every man

Socrates : It is very much to the point : but he, good sir, like almost every other poet, speaks in riddles. For poetry as a whole is by nature (147c) inclined to riddling, and it is not EVERY MAN who can apprehend it. And furthermore, besides having this natural tendency, when it gets hold of a grudging person who wishes not to show forth to us his own wisdom but to conceal it as much as possible, we find it an extraordinarily difficult matter to make out whatever this or that one of them may mean. For surely you do not suppose that Homer, divinest and wisest of poets, did not know it was impossible to know ill ; for it is he who says of Margites that he knew many things, (147d) but knew them all ill : but it is a riddle, I think, in which he has made “ill” stand for “evil,” and “knew” for “to know”. So if we put it together, letting the meter go, indeed, but grasping his meaning, we get this : “Full many crafts he knew, but it was evil for him to know them all”. Then clearly, if it was evil for him to know many things, he was in fact a paltry fellow, assuming we are to believe what we have previously argued. ALCIBIADES II

(407b) “Whither haste ye, O men ? Yea, verily ye know not that ye are doing none of the things ye ought, seeing that ye spend your whole energy on wealth and the acquiring of it ; while as to your sons to whom ye will bequeath it, ye neglect to ensure that they shall understand how to use it justly, and ye find for them no teachers of justice, if so be that it is teachable — or if it be a matter of training and practice, instructors who can efficiently practice and train them — nor have ye even begun by reforming yourselves in this respect. Yet when ye perceive that ye yourselves and your children, though adequately instructed in letters and music and gymnastic — (407c) which ye, forsooth, regard as a complete education in virtue — are in consequence none the less vicious in respect of wealth, how is it that ye do not contemn this present mode of education nor search for teachers who will put an end to this your lack of culture ? Yet truly it is because of this dissonance and sloth, and not because of failure to keep in step with the lyre that brother with brother and city with city clash together without measure or harmony (407d) and are at strife, and in their warring perpetrate and suffer the uttermost horrors. But ye assert that the unjust are unjust not because of their lack of education and lack of knowledge but voluntarily, while on the other hand ye have the face to affirm that injustice is a foul thing, and hateful to Heaven. Then how, pray, could any man voluntarily choose an evil of such a kind ? Any man, you reply, who is mastered by his pleasures. But is not this condition also involuntary, if the act of mastering be voluntary ? Thus in every way the argument proves that unjust action is involuntary, and that EVERY MAN privately (407e) and all the cities publicly ought to pay more attention than they do now to this matter.” CLEITOPHON

So then, Socrates, when I hear you constantly making these speeches I admire you immensely and praise you to the skies. So too when you state the next point in your argument, that those who train their bodies but neglect their souls are guilty of another action of the same sort — neglecting the part that should rule, and attending to that which should be ruled. Also when you declare that whatsoever object a man knows not how to make use of, it is better for him to refrain from making use thereof ; thus, suppose a man knows not how to use his eyes or his ears or the whole of his body, it is better for such a man not to hear nor to see nor to employ his body for any other use rather than to use it in any way whatsoever. (408a) So too, likewise, with respect to art : it is surely plain that a man who does not know how to use his own lyre does not know either how to use his neighbor’s, and that one who does not know how to use the lyre of others does not know how to use his own either, — nor yet any other instrument or chattel. Moreover, the conclusion of this argument of yours is a fine one, — how that for EVERY MAN who knows not how to make use of his soul it is better to have his soul at rest and not to live, than to live acting according to his own caprice ; but if it is necessary for him to live, (408b) it is better after all for such an one to spend his life as a slave rather than a free man, handing over the rudder of his will, as it were of a ship, to another man who has learnt the art of steering men — which is the name that you, Socrates, frequently give to politics, when you declare that this very same art is that of judging and justice. CLEITOPHON

Socrates : Well, but EVERY MAN has power who does what he wishes at the time when he wishes ; (366c) I am not speaking of one who is prevented by disease or that sort of thing, but as I might say of you that you have power to write my name when you wish or do you not say that a man has power who is in such a condition ? LESSER HIPPIAS

Hippias : I say, then, that for EVERY MAN and everywhere it is most beautiful to be rich and healthy, and honored by the Greeks, to reach old age, and, after providing a beautiful funeral for his deceased parents, (291e) to be beautifully and splendidly buried by his own offspring. GREATER HIPPIAS

And this is the reason, Socrates, why the Athenians and mankind in general, when the question relates to carpentering or any other mechanical art, allow but a few to share in their deliberations ; and when any one else interferes, then, as you say, they object, if he be not of the favoured few ; which, as I reply, is very natural. But when they meet to deliberate about political virtue, which proceeds only by way of justice and wisdom, they are patient enough of any man who speaks of them, as is also natural, because they think that EVERY MAN ought to share in this sort of virtue, and that states could not exist if this were otherwise. I have explained to you, Socrates, the reason of this phenomenon. PROTAGORAS

And that you may not suppose yourself to be deceived in thinking that all men regard EVERY MAN as having a share of justice or honesty and of every other political virtue, let me give you a further proof, which is this. In other cases, as you are aware, if a man says that he is a good flute-player, or skilful in any other art in which he has no skill, people either laugh at him or are angry with him, and his relations think that he is mad and go and admonish him ; but when honesty is in question, or some other political virtue, even if they know that he is dishonest, yet, if the man comes publicly forward and tells the truth about his dishonesty, then, what in the other case was held by them to be good sense, they now deem to be madness. They say that all men ought to profess honesty whether they are honest or not, and that a man is out of his mind who says anything else. Their notion is, that a man must have some degree of honesty ; and that if he has none at all he ought not to be in the world. PROTAGORAS

I have been showing that they are right in admitting EVERY MAN as a counsellor about this sort of virtue, as they are of opinion that EVERY MAN is a partaker of it. And I will now endeavour to show further that they do not conceive this virtue to be given by nature, or to grow spontaneously, but to be a thing which may be taught ; and which comes to a man by taking pains. No one would instruct, no one would rebuke, or be angry with those whose calamities they suppose to be due to nature or chance ; they do not try to punish or to prevent them from being what they are ; they do but pity them. Who is so foolish as to chastise or instruct the ugly, or the diminutive, or the feeble ? And for this reason. Because he knows that good and evil of this kind is the work of nature and of chance ; whereas if a man is wanting in those good qualities which are attained by study and exercise and teaching, and has only the contrary evil qualities, other men are angry with him, and punish and reprove him — of these evil qualities one is impiety, another injustice, and they may be described generally as the very opposite of political virtue. In such cases any man will be angry with another, and reprimand him, — clearly because he thinks that by study and learning, the virtue in which the other is deficient may be acquired. If you will think, Socrates, of the nature of punishment, you will see at once that in the opinion of mankind virtue may be acquired ; no one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong, only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone ; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being taught. This is the notion of all who retaliate upon others either privately or publicly. And the Athenians, too, your own citizens, like other men, punish and take vengeance on all whom they regard as evil doers ; and hence, we may infer them to be of the number of those who think that virtue may be acquired and taught. Thus far, Socrates, I have shown you clearly enough, if I am not mistaken, that your countrymen are right in admitting the tinker and the cobbler to advise about politics, and also that they deem virtue to be capable of being taught and acquired. PROTAGORAS

But why then do the sons of good fathers often turn out ill ? There is nothing very wonderful in this ; for, as I have been saying, the existence of a state implies that virtue is not any man’s private possession. If so — and nothing can be truer — then I will further ask you to imagine, as an illustration, some other pursuit or branch of knowledge which may be assumed equally to be the condition of the existence of a state. Suppose that there could be no state unless we were all flute-players, as far as each had the capacity, and everybody was freely teaching everybody the art, both in private and public, and reproving the bad player as freely and openly as EVERY MAN now teaches justice and the laws, not concealing them as he would conceal the other arts, but imparting them — for all of us have a mutual interest in the justice and virtue of one another, and this is the reason why every one is so ready to teach justice and the laws ; — suppose, I say, that there were the same readiness and liberality among us in teaching one another flute-playing, do you imagine, Socrates, that the sons of good flute players would be more likely to be good than the sons of bad ones ? I think not. Would not their sons grow up to be distinguished or undistinguished according to their own natural capacities as flute-players, and the son of a good player would often turn out to be a bad one, and the son of a bad player to be a good one, all flute-players would be good enough in comparison of those who were ignorant and unacquainted with the art of flute-playing ? In like manner I would have you consider that he who appears to you to be the worst of those who have been brought up in laws and humanities, would appear to be a just man and a master of justice if he were to be compared with men who had no education, or courts of justice, or laws, or any restraints upon them which compelled them to practise virtue — with the savages, for example, whom the poet Pherecrates exhibited on the stage at the last year’s Lenaean festival. If you were living among men such as the man-haters in his Chorus, you would be only too glad to meet with Eurybates and Phrynondas, and you would sorrowfully long to revisit the rascality of this part of the world. you, Socrates, are discontented, and why ? Because all men are teachers of virtue, each one according to his ability ; and you say, Where are the teachers ? You might as well ask, Who teaches Greek ? For of that too there will not be any teachers found. Or you might ask, Who is to teach the sons of our artisans this same art which they have learned of their fathers ? He and his fellow-workmen have taught them to the best of their ability, — but who will carry them further in their arts ? And you would certainly have a difficulty, Socrates, in finding a teacher of them ; but there would be no difficulty in finding a teacher of those who are wholly ignorant. And this is true of virtue or of anything else ; if a man is better able than we are to promote virtue ever so little, we must be content with the result. A teacher of this sort I believe myself to be, and above all other men to have the knowledge which makes a man noble and good ; and I give my pupils their money’s-worth, and even more, as they themselves confess. And therefore I have introduced the following mode of payment : — When a man has been my pupil, if he likes he pays my price, but there is no compulsion ; and if he does not like, he has only to go into a temple and take an oath of the value of the instructions, and he pays no more than he declares to be their value. PROTAGORAS

Here Alcibiades interposed, and said : That, Callias, is not a true statement of the case. For our friend Socrates admits that he cannot make a speech — in this he yields the palm to Protagoras : but I should be greatly surprised if he yielded to any living man in the power of holding and apprehending an argument. Now if Protagoras will make a similar admission, and confess that he is inferior to Socrates in argumentative skill, that is enough for Socrates ; but if he claims a superiority in argument as well, let him ask and answer — not, when a question is asked, slipping away from the point, and instead of answering, making a speech at such length that most of his hearers forget the question at issue (not that Socrates is likely to forget — I will be bound for that, although he may pretend in fun that he has a bad memory). And Socrates appears to me to be more in the right than Protagoras ; that is my view, and EVERY MAN ought to say what he thinks. PROTAGORAS

