courage

andreia

COURAGE, a part of virtue, Laches 190, 199; Protag. 349, 350, 353. 359; Laws 1. 631 D foil.; 3. 688 A, 696 B ; 12. 963 ; fourth in the scale of virtue, Laws 1. 630 C, 631 D ; 2. 667 A : = staying at one’s post, Laches 190E; = endurance of the soul, ib. 192 ; =knowledge of that which inspires fear or confidence, ib. 195 (cp. Rep. 2. 376; 4. 429 C, 442 B); = knowledge of that which is not dangerous, Protag. 360 ;—COURAGE not to be ascribed to children or animals, Laches 196 E (but cp. Rep. 4. 430 B; Laws 12. 963 E) ; distinguished from fearlessness, Laches 197 B (cp. Protag. 349 C foil., 351, 359 foil.; Meno 88 A ; Rep. 4. 430 B); concerned with the good and evil of all time, Laches 199; may exist in bad men, Protag. 349 D, 359 B ; Laws 1. 630 B ; springs in many cases merely from dread, Phaedo 68 ; inconsistent with the fear of death, ibid. ; Rep. 3. 386; 6. 486 A ; one of the philosopher’s virtues, Phaedo 68; Rep. 6. 486 A, 490 E, 495 A; required in the guardians, Rep. 2. 375 ; 3. 386 ; 4. 429; 6. 503 E; a good, I Alcib. 115 ;— COURAGE and temperance opposed, Statesm. 307,308 ; to be blended, ib. 310 (cp. Laws 1. 630 A; 3. 696 A);—COURAGE and wisdom, Protag. 350, 360 (cp. Laches 194 D; Gorg. 491,495 ; Laws 12.963); —the COURAGE which resists pleasure, Laws 1. 633:—the COURAGEous life, ib. 5. 733 E:—the COURAGEous temper averse to intellectual toil, Rep. 6. 503 D (cp. Tim. 88 D); dangerous to the state, when in excess, Statesm. 308 A ; apt to make men brutal, ib. 309 D ; a gift of nature, Laws 12. 963 E.

COURAGE. (In treating of COURAGE Plato shows a tendency, as in the case of the virtues generally, to connect or even identify it with knowledge. The subject is first discussed in the Laches, of which itforms the main topic. A series of definitions is there given, which are all found to be inadequate, but which exhibit the progression from a lower to a higher conception of COURAGE. Laches begins by saying , that COURAGE is the quality which makes a man stand his post; but this is refuted by the observation that ‘COURAGE may also be displayed in flight. A second definition, according to which COURAGE is the same as endurance, is equally futile: for endurance may be mere persistence in a wrong course. Nicias then interposes :—Courage is a species of wisdom, which teaches us the true grounds of hope and fear. It is thus distinguished from confidence or fearlessness, which causes men and animals to be bold because they are ignorant of danger. Socrates answers that such a knowledge, like any other, must include the future and the past as well as the present, if it is to be of any use to us. But then COURAGE, which is the ‘ knowledge of all,’ will be identical with ‘all virtue,’ and we have gained, not a definition of COURAGE, but of virtue in general. —A similar identification of COURAGE and wisdom is found in the Protagoras, and is there left unrefuted, although Socrates is made to intimate that the argument is inconclusive.—In the Republic, where COURAGE, like the other virtues, is regarded principally in relation to the state, it is declared to be the especial virtue of the ‘ spirited element’ in the soul which is represented by the warrior class among the citizens. But it is also (as in the Phaedo) a virtue of the philosopher, who alone of men fears neither death nor the life to come.— The Statesman contains an interesting contrast between temperance and COURAGE. The COURAGEous man is all fire and energy j he neither rests himself nor suffers others to rest. The orderly and moderate character on the contrary is long-suffering and patient, nor has he any inclination to interfere with his neighbours. The two dispositions are rarely or never united in the same person; and both when in excess are the cause of great evils (cp. the similar remarks in Rep. 6. 503 C and Theaet. 144 B, and v. s. v. Temperance).—In the Laws, of which one main thesis is that peace is better than war COURAGE is placed fourth and lowest in the scale of virtues. Courage is a mere gift of nature, and may be shown even by children and the brutes. This is a fact which has been overlooked by the legislators of Crete and Sparta. They have tried to make their citizens COURAGEous and enduring, but they have only regarded COURAGE of the vulgar sort, and have neglected that nobler kind which teaches men to resist the insidious temptations of pleasure and desire. The Spartans boast that they are superior to all other men in battle; but war is a matter of chance, and victory does not always prove the goodness or badness of institutions.)

You would not deny, then, that COURAGE and wisdom are also parts of virtue ? PROTAGORAS

Then, I said, no other part of virtue is like knowledge, or like justice, or like COURAGE, or like temperance, or like holiness ? PROTAGORAS

Sees a thing when he is alone, he goes about straightway seeking until he finds some one to whom he may show his discoveries, and who may confirm him in them. And I would rather hold discourse with you than with any one, because I think that no man has a better understanding of most things which a good man may be expected to understand, and in particular of virtue. For who is there, but you ? — who not only claim to be a good man and a gentleman, for many are this, and yet have not the power of making others good whereas you are not only good yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others. Moreover such confidence have you in yourself, that although other Sophists conceal their profession, you proclaim in the face of Hellas that you are a Sophist or teacher of virtue and education, and are the first who demanded pay in return. How then can I do otherwise than invite you to the examination of these subjects, and ask questions and consult with you ? I must, indeed. And I should like once more to have my memory refreshed by you about the questions which I was asking you at first, and also to have your help in considering them. If I am not mistaken the question was this : Are wisdom and temperance and COURAGE and justice and holiness five names of the same thing ? or has each of the names a separate underlying essence and corresponding thing having a peculiar function, no one of them being like any other of them ? And you replied that the five names were not the names of the same thing, but that each of them had a separate object, and that all these objects were parts of virtue, not in the same way that the parts of gold are like each other and the whole of which they are parts, but as the parts of the face are unlike the whole of which they are parts and one another, and have each of them a distinct function. I should like to know whether this is still your opinion ; or if not, I will ask you to define your meaning, and I shall not take you to task if you now make a different statement. For I dare say that you may have said what you did only in order to make trial of me. PROTAGORAS

I answer, Socrates, he said, that all these qualities are parts of virtue, and that four out of the five are to some extent similar, and that the fifth of them, which is COURAGE, is very different from the other four, as I prove in this way : You may observe that many men are utterly unrighteous, unholy, intemperate, ignorant, who are nevertheless remarkable for their COURAGE. PROTAGORAS

In that case, he replied, COURAGE would be a base thing, for the men of whom we are speaking are surely madmen. PROTAGORAS

And those, I said, who are thus confident without knowledge are really not COURAGEous, but mad ; and in that case the wisest are also the most confident, and being the most confident are also the bravest, and upon that view again wisdom will be COURAGE. PROTAGORAS

Nay, Socrates, he replied, you are mistaken in your remembrance of what was said by me. When you asked me, I certainly did say that the COURAGEous are the confident ; but I was never asked whether the confident are the COURAGEous ; if you had asked me, I should have answered “Not all of them” : and what I did answer you have not proved to be false, although you proceeded to show that those who have knowledge are more COURAGEous than they were before they had knowledge, and more COURAGEous than others who have no knowledge, and were then led on to think that COURAGE is the same as wisdom. But in this way of arguing you might come to imagine that strength is wisdom. You might begin by asking whether the strong are able, and I should say “Yes” ; and then whether those who know how to wrestle are not more able to wrestle than those who do not know how to wrestle, and more able after than before they had learned, and I should assent. And when I had admitted this, you might use my admissions in such a way as to prove that upon my view wisdom is strength ; whereas in that case I should not have admitted, any more than in the other, that the able are strong, although I have admitted that the strong are able. For there is a difference between ability and strength ; the former is given by knowledge as well as by madness or rage, but strength comes from nature and a healthy state of the body. And in like manner I say of confidence and COURAGE, that they are not the same ; and I argue that the COURAGEous are confident, but not all the confident COURAGEous. For confidence may be given to men by art, and also, like ability, by madness and rage ; but COURAGE comes to them from nature and the healthy state of the soul. PROTAGORAS

I believe, I said, that they may be of use in helping us to discover how COURAGE is related to the other parts of virtue. If you are disposed to abide by our agreement, that I should show the way in which, as I think, our recent difficulty is most likely to be cleared up, do you follow ; but if not, never mind. PROTAGORAS

Then, I said, these, Hippias and Prodicus, are our premisses ; and I would beg Protagoras to explain to us how he can be right in what he said at first. I do not mean in what he said quite at first, for his first statement, as you may remember, was that whereas there were five parts of virtue none of them was like any other of them ; each of them had a separate function. To this, however, I am not referring, but to the assertion which he afterwards made that of the five virtues four were nearly akin to each other, but that the fifth, which was COURAGE, differed greatly from the others. And of this he gave me the following proof. He said : You will find, Socrates, that some of the most impious, and unrighteous, and intemperate, and ignorant of men are among the most COURAGEous ; which proves that COURAGE is very different from the other parts of virtue. I was surprised at his saying this at the time, and I am still more surprised now that I have discussed the matter with you. So I asked him whether by the brave he meant the confident. Yes, he replied, and the impetuous or goers. (You may remember, Protagoras, that this was your answer.) PROTAGORAS

Then as to the motive from which the cowards act, do you call it cowardice or COURAGE ? PROTAGORAS

But surely COURAGE, I said, is opposed to cowardice ? PROTAGORAS

And the knowledge of that which is and is not dangerous is COURAGE, and is opposed to the ignorance of these things ? PROTAGORAS

