Ath. There is, however, another matter of great importance and difficulty, concerning which God should legislate, if there were any possibility of obtaining from him an ordinance about it. But seeing that divine aid is not to be had, there appears to be a need of some bold man who specially honours plainness of speech, and will say outright what he thinks best for the city and citizens — ordaining what is good and convenient for the whole state amid the corruptions of human souls, opposing the mightiest lusts, and having no man his helper but himself standing alone and following reason only.
Cle. What is this, Stranger, that you are saying ? For we do not as yet understand your meaning.
Ath. Very likely ; I will endeavour to explain myself more clearly. When I came to the subject of education, I beheld young men and maidens holding friendly intercourse with one another. And there naturally arose in my mind a sort of apprehension — I could not help thinking how one is to deal with a city in which youths and maidens are well nurtured, and have nothing to do, and are not undergoing the excessive and servile toils which extinguish wantonness, and whose only cares during their whole life are sacrifices and festivals and dances. How, in such a state as this, will they abstain from desires which thrust many a man and woman into perdition ; and from which reason, assuming the functions of law, commands them to abstain ? The ordinances already made may possibly get the better of most of these desires ; the prohibition of excessive wealth is a very considerable gain in the direction of temperance, and the whole education of our youth imposes a law of moderation on them ; moreover, the eye of the rulers is required always to watch over the young, and never to lose sight of them ; and these provisions do, as far as human means can effect anything, exercise a regulating influence upon the desires in general. But how can we take precautions against the unnatural loves of either sex, from which innumerable evils have come upon individuals and cities ? How shall we devise a remedy and way of escape out of so great a danger ? Truly, Cleinias, here is a difficulty. In many ways Crete and Lacedaemon furnish a great help to those who make peculiar laws ; but in the matter of love, as we are alone, I must confess that they are quite against us. For if any one following nature should lay down the law which existed before the days of Laius, and denounce these lusts as contrary to nature, adducing the animals as a proof that such unions were monstrous, he might prove his point, but he would be wholly at variance with the custom of your states. Further, they are repugnant to a principle which we say that a legislator should always observe ; for we are always enquiring which of our enactments tends to virtue and which not. And suppose we grant that these loves are accounted by law to be honourable, or at least not disgraceful, in what degree will they contribute to virtue ? Will such passions implant in the soul of him who is seduced the habit of courage, or in the soul of the seducer the principle of temperance ? Who will ever believe this ? — or rather, who will not blame the effeminacy of him who yields to pleasures and is unable to hold out against them ? Will not all men censure as womanly him who imitates the woman ? And who would ever think of establishing such a practice by law ? Certainly no one who had in his mind the image of true law. How can we prove, that what I am saying is true ? He who would rightly consider these matters must see the nature of friendship and desire, and of these so-called loves, for they are of two kinds, and out of the two arises a third kind, having the same name ; and this similarity of name causes all the difficulty and obscurity.
Cle. How is that ?
Ath. Dear is the like in virtue to the like, and the equal to the equal ; dear also, though unlike, is he who has abundance to him who is in want. And when either of these friendships becomes excessive, we term the excess love.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. The friendship which arises from contraries is horrible and coarse, and has often no tie of communion ; but that which, arises from likeness is gentle, and has a tie of communion which lasts through life. As to the mixed sort which is made up of them both, there is, first of all, a in determining what he who is possessed by this third love desires ; moreover, he is drawn different ways, and is in doubt between the two principles ; the one exhorting him to enjoy the beauty of youth, and the other forbidding him. For the one is a lover of the body, and hungers after beauty, like ripe fruit, and would fain satisfy himself without any regard to the character of the beloved ; the other holds the desire of the body to be a secondary matter, and looking rather than loving and with his soul desiring the soul of the other in a becoming manner, regards the satisfaction of the bodily love as wantonness ; he reverences and respects temperance and courage and magnanimity and wisdom, and wishes to live chastely with the chaste object of his affection. Now the sort of love which is made up of the other two is that which we have described as the third. Seeing then that there are these three sorts of love, ought the law to prohibit and forbid them all to exist among us ? Is it not rather clear that we should wish to have in the state the love which is of virtue and which desires the beloved youth to be the best possible ; and the other two, if possible, we should hinder ? What do you say, friend Megillus ?