And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens ? Clearly that which is my due. And what is that which I ought to pay or to receive ? What shall be done to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his whole life ; but has been careless of what the many care about — wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was really too honest a man to follow in this way and live, I did not go where I could do no good to you or to myself ; but where I could do the greatest good privately to everyone of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade EVERY MAN among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state before he looks to the interests of the state ; and that this should be the order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such a one ? Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he has his reward ; and the good should be of a kind suitable to him. What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, who desires leisure that he may instruct you ? There can be no more fitting reward than maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in want, and he has enough ; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return. Perhaps you may think that I am braving you in saying this, as in what I said before about the tears and prayers. But that is not the case. I speak rather because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged anyone, although I cannot convince you of that — for we have had a short conversation only ; but if there were a law at Athens, such as there is in other cities, that a capital cause should not be decided in one day, then I believe that I should have convinced you ; but now the time is too short. I cannot in a moment refute great slanders ; and, as I am convinced that I never wronged another, I will assuredly not wrong myself. I will not say of myself that I deserve any evil, or propose any penalty. Why should I ? Because I am afraid of the penalty of death which Meletus proposes ? When I do not know whether death is a good or an evil, why should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an evil ? Shall I say imprisonment ? And why should I live in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates of the year — of the Eleven ? Or shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine is paid ? There is the same objection. I should have to lie in prison, for money I have none, and I cannot pay. And if I say exile (and this may possibly be the penalty which you will affix), I must indeed be blinded by the love of life if I were to consider that when you, who are my own citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and have found them so grievous and odious that you would fain have done with them, others are likely to endure me. No, indeed, men of Athens, that is not very likely. And what a life should I lead, at my age, wandering from city to city, living in ever-changing exile, and always being driven out ! For I am quite sure that into whatever place I go, as here so also there, the young men will come to me ; and if I drive them away, their elders will drive me out at their desire : and if I let them come, their fathers and friends will drive me out for their sakes. APOLOGY

Soc. And what was said about another matter ? Was the disciple in gymnastics supposed to attend to the praise and blame and opinion of EVERY MAN, or of one man only — his physician or trainer, whoever that was ? CRITO

And do you think that a state would be well ordered by a law which compelled EVERY MAN to weave and wash his own coat, and make his own shoes, and his own flask and strigil, and other implements, on this principle of every one doing and performing his own, and abstaining from what is not his own ? CHARMIDES

Nic. I have no objection, Socrates ; and my opinion is that the acquirement of this art is in many ways useful to young men. It is an advantage to them that among the favourite amusements of their leisure hours they should have one which tends to improve and not to injure their bodily health. No gymnastics could be better or harder exercise ; and this, and the art of riding, are of all arts most befitting to a freeman ; for they only who are thus trained in the use of arms are the athletes of our military profession, trained in that on which the conflict turns. Moreover in actual battle, when you have to fight in a line with a number of others, such an acquirement will be of some use, and will be of the greatest whenever the ranks are broken and you have to fight singly, either in pursuit, when you are attacking some one who is defending himself, or in flight, when you have to defend yourself against an assailant. Certainly he who possessed the art could not meet with any harm at the hands of a single person, or perhaps of several ; and in any case he would have a great advantage. Further, this sort of skill inclines a man to the love of other noble lessons ; for EVERY MAN who has learned how to fight in armour will desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is the sequel of the lesson : and when he has learned this, and his ambition is once fired, he will go on to learn the complete art of the general. There is no difficulty in seeing that the knowledge and practice of other military arts will be honourable and valuable to a man ; and this lesson may be the beginning of them. Let me add a further advantage, which is by no means a slight one, — that this science will make any man a great deal more valiant and self-possessed in the field. And I will not disdain to mention, what by some may he thought to be a small matter ; — he will make a better appearance at the right time ; that is to say, at the time when his appearance will strike terror into his enemies. My opinion then, Lysimachus, is, as I say, that the youths should be instructed in this art, and for the reasons which I have given. But Laches may take a different view ; and I shall be very glad to hear what he has to say. LACHES

Soc. And not EVERY MAN has this knowledge ; the physician and the soothsayer have it not ; and they will not be courageous unless they acquire it — that is what you were saying ? LACHES

Soc. Does not EVERY MAN love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them ? EUTHYPHRO

Soc. O Polus, I am not a public man, and only last year, when my tribe were serving as Prytanes, and it became my duty as their president to take the votes, there was a laugh at me, because I was unable to take them. And as I failed then, you must not ask me to count the suffrages of the company now ; but if, as I was saying, you have no better argument than numbers, let me have a turn, and do you make trial of the sort of proof which, as I think, is required ; for I shall produce one witness only of the truth of my words, and he is the person with whom I am arguing ; his suffrage I know how to take ; but with the many I have nothing to do, and do not even address myself to them. May I ask then whether you will answer in turn and have your words put to the proof ? For I certainly think that I and you and EVERY MAN do really believe, that to do is a greater evil than to suffer injustice : and not to be punished than to be punished. GORGIAS

Soc. Well, Polus, but if this is true, where is the great use of rhetoric ? If we admit what has been just now said, EVERY MAN ought in every way to guard himself against doing wrong, for he will thereby suffer great evil ? GORGIAS

Soc. I mean that EVERY MAN is his own ruler ; but perhaps you think that there is no necessity for him to rule himself ; he is only required to rule others ? GORGIAS

Soc. But can EVERY MAN choose what pleasures are good and what are evil, or must he have art or knowledge of them in detail ? GORGIAS

Soc. Think and tell me whether you would approve of another view of mine : To me EVERY MAN appears to be most the friend of him who is most like to him — like to like, as ancient sages say : Would you not agree to this ? GORGIAS

Soc. Excellent Callicles, I am not deaf, and I have heard that a great many times from you and from Polus and from nearly EVERY MAN in the city, but I wish that you would hear me too. I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind — the bad man will kill the good and true. GORGIAS

And this is the reason why the pilot, although he is our saviour, is not usually conceited, any more than the engineer, who is not at all behind either the general, or the pilot, or any one else, in his saving power, for he sometimes saves whole cities. Is there any comparison between him and the pleader ? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your grandiose style, he would bury you under a mountain of words, declaring and insisting that we ought all of us to be engine-makers, and that no other profession is worth thinking about ; he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you despise him and his art, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and you will not allow your daughters to marry his son, or marry your son to his daughters. And yet, on your principle, what justice or reason is there in your refusal ? What right have you to despise the engine-maker, and the others whom I was just now mentioning ? I know that you will say, “I am better, better born.” But if the better is not what I say, and virtue consists only in a man saving himself and his, whatever may be his character, then your censure of the engine-maker, and of the physician, and of the other arts of salvation, is ridiculous. O my friend ! I want you to see that the noble and the good may possibly be something different from saving and being saved : — May not he who is truly a man cease to care about living a certain time ? — he knows, as women say, that no man can escape fate, and therefore he is not fond of life ; he leaves all that with God, and considers in what way he can best spend his appointed term — whether by assimilating himself to the constitution under which he lives, as you at this moment have to consider how you may become as like as possible to the Athenian people, if you mean to be in their good graces, and to have power in the state ; whereas I want you to think and see whether this is for the interest of either of us — I would not have us risk that which is dearest on the acquisition of this power, like the Thessalian enchantresses, who, as they say, bring down the moon from heaven at the risk of their own perdition. But if you suppose that any man will show you the art of becoming great in the city, and yet not conforming yourself to the ways of the city, whether for better or worse, then I can only say that you are mistaken, Callides ; for he who would deserve to be the true natural friend of the Athenian Demus, aye, or of Pyrilampes’ darling who is called after them, must be by nature like them, and not an imitator only. He, then, who will make you most like them, will make you as you desire, a statesman and orator : for EVERY MAN is pleased when he is spoken to in his own language and spirit, and dislikes any other. But perhaps you, sweet Callicles, may be of another mind. What do you say ? GORGIAS

And now we have related many of the noble deeds done by the men who are lying here, and by all the others who have died in defence of their city ; yet far more numerous and more noble are those that remain unmentioned ; (246b) for many days and nights would not suffice were one to relate them all in full. Wherefore it is right that EVERY MAN, bearing these men in mind, should exhort these men’s children, just as in time of war, not to fall out of rank with their fathers nor to give way to cowardice and beat a retreat. And I myself for my own part, o ye children of valiant men, am now exhorting you and in the future, wheresoever I shall encounter any of you, (246c) I shall continue to remind you and admonish you to be zealous to show yourselves supremely valiant. But on this occasion it is my duty to record the message which your fathers, at the time when they were about to risk their lives, enjoined us, in case any ill befell them, to give to those who survived them. I will repeat to you both the words which I heard from their lips and those which they would now desire to say to you, if they had the power, judging from what they actually said on that occasion. You must, however, imagine that you are hearing from their own lips the message which I shall deliver. This, then, is what they said : MENEXENUS

Soc. Yes, Crito, there is more speciousness than truth ; they cannot be made to understand the nature of intermediates. For all persons or things, which are intermediate between two other things, and participate in both of them — if one of these two things is good and the other evil, are better than the one and worse than the other ; but if they are in a mean between two good things which do not tend to the same end, they fall short of either of their component elements in the attainment of their ends. Only in the case when the two component elements which do not tend to the same end are evil is the participant better than either. Now, if philosophy and political action are both good, but tend to different ends, and they participate in both, and are in a mean between them, then they are talking nonsense, for they are worse than either ; or, if the one be good and the other evil, they are better than the one and worse than the other ; only on the supposition that they are both evil could there be any truth in what they say. I do not think that they will admit that their two pursuits are either wholly or partly evil ; but the truth is, that these philosopher-politicians who aim at both fall short of both in the attainment of their respective ends, and are really third, although they would like to stand first. There is no need, however, to be angry at this ambition of theirs — which may be forgiven ; for EVERY MAN ought to be loved who says and manfully pursues and works out anything which is at all like wisdom : at the same time we shall do well to see them as they really are. EUTHYDEMUS

Soc. And is EVERY MAN a carpenter, or the skilled only ? CRATYLUS

Soc. And is EVERY MAN a smith, or only the skilled ? CRATYLUS

Soc. And is EVERY MAN a legislator, or the skilled only ? CRATYLUS

Soc. Then, Hermogenes, not EVERY MAN is able to give a name, but only a maker of names ; and this is the legislator, who of all skilled artisans in the world is the rarest. CRATYLUS

Soc. Then, Hermogenes, I should say that this giving of names can be no such light matter as you fancy, or the work of light or chance persons ; and Cratylus is right in saying that things have names by nature, and that not EVERY MAN is an artificer of names, but he only who looks to the name which each thing by nature has, and is able to express the true forms of things in letters and syllables. CRATYLUS

Soc. My good Hermogenes, I have none to show. Was I not telling you just now (but you have forgotten), that I knew nothing, and proposing to share the enquiry with you ? But now that you and I have talked over the matter, a step has been gained ; for we have discovered that names have by nature a truth, and that not EVERY MAN knows how to give a thing a name. CRATYLUS

Soc. But that, friend Cratylus, is no answer. For if he did begin in error, he may have forced the remainder into agreement with the original error and with himself ; there would be nothing strange in this, any more than in geometrical diagrams, which have often a slight and invisible flaw in the first part of the process, and are consistently mistaken in the long deductions which follow. And this is the reason why EVERY MAN should expend his chief thought and attention on the consideration of his first principles : — are they or are they not rightly laid down ? and when he has duly sifted them, all the rest will follow. Now I should be astonished to find that names are really consistent. And here let us revert to our former discussion : Were we not saying that all things are in motion and progress and flux, and that this idea of motion is expressed by names ? Do you not conceive that to be the meaning of them ? CRATYLUS