My only object, I said, in continuing the discussion, has been the desire to ascertain the nature and relations of virtue ; for if this were clear, I am very sure that the other controversy which has been carried on at great length by both of us — you affirming and I denying that virtue can be taught — would also become clear. The result of our discussion appears to me to be singular. For if the argument had a human voice, that voice would be heard laughing at us and saying : “Protagoras and Socrates, you are strange beings ; there are you, Socrates, who were saying that virtue cannot be taught, contradicting yourself now by your attempt to prove that all things are knowledge, including justice, and temperance, and COURAGE, — which tends to show that virtue can certainly be taught ; for if virtue were other than knowledge, as Protagoras attempted to prove, then clearly virtue cannot be taught ; but if virtue is entirely knowledge, as you are seeking to show, then I cannot but suppose that virtue is capable of being taught. Protagoras, on the other hand, who started by saying that it might be taught, is now eager to prove it to be anything rather than knowledge ; and if this is true, it must be quite incapable of being taught.” Now I, Protagoras, perceiving this terrible confusion of our ideas, have a great desire that they should be cleared up. And I should like to carry on the discussion until we ascertain what virtue is, whether capable of being taught or not, lest haply Epimetheus should trip us up and deceive us in the argument, as he forgot us in the story ; I prefer your Prometheus to your Epimetheus, for of him I make use, whenever I am busy about these questions, in Promethean care of my own life. And if you have no objection, as I said at first, I should like to have your help in the enquiry. PROTAGORAS

Well, Athenians, this and the like of this is nearly all the defence which I have to offer. Yet a word more. Perhaps there may be someone who is offended at me, when he calls to mind how he himself, on a similar or even a less serious occasion, had recourse to prayers and supplications with many tears, and how he produced his children in court, which was a moving spectacle, together with a posse of his relations and friends ; whereas I, who am probably in danger of my life, will do none of these things. Perhaps this may come into his mind, and he may be set against me, and vote in anger because he is displeased at this. Now if there be such a person among you, which I am far from affirming, I may fairly reply to him : My friend, I am a man, and like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and not of wood or stone, as Homer says ; and I have a family, yes, and sons. O Athenians, three in number, one of whom is growing up, and the two others are still young ; and yet I will not bring any of them hither in order to petition you for an acquittal. And why not ? Not from any self-will or disregard of you. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is another question, of which I will not now speak. But my reason simply is that I feel such conduct to be discreditable to myself, and you, and the whole state. One who has reached my years, and who has a name for wisdom, whether deserved or not, ought not to debase himself. At any rate, the world has decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men. And if those among you who are said to be superior in wisdom and COURAGE, and any other virtue, demean themselves in this way, how shameful is their conduct ! I have seen men of reputation, when they have been condemned, behaving in the strangest manner : they seemed to fancy that they were going to suffer something dreadful if they died, and that they could be immortal if you only allowed them to live ; and I think that they were a dishonor to the state, and that any stranger coming in would say of them that the most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians themselves give honor and command, are no better than women. And I say that these things ought not to be done by those of us who are of reputation ; and if they are done, you ought not to permit them ; you ought rather to show that you are more inclined to condemn, not the man who is quiet, but the man who gets up a doleful scene, and makes the city ridiculous. APOLOGY

Cr. Fear not. There are persons who at no great cost are willing to save you and bring you out of prison ; and as for the informers, you may observe that they are far from being exorbitant in their demands ; a little money will satisfy them. My means, which, as I am sure, are ample, are at your service, and if you have a scruple about spending all mine, here are strangers who will give you the use of theirs ; and one of them, Simmias the Theban, has brought a sum of money for this very purpose ; and Cebes and many others are willing to spend their money too. I say, therefore, do not on that account hesitate about making your escape, and do not say, as you did in the court, that you will have a difficulty in knowing what to do with yourself if you escape. For men will love you in other places to which you may go, and not in Athens only ; there are friends of mine in Thessaly, if you like to go to them, who will value and protect you, and no Thessalian will give you any trouble. Nor can I think that you are justified, Socrates, in betraying your own life when you might be saved ; this is playing into the hands of your enemies and destroyers ; and moreover I should say that you were betraying your children ; for you might bring them up and educate them ; instead of which you go away and leave them, and they will have to take their chance ; and if they do not meet with the usual fate of orphans, there will be small thanks to you. No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nurture and education. But you are choosing the easier part, as I think, not the better and manlier, which would rather have become one who professes virtue in all his actions, like yourself. And, indeed, I am ashamed not only of you, but of us who are your friends, when I reflect that this entire business of yours will be attributed to our want of COURAGE. The trial need never have come on, or might have been brought to another issue ; and the end of all, which is the crowning absurdity, will seem to have been permitted by us, through cowardice and baseness, who might have saved you, as you might have saved yourself, if we had been good for anything (for there was no difficulty in escaping) ; and we did not see how disgraceful, Socrates, and also miserable all this will be to us as well as to you. Make your mind up then, or rather have your mind already made up, for the time of deliberation is over, and there is only one thing to be done, which must be done, if at all, this very night, and which any delay will render all but impossible ; I beseech you therefore, Socrates, to be persuaded by me, and to do as I say. CRITO

Socrates : And such a rescue you call noble, in respect of the endeavor to save those whom it was one’s duty to save ; and this is COURAGE, is it not ? ALCIBIADES I

(115c) Socrates : And is not the COURAGE one thing, and the death another ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Then see if, inasmuch as it is noble, it is also good ; for in the present case you were admitting that the rescue was noble in respect of its COURAGE : now consider this very thing, COURAGE, and say whether it is good or bad. Consider it in this way : which would you choose to have, good things or evil ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Then what do you say of COURAGE ? At what price would you allow yourself to be deprived of it ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : And life and COURAGE are the extreme opposites of death and cowardice ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : So you reckon COURAGE among the best things, and death among the worst. ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Then the rescue of one’s friends in battle, inasmuch as it is noble in respect of the working of good by COURAGE, you have termed noble ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Yes, and mine, noble Alcibiades, to Daedalus, and Daedalus to Hephaestus, son of Zeus ! But take the lines of those people, going back from them : you have a succession of kings reaching to Zeus — on the one hand, kings of Argos and Sparta ; on the other, of Persia, which they have always ruled, and frequently Asia also, as at present ; whereas we are private persons ourselves, and so were our fathers. And then, (121b) suppose that you had to make what show you could of your ancestors, and of Salamis as the native land of Eurysaces, or of Aegina as the home of the yet earlier Aeacus, to impress Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, how you must expect to be laughed at ! Why, I am afraid we are quite outdone by those persons in pride of birth and upbringing altogether. Or have you not observed how great are the advantages of the Spartan kings, and how their wives are kept under statutory ward of the ephors, in order that every possible precaution may be taken against the king being born (121c) of any but the Heracleidae ? And the Persian king so far surpasses us that no one has a suspicion that he could have been born of anybody but the king before him ; and hence the king’s wife has nothing to guard her except fear. When the eldest son, the heir to the throne, is born, first of all the king’s subjects who are in his palace have a feast, and then for ever after on that date the whole of Asia celebrates the king’s birthday with sacrifice and feasting : but when we are born, as the comic poet says, (121d) even the neighbors barely notice it, Alcibiades. After that comes the nurture of the child, not at the hands of a woman-nurse of little worth, but of the most highly approved eunuchs in the king’s service, who are charged with the whole tendance of the new-born child, and especially with the business of making him as handsome as possible by moulding his limbs into a correct shape ; and while doing this they are in high honor. (121e) When the boys are seven years old they are given horses and have riding lessons, and they begin to follow the chase. And when the boy reaches fourteen years he is taken over by the royal tutors, as they call them there : these are four men chosen as the most highly esteemed among the Persians of mature age, namely, the wisest one, the justest one, the most temperate one, (122a) and the bravest one. The first of these teaches him the magian lore of Zoroaster, son of Horomazes ; and that is the worship of the gods : he teaches him also what pertains to a king. The justest teaches him to be truthful all his life long ; the most temperate, not to be mastered by even a single pleasure, in order that he may be accustomed to be a free man and a veritable king, who is the master first of all that is in him, not the slave ; while the bravest trains him to be fearless and undaunted, telling him that to be daunted is to be enslaved. But you, (122b) Alcibiades, had a tutor set over you by Pericles from amongst his servants,who was old as to be the most useless of them, Zopyrus the Thracian. I might describe to you at length the nurture and education of your competitors, were it not too much of a task ; and besides, what I have said suffices to show the rest that follows thereon. But about your birth, Alcibiades, or nurture or education, or about those of any other Athenian, one may say that nobody cares, unless it be some lover whom you chance to have. And again, if you chose to glance at the wealth, the luxury, (122c) the robes with sweeping trains, the anointings with myrrh, the attendant troops of menials, and all the other refinements of the Persians, you would be ashamed at your own case, on perceiving its inferiority to theirs. Should you choose, again, to look at the temperance and orderliness, the facility and placidity, the magnanimity and discipline, the COURAGE and endurance, and the toil-loving, success-loving, honor-loving spirit of the Spartans, you would count yourself but a child(122d) in all these things. If again you regard wealth, and think yourself something in that way, I must not keep silence on this point either, if you are to realize where you stand. For in this respect you have only to look at the wealth of the Spartans, and you will perceive that our riches here are far inferior to theirs. Think of all the land that they have both in their own and in the Messenian country : not one of our estates could compete with theirs in extent and excellence, nor again in ownership of slaves, and especially of those of the helot class, nor yet of horses, (122e) nor of all the flocks and herds that graze in Messene. However, I pass over all these things : but there is more gold and silver privately held in Lacedaemon than in the whole of Greece ; for during many generations treasure has been passing in to them from every part of Greece, and often from the barbarians also, but not passing out to anyone ; and just as in the fable of Aesop, (123a) where the fox remarked to the lion on the direction of the footmarks, the traces of the money going into Lacedaemon are clear enough, but nowhere are any to be seen of it coming out ; so that one can be pretty sure that those people are the richest of the Greeks in gold and silver, and that among themselves the richest is the king ; for the largest and most numerous receipts of the kind are those of the kings, (123b) and besides there is the levy of the royal tribute in no slight amount, which the Spartans pay to their kings. Now, the Spartan fortunes, though great compared with the wealth of other Greeks, are nought beside that of the Persians and their king. For I myself was once told by a trustworthy person, who had been up to their court, that he traversed a very large tract of excellent land, nearly a day’s journey, which the inhabitants called the girdle of the king’s wife, and another which was similarly called her veil ; (123c) and many other fine and fertile regions reserved for the adornment of the consort ; and each of these regions was named after some part of her apparel. So I imagine, if someone should say to the king’s mother Amestris, who was wife of Xerxes, “The son of Deinomache intends to challenge your son ; the mother’s dresses are worth perhaps fifty minae at the outside, while the son has under three hundred acres at Erchiae,” she would wonder to what on earth this (123d) Alcibiades could be trusting, that he proposed to contend against Artaxerxes ; and I expect she would remark — “The only possible things that the man can be trusting to for his enterprise are industry and wisdom ; for these are the only things of any account among the Greeks.” Whereas if she were informed that this Alcibiades who is actually making such an attempt is, in the first place, as yet barely twenty years old, and secondly, altogether uneducated ; and further, that when his lover tells him that he must first learn, and take pains over himself, and practise, (123e) before he enters on a contest with the king, he refuses, and says he will do very well as he is ; I expect she would ask in surprise, “On what, then, can the youngster rely ?” And if we told her, “On beauty, stature, birth, wealth, and mental gifts,” she would conclude we were mad, Alcibiades, when she compared the advantages of her own people in all these respects. And I imagine that even Lampido, daughter of Leotychides (124a) and wife of Archidamus and mother of Agis, who have all been kings, would wonder in the same way, when she compared her people’s resources, at your intention of having a contest with her son despite your bad upbringing. And yet, does it not strike you as disgraceful that our enemies’ wives should have a better idea of the qualities that we need for an attempt against them than we have ourselves ? Ah, my remarkable friend, listen to me and the Delphic motto, (124b) “Know thyself” ; for these people are our competitors, not those whom you think ; and there is nothing that will give us ascendancy over them save only pains and skill. If you are found wanting in these, you will be found wanting also in achievement of renown among Greeks and barbarians both ; and of this I observe you to be more enamored than anyone else ever was of anything. ALCIBIADES I

