace. The warrior dance is different from the peaceful one, and may be rightly termed Pyrrhic ; this imitates the modes of avoiding blows and missiles by dropping or giving way, or springing aside, or rising up or falling down ; also the opposite postures which are those of action, as, for example, the imitation of archery and the hurling of javelins, and of all sorts of blows. And when the imitation is of brave bodies and souls, and the action is direct and muscular, giving for the most part a straight movement to the limbs of the body — that, I say, is the true sort ; but the opposite is not right. In the dance of peace what we have to consider is whether a man bears himself naturally and gracefully, and after the manner of men who duly conform to the law. But before proceeding I must distinguish the dancing about which there is any doubt, from that about which there is no doubt. Which is the doubtful kind, and how are the two to be distinguished ? There are dances of the Bacchic sort, both those in which, as they say, they imitate drunken men, and which are named after the Nymphs, and Pan, and Silenuses, and Satyrs ; and also those in which purifications are made or mysteries celebrated — all this sort of dancing cannot be rightly defined as having either a peaceful or a warlike character, or indeed as having any meaning whatever and may, I think, be most truly described as distinct from the warlike dance, and distinct from the peaceful, and not suited for a city at all. There let it lie ; and so leaving it to lie, we will proceed to the dances of war and peace, for with these we are undoubtedly concerned. Now the unwarlike muse, which honours in dance the Gods and the sons of the Gods, is entirely associated with the consciousness of prosperity ; this class may be subdivided into two lesser classes, of which one is expressive of an escape from some labour or danger into good, and has greater pleasures, the other expressive of preservation and increase of former good, in which the pleasure is less exciting ; — in all these cases, every man when the pleasure is greater, moves his body more, and less when the pleasure is less ; and, again, if he be more orderly and has learned courage from discipline he waves less, but if he be a coward, and has no training or self-control, he makes greater and more violent movements, and in general when he is speaking or singing he is not altogether able to keep his body still ; and so out of the imitation of words in gestures the whole art of dancing has arisen. And in these various kinds of imitation one man moves in an orderly, another in a disorderly manner ; and as the ancients may be observed to have given many names which are according to nature and deserving of praise, so there is an excellent one which they have given to the dances of men who in their times of prosperity are moderate in their pleasures — the giver of names, whoever he was, assigned to them a very true, and poetical, and rational name, when he called them Emmeleiai, or dances of order, thus establishing two kinds of dances of the nobler sort, the dance of war which he called the Pyrrhic, and the dance of peace which he called Emmeleia, or the dance of order ; giving to each their appropriate and becoming name. These things the legislator should indicate in general outline, and the guardian of the law should enquire into them and search them out, combining dancing with music, and assigning to the several sacrificial feasts that which is suitable to them ; and when he has consecrated all of them in due order, he shall for the future change nothing, whether of dance or song. Thenceforward the city and the citizens shall continue to have the same pleasures, themselves being as far as possible alike, and shall live well and happily.
I have described the dances which are appropriate to noble bodies and generous souls. But it is necessary also to consider and know uncomely persons and thoughts, and those which are intended to produce laughter in comedy, and have a comic character in respect of style, song, and dance, and of the imitations which these afford. For serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man is really to have intelligence of either ; but he can not carry out both in action, if he is to have any degree of virtue. And for this very reason he should learn them both, in order that he may not in ignorance do or say anything which is ridiculous and out of place — he should command slaves and hired strangers to imitate such things, but he should never take any serious interest in them himself, nor should any freeman or freewoman be discovered taking pains to learn them ; and there should always be some element of novelty in the imitation. Let these then be laid down, both in law and in our discourse, as the regulations of laughable amusements which are generally called comedy. And, if any of the serious poets, as they are termed, who write tragedy, come to us and say — “O strangers, may we go to your city and country or may we not, and shall we bring with us our poetry — what is your will about these matters ?” — how shall we answer the divine men ? I think that our answer should be as follows : — Best of strangers, we will say to them, we also according to our ability are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest ; for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy. You are poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law can alone perfect, as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow you to erect your stage in the agora, or introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our women and children, and the common people, about our institutions, in language other than our own, and very often the opposite of our own. For a state would be mad which gave you this licence, until the magistrates had determined whether your poetry might be recited, and was fit for publication or not. Wherefore, O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses, first of all show your songs to the magistrates, and let them compare them with our own, and if they are the same or better we will give you a chorus ; but if not, then, my friends, we cannot. Let these, then, be the customs ordained by law about all dances and the teaching of them, and let matters relating to slaves be separated from those relating to masters, if you do not object.