Megillus. I think, Stranger, that you are perfectly right in what you have been now saying.
Ath. I knew well, my friend, that I should obtain your assent, which I accept, and therefore have no need to analyse your custom any further. Cleinias shall be prevailed upon to give me his assent at some other time. Enough of this ; and now let us proceed to the laws.
Meg. Very good.
Ath. Upon reflection I see a way of imposing the law, which, in one respect, is easy, but, in another, is of the utmost difficulty.
Meg. What do you mean ?
Ath. We are all aware that most men, in spite of their lawless natures, are very strictly and precisely restrained from intercourse with the fair, and this is not at all against their will, but entirely with their will.
Meg. When do you mean ?
Ath. When any one has a brother or sister who is fair ; and about a son or daughter the same unwritten law holds, and is a most perfect safeguard, so that no open or secret connection ever takes place between them. Nor does the thought of such a thing ever enter at all into the minds of most of them.
Meg. Very true.
Ath. Does not a little word extinguish all pleasures of that sort ?
Meg. What word ?
Ath. The declaration that they are unholy, hated of God, and most infamous ; and is not the reason of this that no one has ever said the opposite, but every one from his earliest childhood has heard men speaking in the same manner about them always and everywhere, whether in comedy or in the graver language of tragedy ? When the poet introduces on the stage a Thyestes or an Oedipus, or a Macareus having secret intercourse with his sister, he represents him, when found out, ready to kill himself as the penalty of his sin.
Meg. You are very right in saying that tradition, if no breath of opposition ever assails it, has a marvellous power.
Ath. Am I not also right in saying that the legislator who wants to master any of the passions which master man may easily know how to subdue them ? He will consecrate the tradition of their evil character among all, slaves and freemen, women and children, throughout the city : — that will be the surest foundation of the law which he can make.
Meg. Yes ; but will he ever succeed in making all mankind use the same language about them ?
Ath. A good objection ; but was I not just now saying that I had a way to make men use natural love and abstain from unnatural, not intentionally destroying the seeds of human increase, or sowing them in stony places, in which they will take no root ; and that I would command them to abstain too from any female field of increase in which that which is sown is not likely to grow ? Now if a law to this effect could only be made perpetual, and gain an authority such as already prevents intercourse of parents and children — such a law, extending to other sensual desires, and conquering them, would be the source of ten thousand blessings. For, in the first place, moderation is the appointment of nature, and deters men from all frenzy and madness of love, and from all adulteries and immoderate use of meats and drinks, and makes them good friends to their own wives. And innumerable other benefits would result if such a could only be enforced. I can imagine some lusty youth who is standing by, and who, on hearing this enactment, declares in scurrilous terms that we are making foolish and impossible laws, and fills the world with his outcry. And therefore I said that I knew a way of enacting and perpetuating such a law, which was very easy in one respect, but in another most difficult. There is no difficulty in seeing that such a law is possible, and in what way ; for, as I was saying, the ordinance once consecrated would master the soul of, every man, and terrify him into obedience. But matters have now come to such a pass that even then the desired result seems as if it could not be attained, just as the continuance of an entire state in the practice of common meals is also deemed impossible. And although this latter is partly disproven by the fact of their existence among you, still even in your cities the common meals of women would be regarded as unnatural and impossible. I was thinking of the rebelliousness of the human heart when I said that the permanent establishment of these things is very difficult.
Meg. Very true.
Ath. Shall I try and find some sort of persuasive argument which will prove to you that such enactments are possible, and not beyond human nature ?
Cle. By all means.
Ath. Is a man more likely to abstain from the pleasures of love and to do what he is bidden about them, when his body is in a good condition, or when he is in an ill condition, and out of training ?