Soc. Then which of the parts of virtue shall we select ? Must we not select that to which the art of fighting in armour is supposed to conduce ? And is not that generally thought to be COURAGE ? LACHES

Soc. Then, Laches, suppose that we first set about determining the nature of COURAGE, and in the second place proceed to enquire how the young men may attain this quality by the help of studies and pursuits. Tell me, if you can, what is COURAGE. LACHES

La. Indeed, Socrates, I see no difficulty in answering ; he is a man of COURAGE who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy ; there can be no mistake about that. LACHES

Soc. That was my meaning when I said that I was to blame in having put my question badly, and that this was the reason of your answering badly. For I meant to ask you not only about the COURAGE of heavy-armed soldiers, but about the COURAGE of cavalry and every other style of soldier ; and not only who are COURAGEous in war, but who are COURAGEous in perils by sea, and who in disease, or in poverty, or again in politics, are COURAGEous ; and not only who are COURAGEous against pain or fear, but mighty to contend against desires and pleasures, either fixed in their rank or turning upon their enemy. There is this sort of COURAGE — is there not, Laches ? LACHES

Soc. And all these are COURAGEous, but some have COURAGE in pleasures, and some in pains : some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions, as I should imagine. LACHES

Soc. Now I was asking about COURAGE and cowardice in general. And I will begin with COURAGE, and once more ask, What is that common quality, which is the same in all these cases, and which is called COURAGE ? Do you now understand what I mean ? LACHES

Soc. And now, Laches, do you try and tell me in like manner, What is that common quality which is called COURAGE, and which includes all the various uses of the term when applied both to pleasure and pain, and in all the cases to which I was just now referring ? LACHES

La. I should say that COURAGE is a sort of endurance of the soul, if I am to speak of the universal nature which pervades them all. LACHES

Soc. But that is what we must do if we are to answer the question. And yet I cannot say that every kind of endurance is, in my opinion, to be deemed COURAGE. Hear my reason : I am sure, Laches, that you would consider COURAGE to be a very noble quality. LACHES

Soc. Then you would not admit that sort of endurance to be COURAGE — for it is not noble, but COURAGE is noble ? LACHES

Soc. Then, according to you, only the wise endurance is COURAGE ? LACHES

Soc. Or, for example, if a man is a physician, and his son, or some patient of his, has inflammation of the lungs, and begs that he may be allowed to eat or drink something, and the other is firm and refuses ; is that COURAGE ? LACHES

La. No ; that is not COURAGE at all, any more than the last. LACHES

Soc. Whereas COURAGE was acknowledged to be a noble quality. LACHES

Soc. And now on the contrary we are saying that the foolish endurance, which was before held in dishonour, is COURAGE. LACHES

Soc. Then according to your statement, you and I, Laches, are not attuned to the Dorian mode, which is a harmony of words and deeds ; for our deeds are not in accordance with our words. Any one would say that we had COURAGE who saw us in action, but not, I imagine, he who heard us talking about COURAGE just now. LACHES

Soc. The principle of endurance. We too must endure and persevere in the enquiry, and then COURAGE will not laugh at our faintheartedness in searching for COURAGE ; which after all may, very likely, be endurance. LACHES

La. I am ready to go on, Socrates ; and yet I am unused to investigations of this sort. But the spirit of controversy has been aroused in me by what has been said ; and I am really grieved at being thus unable to — express my meaning. For I fancy that I do know the nature of COURAGE ; but, somehow or other, she has slipped away from me, and I cannot get hold of her and tell her nature. LACHES

Soc. Come then, Nicias, and do what you can to help your friends, who are tossing on the waves of argument, and at the last gasp : you see our extremity, and may save us and also settle your own opinion, if you will tell us what you think about COURAGE. LACHES

Nic. I have been thinking, Socrates, that you and Laches are not defining COURAGE in the right way ; for you have forgotten an excellent saying which I have heard from your own lips. LACHES

Soc. I think that I understand him ; and he appears to me to mean that COURAGE is a sort of wisdom. LACHES

Nic. I mean to say, Laches, that COURAGE is the knowledge of that which inspires fear or confidence in war, or in anything. LACHES

La. Why, surely COURAGE is one thing, and wisdom another. LACHES

Soc. Then tell me, Nicias, or rather tell us, for Laches and I are partners in the argument : Do you mean to affirm that COURAGE is the knowledge of the grounds of hope and fear ? LACHES

Soc. Clearly not, Nicias ; not even such a big pig as the Crommyonian sow would be called by you COURAGEous. And this I say not as a joke, but because I think that he who assents to your doctrine, that COURAGE is the knowledge of the grounds of fear and hope, cannot allow that any wild beast is COURAGEous, unless he admits that a lion, or a leopard, or perhaps a boar, or any other animal, has such a degree of wisdom that he knows things which but a few human beings ever know by reason of their difficulty. He who takes your view of COURAGE must affirm that a lion, and a stag, and a bull, and a monkey, have equally little pretensions to COURAGE. LACHES

La. Capital, Socrates ; by the gods, that is truly good. And I hope, Nicias, that you will tell us whether these animals, which we all admit to be COURAGEous, are really wiser than mankind ; or whether you will have the boldness, in the face of universal opinion, to deny their COURAGE. LACHES

Nic. Why, Laches, I do not call animals or any other things which have no fear of dangers, because they are ignorant of them, COURAGEous, but only fearless and senseless. Do you imagine that I should call little children COURAGEous, which fear no dangers because they know none ? There is a difference, to my way of thinking, between fearlessness and COURAGE. I am of opinion that thoughtful COURAGE is a quality possessed by very few, but that rashness and boldness, and fearlessness, which has no forethought, are very common qualities possessed by many men, many women, many children, many animals. And you, and men in general, call by the term “COURAGEous” actions which I call rash ; — my COURAGEous actions are wise actions. LACHES

La. Behold, Socrates, how admirably, as he thinks, he dresses himself out in words, while seeking to deprive of the honour of COURAGE those whom all the world acknowledges to be COURAGEous. LACHES

Soc. Yes, my sweet friend, but a great statesman is likely to have a great intelligence. And I think that the view which is implied in Nicias’ definition of COURAGE is worthy of examination. LACHES

Soc. Yes, I do ; but I must beg of you, Nicias, to begin again. You remember that we originally considered COURAGE to be a part of virtue. LACHES

Soc. Do you agree with me about the parts ? For I say that justice, temperance, and the like, are all of them parts of virtue as well as COURAGE. Would you not say the same ? LACHES

Soc. And the knowledge of these things you call COURAGE ? LACHES

Soc. And COURAGE, my friend, is, as you say, a knowledge of the fearful and of the hopeful ? LACHES

Nic. That is true. Soc. Then COURAGE is not the science which is concerned with the fearful and hopeful, for they are future only ; COURAGE, like the other sciences, is concerned not only with good and evil of the future, but of the present and past, and of any time ? LACHES

Soc. Then the answer which you have given, Nicias, includes only a third part of COURAGE ; but our question extended to the whole nature of COURAGE : and according to your view, that is, according to your present view, COURAGE is not only the knowledge of the hopeful and the fearful, but seems to include nearly every good and evil without reference to time. What do you say to that alteration in your statement ? LACHES

Soc. But then, Nicias, COURAGE, according to this new definition of yours, instead of being a part of virtue only, will be all virtue ? LACHES