This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection, who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these : in sacrifices, feasts, dances, he is our lord — who sends courtesy and sends away discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness ; the friend of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods ; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him ; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace ; regardful of the good, regardless of the evil : in every word, work, wish, fear-saviour, pilot, comrade, helper ; glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest : in whose footsteps let EVERY MAN follow, sweetly singing in his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men. Such is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet having a certain measure of seriousness, which, according to my ability, I dedicate to the god. SYMPOSIUM

Such, Phaedrus, — and I speak not only to you, but to all of you — were the words of Diotima ; and I am persuaded of their truth. And being persuaded of them, I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this end human nature will not easily find a helper better than love : And therefore, also, I say that EVERY MAN ought to honour him as I myself honour him, and walk in his ways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise the power and spirit of love according to the measure of my ability now and ever. SYMPOSIUM

And now, my boys, I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear to him to be a caricature, and yet I speak, not to make fun of him, but only for the truth’s sake. I say, that he is exactly like the busts of Silenus, which are set up in the statuaries, shops, holding pipes and flutes in their mouths ; and they are made to open in the middle, and have images of gods inside them. I say also that hit is like Marsyas the satyr. You yourself will not deny, Socrates, that your face is like that of a satyr. Aye, and there is a resemblance in other points too. For example, you are a bully, as I can prove by witnesses, if you will not confess. And are you not a flute-player ? That you are, and a performer far more wonderful than Marsyas. He indeed with instruments used to charm the souls of men by the powers of his breath, and the players of his music do so still : for the melodies of Olympus are derived from Marsyas who taught them, and these, whether they are played by a great master or by a miserable flute-girl, have a power which no others have ; they alone possess the soul and reveal the wants of those who have need of gods and mysteries, because they are divine. But you produce the same effect with your words only, and do not require the flute ; that is the difference between you and him. When we hear any other speaker, even very good one, he produces absolutely no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments of you and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze and possess the souls of EVERY MAN, woman, and child who comes within hearing of them. And if I were not, afraid that you would think me hopelessly drunk, I would have sworn as well as spoken to the influence which they have always had and still have over me. For my heart leaps within me more than that of any Corybantian reveller, and my eyes rain tears when I hear them. And I observe that many others are affected in the same manner. I have heard Pericles and other great orators, and I thought that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling ; my soul was not stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state. But this Marsyas has often brought me to such pass, that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading (this, Socrates, you will admit) ; and I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him, and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate would be like that of others, — he would transfix me, and I should grow old sitting at his feet. For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the Athenians ; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away from him. And he is the only person who ever made me ashamed, which you might think not to be in my nature, and there is no one else who does the same. For I know that I cannot answer him or say that I ought not to do as he bids, but when I leave his presence the love of popularity gets the better of me. And therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed of what I have confessed to him. Many a time have I wished that he were dead, and yet I know that I should be much more sorry than glad, if he were to die : so that am at my wit’s end. SYMPOSIUM

But if this is true, O my friend, then there is great hope that, going whither I go, I shall there be satisfied with that which has been the chief concern of you and me in our past lives. And now that the hour of departure is appointed to me, this is the hope with which I depart, and not I only, but EVERY MAN who believes that he has his mind purified. PHAEDO

But do you think that EVERY MAN is able to give a reason about these very matters of which we are speaking ? PHAEDO

Soc. But then, my boy, how can any one contend that knowledge is perception, or that to EVERY MAN what appears is ? THEAETETUS

Soc. And if our recent definition holds, EVERY MAN knows that which he has seen ? THEAETETUS

Soc. And thus, my friend, on every occasion, private as well as public, as I said at first, when he appears in a law-court, or in any place in which he has to speak of things which are at his feet and before his eyes, he is the jest, not only of Thracian handmaids but of the general herd, tumbling into wells and every sort of disaster through his inexperience. His awkwardness is fearful, and gives the impression of imbecility. When he is reviled, he has nothing personal to say in answer to the civilities of his adversaries, for he knows no scandals of any one, and they do not interest him ; and therefore he is laughed at for his sheepishness ; and when others are being praised and glorified, in the simplicity of his heart he cannot help going into fits of laughter, so that he seems to be a downright idiot. When he hears a tyrant or king eulogized, he fancies that he is listening to the praises of some keeper of cattle — a swineherd, or shepherd, or perhaps a cowherd, who is congratulated on the quantity of milk which he squeezes from them ; and he remarks that the creature whom they tend, and out of whom they squeeze the wealth, is of a less traitable and more insidious nature. Then, again, he observes that the great man is of necessity as ill-mannered and uneducated as any shepherd — for he has no leisure, and he is surrounded by a wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth ; and when they sing the, praises of family, and say that someone is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray a dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that EVERY MAN has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable. And when people pride themselves on having a pedigree of twenty-five ancestors, which goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand their poverty of ideas. Why are they unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was such as fortune made him and he had a fiftieth, and so on ? He amuses himself with the notion that they cannot count, and thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of their senseless vanity. Now, in all these cases our philosopher is derided by the vulgar, partly because he is thought to despise them, and also because he is ignorant of what is before him, and always at a loss. THEAETETUS

Soc. But, O my friend, when he draws the other into upper air, and gets him out of his pleas and rejoinders into the contemplation of justice and injustice in their own nature and in their difference from one another and from all other things ; or from the commonplaces about the happiness of a king or of a rich man to the consideration of government, and of human happiness and misery in general — what they are, and how a man is to attain the one and avoid the other — when that narrow, keen, little legal mind is called to account about all this, he gives the philosopher his revenge ; for dizzied by the height at which he is hanging, whence he looks down into space, which is a strange experience to him, he being dismayed, and lost, and stammering broken words, is laughed at, not by Thracian handmaidens or any other uneducated persons, for they have no eye for the situation, but by EVERY MAN who has not been brought up a slave. Such are the two characters, Theodorus : the one of the freeman, who has becomes trained in liberty and leisure, whom you call the philosopher — him we cannot blame because he appears simple and of no account when he has to perform some menial task, such as packing up bed-clothes, or flavouring a sauce or fawning speech ; the other character is that of the man who is able to do all this kind of service smartly and neatly, but knows not how to wear his cloak like a gentleman ; still less with the music of discourse can he hymn the true life aright which is lived by immortals or men blessed of heaven. THEAETETUS

Soc. There are many ways, Theodorus, in which the doctrine that every opinion of : EVERY MAN is true may be refuted ; but there is more difficulty, in proving that states of feeling, which are present to a man, and out of which arise sensations and opinions in accordance with them, are also untrue. And very likely I have been talking nonsense about them ; for they may be unassailable, and those who say that there is clear evidence of them, and that they are matters of knowledge, may probably be right ; in which case our friend Theaetetus was not so far from the mark when he identified perception and knowledge. And therefore let us draw nearer, as the advocate of Protagoras desires ; and the truth of the universal flux a ring : is the theory sound or not ? at any rate, no small war is raging about it, and there are combination not a few. THEAETETUS

Soc. And so, Theodorus, we have got rid of your friend without assenting to his doctrine, that EVERY MAN is the measure of all things — a wise man only is a measure ; neither can we allow that knowledge is perception, certainly not on the hypothesis of a perpetual flux, unless perchance our friend Theaetetus is able to convince us that it is. THEAETETUS

Str. The higher ideas, my dear friend, can hardly be set forth except through the medium of examples ; EVERY MAN seems to know all things in a dreamy sort of way, and then again to wake up and to know nothing. STATESMAN

First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and the lord of all that is in us : to this the gods, when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants, considering that it partook of every sort of motion. In order then that it might not tumble about among the high and deep places of the earth, but might be able to get over the one and out of the other, they provided the body to be its vehicle and means of locomotion ; which consequently had length and was furnished with four limbs extended and flexible ; these God contrived to be instruments of locomotion with which it might take hold and find support, and so be able to pass through all places, carrying on high the dwelling-place of the most sacred and divine part of us. Such was the origin of legs and hands, which for this reason were attached to EVERY MAN ; and the gods, deeming the front part of man to be more honourable and more fit to command than the hinder part, made us to move mostly in a forward direction. Wherefore man must needs have his front part unlike and distinguished from the rest of his body. TIMAEUS

Thus I state my view : — If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind ; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature ; the one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion ; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason ; the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can : and lastly, EVERY MAN may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only. And there is another nature of the same name with it, and like to it, perceived by sense, created, always in motion, becoming in place and again vanishing out of place, which is apprehended by opinion and sense. And there is a third nature, which is space, and is eternal, and admits not of destruction and provides a home for all created things, and is apprehended without the help of sense, by a kind of spurious reason, and is hardly real ; which we beholding as in a dream, say of all existence that it must of necessity be in some place and occupy a space, but that what is neither in heaven nor in earth has no existence. Of these and other things of the same kind, relating to the true and waking reality of nature, we have only this dreamlike sense, and we are unable to cast off sleep and determine the truth about them. For an image, since the reality, after which it is modelled, does not belong to it, and it exists ever as the fleeting shadow of some other, must be inferred to be in another (i.e. in space ), grasping existence in some way or other, or it could not be at all. But true and exact reason, vindicating the nature of true being, maintains that while two things (i.e. the image and space) are different they cannot exist one of them in the other and so be one and also two at the same time. TIMAEUS

Thus have we discussed the general affections of the whole body, and the names of the agents which produce them. And now I will endeavour to speak of the affections of particular parts, and the causes and agents of them, as far as I am able. In the first place let us set forth what was omitted when we were speaking of juices, concerning the affections peculiar to the tongue. These too, like most of the other affections, appear to be caused by certain contractions and dilations, but they have besides more of roughness and smoothness than is found in other affections ; for whenever earthy particles enter into the small veins which are the testing of the tongue, reaching to the heart, and fall upon the moist, delicate portions of flesh — when, as they are dissolved, they contract and dry up the little veins, they are astringent if they are rougher, but if not so rough, then only harsh. Those of them which are of an abstergent nature, and purge the whole surface of the tongue, if they do it in excess, and so encroach as to consume some part of the flesh itself, like potash and soda, are all termed bitter. But the particles which are deficient in the alkaline quality, and which cleanse only moderately, are called salt, and having no bitterness or roughness, are regarded as rather agreeable than otherwise. Bodies which share in and are made smooth by the heat of the mouth, and which are inflamed, and again in turn inflame that which heats them, and which are so light that they are carried upwards to the sensations of the head, and cut all that comes in their way, by reason of these qualities in them, are all termed pungent. But when these same particles, refined by putrefaction, enter into the narrow veins, and are duly proportioned to the particles of earth and air which are there, they set them whirling about one another, and while they are in a whirl cause them to dash against and enter into one another, and so form hollows surrounding the particles that enter — which watery vessels of air (for a film of moisture, sometimes earthy, sometimes pure, is spread around the air) are hollow spheres of water ; and those of them which are pure, are transparent, and are called bubbles, while those composed of the earthy liquid, which is in a state of general agitation and effervescence, are said to boil or ferment — of all these affections the cause is termed acid. And there is the opposite affection arising from an opposite cause, when the mass of entering particles, immersed in the moisture of the mouth, is congenial to the tongue, and smooths and oils over the roughness, and relaxes the parts which are unnaturally contracted, and contracts the parts which are relaxed, and disposes them all according to their nature — that sort of remedy of violent affections is pleasant and agreeable to EVERY MAN, and has the name sweet. But enough of this. TIMAEUS