Cle. We can have no hesitation in assenting when you put the matter thus.
Ath. There still remain three studies suitable for freemen. Arithmetic is one of them ; the measurement of length, surface, and depth is the second ; and the third has to do with the revolutions of the stars in relation to one another. Not every one has need to toil through all these things in a strictly scientific manner, but only a few, and who they are to be we will hereafter indicate at the end, which will be the proper place ; not to know what is necessary for mankind in general, and what is the truth, is disgraceful to every one : and yet to enter into these matters minutely is neither easy, nor at all possible for every one ; but there is something in them which is necessary and cannot be set aside, and probably he who made the proverb about God originally had this in view when he said, that “not even God himself can fight against necessity” ; — he meant, if I am not mistaken, divine necessity ; for as to the human necessities of which the many speak, when they talk in this manner, nothing can be more ridiculous than such an application of the words.
Cle. And what necessities of knowledge are there, Stranger, which are divine and not human ?
Ath. I conceive them to be those of which he who has no use nor any knowledge at all cannot be a God, or demi-god, or hero to mankind, or able to take any serious thought or charge of them. And very unlike a divine man would he be, who is unable to count one, two, three, or to distinguish odd and even numbers, or is unable to count at all, or reckon night and day, and who is totally unacquainted with the revolution of the sun and moon, and the other stars. There would be great folly in supposing that all these are not necessary parts of knowledge to him who intends to know anything about the highest kinds of knowledge ; but which these are, and how many there are of them, and when they are to be learned, and what is to be learned together and what apart, and the whole correlation of them, must be rightly apprehended first ; and these leading the way we may proceed to the other parts of knowledge. For so necessity grounded in nature constrains us, against which we say that no God contends, or ever will contend.
Cle. I think, Stranger, that what you have now said is very true and agreeable to nature.
Ath. Yes, Cleinias, that is so. But it is difficult for the legislator to begin with these studies ; at a more convenient time we will make regulations for them.
Cle. You seem, Stranger, to be afraid of our habitual ignorance of the subject : there is no reason why that should prevent you from speaking out.
Ath. I certainly am afraid of the difficulties to which you allude, but I am still more afraid of those who apply themselves to this sort of knowledge, and apply themselves badly. For entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all ; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with an ill bringing up, are far more fatal.
Cle. True.
Ath. All freemen, I conceive, should learn as much of these branches of knowledge as every child in Egypt is taught when he learns the alphabet. In that country arithmetical games have been invented for the use of mere children, which they learn as a pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands, using the same number sometimes for a larger and sometimes for a lesser number of persons ; and they arrange pugilists, and wrestlers as they pair together by lot or remain over, and show how their turns come in natural order. Another mode of amusing them is to distribute vessels, sometimes of gold, brass, silver, and the like, intermixed with one another, sometimes of one metal only ; as I was saying they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and movements of armies and expeditions, in the management of a household they make people more useful to themselves, and more wide awake ; and again in measurements of things which have length, and breadth, and depth, they free us from that natural ignorance of all these things which is so ludicrous and disgraceful.
Cle. What kind of ignorance do you mean ?
Ath. O my dear Cleinias, I, like yourself, have late in life heard with amazement of our ignorance in these matters ; to me we appear to be more like pigs than men, and I am quite ashamed, not only of myself, but of all Hellenes.
Cle. About what ? Say, Stranger, what you mean.
Ath. I will ; or rather I will show you my meaning by a question, and do you please to answer me : You know, I suppose, what length is ?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And what breadth is ?
Cle. To be sure.
Ath. And you know that these are two distinct things, and that there is a third thing called depth ?
Cle. Of course.
Ath. And do not all these seem to you to be commensurable with themselves ?
Cle. Yes.
Ath. That is to say, length is naturally commensurable with length, and breadth with breadth, and depth in like manner with depth ?
Cle. Undoubtedly.
Ath. But if some things are commensurable and others wholly incommensurable, and you think that all things are commensurable, what is your position in regard to them ?
Cle. Clearly, far from good.
Ath. Concerning length and breadth when compared with depth, or breadth when and length when compared with one another, are not all the Hellenes agreed that these are commensurable with one in some way ?
Cle. Quite true.