Soc. But we were saying that COURAGE is one of the parts of virtue ? LACHES

Soc. Then, Nicias, we have not discovered what COURAGE is. LACHES

Nic. I perceive, Laches, that you think nothing of having displayed your ignorance of the nature of COURAGE, but you look only to see whether I have not made a similar display ; and if we are both equally ignorant of the things which a man who is good for anything should know, that, I suppose, will be of no consequence. You certainly appear to me very like the rest of the world, looking at your neighbour and not at yourself. I am of opinion that enough has been said on the subject which we have been discussing ; and if anything has been imperfectly said, that may be hereafter corrected by the help of Damon, whom you think to laugh down, although you have never seen him, and with the help of others. And when I am satisfied myself, I will freely impart my satisfaction to you, for I think that you are very much in want of knowledge. LACHES

Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing ; and this part of the festival was nearly at an end. They were all in their white array, and games at dice were going on among them. Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves ; but some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd and even with a number of dice, which they took out of little wicker baskets. There was also a circle of lookers-on ; among them was Lysis. He was standing with the other boys and youths, having a crown upon his head, like a fair vision, and not less worthy of praise for his goodness than for his beauty. We left them, and went over to the opposite side of the room, where, finding a quiet place, we sat down ; and then we began to talk. This attracted Lysis, who was constantly turning round to look at us — he was evidently wanting to come to us. For a time he hesitated and had not the COURAGE to come alone ; but first of all, his friend Menexenus, leaving his play, entered the Palaestra from the court, and when he saw Ctesippus and myself, was going to take a seat by us ; and then Lysis, seeing him, followed, and sat down by his side ; and the other boys joined. I should observe that Hippothales, when he saw the crowd, got behind them, where he thought that he would be out of sight of Lysis, lest he should anger him ; and there he stood and listened. LYSIS

Cal. Quite so, Socrates ; and they are really fools, for how can a man be happy who is the servant of anything ? On the contrary, I plainly assert, that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them ; but when they have grown to their greatest he should have COURAGE and intelligence to minister to them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natural justice and nobility. To this however the many cannot attain ; and they blame the strong man because they are ashamed of their own weakness, which they desire to conceal, and hence they say that intemperance is base. As I have remarked already, they enslave the nobler natures, and being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance and justice out of their own cowardice. For if a man had been originally the son of a king, or had a nature capable of acquiring an empire or a tyranny or sovereignty, what could be more truly base or evil than temperance — to a man like him, I say, who might freely be enjoying every good, and has no one to stand in his way, and yet has admitted custom and reason and the opinion of other men to be lords over him ? — must not he be in a miserable plight whom the reputation of justice and temperance hinders from giving more to his friends than to his enemies, even though he be a ruler in his city ? Nay, Socrates, for you profess to be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this : — that luxury and intemperance and licence, if they be provided with means, are virtue and happiness — all the rest is a mere bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of men, nothing worth. GORGIAS

Soc. And were you not saying just now, that some COURAGE implied knowledge ? GORGIAS

Soc. And you were speaking of COURAGE and knowledge as two things different from one another ? GORGIAS

Soc. And would you say that COURAGE differed from pleasure ? GORGIAS

Soc. Well, then, let us remember that Callicles, the Acharnian, says that pleasure and good are the same ; but that knowledge and COURAGE are not the same, either with one another, or with the good. GORGIAS

Then Darius, accusing us and the Eretrians of having plotted against Sardis, dispatched fifty myriads of men in transports and warships, together with three hundred ships of war, and Datis as their commander ; (240b) and him the king ordered to bring back the Eretrians and Athenians in captivity, if he wished to keep his own head. He then sailed to Eretria against men who were amongst the most famous warriors in Greece at that time, and by no means few in number ; them he overpowered within three days, and lest any should escape he made a thorough search of the whole of their country and his method was this. His soldiers marched to the limits of Eretria and posted themselves at intervals from sea to sea ; (240c) then they joined hands and passed through the whole of the country, in order that they might be able to report to the king that not a man had escaped out of their hands. With the same design they sailed off from Eretria to Marathon, supposing that they would have an easy task in leading the Athenians captive under the same yoke of bondage as the Eretrians. And while these actions were being accomplished in part, and in part attempted, not one of the Greeks lent aid to the Eretrians nor yet to the Athenians, save only the Lacedaemonians (and they arrived on the day after the battle) ; all the rest were terrorstricken, and, hugging their present security, (240d) made no move. It is by realizing this position of affairs that we can appreciate what manner of men those were, in point of valor, who awaited the onset of the barbarians’ power, chastised all Asia’s insolent pride, and were the first to rear trophies of victory over the barbarians ; whereby they pointed the way to the others and taught them to know that the Persian power was not invincible, since there is no multitude of men or money but COURAGE conquers it. (240e) I, therefore, affirm that those men were the begetters not merely of our bodies but of our freedom also, and the freedom of all the dwellers in this continent ; for it was the example of that exploit of theirs which fired the Greeks with COURAGE to risk the later battles in the cause of salvation, learning their lesson from the men of Marathon. MENEXENUS

Soc. Next, let us consider the goods of the soul : they are temperance, justice, COURAGE, quickness of apprehension, memory, magnanimity, and the like ? MENO

Soc. And such of these as are not knowledge, but of another sort, are sometimes profitable and sometimes hurtful ; as, for example, COURAGE wanting prudence, which is only a sort of confidence ? When a man has no sense he is harmed by COURAGE, but when he has sense he is profited ? MENO

The youth, overpowered by the question blushed, and in his perplexity looked at me for help ; and I, knowing that he was disconcerted, said : Take COURAGE, Cleinias, and answer like a man whichever you think ; for my belief is that you will derive the greatest benefit from their questions. EUTHYDEMUS

And what other goods are there ? I said. What do you say of temperance, justice, COURAGE : do you not verily and indeed think, Cleinias, that we shall be more right in ranking them as goods than in not ranking them as goods ? For a dispute might possibly arise about this. What then do you say ? EUTHYDEMUS

Soc. Well, then, let me go on in the hope of making you believe in the originality of the rest. What remains after justice ? I do not think that we have as yet discussed COURAGE (andreia), — injustice (adikia), which is obviously nothing more than a hindrance to the penetrating principle (diaiontos), need not be considered. Well, then, the name of andreia seems to imply a battle ; — this battle is in the world of existence, and according to the doctrine of flux is only the counterflux (enantia rhon) : if you extract the d from andreia, the name at once signifies the thing, and you may clearly understand that andreia is not the stream opposed to every stream, but only to that which is contrary to justice, for otherwise COURAGE would not have been praised. The words arren (male) and aner (man) also contain a similar allusion to the same principle of the upward flux (te ano rhon). Gune (woman) I suspect to be the same word as goun (birth) : thelu (female) appears to be partly derived from thele (the teat), because the teat is like rain, and makes things flourish (tethelenai). CRATYLUS

Soc. Then fear not, but have the COURAGE to admit that one name may be correctly and another incorrectly given ; and do not insist that the name shall be exactly the same with the thing ; but allow the occasional substitution of a wrong letter, and if of a letter also of a noun in a sentence, and if of a noun in a sentence also of a sentence which is not appropriate to the matter, and acknowledge that the thing may be named, and described, so long as the general character of the thing which you are describing is retained ; and this, as you will remember, was remarked by Hermogenes and myself in the particular instance of the names of the letters. CRATYLUS

And Acusilaus agrees with Hesiod. Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live at principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able to implant so well as love. Of what am I speaking ? Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour ; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms ? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger ? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time ; Love would inspire him. That COURAGE which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover. SYMPOSIUM

I should be strangely forgetful, Agathon, replied Socrates, of the COURAGE and magnanimity which you showed when your own compositions were about to be exhibited, and you came upon the stage with the actors and faced the vast theatre altogether undismayed, if I thought that your nerves could be fluttered at a small party of friends. SYMPOSIUM

herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness — that she walks not upon the hard but upon the soft. Let us adduce a similar proof of the tenderness of Love ; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of both god, and men, which are of all things the softest : in them he walks and dwells and makes his home. Not in every soul without exception, for Where there is hardness he departs, where there is softness there he dwells ; and nestling always with his feet and in all manner of ways in the softest of soft places, how can he be other than the softest of all things ? Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as the youngest, and also he is of flexile form ; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way into and out of every soulsoul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especial manner the attribute of Love ; ungrace and love are always at war with one another. The fairness of his complexion is revealed by his habitation among the flowers ; for he dwells not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether of body or soul or aught else, but in the place of flowers and scents, there he sits and abides. Concerning the beauty of the god I have said enough ; and yet there remains much more which I might say. Of his virtue I have now to speak : his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any god or any man ; for he suffers not by force if he suffers ; force comes not near him, neither when he acts does he act by force. For all men in all things serve him of their own free will, and where there is voluntary agreement, there, as the laws which are the lords of the city say, is justice. And not only is he just but exceedingly temperate, for Temperance is the acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and no pleasure ever masters Love ; he is their master and they are his servants ; and if he conquers them he must be temperate indeed. As to COURAGE, even the God of War is no match for him ; he is the captive and Love is the lord, for love, the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the tale runs ; and the master is stronger than the servant. And if he conquers the bravest of all others, he must be himself the bravest. SYMPOSIUM

Of his COURAGE and justice and temperance I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom — and according to the measure of my ability I must try to do my best. In the first place he is a poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art), and he is also the source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he were not himself a poet. And at the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he had no music in him before ; this also is a proof that Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts ; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing ? Are they not all the works his wisdom, born and begotten of him ? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame ? — he whom Love touches riot walks in darkness. The arts of medicine and archery and divination were discovered by Apollo, under the guidance of love and desire ; so that he too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody of the Muses, the metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire of Zeus over gods and men, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them. And so Love set in order the empire of the gods — the love of beauty, as is evident, for with deformity Love has no concern. In the days of old, as I began by saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were ruled by Necessity ; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore, Phaedrus, I say of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, and the cause of what is fairest and best in all other things. And there comes into my mind a line of poetry in which he is said to be the god who SYMPOSIUM