But our creators, considering whether they should make a longer-lived race which was worse, or a shorter-lived race which was better, came to the conclusion that every one ought to prefer a shorter span of life, which was better, to a longer one, which was worse ; and therefore they covered the head with thin bone, but not with flesh and sinews, since it had no joints ; and thus the head was added, having more wisdom and sensation than the rest of the body, but also being in EVERY MAN far weaker. For these reasons and after this manner God placed the sinews at the extremity of the head, in a circle round the neck, and glued them together by the principle of likeness and fastened the extremities of the jawbones to them below the face, and the other sinews he dispersed throughout the body, fastening limb to limb. The framers of us framed the mouth, as now arranged, having teeth and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessary and the good, contriving the way in for necessary purposes, the way out for the best purposes ; for that is necessary which enters in and gives food to the body ; but the river of speech, which flows out of a man and ministers to the intelligence, is the fairest and noblest of all streams. Still the head could neither be left a bare frame of bones, on account of the extremes of heat and cold in the different seasons, nor yet be allowed to be wholly covered, and so become dull and senseless by reason of an overgrowth of flesh. The fleshy nature was not therefore wholly dried up, but a large sort of peel was parted off and remained over, which is now called the skin. This met and grew by the help of the cerebral moisture, and became the circular envelopment of the head. And the moisture, rising up under the sutures, watered and closed in the skin upon the crown, forming a sort of knot. The diversity of the sutures was caused by the power of the courses of the soul and of the food, and the more these struggled against one another the more numerous they became, and fewer if the struggle were less violent. This skin the divine power pierced all round with fire, and out of the punctures which were thus made the moisture issued forth, and the liquid and heat which was pure came away, and a mixed part which was composed of the same material as the skin, and had a fineness equal to the punctures, was borne up by its own impulse and extended far outside the head, but being too slow to escape, was thrust back by the external air, and rolled up underneath the skin, where it took root. Thus the hair sprang up in the skin, being akin to it because it is like threads of leather, but rendered harder and closer through the pressure of the cold, by which each hair, while in process of separation from the skin, is compressed and cooled. Wherefore the creator formed the head hairy, making use of the causes which I have mentioned, and reflecting also that instead of flesh the brain needed the hair to be a light covering or guard, which would give shade in summer and shelter in winter, and at the same time would not impede our quickness of perception. From the combination of sinew, skin, and bone, in the structure of the finger, there arises a triple compound, which, when dried up, takes the form of one hard skin partaking of all three natures, and was fabricated by these second causes, but designed by mind which is the principal cause with an eye to the future. For our creators well knew that women and other animals would some day be framed out of men, and they further knew that many animals would require the use of nails for many purposes ; wherefore they fashioned in men at their first creation the rudiments of nails. For this purpose and for these reasons they caused skin, hair, and nails to grow at the extremities of the limbs. And now that all the parts and members of the mortal animal had come together, since its life of necessity consisted of fire and breath, and it therefore wasted away by dissolution and depletion, the gods contrived the following remedy : They mingled a nature akin to that of man with other forms and perceptions, and thus created another kind of animal. These are the trees and plants and seeds which have been improved by cultivation and are now domesticated among us ; anciently there were only the will kinds, which are older than the cultivated. For everything that partakes of life may be truly called a living being, and the animal of which we are now speaking partakes of the third kind of soul, which is said to be seated between the midriff and the navel, having no part in opinion or reason or mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires which accompany them. For this nature is always in a passive state, revolving in and about itself, repelling the motion from without and using its own, and accordingly is not endowed by nature with the power of observing or reflecting on its own concerns. Wherefore it lives and does not differ from a living being, but is fixed and rooted in the same spot, having no power of self-motion. TIMAEUS

Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise ; the disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelligence ; and of this there are two kinds ; to wit, madness and ignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of them, that state may be called disease ; and excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unseasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything rightly ; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great ; his soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body ; yet he is regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mistake. The truth is that the intemperance of love is a disease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity which is produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency of the bones. And in general, all that which is termed the incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for reproach. For no man is voluntarily bad ; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to EVERY MAN and happen to him against his will. And in the case of pain too in like manner the soul suffers much evil from the body. For where the acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wander about in the body, and find no exit or escape, but are pent up within and mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are blended, with them, they produce all sorts of diseases, more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity ; and being carried to the three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail, they create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity. Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators rather than the educated. But however that may be, we should endeavour as far as we can by education, and studies, and learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue ; this, however, is part of another subject. TIMAEUS

Ath. Then let us not leave the meaning of education ambiguous or ill-defined. At present, when we speak in terms of praise or blame about the bringing-up of each person, we call one man educated and another uneducated, although the uneducated man may be sometimes very well educated for the calling of a retail trader, or of a captain of a ship, and the like. For we are not speaking of education in this narrower sense, but of that other education in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name ; that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all. But let us not quarrel with one another about a word, provided that the proposition which has just been granted hold good : to wit, that those who are rightly educated generally become good men. Neither must we cast a slight upon education, which is the first and fairest thing that the best of men can ever have, and which, though liable to take a wrong direction, is capable of reformation. And this work of reformation is the great business of EVERY MAN while he lives. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Let us look at the matter thus : May we not conceive each of us living beings to be a puppet of the Gods, either their plaything only, or created with a purpose — which of the two we cannot certainly know ? But we do know, that these affections in us are like cords and strings, which pull us different and opposite ways, and to opposite actions ; and herein lies the difference between virtue and vice. According to the argument there is one among these cords which EVERY MAN ought to grasp and never let go, but to pull with it against all the rest ; and this is the sacred and golden cord of reason, called by us the common law of the State ; there are others which are hard and of iron, but this one is soft because golden ; and there are several other kinds. Now we ought always to cooperate with the lead of the best, which is law. For inasmuch as reason is beautiful and gentle, and not violent, her rule must needs have ministers in order to help the golden principle in vanquishing the other principles. And thus the moral of the tale about our being puppets will not have been lost, and the meaning of the expression “superior or inferior to a man’s self” will become clearer ; and the individual, attaining to right reason in this matter of pulling the strings of the puppet, should live according to its rule ; while the city, receiving the same from some god or from one who has knowledge of these things, should embody it in a law, to be her guide in her dealings with herself and with other states. In this way virtue and vice will be more clearly distinguished by us. And when they have become clearer, education and other institutions will in like manner become clearer ; and in particular that question of convivial entertainment, which may seem, perhaps, to have been a very trifling matter, and to have taken a great many more words than were necessary. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. That EVERY MAN and boy, slave and free, both sexes, and the whole city, should never cease charming themselves with the strains of which we have spoken ; and that there should be every sort of change and variation of them in order to take away the effect of sameness, so that the singers may always receive pleasure from their hymns, and may never weary of them ? LAWS BOOK II

Ath. And EVERY MAN surely likes his own laws best, and the laws of others not so well. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. Why, yes ; EVERY MAN when he is young has that sort of vision dullest, and when he is old keenest. LAWS BOOK IV

Ath. Then let me first give the law of marriage in a simple form ; it may run as follows : — A man shall marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, or, if he does not, he shall pay such and such a fine, or shall suffer the loss of such and such privileges. This would be the simple law about marriage. The double law would run thus : — A man shall marry between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, considering that in a manner the human race naturally partakes of immortality, which EVERY MAN is by nature inclined to desire to the utmost ; for the desire of EVERY MAN that he may become famous, and not lie in the grave without a name, is only the love of continuance. Now mankind are coeval with all time, and are ever following, and will ever follow, the course of time ; and so they are immortal, because they leave children’s children behind them, and partake of immortality in the unity of generation. And for a man voluntarily to deprive himself of this gift, as he deliberately does who will not have a wife or children, is impiety. He who obeys the law shall be free, and shall pay no fine ; but he who is disobedient, and does not marry, when he has arrived at the age of thirty-five, shall pay a yearly fine of a certain amount, in order that he may not imagine his celibacy to bring ease and profit to him ; and he shall not share in the honours which the young men in the state give to the aged. Comparing now the two forms of the law, you will be able to arrive at a judgment about any other laws — whether they should be double in length even when shortest, because they have to persuade as well as threaten, or whether they shall only threaten and be of half the length. LAWS BOOK IV

Athenian Stranger. Listen, all ye who have just now heard the laws about Gods, and about our dear forefathers : — Of all the things which a man has, next to the Gods, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. Now in EVERY MAN there are two parts : the better and superior, which rules, and the worse and inferior, which serves ; and the ruling part of him is always to be preferred to the subject. Wherefore I am right in bidding every one next to the Gods, who are our masters, and those who in order follow them (i.e., the demons), to honour his own soul, which every one seems to honour, but no one honours as he ought ; for honour is a divine good, and no evil thing is honourable ; and he who thinks that he can honour the soul by word or gift, or any sort of compliance, without making her in any way better, seems to honour her, but honours her not at all. For example, EVERY MAN, from his very boyhood, fancies that he is able to know everything, and thinks that he honours his soul by praising her, and he is very ready to let her do whatever she may like. But I mean to say that in acting thus he injures his soul, and is far from honouring her ; whereas, in our opinion, he ought to honour her as second only to the Gods. Again, when a man thinks that others are to be blamed, and not himself, for the errors which he has committed from time to time, and the many and great evils which befell him in consequence, and is always fancying himself to be exempt and innocent, he is under the idea that he is honouring his soul ; whereas the very reverse is the fact, for he is really injuring her. And when, disregarding the word and approval of the legislator, he indulges in pleasure, then again he is far from honouring her ; he only dishonours her, and fills her full of evil and remorse ; or when he does not endure to the end the labours and fears and sorrows and pains which the legislator approves, but gives way before them, then, by yielding, he does not honour the soul, but by all such conduct he makes her to be dishonourable ; nor when he thinks that life at any price is a good, does he honour her, but yet once more he dishonours her ; for the soul having a notion that the world below is all evil, he yields to her, and does not resist and teach or convince her that, for aught she knows, the world of the Gods below, instead of being evil, may be the greatest of all goods. Again, when any one prefers beauty to virtue, what is this but the real and utter dishonour of the soul ? For such a preference implies that the body is more honourable than the soul ; and this is false, for there is nothing of earthly birth which is more honourable than the heavenly, and he who thinks otherwise of the soul has no idea how greatly he undervalues this wonderful possession ; nor, again, when a person is willing, or not unwilling, to acquire dishonest gains, does he then honour his soul with gifts — far otherwise ; he sells her glory and honour for a small piece of gold ; but all the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. In a word, I may say that he who does not estimate the base and evil, the good and noble, according to the standard of the legislator, and abstain in every possible way from the one and practise the other to the utmost of his power, does not know that in all these respects he is most foully and disgracefully abusing his soul, which is the divinest part of man ; for no one, as I may say, ever considers that which is declared to be the greatest penalty of evil-doing — namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men, and growing like them to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad. And he who is joined to them must do and suffer what such men by nature do and say to one another — a suffering which is not justice but retribution ; for justice and the just are noble, whereas retribution is the suffering which waits upon injustice ; and whether a man escape or endure this, he is miserable — in the former case, because he is not cured ; while in the latter, he perishes in order that the rest of mankind may be saved. LAWS BOOK V

Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both to Gods and men ; and he who would be blessed and happy, should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he can be trusted ; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool. Neither condition is enviable, for the untrustworthy and ignorant has no friend, and as time advances he becomes known, and lays up in store for himself isolation in crabbed age when life is on the wane : so that, whether his children or friends are alive or not, he is equally solitary. — Worthy of honour is he who does no injustice, and of more than twofold honour, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any ; the first may count as one man, the second is worth many men, because he informs the rulers of the injustice of others. And yet more highly to be esteemed is he who co-operates with the rulers in correcting the citizens as far as he can — he shall be proclaimed the great and perfect citizen, and bear away the palm of virtue. The same praise may be given about temperance and wisdom, and all other goods which may be imparted to others, as well as acquired by a man for himself ; he who imparts them shall be honoured as the man of men, and he who is willing, yet is not able, may be allowed the second place ; but he who is jealous and will not, if he can help, allow others to partake in a friendly way of any good, is deserving of blame : the good, however, which he has, is not to be undervalued by us because it is possessed by him, but must be acquired by us also to the utmost of our power. Let EVERY MAN, then, freely strive for the prize of virtue, and let there be no envy. For the unenvious nature increases the greatness of states — he himself contends in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man ; but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now EVERY MAN should be valiant, but he should also be gentle. From the cruel, or hardly curable, or altogether incurable acts of injustice done to him by others, a man can only escape by fighting and defending himself and conquering, and by never ceasing to punish them ; and no man who is not of a noble spirit is able to accomplish this. As to the actions of those who do evil, but whose evil is curable, in the first place, let us remember that the unjust man is not unjust of his own free will. For no man of his own free will would choose to possess the greatest of evils, and least of all in the most honourable part of himself. And the soul, as we said, is of a truth deemed by all men the most honourable. In the soul, then, which is the most honourable part of him, no one, if he could help, would admit, or allow to continue the greatest of evils. The unrighteous and vicious are always to be pitied in any case ; and one can afford to forgive as well as pity him who is curable, and refrain and calm one’s anger, not getting into a passion, like a woman, and nursing ill-feeling. But upon him who is incapable of reformation and wholly evil, the vials of our wrath should be poured out ; wherefore I say that good men ought, when occasion demands, to be both gentle and passionate. LAWS BOOK V

Of all evils the greatest is one which in the souls of most men is innate, and which a man is always excusing in himself and never correcting ; mean, what is expressed in the saying that “Every man by nature is and ought to be his own friend.” Whereas the excessive love of self is in reality the source to each man of all offences ; for the lover is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the good, and the honourable, and thinks that he ought always to prefer himself to the truth. But he who would be a great man ought to regard, not himself or his interests, but what is just, whether the just act be his own or that of another. Through a similar error men are induced to fancy that their own ignorance is wisdom, and thus we who may be truly said to know nothing, think that we know all things ; and because we will not let others act for us in what we do not know, we are compelled to act amiss ourselves. Wherefore let EVERY MAN avoid excess of self-love, and condescend to follow a better man than himself, not allowing any false shame to stand in the way. There are also minor precepts which are often repeated, and are quite as useful ; a man should recollect them and remind himself of them. For when a stream is flowing out, there should be water flowing in too ; and recollection flows in while wisdom is departing. Therefore I say that a man should refrain from excess either of laughter or tears, and should exhort his neighbour to do the same ; he should veil his immoderate sorrow or joy, and seek to behave with propriety, whether the genius of his good fortune remains with him, or whether at the crisis of his fate, when he seems to be mounting high and steep places, the Gods oppose him in some of his enterprises. Still he may ever hope, in the case of good men, that whatever afflictions are to befall them in the future God will lessen, and that present evils he will change for the better ; and as to the goods which are the opposite of these evils, he will not doubt that they will be added to them, and that they will be fortunate. Such should be men’s hopes, and such should be the exhortations with which they admonish one another, never losing an opportunity, but on every occasion distinctly reminding themselves and others of all these things, both in jest and earnest. LAWS BOOK V

How then can we rightly order the distribution of the land ? In the first place, the number of the citizens has to be determined, and also the number and size of the divisions into which they will have to be formed ; and the land and the houses will then have to be apportioned by us as fairly as we can. The number of citizens can only be estimated satisfactorily in relation to the territory and the neighbouring states. The territory must be sufficient to maintain a certain number of inhabitants in a moderate way of life — more than this is not required ; and the number of citizens should be sufficient to defend themselves against the injustice of their neighbours, and also to give them the power of rendering efficient aid to their neighbours when they are wronged. After having taken a survey of theirs and their neighbours’ territory, we will determine the limits of them in fact as well as in theory. And now, let us proceed to legislate with a view to perfecting the form and outline of our state. The number of our citizens shall be 5040 — this will be a convenient number ; and these shall be owners of the land and protectors of the allotment. The houses and the land will be divided in the same way, so that EVERY MAN may correspond to a lot. Let the whole number be first divided into two parts, and then into three ; and the number is further capable of being divided into four or five parts, or any number of parts up to ten. Every legislator ought to know so much arithmetic as to be able to tell what number is most likely to be useful to all cities ; and we are going to take that number which contains the greatest and most regular and unbroken series of divisions. The whole of number has every possible division, and the number 5040 can be divided by exactly fifty-nine divisors, and ten of these proceed without interval from one to ten : this will furnish numbers for war and peace, and for all contracts and dealings, including taxes and divisions of the land. These properties of number should be ascertained at leisure by those who are bound by law to know them ; for they are true, and should be proclaimed at the foundation of the city, with a view to use. Whether the legislator is establishing a new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of Gods and temples — the temples which are to be built in each city, and the Gods or demi-gods after whom they are to be called — if he be a man of sense, he will make no change in anything which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or the God Ammon, or any ancient tradition has sanctioned in whatever manner, whether by apparitions or reputed inspiration of Heaven, in obedience to which mankind have established sacrifices in connection with mystic rites, either originating on the spot, or derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus or some other place, and on the strength of which traditions they have consecrated oracles and images, and altars and temples, and portioned out a sacred domain for each of them. The least part of all these ought not to be disturbed by the legislator ; but he should assign to the several districts some God, or demi-god, or hero, and, in the distribution of the soil, should give to these first their chosen domain and all things fitting, that the inhabitants of the several districts may meet at fixed times, and that they may readily supply their various wants, and entertain one another with sacrifices, and become friends and acquaintances ; for there is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should be known to one another. When not light but darkness and ignorance of each other’s characters prevails among them, no one will receive the honour of which he is deserving, or the power or the justice to which he is fairly entitled : wherefore, in every state, above all things, EVERY MAN should take heed that he have no deceit in him, but that he be always true and simple ; and that no deceitful person take any advantage of him. LAWS BOOK V

Further, the law enjoins that no private man shall be allowed to possess gold and silver, but only coin for daily use, which is almost necessary in dealing with artisans, and for payment of hirelings, whether slaves or immigrants, by all those persons who require the use of them. Wherefore our citizens, as we say, should have a coin passing current among themselves, but not accepted among the rest of mankind ; with a view, however, to expeditions and journeys to other lands — for embassies, or for any other occasion which may arise of sending out a herald, the state must also possess a common Hellenic currency. If a private person is ever obliged to go abroad, let him have the consent of the magistrates and go ; and if when he returns he has any foreign money remaining, let him give the surplus back to the treasury, and receive a corresponding sum in the local currency. And if he is discovered to appropriate it, let it be confiscated, and let him who knows and does not inform be subject to curse and dishonour equally him who brought the money, and also to a fine not less in amount than the foreign money which has been brought back. In marrying and giving in marriage, no one shall give or receive any dowry at all ; and no one shall deposit money with another whom he does not trust as a friend, nor shall he lend money upon interest ; and the borrower should be under no obligation to repay either capital or interest. That these principles are best, any one may see who compares them with the firsfirst principle and intention of a state. The intention, as we affirm, of a reasonable statesman, is not what the many declare to be the object of a good legislator, namely, that the state for the true interests of which he is advising should be as great and as rich as possible, and should possess gold and silver, and have the greatest empire by sea and land ; — this they imagine to be the real object of legislation, at the same time adding, inconsistently, that the true legislator desires to have the city the best and happiest possible. But they do not see that some of these things are possible, and some of them are impossible ; and he who orders the state will desire what is possible, and will not indulge in vain wishes or attempts to accomplish that which is impossible. The citizen must indeed be happy and good, and the legislator will seek to make him so ; but very rich and very good at the same time he cannot be, not, at least, in the sense in which the many speak of riches. For they mean by “the rich” the few who have the most valuable possessions, although the owner of them may quite well be a rogue. And if this is true, I can never assent to the doctrine that the rich man will be happy — he must be good as well as rich. And good in a high degree, and rich in a high degree at the same time, he cannot be. Some one will ask, why not ? And we shall answer — Because acquisitions which come from sources which are just and unjust indifferently, are more than double those which come from just sources only ; and the sums which are expended neither honourably nor disgracefully, are only half as great as those which are expended honourably and on honourable purposes. Thus, if the one acquires double and spends half, the other who is in the opposite case and is a good man cannot possibly be wealthier than he. The first — I am speaking of the saver and not of the spender — is not always bad ; he may indeed in some cases be utterly bad, but, as I was saying, a good man he never is. For he who receives money unjustly as well as justly, and spends neither nor unjustly, will be a rich man if he be also thrifty. On the other hand, the utterly bad is in general profligate, and therefore very poor ; while he who spends on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just means only, can hardly be remarkable for riches, any more than he can be very poor. Our statement, then, is true, that the very rich are not good, and, if they are not good, they are not happy. But the intention of our laws was that the citizens should be as happy as may be, and as friendly as possible to one another. And men who are always at law with one another, and amongst whom there are many wrongs done, can never be friends to one another, but only those among whom crimes and lawsuits are few and slight. Therefore we say that gold and silver ought not to be allowed in the city, nor much of the vulgar sort of trade which is carried on by lending money, or rearing the meaner kinds of live stock ; but only the produce of agriculture, and only so much of this as will not compel us in pursuing it to neglect that for the sake of which riches exist — I mean, soul and body, which without gymnastics, and without education, will never be worth anything ; and therefore, as we have said not once but many times, the care of riches should have the last place in our thoughts. For there are in all three things about which EVERY MAN has an interest ; and the interest about money, when rightly regarded, is the third and lowest of them : midway comes the interest of the body ; and, first of all, that of the soul ; and the state which we are describing will have been rightly constituted if it ordains honours according to this scale. But if, in any of the laws which have been ordained, health has been preferred to temperance, or wealth to health and temperate habits, that law must clearly be wrong. Wherefore, also, the legislator ought often to impress upon himself the question — “What do I want ?” and “Do I attain my aim, or do I miss the mark ?” In this way, and in this way only, he ma acquit himself and free others from the work of legislation. LAWS BOOK V