Ath. But if they are absolutely incommensurable, and yet all of us regard them as commensurable, have we not reason to be ashamed of our compatriots ; and might we not say to them : — O ye best of Hellenes, is not this one of the things of which we were saying that not to know them is disgraceful, and of which to have a bare knowledge only is no great distinction ?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And there are other things akin to these, in which there spring up other errors of the same family.
Cle. What are they ?
Ath. The natures of commensurable and incommensurable quantities in their relation to one another. A man who is good for a thing ought to be able, when he thinks, to distinguish them ; and different persons should compete with one another in asking questions, which will be a fair, better and more graceful way of passing their time than the old man’s game of draughts.
Cle. I dare say ; and these pastimes are not so very unlike a game of draughts.
Ath. And these, as I maintain, Cleinias, are the studies which our youth ought to learn, for they are innocent and not difficult ; the learning of them will be an amusement, and they will benefit the state. If anyone is of another mind, let him say what he has to say.
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Then if these studies are such as we maintain we will include them ; if not, they shall be excluded.
Cle. Assuredly : but may we not now, Stranger, prescribe these studies as necessary, and so fill up the lacunae of our laws ?
Ath. They shall be regarded as pledges which may be hereafter redeemed and removed from our state, if they do not please either us who give them, or you who accept them.
Cle. A fair condition.
Ath. Next let us see whether we are or are not willing that the study of astronomy shall be proposed for our youth.
Cle. Proceed.
Ath. Here occurs a strange phenomenon, which certainly cannot in any point of view be tolerated.
Cle. To what are you referring ?
Ath. Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious ; whereas the very opposite is the truth.
Cle. What do you mean ?
Ath. Perhaps what I am saying may seem paradoxical, and at variance with the usual language of age. But when any one has any good and true notion which is for the advantage of the state and in every way acceptable to God, he cannot abstain from expressing it.
Cle. Your words are reasonable enough ; but shall we find any good or true notion about the stars ?
Ath. My good friends, at this hour all of us Hellenes tell lies, if I may use such an expression, about those great Gods, the Sun and the Moon.
Cle. Lies of what nature ?
Ath. We say that they and divers other stars do not keep the same path, and we call them planets or wanderers.
Cle. Very true, Stranger ; and in the course of my life I have often myself seen the morning star and the evening star and divers others not moving in their accustomed course, but wandering out of their path in all manner of ways, and I have seen the sun and moon doing what we all know that they do.
Ath. Just so, Megillus and Cleinias ; and I maintain that our citizens and our youth ought to learn about the nature of the Gods in heaven, so far as to be able to offer sacrifices and pray to them in pious language, and not to blaspheme about them.
Cle. There you are right if such a knowledge be only attainable ; and if we are wrong in our mode of speaking now, and can be better instructed and learn to use better language, then I quite agree with you that such a degree of knowledge as will enable us to speak rightly should be acquired by us. And now do you try to explain to us your whole meaning, and we, on our part, will endeavour to understand you.
Ath. There is some difficulty in understanding my meaning, but not a very great one, nor will any great length of time be required. And of this I am myself a proof ; for I did not know these things long ago, nor in the days of my youth, and yet I can explain them to you in a brief space of time ; whereas if they had been difficult I could certainly never have explained them all, old as I am, to old men like yourselves.
Cle. True ; but what is this study which you describe as wonderful and fitting for youth to learn, but of which we are ignorant ? Try and explain the nature of it to us as clearly as you can.
Ath. I will. For, O my good friends, that other doctrine about the wandering of the sun and the moon and the other stars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth. Each of them moves in the same path — not in many paths, but in one only, which is circular, and the varieties are only apparent. Nor are we right in supposing that the swiftest of them is the slowest, nor conversely, that the slowest is the quickest. And if what I say is true, only just imagine that we had a similar notion about horses running at Olympia, or about men who ran in the long course, and that we addressed the swiftest as the slowest and the slowest as the swiftest, and sang the praises of the vanquished as though he were the victor, — in that case our praises would not be true, nor very agreeable to the runners, though they be but men ; and now, to commit the same error about the Gods which would have been ludicrous and erroneous in the case of men — is not that ludicrous and erroneous ?
Cle. Worse than ludicrous, I should say.
Ath. At all events, the Gods cannot like us to be spreading a false report of them.
Cle. Most true, if such is the fact.
Ath. And if we can show that such is really the fact, then all these matters ought to be learned so far as is necessary for the avoidance of impiety ; but if we cannot, they may be let alone, and let this be our decision.
Cle. Very good.