I have told you one tale, and now I must tell you another, which is worth hearing, ‘Of the doings and sufferings of the enduring man’, while he was on the expedition. One morning he was thinking about something which he could not resolve ; he would not give it up, but continued thinking from early dawn until noon — there he stood fixed in thought ; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the rumour ran through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about something ever since the break of day. At last, in the evening after supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood until the following morning ; and with the return of light he offered up a prayer to the sun, and went his way. I will also tell, if you please — and indeed I am bound to tell of his COURAGE in battle ; for who but he saved my life ? Now this was the engagement in which I received the prize of valour : for I was wounded and he would not leave me, but he rescued me and my arms ; and he ought to have received the prize of valour which the generals wanted to confer on me partly on account of my rank, and I told them so, (this, again Socrates will not impeach or deny), but he was more eager than the generals that I and not he should have the prize. There was another occasion on which his behaviour was very remarkable — in the flight of the army after the battle of Delium, where he served among the heavy-armed — I had a better opportunity of seeing him than at Potidaea, for I was myself on horseback, and therefore comparatively out of danger. He and Laches were retreating, for the troops were in flight, and I met them and told them not to be disCOURAGEd, and promised to remain with them ; and there you might see him, Aristophanes, as you describe, just as he is in the streets of Athens, stalking like a and rolling his eyes, calmly contemplating enemies as well as friends, and making very intelligible to anybody, even from a distance, that whoever attacked him would be likely to meet with a stout resistance ; and in this way he and his companion escaped — for this is the sort of man who is never touched in war ; those only are pursued who are running away headlong. I particularly observed how superior he was to Laches in presence of mind. Many are the marvels which I might narrate in praise of Socrates ; most of his ways might perhaps be paralleled in another man, but his absolute unlikeness to any human being that is or ever has been is perfectly astonishing. You may imagine Brasidas and others to have been like Achilles ; or you may imagine Nestor and Antenor to have been like Perides ; and the same may be said of other famous men, but of this strange being you will never be able to find any likeness, however remote, either among men who now are or who ever have been — other than that which I have already suggested of Silenus and the satyrs ; and they represent in a figure not only himself, but his words. For, although I forgot to mention this to you before, his words are like the images of Silenus which open ; they are ridiculous when you first hear them ; he clothes himself in language that is like the skin of the wanton satyr — for his talk is of pack-asses and smiths and cobblers and curriers, and he is always repeating the same things in the same words, so that any ignorant or inexperienced person might feel disposed to laugh at him ; but he who opens the bust and sees what is within will find that they are the only words which have a meaning in them, and also the most divine, abounding in fair images of virtue, and of the widest comprehension, or rather extending to the whole duty of a good and honourable man. SYMPOSIUM

There is a virtue, Simmias, which is named COURAGE. Is not that a special attribute of the philosopher ? PHAEDO

For the COURAGE and temperance of other men, if you will consider them, are really a contradiction. PHAEDO

Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or pleasure or pain, which are measured like coins, the greater with the less, is not the exchange of virtue. O my dear Simmias, is there not one true coin for which all things ought to exchange ? — and that is wisdom ; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether COURAGE or temperance or justice. And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her ? But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her ; but in the true exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance, and justice, and COURAGE, and wisdom herself are a purgation of them. And I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods. For “many,” as they say in the mysteries, “are the thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics,” — meaning, as I interpret the words, the true philosophers. In the number of whom I have been seeking, according to my ability, to find a place during my whole life ; whether I have sought in a right way or not, and whether I have succeeded or not, I shall truly know in a little while, if God will, when I myself arrive in the other world : that is my belief. And now, Simmias and Cebes, I have answered those who charge me with not grieving or repining at parting from you and my masters in this world ; and I am right in not repining, for I believe that I shall find other masters and friends who are as good in the world below. But all men cannot believe this, and I shall be glad if my words have any more success with you than with the judges of the Athenians. PHAEDO

Socrates inclined his head to the speaker and listened. I like your COURAGE, he said, in reminding us of this. But you do not observe that there is a difference in the two cases. For then we were speaking of opposites in the concrete, and now of the essential opposite which, as is affirmed, neither in us nor in nature can ever be at variance with itself : then, my friend, we were speaking of things in which opposites are inherent and which are called after them, but now about the opposites which are inherent in them and which give their name to them ; these essential opposites will never, as we maintain, admit of generation into or out of one another. At the same time, turning to Cebes, he said : Were you at all disconcerted, Cebes, at our friend’s objection ? PHAEDO

I do not mean to affirm that the description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true — a man of sense ought hardly to say that. But I do say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, that something of the kind is true. The venture is a glorious one, and he ought to comfort himself with words like these, which is the reason why lengthen out the tale. Wherefore, I say, let a man be of good cheer about his soul, who has cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien to him, and rather hurtful in their effects, and has followed after the pleasures of knowledge in this life ; who has adorned the soul in her own proper jewels, which are temperance, and justice, and COURAGE, and nobility, and truth — in these arrayed she is ready to go on her journey to the world below, when her time comes. You, Simmias and Cebes, and all other men, will depart at some time or other. Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls. Soon I must drink the poison ; and I think that I had better repair to the bath first, in order that the women may not have the trouble of washing my body after I am dead. PHAEDO

And not only while his love continues is he mischievous and unpleasant, but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives of interest. The hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of another master ; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance are his bosom’s lords ; but the beloved has not discovered the change which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to his recollection former sayings and doings ; he believes himself to be speaking to the same person, and the other, not having the COURAGE to confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil the oaths and promises which he made when under the dominion of folly, and having now grown wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did or to be as he was before. And so he runs away and is constrained to be a defaulter ; the oyster-shell has fallen with the other side uppermost — he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelled to follow him with passion and imprecation not knowing that he ought never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a sensible non-lover ; and that in making such a choice he was giving himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being, hurtful to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful to the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. Consider this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness ; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you : PHAEDRUS

And now they are at the spot and behold the flashing beauty of the beloved ; which when the charioteer sees, his memory is carried to the true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal. He sees her, but he is afraid and falls backwards in adoration, and by his fall is compelled to pull back the reins with such violence as to bring both the steeds on their haunches, the one willing and unresisting, the unruly one very unwilling ; and when they have gone back a little, the one is overcome with shame and wonder, and his whole soul is bathed in perspiration ; the other, when the pain is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of COURAGE and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and guilty of desertion. Again they refuse, and again he urges them on, and will scarce yield to their prayer that he would wait until another time. When the appointed hour comes, they make as if they had forgotten, and he reminds them, fighting and neighing and dragging them on, until at length he, on the same thoughts intent, forces them to draw near again. And when they are near he stoops his head and puts up his tail, and takes the bit in his teeth. and pulls shamelessly. Then the charioteer is worse off than ever ; he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild steed and covers his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his legs and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. And when this has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer, and when he sees the beautiful one he is ready to die of fear. And from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. PHAEDRUS

Soc. Do you hear, Theaetetus, what Theodorus says ? The philosopher, whom you would not like to disobey, and whose word ought to be a command to a young man, bids me interrogate you. Take COURAGE, then, and nobly say what you think that knowledge is. THEAETETUS

Soc. Too true, my friend, as I well know ; there is, however, one peculiarity in their case : when they begin to reason in private about their dislike of philosophy, if they have the COURAGE to hear the argument out and do not run away, they grow at last strangely discontented with themselves ; their rhetoric fades away, and they become helpless as children. These however are digressions from which we must now desist, or they will overflow, and drown the original argument ; to which, if you please, we will now return. THEAETETUS

Str. Let me put the matter in another way : I suppose that you would consider COURAGE to be a part of virtue ? STATESMAN

Str. And you would think temperance to be different from COURAGE ; and likewise to be a part of virtue ? STATESMAN

Str. You fancy that this is all so easy : Well, let us consider these notions with reference to the opposite classes of action under which they fall. When we praise quickness and energy and acuteness, whether of mind or body or sound, we express our praise of the quality which we admire by one word, and that one word is manliness or COURAGE. STATESMAN

Str. We exclaim How calm ! How temperate ! in admiration of the slow and quiet working of the intellect, and of steadiness and gentleness in action, of smoothness and depth of voice, and of all rhythmical movement and of music in general, when these have a proper solemnity. Of all such actions we predicate not COURAGE, but a name indicative of order. STATESMAN

Str. The rest of the citizens, out of whom, if they have education, something noble may be made, and who are capable of being united by the Statesman, the kingly art blends and weaves together ; taking on the one hand those whose natures tend rather to COURAGE, which is the stronger element and may be regarded as the warp, and on the other hand those which incline to order and gentleness, and which are represented in the figure as spun thick and soft after the manner of the woof — these, which are naturally opposed, she seeks to bind and weave together in the following manner : STATESMAN

Str. Because COURAGE, when untempered by the gentler nature during many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts forth into downright madness. STATESMAN

Str. And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and has no element of COURAGE in many successive generations, is apt to grow too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless. STATESMAN

Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable ; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles ; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean ; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits ; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in COURAGE and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods ; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way ; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.” TIMAEUS

As I said at first, when all things were in disorder God created in each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in relation to each other, all the measures and harmonies which they could possibly receive. For in those days nothing had any proportion except by accident ; nor did any of the things which now have names deserve to be named at all — as, for example, fire, water, and the rest of the elements. All these the creator first set in order, and out of them he constructed the universe, which was a single animal comprehending in itself all other animals, mortal and immortal. Now of the divine, he himself was the creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to his offspring. And they, imitating him, received from him the immortal principle of the soul ; and around this they proceeded to fashion a mortal body, and. made it to be the vehicle of the so and constructed within the body a soul of another nature which was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible affections — first of all, pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil ; then, pain, which deters from good ; also rashness and fear, two foolish counsellors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope easily led astray — these they mingled with irrational sense and with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so framed man. Wherefore, fearing to pollute the divine any more than was absolutely unavoidable, they gave to the mortal nature a separate habitation in another part of the body, placing the neck between them to be the isthmus and boundary, which they constructed between the head and breast, to keep them apart. And in the breast, and in what is termed the thorax, they encased the mortal soul ; and as the one part of this was superior and the other inferior they divided the cavity of the thorax into two parts, as the women’s and men’s apartments are divided in houses, and placed the midriff to be a wall of partition between them. That part of the inferior soul which is endowed with COURAGE and passion and loves contention they settled nearer the head, midway between the midriff and the neck, in order that it might be under the rule of reason and might join with it in controlling and restraining the desires when they are no longer willing of their own accord to obey the word of command issuing from the citadel. TIMAEUS