It would be well that EVERY MAN should come to the colony having all things equal ; but seeing that this is not possible, and one man will have greater possessions than another, for many reasons and in particular in order to preserve equality in special crises of the state, qualifications of property must be unequal, in order that offices and contributions and distributions may be proportioned to the value of each person’s wealth, and not solely to the virtue of his ancestors or himself, nor yet to the strength and beauty of his person, but also to the measure of his wealth or poverty ; and so by a law of inequality, which will be in proportion to his wealth, he will receive honours and offices as equally as possible, and there will be no quarrels and disputes. To which end there should be four different standards appointed according to the amount of property : there should be a first and a second and a third and a fourth class, in which the citizens will be placed, and they will be called by these or similar names : they may continue in the same rank, or pass into another in any individual case, on becoming richer from being, poorer, or poorer from being richer. The form of law which I should propose as the natural sequel would be as follows : — In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues — not faction, but rather distraction ; — here should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty, nor, again, excess of wealth, for both are productive of both these evils. Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or wealth. Let the limit of poverty be the value of the lot ; this ought to be preserved, and no ruler, nor any one else who aspires after a reputation for virtue, will allow the lot to be impaired in any case. This the legislator gives as a measure, and he will permit a man to acquire double or triple, or as much as four times the amount of this. But if a person have yet greater riches, whether he has found them, or they have been given to him, or he has made them in business, or has acquired by any stroke of fortune that which is in excess of the measure, if he give back the surplus to the state, and to the Gods who are the patrons of the state, he shall suffer no penalty or loss of reputation ; but if he disobeys this our law any one who likes may inform against him and receive half the value of the excess, and the delinquent shall pay a sum equal to the excess out of his own property, and the other half of the excess shall belong to the Gods. And let every possession of EVERY MAN, with the exception of the lot, be publicly registered before the magistrates whom the law appoints, so that all suits about money may be easy and quite simple. LAWS BOOK V

The next thing to be noted is, that the city should be placed as nearly as possible in the centre of the country ; we should choose a place which possesses what is suitable for a city, and this may easily be imagined and described. Then we will divide the city into twelve portions, first founding temples to Hestia, to Zeus and to Athene, in a spot which we will call the Acropolis, and surround with a circular wall, making the division of the entire city and country radiate from this point. The twelve portions shall be equalized by the provision that those which are of good land shall be smaller. while those of inferior quality shall be larger. The number of the lots shall be 5040, and each of them shall be divided into two, and every allotment shall be composed of two such sections ; one of land near the city, the other of land which is at a distance. This arrangement shall be carried out in the following manner : The section which is near the city shall be added to that which is on borders, and form one lot, and the portion which is next nearest shall be added to the portion which is next farthest ; and so of the rest. Moreover, in the two sections of the lots the same principle of equalization of the soil ought to be maintained ; the badness and goodness shall be compensated by more and less. And the legislator shall divide the citizens into twelve parts, and arrange the rest of their property, as far as possible, so as to form twelve equal parts ; and there shall be a registration of all. After this they shall assign twelve lots to twelve Gods, and call them by their names, and dedicate to each God their several portions, and call the tribes after them. And they shall distribute the twelve divisions of the city in the same way in which they divided the country ; and EVERY MAN shall have two habitations, one in the centre of the country, and the other at the extremity. Enough of the manner of settlement. LAWS BOOK V

The council shall consist of 30 x 12 members — 360 will be a convenient number for sub-division. If we divide the whole number into four parts of ninety each, we get ninety counsellors for each class. First, all the citizens shall select candidates from the first class ; they shall be compelled to vote, and, if they do not, shall be duly fined. When the candidates have been selected, some one shall mark them down ; this shall be the business of the first day. And on the following day, candidates shall be selected from the second class in the same manner and under the same conditions as on the previous day ; and on the third day a selection shall be made from the third class, at which every one may, if he likes, vote, and the three first classes shall be compelled to vote ; but the fourth and lowest class shall be under no compulsion, and any member of this class who does not vote shall not be punished. On the fourth day candidates shall be selected from the fourth and smallest class ; they shall be selected by all, but he who is of the fourth class shall suffer no penalty, nor he who is of the third, if he be not willing to vote ; but he who is of the first or second class, if he does not vote shall be punished ; — he who is of the second class shall pay a fine of triple the amount which was exacted at first, and he who is of the first class quadruple. On the fifth day the rulers shall bring out the names noted down, for all the citizens to see, and EVERY MAN shall choose out of them, under pain, if he do not, of suffering the first penalty ; and when they have chosen out of each of the classes, they shall choose one-half of them by lot, who shall undergo a scrutiny : — These are to form the council for the year. LAWS BOOK VI

After the wardens of the country, we have to speak of the election of wardens of the agora and of the city. The wardens of the country were sixty in number, and the wardens of the city will be three, and will divide the twelve parts of the city into three ; like the former, they shall have care of the ways, and of the different high roads which lead out of the country into the city, and of the buildings, that they may be all made according to law ; — also of the waters, which the guardians of the supply preserve and convey to them, care being taken that they may reach the fountains pure and abundant, and be both an ornament and a benefit to the city. These also should be men of influence, and at leisure to take care of the public interest. Let EVERY MAN propose as warden of the city any one whom he likes out of the highest class, and when the vote has been given on them, and the number is reduced to the six who have the greatest number of votes, let the electing officers choose by lot three out of the six, and when they have undergone a scrutiny let them hold office according to the laws laid down for them. Next, let the wardens of the agora be elected in like manner, out of the first and second class, five in number : ten are to be first elected, and out of the ten five are to be chosen by lot, as in the election of the wardens of the city : — these when they have undergone a scrutiny are to be declared magistrates. Every one shall vote for every one, and he who will not vote, if he be informed against before the magistrates, shall be fined fifty drachmae, and shall also be deemed a bad citizen. Let any one who likes go to the assembly and to the general council ; it shall be compulsory to go on citizens of the first and second class, and they shall pay a fine of ten drachmae if they be found not answering to their names at the assembly. the third and fourth class shall be under no compulsion, and shall be let off without a fine, unless the magistrates have commanded all to be present, in consequence of some urgent necessity. The wardens of the agora shall observe the order appointed by law for the agora, and shall have the charge of the temples and fountains which are in the agora ; and they shall see that no one injures anything, and punish him who does, with stripes and bonds, if he be a slave or stranger ; but if he be a citizen who misbehaves in this way, they shall have the power themselves of inflicting a fine upon him to the amount of a hundred drachmae, or with the consent of the wardens of the city up to double that amount. And let the wardens of the city have a similar power of imposing punishments and fines in their own department ; and let them impose fines by their own department ; and let them impose fines by their own authority, up to a mina, or up to two minae with the consent of the wardens of the agora. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. The bride and bridegroom should consider that they are to produce for the state the best and fairest specimens of children which they can. Now all men who are associated any action always succeed when they attend and give their mind to what they are doing, but when they do not give their mind or have no mind, they fail ; wherefore let the bridegroom give his mind to the bride and to the begetting of children, and the bride in like manner give her mind to the bridegroom, and particularly at the time when their children are not yet born. And let the women whom we have chosen be the overseers of such matters, and let them in whatever number, large or small, and at whatever time the magistrates may command, assemble every day in the temple of Eileithyia during a third part of the day, and being there assembled, let them inform one another of any one whom they see, whether man or woman, of those who are begetting children, disregarding the ordinances given at the time when the nuptial sacrifices and ceremonies were performed. Let the begetting of children and the supervision of those who are begetting them continue ten years and no longer, during the time when marriage is fruitful. But if any continue without children up to this time, let them take counsel with their kindred and with the women holding the office of overseer and be divorced for their mutual benefit. If, however, any dispute arises about what is proper and for the interest of either party, they shall choose ten of the guardians of the law and abide by their permission and appointment. The women who preside over these matters shall enter into the houses of the young, and partly by admonitions and partly by threats make them give over their folly and error : if they persist, let the women go and tell the guardians of the law, and the guardians shall prevent them. But if they too cannot prevent them, they shall bring the matter before the people ; and let them write up their names and make oath that they cannot reform such and such an one ; and let him who is thus written up, if he cannot in a court of law convict those who have inscribed his name, be deprived of the privileges of a citizen in the following respects : — let him not go to weddings nor to the thanksgivings after the birth of children ; and if he go, let any one who pleases strike him with impunity ; and let the same regulations hold about women : let not a woman be allowed to appear abroad, or receive honour, or go to nuptial and birthday festivals, if she in like manner be written up as acting disorderly and cannot obtain a verdict. And if, when they themselves have done begetting children according to the law, a man or woman have connection with another man or woman who are still begetting children, let the same penalties be inflicted upon them as upon those who are still having a family ; and when the time for procreation has passed let the man or woman who refrains in such matters be held in esteem, and let those who do not refrain be held in the contrary of esteem — that is to say, disesteem. Now, if the greater part of mankind behave modestly, the enactments of law may be left to slumber ; but, if they are disorderly, the enactments having been passed, let them be carried into execution. To EVERY MAN the first year is the beginning of life, and the time of birth ought to be written down in the temples of their fathers as the beginning of existence to every child, whether boy or girl. Let every phratria have inscribed on a whited wall the names of the successive archons by whom the years are reckoned. And near to them let the living members of the phratria be inscribed, and when they depart life let them be erased. The limit of marriageable ages for a woman shall be from sixteen to twenty years at the longest — for a man, from thirty to thirty-five years ; and let a woman hold office at forty, and a man at thirty years. Let a man go out to war from twenty to sixty years, and for a woman, if there appear any need to make use of her in military service, let the time of service be after she shall have brought forth children up to fifty years of age ; and let regard be had to what is possible and suitable to each. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. I say that about serious matters a man should be serious, and about a matter which is not serious he should not be, serious ; and that God is the natural and worthy object of our most serious and blessed endeavours, for man, as I said before, is made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the best of him ; wherefore also EVERY MAN and woman should walk seriously, and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and be of another mind from what they are at present. 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. One cause is the love of wealth, which wholly absorbs men, and never for a moment allows them to think of anything but their own private possessions ; on this the soul of every citizen hangs suspended, and can attend to nothing but his daily gain ; mankind are ready to learn any branch of knowledge, and to follow any pursuit which tends to this end, and they laugh at every other : — that is one reason why a city will not be in earnest about such contests or any other good and honourable pursuit. But from an insatiable love of gold and silver, EVERY MAN will stoop to any art or contrivance, seemly or unseemly, in the hope of becoming rich ; and will make no objection to performing any action, holy, or unholy and utterly base, if only like a beast he have the power of eating and drinking all kinds of things, and procuring for himself in every sort of way the gratification of his lusts. LAWS BOOK VIII