Cle. He will be far more temperate when he is in training.
Ath. And have we not heard of Iccus of Tarentum, who, with a view to the Olympic and other contests, in his zeal for his art, ind also because he was of a manly and temperate disposition, never had any connection with a woman or a youth during the whole time of his training ? And the same is said of Crison and Astylus and Diopompus and many others ; and yet, Cleinias, they were far worse educated in their minds than your and my citizens, and in their bodies far more lusty.
Cle. No doubt this fact has been often affirmed positively by the ancients of these athletes.
Ath. And had they ; courage to abstain from what is ordinarilly deemed a pleasure for the sake of a victory in wrestling, running, and the like ; and shall our young men be incapable of a similar endurance for the sake of a much nobler victory, which is the noblest of all, as from their youth upwards we will tell them, charming them, as we hope, into the belief of this by tales and sayings and songs ?
Cle. Of what victory are you speaking ?
Ath. Of the victory over pleasure, which if they win, they will live happily ; or if they are conquered, the reverse of happily. And, further, may we not suppose that the fear of impiety will enable them to master that which other inferior people have mastered ?
Cle. I dare say.
Ath. And since we have reached this point in our legislation, and have fallen into a difficulty by reason of the vices of mankind, I affirm that our ordinance should simply run in the following terms : Our citizens ought not to fall below the nature of birds and beasts in general, who are born in great multitudes, and yet remain until the age for procreation virgin and unmarried, but when they have reached the proper time of life are coupled, male and female, and lovingly pair together, and live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original compact : — surely, we will say to them, you should be better than the animals. But if they are corrupted by the other Hellenes and the common practice of barbarians, and they see with their eyes and hear with their ears of the so-called free love everywhere prevailing among them, and they themselves are not able to get the better of the temptation, the guardians of the law, exercising the functions of lawgivers, shall devise a second law against them.
Cle. And what law would you advise them to pass if this one failed ?
Ath. Clearly, Cleinias, the one which would naturally follow.
Cle. What is that ?
Ath. Our citizens should not allow pleasures to strengthen with indulgence, but should by toil divert the aliment and exuberance of them into other parts of the body ; and this will happen if no immodesty be allowed in the practice of love. Then they will be ashamed of frequent intercourse, and they will find pleasure, if seldom enjoyed, to be a less imperious mistress. They should not be found out doing anything of the sort. Concealment shall be honourable, and sanctioned by custom and made law by unwritten prescription ; on the other hand, to be detected shall be esteemed dishonourable, but not, to abstain wholly. In this way there will be a second legal standard of honourable and dishonourable, involving a second notion of right. Three principles will comprehend all those corrupt natures whom we call inferior to themselves, and who form but one dass, and will compel them not to transgress.
Cle. What are they ?
Ath. The principle of piety, the love of honour, and the desire of beauty, not in the body but in the soul. These are, perhaps, romantic aspirations ; but they are the noblest of aspirations, if they could only be realized in all states, and, God willing, in the matter of love we may be able to enforce one of two things — either that no one shall venture to touch any person of the freeborn or noble class except his wedded wife, or sow the unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or in barren and unnatural lusts ; or at least we may abolish altogether the connection of men with men ; and as to women, if any man has to do with any but those who come into his house duly married by sacred rites, whether they be bought or acquired in any other way, and he offends publicly in the face of all mankind, we shall be right in enacting that he be deprived of civic honours and privileges, and be deemed to be, as he truly is, a stranger. Let this law, then, whether it is one, or ought rather to be called two, be laid down respecting love in general, and the intercourse of the sexes which arises out of the desires, whether rightly or wrongly indulged.
Meg. I, for my part, Stranger, would gladly receive this law. Cleinias shall speak for himself, and tell you what is his opinion.
Cle. I will, Megillus, when an opportunity offers ; at present, I think that we had better allow the Stranger to proceed with his laws.
Meg. Very good.