Soc. Is there not an absurdity in arguing that there is nothing good or noble in the body, or in anything else, but that good is in the soul only, and that the only good of the soul is pleasure ; and that COURAGE or temperance or understanding, or any other good of the soul, is not really a good ? — and is there not yet a further absurdity in our being compelled to say that he who has a feeling of pain and not of pleasure is bad at the time when he is suffering pain, even though he be the best of men ; and again, that he who has a feeling of pleasure, in so far as he is pleased at the time when he is pleased, in that degree excels in virtue ? PHILEBUS

And such an one is far better, as we affirm, than the other in a more difficult kind of war, much in the same degree as justice and temperance and wisdom, when united with COURAGE, are better than COURAGE only ; for a man cannot be faithful and good in civil strife without having all virtue. But in the war of which Tyrtaeus speaks, many a mercenary soldier will take his stand and be ready to die at his post, and yet they are generally and almost without exception insolent, unjust, violent men, and the most senseless of human beings. You will ask what the conclusion is, and what I am seeking to prove : I maintain that the divine legislator of Crete, like any other who is worthy of consideration, will always and above all things in making laws have regard to the greatest virtue ; which, according to Theognis, is loyalty in the hour of danger, and may be truly called perfect justice. Whereas, that virtue which Tyrtaeus highly praises is well enough, and was praised by the poet at the right time, yet in place and dignity may be said to be only fourth rate. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. You ought to have said, Stranger — The Cretan laws are with reason famous among the Hellenes ; for they fulfil the object of laws, which is to make those who use them happy ; and they confer every sort of good. Now goods are of two kinds : there are human and there are divine goods, and the human hang upon the divine ; and the state which attains the greater, at the same time acquires the less, or, not having the greater, has neither. Of the lesser goods the first is health, the second beauty, the third strength, including swiftness in running and bodily agility generally, and the fourth is wealth, not the blind god (Pluto), but one who is keen of sight, if only he has wisdom for his companion. For wisdom is chief and leader of the divine dass of goods, and next follows temperance ; and from the union of these two with COURAGE springs justice, and fourth in the scale of virtue is COURAGE. All these naturally take precedence of the other goods, and this is the order in which the legislator must place them, and after them he will enjoin the rest of his ordinances on the citizens with a view to these, the human looking to the divine, and the divine looking to their leader mind. Some of his ordinances will relate to contracts of marriage which they make one with another, and then to the procreation and education of children, both male and female ; the duty of the lawgiver will be to take charge of his citizens, in youth and age, and at every time of life, and to give them punishments and rewards ; and in reference to all their intercourse with one another, he ought to consider their pains and pleasures and desires, and the vehemence of all their passions ; he should keep a watch over them, and blame and praise them rightly by the mouth of the laws themselves. Also with regard to anger and terror, and the other perturbations of the soul, which arise out of misfortune, and the deliverances from them which prosperity brings, and the experiences which come to men in diseases, or in war, or poverty, or the opposite of these ; in all these states he should determine and teach what is the good and evil of the condition of each. In the next place, the legislator has to be careful how the citizens make their money and in what way they spend it, and to have an eye to their mutual contracts and dissolutions of contracts, whether voluntary or involuntary : he should see how they order all this, and consider where justice as well as injustice is found or is wanting in their several dealings with one another ; and honour those who obey the law, and impose fixed penalties on those who disobey, until the round of civil life is ended, and the time has come for the consideration of the proper funeral rites and honours of the dead. And the lawgiver reviewing his work, will appoint guardians to preside over these things — some who walk by intelligence, others by true opinion only, and then mind will bind together all his ordinances and show them to be in harmony with temperance and justice, and not with wealth or ambition. This is the spirit, Stranger, in which I was and am desirous that you should pursue the subject. And I want to know the nature of all these things, and how they are arranged in the laws of Zeus, as they are termed, and in those of the Pythian Apollo, which Minos and Lycurgus gave ; and how the order of them is discovered to his eyes, who has experience in laws gained either by study or habit, although they are far from being self-evident to the rest of mankind like ourselves. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. I think that we must begin again as before, and first consider the habit of COURAGE ; and then we will go on and discuss another and then another form of virtue, if you please. In this way we shall have a model of the whole ; and with these and similar discourses we will beguile the way. And when we have gone through all the virtues, we will show, by the grace of God, that the institutions of which I was speaking look to virtue. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Excellent, O Lacedaemonian Stranger. But how ought we to define COURAGE ? Is it to be regarded only as a combat against fears and pains, or also against desires and pleasures, and against flatteries ; which exercise such a tremendous power, that they make the hearts even of respectable citizens to melt like wax ? LAWS BOOK I

Ath. But surely the lawgivers of Crete and Lacedaemon have not legislated for a COURAGE which is lame of one leg, able only to meet attacks which come from the left, but impotent against the insidious flatteries which come from the right ? LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Suppose, Cleinias and Megillus, that we consider the virtue which follows next of those which we intended to discuss (for after COURAGE comes temperance), what institutions shall we find relating to temperance, either in Crete or Lacedaemon, which, like your military institutions, differ from those of any ordinary state. LAWS BOOK I

Meg. That is not an easy question to answer ; still I should say that the common meals and gymnastic exercises have been excellently devised for the promotion both of temperance and COURAGE. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. And when we want to make him rightly fearful, must we not introduce him to shameless pleasures, and train him to take up arms against them, and to overcome them ? Or does this principle apply to COURAGE only, and must he who would be perfect in valour fight against and overcome his own natural character — since if he be unpractised and inexperienced in such conflicts, he will not be half the man which he might have been — and are we to suppose, that with temperance it is otherwise, and that he who has never fought with the shameless and unrighteous temptations of his pleasures and lusts, and conquered them, in earnest and in play, by word, deed, and act, will still be perfectly temperate ? LAWS BOOK I

Ath. No ; but, if there had been, might not such a draught have been of use to the legislator as a test of COURAGE ? Might we not go and say to him, “O legislator, whether you are legislating for the Cretan, or for any other state, would you not like to have a touchstone of the COURAGE and cowardice of your citizens ?” LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Now, let us remember, as we were saying, that there are two things which should be cultivated in the soul : first, the greatest COURAGE ; secondly, the greatest fear — LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Thank you for reminding me. But now, as the habit of COURAGE and fearlessness is to be trained amid fears, let us consider whether the opposite quality is not also to be trained among opposites. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Thus far I too should agree with the many, that the excellence of music is to be measured by pleasure. But the pleasure must not be that of chance persons ; the fairest music is that which delights the best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one<one man who is pre-eminent in virtue and education. And therefore the judges must be men of character, for they will require both wisdom and COURAGE ; the true judge must not draw his inspiration from the theatre, nor ought he to be unnerved by the clamour of the many and his own incapacity ; nor again, knowing the truth, ought he through cowardice and unmanliness carelessly to deliver a lying judgment, with the very same lips which have just appealed to the Gods before he judged. He is sitting not as the disciple of the theatre, but, in his proper place, as their instructor, and he ought to be the enemy of all pandering to the pleasure of the spectators. The ancient and common custom of Hellas, which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, did certainly leave the judgment to the body of spectators, who determined the victor by show of hands. But this custom has been the destruction of the poets ; for they are now in the habit of composing with a view to please the bad taste of their judges, and the result is that the spectators instruct themselves ; — and also it has been the ruin of the theatre ; they ought to be having characters put before them better than their own, and so receiving a higher pleasure, but now by their own act the opposite result follows. What inference is to be drawn from all this ? Shall I tell you ? LAWS BOOK II

Ath. When a man has health and wealth and a tyranny which lasts, and when he is preeminent in strength and COURAGE, and has the gift of immortality, and none of the so-called evils which counter-balance these goods, but only the injustice and insolence of his own nature — of such an one you are, I suspect, unwilling to believe that he is miserable rather than happy. LAWS BOOK II

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. LAWS BOOK II

Ath. When these larger habitations grew up out of the lesser original ones, each of the lesser ones would survive in the larger ; every family would be under the rule of the eldest, and, owing to their separation from one another, would have peculiar customs in things divine and human, which they would have received from their several parents who had educated them ; and these customs would incline them to order, when the parents had the element of order in their nature, and to COURAGE, when they had the element of COURAGE. And they would naturally stamp upon their children, and upon their children’s children, their own likings ; and, as we are saying, they would find their way into the larger society, having already their own peculiar laws. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. I suppose that COURAGE is a part of virtue ? LAWS BOOK III

Now, what lives are they, and how many in which, having searched out and beheld the objects of will and desire and their opposites, and making of them a law, choosing, I say, the dear and the pleasant and the best and noblest, a man may live in the happiest way possible ? Let us say that the temperate life is one kind of life, and the rational another, and the COURAGEous another, and the healthful another ; and to these four let us oppose four other lives — the foolish, the cowardly, the intemperate, the diseased. He who knows the temperate life will describe it as in all things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid desires and loves not insane ; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and stinging desires, and loves utterly insane ; and in the temperate life the pleasures exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of the two lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other more painful, and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is that no man is voluntarily intemperate ; but that the whole multitude of men lack temperance in their lives, either from ignorance, or from want of self-control, or both. And the same holds of the diseased and healthy life ; they both have pleasures and pains, but in health the pleasure exceeds the pain, and in sickness the pain exceeds the pleasure. Now our intention in choosing the lives is not that the painful should exceed, but the life in which pain is exceeded by pleasure we have determined to be the more pleasant life. And we should say that the temperate life has the elements both of pleasure and pain fewer and smaller and less frequent than the intemperate, and the wise life than the foolish life, and the life of COURAGE than the life of cowardice ; one of each pair exceeding in pleasure and the other in pain, the COURAGEous surpassing the cowardly, and the wise exceeding the foolish. And so the one dass of lives exceeds the other class in pleasure ; the temperate and COURAGEous and wise and healthy exceed the cowardly and foolish and intemperate and diseased lives ; and generally speaking, that which has any virtue, whether of body or soul, is pleasanter than the vicious life, and far superior in beauty and rectitude and excellence and reputation, and causes him who lives accordingly to be infinitely happier than the opposite. LAWS BOOK V