Ath. A good objection ; but was I not just now saying that I had a way to make men use natural love and abstain from unnatural, not intentionally destroying the seeds of human increase, or sowing them in stony places, in which they will take no root ; and that I would command them to abstain too from any female field of increase in which that which is sown is not likely to grow ? Now if a law to this effect could only be made perpetual, and gain an authority such as already prevents intercourse of parents and children — such a law, extending to other sensual desires, and conquering them, would be the source of ten thousand blessings. For, in the first place, moderation is the appointment of nature, and deters men from all frenzy and madness of love, and from all adulteries and immoderate use of meats and drinks, and makes them good friends to their own wives. And innumerable other benefits would result if such a could only be enforced. I can imagine some lusty youth who is standing by, and who, on hearing this enactment, declares in scurrilous terms that we are making foolish and impossible laws, and fills the world with his outcry. And therefore I said that I knew a way of enacting and perpetuating such a law, which was very easy in one respect, but in another most difficult. There is no difficulty in seeing that such a law is possible, and in what way ; for, as I was saying, the ordinance once consecrated would master the soul of, EVERY MAN, and terrify him into obedience. But matters have now come to such a pass that even then the desired result seems as if it could not be attained, just as the continuance of an entire state in the practice of common meals is also deemed impossible. And although this latter is partly disproven by the fact of their existence among you, still even in your cities the common meals of women would be regarded as unnatural and impossible. I was thinking of the rebelliousness of the human heart when I said that the permanent establishment of these things is very difficult. LAWS BOOK VIII

Let us first of all, then, have a class of laws which shall be called the laws of husbandmen. And let the first of them be the law of Zeus, the god of boundaries. Let no one shift the boundary line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or, if he dwells at the extremity of the land, of any stranger who is conterminous with him, considering that this is truly “to move the immovable,” and every one should be more willing to move the largest rock which is not a landmark, than the least stone which is the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours ; for Zeus, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and Zeus, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused, terrible are the wars which they stir up. He who obeys the law will never know the fatal consequences of disobedience, but he who despises the law shall be liable to a double penalty, the first coming from the Gods, and the second from the law. For let no one wilfully remove the boundaries of his neighbour’s land, and if any one does, let him who will inform the landowners, and let them bring him into court, and if he be convicted of re-dividing the land by stealth or by force, let the court determine what he ought to suffer or pay. In the next place, many small injuries done by neighbours to one another, through their multiplication, may cause a weight of enmity, and make neighbourhood a very disagreeable and bitter thing. Wherefore a man ought to be very careful of committing any offence against his neighbour, and especially of encroaching on his neighbour’s land ; for any man may easily do harm, but not EVERY MAN can do good to another. He who encroaches on his neighbour’s land, and transgresses his boundaries, shall make good the damage, and, to cure him of his impudence and also of his meanness, he shall pay a double penalty to the injured party. Of these and the like matters the wardens of the country shall take cognizance, and be the judges of them and assessors of the damage ; in the more important cases, as has been already said, the whole number of them belonging to any one of the twelve divisions shall decide, and in the lesser cases the commanders : or, again, if any one pastures his cattle on his neighbour’s land, they shall see the injury, and adjudge the penalty. And if any one, by decoying the bees, gets possession of another’s swarms, and draws them to himself by making noises, he shall pay the damage ; or if anyone sets fire to his own wood and takes no care of his neighbour’s property, he shall be fined at the discretion of the magistrates. And if in planting he does not leave a fair distance between his own and his neighbour’s land, he shall be punished, in accordance with the enactments of many law givers, which we may use, not deeming it necessary that the great legislator of our state should determine all the trifles which might be decided by any body ; for example, husbandmen have had of old excellent laws about waters, and there is no reason why we should propose to divert their course : who likes may draw water from the fountain-head of the common stream on to his own land, if he do not cut off the spring which clearly belongs to some other owner ; and he may take the water in any direction which he pleases, except through a house or temple or sepulchre, but he must be careful to do no harm beyond the channel. And if there be in any place a natural dryness of the earth, which keeps in the rain from heaven, and causes a deficiency in the supply of water, let him dig down on his own land as far as the clay, and if at this depth he finds no water, let him obtain water from his neighbours, as much, as is required for his servants’ drinking, and if his neighbours, too, are limited in their supply, let him have a fixed measure, which shall be determined by the wardens of the country. This he shall receive each day, and on these terms have a share of his neighbours’ water. If there be heavy rain, and one of those on the lower ground injures some tiller of the upper ground, or some one who has a common wall, by refusing to give the man outlet for water ; or, again, if some one living on the higher ground recklessly lets off the water on his lower neighbour, and they cannot come to terms with one another, let him who will call in a warden of the city, if he be in the city, or if he be in the country, warden of the country, and let him obtain a decision determining what each of them is to do. And he who will not abide by the decision shall suffer for his malignant and morose temper, and pay a fine to the injured party, equivalent to double the value of the injury, because he was unwilling to submit to the magistrates. LAWS BOOK VIII

Now of artisans, let the regulations be as follows : — In the first place, let no citizen or servant of a citizen be occupied in handicraft arts ; for he who is to secure and preserve the public order of the state, has an art which requires much study and many kinds of knowledge, and does not admit of being made a secondary occupation ; and hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly, or of practising one art himself, and superintending some one else who is practising another. Let this, then, be our first principle in the state : — No one who is a smith shall also be a carpenter, and if he be a carpenter, he shall not superintend the smith’s art rather than his own, under the pretext that in superintending many servants who are working for him, he is likely to superintend them better, because more revenue will accrue to him from them than from his own art ; but let EVERY MAN in the state have one art, and get his living by that. Let the wardens of the city labour to maintain this law, and if any citizen incline to any other art than the study of virtue, let them punish him with disgrace and infamy, until they bring him back into his own right course ; and if any stranger profess two arts, let them chastise him with bonds and money penalties, and expulsion from the state, until they compel him to be one only and not many. LAWS BOOK VIII

Athenian Stranger. There is a sense of disgrace in legislating, as we are about to do, for all the details of crime in a state which, as we say, is to be well regulated and will be perfectly adapted to the practice of virtue. To assume that in such a state there will arise some one who will be guilty of crimes as heinous as any which are ever perpetrated in other states, and that we must legislate for him by anticipation, and threaten and make laws against him if he should arise, in order to deter him, and punish his acts, under the idea that he will arise — this, as I was saying, is in a manner disgraceful. Yet seeing that we are not like the ancient legislators, who gave laws to heroes and sons of gods, being, according to the popular belief, themselves the offspring of the gods, and legislating for others, who were also the children of divine parents, but that we are only men who are legislating for the sons of men, there is no uncharitableness in apprehending that some one of our citizens may be like a seed which has touched the ox’s horn, having a heart so hard that it cannot be softened any more than those seeds can be softened by fire. Among our citizens there may be those who cannot be subdued by all the strength of the laws ; and for their sake, though an ungracious task, I will proclaim my first law about the robbing of temples, in case any one should dare to commit such a crime. I do not expect or imagine that any well-brought-up citizen will ever take the infection, but their servants, and strangers, and strangers’ servants may be guilty of many impieties. And with a view to them especially, and yet not without a provident eye to the weakness of human nature generally, I will proclaim the law about robbers of temples and similar incurable, or almost incurable, criminals. Having already agreed that such enactments ought always to have a short prelude, we may speak to the criminal, whom some tormenting desire by night and by day tempts to go and rob a temple, the fewest possible words of admonition and exhortation : — O sir, we will say to him, the impulse which moves you to rob temples is not an ordinary human malady, nor yet a visitation of heaven, but a madness which is begotten in a man from ancient and unexpiated crimes of his race, an ever-recurring curse ; — against this you must guard with all your might, and how you are to guard we will explain to you. When any such thought comes into your mind, go and perform expiations, go as a suppliant to the temples of the Gods who avert evils, go to the society of those who are called good men among you ; hear them tell and yourself try to repeat after them, that EVERY MAN should honour the noble and the just. Fly from the company of the wicked — fly and turn not back ; and if your disorder is lightened by these remedies, well and good, but if not, then acknowledge death to be nobler than life, and depart hence. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. And now I can define to you clearly, and without ambiguity, what I mean by the just and unjust, according to my notion of them : — When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies and desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not — I call all this injustice. But when the opinion of the best, in whatever part of human nature states or individuals may suppose that to dwell, has dominion in the soul and orders the life of EVERY MAN, even if it be sometimes mistaken, yet what is done in accordance therewith, the principle in individuals which obeys this rule, and is best for the whole life of man, is to be called just ; although the hurt done by mistake is thought by many to be involuntary injustice. Leaving the question of names, about which we are not going to quarrel, and having already delineated three sources of error, we may begin by recalling them somewhat more vividly to our memory : — One of them was of the painful sort, which we denominate anger and fear. LAWS BOOK IX

All the preceding injuries and every kind of assault are deeds of violence ; and EVERY MAN, woman, or child ought to consider that the elder has the precedence of the younger in honour, both among the Gods and also among men who would live in security and happiness. Wherefore it is a foul thing and hateful to the Gods to see an elder man assaulted by a younger in the city ; and it is reasonable that a young man when struck by an elder should lightly endure his anger, laying up in store for himself a like honour when he is old. Let this be the law : — Every one shall reverence his elder in word and deed ; he shall respect any one who is twenty years older than himself, whether male or female, regarding him or her as his father or mother ; and he shall abstain from laying hands on any one who is of an age to have been his father or his mother, out of reverence to the Gods who preside over birth ; similarly he shall keep his hands from a stranger, whether he be an old inhabitant or newly arrived ; he shall not venture to correct such an one by blows, either as the aggressor or in self-defence. If he thinks that some stranger has struck him out of wantonness or insolence, and ought to be punished, he shall take him to the wardens of the city, but let him not strike him, that the stranger may be kept far away from the possibility of lifting up his hand against a citizen, and let the wardens of the city take the offender and examine him, not forgetting their duty to the God of Strangers, and in case the stranger appears to have struck the citizen unjustly, let them inflict upon him as many blows with the scourge as he has himself inflicted, and quell his presumption. But if he be innocent, they shall threaten and rebuke the man who arrested him, and let them both go. If a person strikes another of the same age or somewhat older than himself, who has no children, whether he be an old man who strikes an old man or a young man who strikes a young man, let the person struck defend himself in the natural way without a weapon and with his hands only. He who, being more than forty years of age, dares to fight with another, whether he be the aggressor or in self defence, shall be regarded as rude and ill-mannered and slavish ; — this will be a disgraceful punishment, and therefore suitable to him. The obedient nature will readily yield to such exhortations, but the disobedient, who heeds not the prelude, shall have the law ready for him : — If any man smite another who is older than himself, either by twenty or by more years, in the first place, he who is at hand, not being younger than the combatants, nor their equal in age, shall separate them, or be disgraced according to law ; but if he be the equal in age of the person who is struck or younger, he shall defend the person injured as he would a brother or father or still older relative. Further, let him who dares to smite an elder be tried for assault, as I have said, and if he be found guilty, let him be imprisoned for a period of not less than a year, or if the judges approve of a longer period, their decision shall be final. But if a stranger or metic smite one who is older by twenty years or more, the same law shall hold about the bystanders assisting, and he who is found guilty in such a suit, if he be a stranger but not resident, shall be imprisoned during a period of two years ; and a metic who disobeys the laws shall be imprisoned for three years, unless the court assign him a longer term. And let him who was present in any of these cases and did not assist according to law be punished, if he be of the highest dass, by paying a fine of a mina ; or if he be of the second class, of fifty drachmas ; or if of the third class, by a fine of thirty drachmas ; or if he be of the fourth class, by a fine of twenty drachmas ; and the generals and taxiarchs and phylarchs and hipparchs shall form the court in such cases. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. And this soul of the sun, which is therefore better than the sun, whether taking the sun about in a chariot to give light to men, or acting from without or in whatever way, ought by EVERY MAN to be deemed a God. LAWS BOOK X