Ath. But if fear has such a power we ought to infer from these facts, that every soul which from youth upward has been familiar with fears, will be made more liable to fear, and every one will allow that this is the way to form a habit of cowardice and not of COURAGE. LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. And, on the other hand, the habit of overcoming, from our youth upwards, the fears and terrors which beset us, may be said to be an exercise of COURAGE. LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. Again, we must distinguish and determine on some general principle what songs are suitable to women, and what to men, and must assign to them their proper melodies and rhythms. It is shocking for a whole harmony to be inharmonical, or for a rhythm to be unrhythmical, and this will happen when the melody is inappropriate to them. And therefore the legislator must assign to these also their forms. Now both sexes have melodies and rhythms which of necessity belong to them ; and those of women are clearly enough indicated by their natural difference. The grand, and that which tends to COURAGE, may be fairly called manly ; but that which inclines to moderation and temperance, may be declared both in law and in ordinary speech to be the more womanly quality. This, then, will be the general order of them. LAWS BOOK VII

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. LAWS BOOK VII

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. LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. And shall the warriors of our city, who are destined when occasion calli to enter the greatest of all contests, and to fight for their lives, and their children, and their property, and the whole city, be worse prepared than boxers ? And will the legislator, because he is afraid that their practising with one another may appear to some ridiculous, abstain from commanding them to go out and fight ; will he not ordain that soldiers shall perform lesser exercises without arms every day, making dancing and all gymnastic tend to this end ; and also will he not require that they shall practise some gymnastic exercises, greater as well as lesser, as often as every month ; and that they shall have contests one with another in every part of the country, seizing upon posts and lying in ambush, and imitating in every respect the reality of war ; fighting with boxing-gloves and hurling javelins, and using weapons somewhat dangerous, and as nearly as possible like the true ones, in order that the sport may not be altogether without fear, but may have terrors and to a certain degree show the man who has and who has not COURAGE ; and that the honour and dishonour which are assigned to them respectively, may prepare the whole city for the true conflict of life ? If any one dies in these mimic contests, the homicide is involuntary, and we will make the slayer, when he has been purified according to law, to be pure of blood, considering that if a few men should die, others as good as they will be born ; but that if fear is dead then the citizens will never find a test of superior and inferior natures, which is a far greater evil to the state than the loss of a few. LAWS BOOK VIII

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. LAWS BOOK VIII

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 ? LAWS BOOK VIII

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 ? LAWS BOOK VIII

Ath. Yes ; and COURAGE is a part of virtue, and cowardice of vice ? LAWS BOOK X

When a man makes an agreement which he does not fulfil, unless the agreement be of a nature which the law or a vote of the assembly does not allow, or which he has made under the influence of some unjust compulsion, or which he is prevented from fulfilling against his will by some unexpected chance, the other party may go to law with him in the courts of the tribes, for not having completed his agreement, if the parties are not able previously to come to terms before arbiters or before their neighbours. The class of craftsmen who have furnished human life with the arts is dedicated to Hephaestus and Athene ; and there is a class of craftsmen who preserve the works of all craftsmen by arts of defence, the votaries of Ares and Athene, to which divinities they too are rightly dedicated. All these continue through life serving the country and the people ; some of them are leaders in battle ; others make for hire implements and works, and they ought not to deceive in such matters, out of respect to the Gods who are their ancestors. If any craftsman through indolence omit to execute his work in a given time, not reverencing the God who gives him the means of life, but considering, foolish fellow, that he is his own God and will let him off easily, in the first place, he shall suffer at the hands of the God, and in the second place, the law shall follow in a similar spirit. He shall owe to him who contracted with him the price of the works which he has failed in performing, and he shall begin again and execute them gratis in the given time. When a man undertakes a work, the law gives him the same advice which was given to the seller, that he should not attempt to raise the price, but simply ask the value ; this the law enjoins also on the contractor ; for the craftsman assuredly knows the value of his work. Wherefore, in free states the man of art ought not to attempt to impose upon private individuals by the help of his art, which is by nature a true thing ; and he who is wronged in a matter of this sort, shall have a right of action against the party who has wronged him. And if any one lets out work to a craftsman, and does not pay him duly according to the lawful agreement, disregarding Zeus the guardian of the city and Athene, who are the partners of the state, and overthrows the foundations of society for the sake of a little gain, in his case let the law and the Gods maintain the common bonds of the state. And let him who, having already received the work in exchange, does not pay the price in the time agreed, pay double the price ; and if a year has elapsed, although interest is not to be taken on loans, yet for every drachma which he owes to the contractor let him pay a monthly interest of an obol. Suits about these matters are to be decided by the courts of the tribes ; and by the way, since we have mentioned craftsmen at all, we must not forget the other craft of war, in which generals and tacticians are the craftsmen, who undertake voluntarily the work of our safety, as other craftsmen undertake other public works ; — if they execute their work well the law will never tire of praising him who gives them those honours which are the just rewards of the soldier ; but if any one, having already received the benefit of any noble service in war, does not make the due return of honour, the law will blame him. Let this then be the law, having an ingredient of praise, not compelling but advising the great body of the citizens to honour the brave men who are the saviours of the whole state, whether by their COURAGE or by their military skill ; — they should honour them, I say, in the second place ; for the first and highest tribute of respect is to be given to those who are able above other men to honour the words of good legislators. LAWS BOOK XI

Ath. And further, all four of them we call one ; for we say that COURAGE is virtue, and that prudence is virtue, and the same of the two others, as if they were in reality not many but one, that is, virtue. LAWS BOOK XII

Ath. Ask me what is that one thing which call virtue, and then again speak of as two, one part being COURAGE and the other wisdom. I will tell you how that occurs : — One of them has to do with fear ; in this the beasts also participate, and quite young children — I mean COURAGE ; for a COURAGEous temper is a gift of nature and not of reason. But without reason there never has been, or is, or will be a wise and understanding soul ; it is of a different nature. LAWS BOOK XII

Ath. And is there anything greater to the legislator and the guardian of the law, and to him who thinks that he excels all other men in virtue, and has won the palm of excellence, that these very qualities of which we are now speaking — COURAGE, temperance, wisdom, justice ? LAWS BOOK XII

Ath. Then, as would appear, we must compel the guardians of our divine state to perceive, in the first place, what that principle is which is the same in all the four — the same, as we affirm, in COURAGE and in temperance, and in justice and in prudence, and which, being one, we call as we ought, by the single name of virtue. To this, my friends, we will, if you please, hold fast, and not let go until we have sufficiently explained what that is to which we are to look, whether to be regarded as one, or as a whole, or as both, or in whatever way. Are we likely ever to be in a virtuous condition, if we cannot tell whether virtue is many, or four, or one ? Certainly, if we take counsel among ourselves, we shall in some way contrive that this principle has a place amongst us ; but if you have made up your mind that we should let the matter alone, we will. LAWS BOOK XII

Moreover, let us turn back some little way in our discussion (977c) and recall how entirely right we were in conceiving that if we should deprive human nature of number we should never attain to any understanding. For then the soul of that creature which could not tell things would never any more be able, one may say, to attain virtue in general ; and the creature that did not know two and three, or odd or even, and was completely ignorant of number, could never clearly tell of things about which it had only acquired sensations and memories. From the attainment of ordinary virtue — (977d) COURAGE and temperance — it is certainly not debarred : but if a man is deprived of true telling he can never become wise, and he who has not the acquirement of wisdom — the greatest part of virtue as a whole — can no more achieve the perfect goodness which may make him happy. Thus it is absolutely necessary to postulate number ; and why this is necessary can be shown by a still fuller argument than any that has been advanced. But here is one that will be particularly correct — that of the properties of the other arts, which we recounted just now in granting the existence of all the arts, (977e) not a single one can remain, but all of them are utterly defective, when once you remove numeration. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

So these (985c) five being really existent creatures, wherever any of us came upon them, either happening upon them in the dream-world of sleep, or by something spoken to persons listening in health, or equally in sickness, through ominous utterances and prophecies, or again when they have arrived at the end of life opinions that occur to us both in private and in public, whence many sanctities of many beings have arisen, and others shall arise — in regard to all these the lawgiver who possesses even the slightest degree of mind will never dare by innovations to turn his city to a divine worship which is (985d) lacking in certainty. Nor indeed will he put a stop to sacrifices on which the ancestral custom has pronounced, when he knows nothing at all of the matter, just as it is not possible for mortal nature to know about such things. And of the gods who are really manifest to us the same statement must surely hold — that those men are most evil who have not COURAGE to tell and make manifest to us that these are likewise gods, but without any frenzied rites, or any tribute of the honors that are their due. But as things are, we have a strange conjunction (985e) of proceedings : for it is as though one of us should see the sun or moon being born and all of us looking on, and should utter no word through some impotence of speech, and should not also at the same time be zealous, so far as in him lay, when they lacked their share of honor, to bring them in all evidence to an honored place, and cause festivals and sacrifices to be offered to them, and apportion to each a reserved space of time for the greater or lesser length of its year, as may happen : (986a) would it not be agreed both by himself and by another who observed it that he would justly be described as an evil man ? EPINOMIS BOOK XII

Now the fact that the greatest part of virtue is not properly practiced is the cause of our condition, as is just now indicated — it seems clear to me — by what has been said. (989b) For let no one ever persuade us that there is a greater part of virtue, for the race of mortals, than piety ; and I must say it is owing to the greatest stupidity that this has not appeared in the best natures. And the best are they which can only become so with the greatest difficulty, and the benefit is greatest if they do become so : for a soul that admits of slowness and the opposite inclination moderately and gently will be good-tempered ; and if it admires COURAGE, and is easily persuaded to temperance, and, most important of all, is enabled (989c) by these natural gifts to learn and has a good memory, it will be able to rejoice most fully in these very things, so as to be a lover of learning. For these things are not easily engendered, but when once they are begotten, and receive due nourishment and education, they will be able to restrain the greater number of men, even the worse among us, in the most correct way by our every thought, every action, and every word about the gods, in due manner and due season, as regards both sacrifices and purifications in matters concerning gods and men alike, so that we are contriving no life of pretence, (989d) but truly honoring virtue, which indeed is the most important of all business for the whole state. That section of us, then, we say is naturally the most competent, and supremely able to learn the best and noblest lessons that it may be taught : but it cannot get this teaching either, unless God gives his guidance. If, however, it should be so taught, but should fail in some way to do accordingly, it were better for it not to learn. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

It has been plain, I believe, all along that I took a keen interest in the operations that have been carried out, and that I was most anxious to see them finally completed. In this I was mainly prompted (4.320b) by my jealous regard for what is noble ; for I esteem it just that those who are truly virtuous, and who act accordingly, should achieve the reputation they deserve. Now for the present (God willing) affairs are going well ; but it is in the future that the chief struggle lies. For while it might be thought that excellence in COURAGE and speed and strength might belong to various other men, everyone would agree that surpassing excellence in truth, justice, generosity and the outward exhibition of all these virtues (4.320c) naturally belongs to those who profess to hold them in honor. Now the point of this remark is plain ; but none the less it is right that we should remind ourselves that it behoves certain persons (who these are of course you know) to surpass the rest of mankind as if they were less than children. It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to show plainly that we are the sort of men we claim to be, and that all the more because (God willing) it will be an easy task. For whereas all other men find it necessary to wander far afield (4.320d) if they mean to get themselves known, you are in such a position now that people all the world over — bold though it be to say so — have their eyes fixed on one place only, and in that place upon you above all men. Seeing, then, that you have the eyes of all upon you, prepare yourself to play the part of that ancient worthy Lycurgus and of Cyrus and of all those others who have been famed hitherto for their excellence of character and of statesmanship ; and that all the more because there are (4.320e) many, including nearly all the people here, who keep saying that, now that Dionysius is overthrown, there is every prospect that things will go to ruin owing to the jealous rivalry of yourself, and Heracleides and Theodotes and the other notables. I pray, then, that no one, if possible, may suffer from this complaint ; but in case anyone should, after all, do so, you must play the part of a physician ; and so things will turn out best for you all. LETTERS LETTER IV

Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and unjust, we must isolate them ; there is no other way ; and how is the isolation to be effected ? I answer : Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man entirely just ; nothing is to be taken away from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other distinguished masters of craft ; like the skilful pilot or physician, who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody) : for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice ; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice. If he have taken a false step he must be able to recover himself ; he must be one who can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where force is required by his COURAGE and strength, and command of money and friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honored and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of honor and rewards ; therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering ; and he must be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst ; then he will have been put to the proof ; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the hour of death ; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two. THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

I answered : Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one warlike, to sound the note or accent which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every such crisis meets the blows of fortune with firm step and a determination to endure ; and another to be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to persuade God by prayer, or man by instruction and admonition, or on the other hand, when he is expressing his willingness to yield to persuasion or entreaty or admonition, and which represents him when by prudent conduct he has attained his end, not carried away by his success, but acting moderately and wisely under the circumstances, and acquiescing in the event. These two harmonies I ask you to leave ; the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of COURAGE, and the strain of temperance ; these, I say, leave. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor our guardians, whom we have to educate, can ever become musical until we and they know the essential forms of temperance, COURAGE, liberality, magnificence, and their kindred, as well as the contrary forms, in all their combinations, and can recognize them and their images wherever they are found, not slighting them either in small things or great, but believing them all to be within the sphere of one art and study. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Yet surely, I said, this ferocity only comes from spirit, which, if rightly educated, would give COURAGE, but, if too much intensified, is liable to become hard and brutal. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary ; neither should they have a private house or store closed against anyone who has a mind to enter ; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and COURAGE ; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more ; and they will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God ; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture ; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and they will be the saviours of the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become good housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of the other citizens ; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand. For all which reasons may we not say that thus shall our State be ordered, and that these shall be the regulations appointed by us for our guardians concerning their houses and all other matters ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Again, I said, there is no difficulty in seeing the nature of COURAGE, and in what part that quality resides which gives the name of COURAGEous to the State. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

The rest of the citizens may be COURAGEous or may be cowardly, but their COURAGE or cowardice will not, as I conceive, have the effect of making the city either the one or the other. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

The city will be COURAGEous in virtue of a portion of herself which preserves under all circumstances that opinion about the nature of things to be feared and not to be feared in which our legislator educated them ; and this is what you term COURAGE. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

I mean that COURAGE is a kind of salvation. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Then now, I said, you will understand what our object was in selecting our soldiers, and educating them in music and gymnastics ; we were contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the laws in perfection, and the color of their opinion about dangers and of every other opinion was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and training, not to be washed away by such potent lyes as pleasure — mightier agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye ; or by sorrow, fear, and desire, the mightiest of all other solvents. And this sort of universal saving power of true opinion in conformity with law about real and false dangers I call and maintain to be COURAGE, unless you disagree. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

But I agree, he replied ; for I suppose that you mean to exclude mere uninstructed COURAGE, such as that of a wild beast or of a slave — this, in your opinion, is not the COURAGE which the law ordains, and ought to have another name. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Then I may infer COURAGE to be such as you describe ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Why, yes, said I, you may, and if you add the words “of a citizen,” you will not be far wrong — hereafter, if you like, we will carry the examination further, but at present we are seeking, not for COURAGE, but justice ; and for the purpose of our inquiry we have said enough. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Why, because temperance is unlike COURAGE and wisdom, each of which resides in a part only, the one making the State wise and the other valiant ; not so temperance, which extends to the whole, and runs through all the notes of the scale, and produces a harmony of the weaker and the stronger and the middle class, whether you suppose them to be stronger or weaker in wisdom, or power, or numbers, or wealth, or anything else. Most truly then may we deem temperance to be the agreement of the naturally superior and inferior, as to the right to rule of either, both in States and individuals. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Because I think that this is the only virtue which remains in the State when the other virtues of temperance and COURAGE and wisdom are abstracted ; and, that this is the ultimate cause and condition of the existence of all of them, and while remaining in them is also their preservative ; and we were saying that if the three were discovered by us, justice would be the fourth, or remaining one. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Then the power of each individual in the State to do his own work appears to compete with the other political virtues, wisdom, temperance, COURAGE. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Also that the same quality which constitutes COURAGE in the State constitutes COURAGE in the individual, and that both the State and the individual bear the same relation to all the other virtues ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Glaucon laughed and said : Well, then, Socrates, in case you and your argument do us any serious injury you shall be acquitted beforehand of the homicide, and shall not be held to be a deceiver ; take COURAGE then and speak. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And must not that be a blameless study which he only can pursue who has the gift of a good memory, and is quick to learn — noble, gracious, the friend of truth, justice, COURAGE, temperance, who are his kindred ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Neither is there any reason why I should again set in array the philosopher’s virtues, as you will doubtless remember that COURAGE, magnificence, apprehension, memory, were his natural gifts. And you objected that, although no one could deny what I then said, still, if you leave words and look at facts, the persons who are thus described are some of them manifestly useless, and the greater number utterly depraved, we were then led to inquire into the grounds of these accusations, and have now arrived at the point of asking why are the majority bad, which question of necessity brought us back to the examination and definition of the true philosopher. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

In the first place there are their own virtues, their COURAGE, temperance, and the rest of them, every one of which praiseworthy qualities (and this is a most singular circumstance) destroys and distracts from philosophy the soul which is the possessor of them. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Then, do you see any way in which the philosopher can be preserved in his calling to the end ? — and remember what we were saying of him, that he was to have quickness and memory and COURAGE and magnificence — these were admitted by us to be the true philosopher’s gifts. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

You may remember, I said, that we divided the soul into three parts ; and distinguished the several natures of justice, temperance, COURAGE, and wisdom ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

And, again, in respect of temperance, COURAGE, magnificence, and every other virtue, should we not carefully distinguish between the true son and the bastard ? for where there is no discernment of such qualities, States and individuals unconsciously err ; and the State makes a ruler, and the individual a friend, of one who, being defective in some part of virtue, is in a figure lame or a bastard. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Such is the state of affairs which prevails among them. And often rulers and their subjects may come in one another’s way, whether on a journey or on some other occasion of meeting, on a pilgrimage or a march, as fellow-soldiers or fellowsailors ; aye, and they may observe the behavior of each other in the very moment of danger — for where danger is, there is no fear that the poor will be despised by the rich — and very likely the wiry, sunburnt poor man may be placed in battle at the side of a wealthy one who has never spoilt his complexion and has plenty of superfluous flesh — when he sees such a one puffing and at his wits’-end, how can he avoid drawing the conclusion that men like him are only rich because no one has the COURAGE to despoil them ? And when they meet in private will not people be saying to one another, “Our warriors are not good for much” ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

Or if honor, or victory, or COURAGE, in that case the judgment of the ambitious or pugnacious would be the truest ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

Very true, he said ; but in your presence, even if I had any faint notion, I could not muster COURAGE to utter it. Will you inquire yourself ? Well, then, shall we begin the inquiry in our usual manner : Whenever a number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have also a corresponding idea or form ; do you understand me ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X