Cle. Yes, by EVERY MAN who has the least particle of sense. LAWS BOOK X

This is the justice of the Gods who inhabit Olympus. O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the Gods, know that if you become worse you shall go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven, which neither you nor any other unfortunate will ever glory in escaping, and which the ordaining powers have specially ordained ; take good heed thereof, for it will be sure to take heed of you. If you say : — I am small and will creep into the depths of the earth, or I am high and will fly up to heaven, you are not so small or so high but that you shall pay the fitting penalty, either here or in the world below or in some still more savage place whither you shall be conveyed. This is also the explanation of the fate of those whom you saw, who had done unholy and evil deeds, and from small beginnings had grown great, and you fancied that from being miserable they had become happy ; and in their actions, as in a mirror, you seemed to see the universal neglect of the Gods, not knowing how they make all things work together and contribute to the great whole. And thinkest thou, bold man, that thou needest not to know this ? — he who knows it not can never form any true idea of the happiness or unhappiness of life or hold any rational discourse respecting either. If Cleinias and this our reverend company succeed in bringing to you that you know not what you say of the Gods, then will God help you ; but should you desire to hear more, listen to what we say to the third opponent, if you have any understanding whatsoever. For I think that we have sufficiently proved the existence of the Gods, and that they care for men : — The other notion that they are appeased by the wicked, and take gifts, is what we must not concede to any one, and what EVERY MAN should disprove to the utmost of his power. LAWS BOOK X

Ath. Every man of any understanding fears and respects the prayers of parents, knowing well that many times and to many persons they have been accomplished. Now these things being thus ordered by nature, good men think it a blessing from heaven if their parents live to old age and reach the utmost limit of human life, or if taken away before their time they are deeply regretted by them ; but to bad men parents are always a cause of terror. Wherefore let EVERY MAN honour with every sort of lawful honour his own parents, agreeably to what has now been said. But if this prelude be an unmeaning sound in the cars of any one, let the law follow, which may be rightly imposed in these terms : — If any one in this city be not sufficiently careful of his parents, and do not regard and gratify in every respect their wishes more than those of his sons and of his other offspring or of himself — let him who experiences this sort of treatment either come himself, or send some one to inform the three eldest guardians of the law, and three of the women who have the care of marriages ; and let them look to the matter and punish youthful evil-doers with stripes and bonds if they are under thirty years of age, that is to say, if they be men, or if they be women, let them undergo the same punishment up to forty years of age. But if, when they are still more advanced in years, they continue the same neglect of their parents, and do any hurt to any of them, let them be brought before a court in which every single one of the eldest citizens shall be the judges, and if the offender be convicted, let the court determine what he ought to pay or suffer, and any penalty may be imposed on him which a man can pay or suffer. If the person who has been wronged be unable to inform the magistrates, let any freeman who hears of his case inform, and if he do not, he shall be deemed base, and shall be liable to have a suit for damage brought against him by any one who likes. And if a slave inform, he shall receive freedom ; and if he be the slave of the injurer or injured party, he shall be set free by the magistrates, or if he belong to any other citizen, the public shall pay a price on his behalf to the owner ; and let the magistrates take heed that no one wrongs him out of revenge, because he has given information. LAWS BOOK XI

Now EVERY MAN who is engaged in any suit ought to be very careful of bringing false witness against any one, either intentionally or unintentionally, if he can help ; for justice is truly said to be an honourable maiden, and falsehood is naturally repugnant to honour and justice. A witness ought to be very careful not to sift against justice, as for example in what relates to the throwing away of arms — he must distinguish the throwing them away when necessary, and not make that a reproach, or bring in action against some innocent person on that account. To make the distinction maybe difficult ; but still the law must attempt to define the different kinds in some way. Let me endeavour to explain my meaning by an ancient tale : — If Patroclus had been brought to the tent still alive but without his arms (and this has happened to innumerable persons), the original arms, which the poet says were presented to Peleus by the Gods as a nuptial gift when he married. Thetis, remaining in the hands of Hector, then the base spirits of that day might have reproached the son of Menoetius with having cast away his arms. Again, there is the case of those who have been thrown down precipices and lost their arms ; and of those who at sea, and in stormy places, have been suddenly overwhelmed by floods of water ; and there are numberless things of this kind which one might adduce by way of extenuation, and with the view of justifying a misfortune which is easily misrepresented. We must, therefore, endeavour to divide to the best of our power the greater and more serious evil from the lesser. And a distinction may be drawn in the use of terms of reproach. A man does not always deserve to be called the thrower away of his shield ; he may be only the loser of his arms. For there is a great or rather absolute difference between him who is deprived of his arms by a sufficient force, and him who voluntarily lets his shield go. Let the law then be as follows : — If a person having arms is overtaken by the enemy and does not turn round and defend himself, but lets them go voluntarily or throws them away, choosing a base life and a swift escape rather than a courageous and noble and blessed death — in such a case of the throwing away of arms let justice be done, but the judge need take no note of the case just now mentioned ; for the bad man ought always to be punished, in the hope that he may be improved, but not the unfortunate, for there is no advantage in that. And what shall be the punishment suited to him who has thrown away his weapons of defence ? Tradition says that Caeneus, the Thessalian, was changed by a God from a woman into a man ; but the converse miracle cannot now be wrought, or no punishment would be more proper than that the man who throws away his shield should be changed into a woman. This however is impossible, and therefore let us make a law as nearly like this as we can — that he who loves his life too well shall be in no danger for the remainder of his days, but shall live for ever under the stigma of cowardice. And let the law be in the following terms : — When a man is found guilty of disgracefully throwing away his arms in war, no general or military officer shall allow him to serve as a soldier, or give him any place at all in the ranks of soldiers ; and the officer who gives the coward any place, shall suffer a penalty which the public examiner shall exact of him ; and if he be of the highest dass, he shall pay a thousand drachmae ; or if he be of the second class, five minae ; or if he be of the third, three minae ; or if he be of the fourth class, one mina. And he who is found guilty of cowardice, shall not only be dismissed from manly dangers, which is a disgrace appropriate to his nature, but he shall pay a thousand drachmae, if he be of the highest class, and five minae if he be of the second class, and three if he be of the third class, and a mina, like the preceding, if he be of the fourth class. LAWS BOOK XII

If any one knowingly receives anything which has been stolen, he shall undergo the same punishment as the thief, and if a man receives an exile he shall be punished with death. Every man should regard the friend and enemy of the state as his own friend and enemy ; and if any one makes peace or war with another on his own account, and without the authority of the state, he, like the receiver of the exile, shall undergo the penalty of death. And if any fraction of the City declare war or peace against any, the generals shall indict the authors of this proceeding, and if they are convicted death shall be the penalty. Those who serve their country ought to serve without receiving gifts, and there ought to be no excusing or approving the saying, “Men should receive gifts as the reward of good, but not of evil deeds” ; for to know which we are doing, and to stand fast by our knowledge, is no easy matter. The safest course is to obey the law which says, “Do no service for a bribe,” and let him who disobeys, if he be convicted, simply die. With a view to taxation, for various reasons, EVERY MAN ought to have had his property valued : and the tribesmen should likewise bring a register of the yearly produce to the wardens of the country, that in this way there may be two valuations ; and the public officers may use annuary whichever on consideration they deem the best, whether they prefer to take a certain portion of the whole value, or of the annual revenue, after subtracting what is paid to the common tables. LAWS BOOK XII

This, then, was the advice which Dion and I gave to Dionysios, since, owing to bringing up which he had received from his father, he had had no advantages in the way of education or of suitable lessons, in the first place… ; and, in the second place, that, after starting in this way, he should make friends of others among his connections who were of the same age and were in sympathy with his pursuit of virtue, but above all that he should be in harmony with himself ; for this it was of which he was remarkably in need. This we did not say in plain words, for that would not have been safe ; but in covert language we maintained that EVERY MAN in this way would save both himself and those whom he was leading, and if he did not follow this path, he would do just the opposite of this. And after proceeding on the course which we described, and making himself a wise and temperate man, if he were then to found again the cities of Sicily which had been laid waste, and bind them together by laws and constitutions, so as to be loyal to him and to one another in their resistance to the attacks of the barbarians, he would, we told him, make his father’s empire not merely double what it was but many times greater. For, if these things were done, his way would be clear to a more complete subjugation of the Carthaginians than that which befell them in Gelon’s time, whereas in our own day his father had followed the opposite course of levying attribute for the barbarians. This was the language and these the exhortations given by us, the conspirators against Dionysios according to the charges circulated from various sources — charges which, prevailing as they did with Dionysios, caused the expulsion of Dion and reduced me to a state of apprehension. But when — to summarise great events which happened in no great time — Dion returned from the Peloponnese and Athens, his advice to Dionysios took the form of action. LETTERS LETTER VII

But if, after all, this is work for a future time, whereas immediate action is called for by the disorders of all sorts and kinds which arise every day from your state of civil strife, EVERY MAN to whom Providence has given even a moderate share of right intelligence ought to know that in times of civil strife there is no respite from trouble till the victors make an end of feeding their grudge by combats and banishments and executions, and of wreaking their vengeance on their enemies. They should master themselves and, enacting impartial laws, framed not to gratify themselves more than the conquered party, should compel men to obey these by two restraining forces, respect and fear ; fear, because they are the masters and can display superior force ; respect, because they rise superior to pleasures and are willing and able to be servants to the laws. There is no other way save this for terminating the troubles of a city that is in a state of civil strife ; but a constant continuance of internal disorders, struggles, hatred and mutual distrust is the common lot of cities which are in that plight. LETTERS LETTER VII

Again you must learn the point which comes next. Every circle, of those which are by the act of man drawn or even turned on a lathe, is full of that which is opposite to the fifth thing. For everywhere it has contact with the straight. But the circle itself, we say, has nothing in either smaller or greater, of that which is its opposite. We say also that the name is not a thing of permanence for any of them, and that nothing prevents the things now called round from being called straight, and the straight things round ; for those who make changes and call things by opposite names, nothing will be less permanent (than a name). Again with regard to the definition, if it is made up of names and verbal forms, the same remark holds that there is no sufficiently durable permanence in it. And there is no end to the instances of the ambiguity from which each of the four suffers ; but the greatest of them is that which we mentioned a little earlier, that, whereas there are two things, that which has real being, and that which is only a quality, when the soul is seeking to know, not the quality, but the essence, each of the four, presenting to the soul by word and in act that which it is not seeking (i.e., the quality), a thing open to refutation by the senses, being merely the thing presented to the soul in each particular case whether by statement or the act of showing, fills, one may say, EVERY MAN with puzzlement and perplexity. LETTERS LETTER VII

In one word, the man who has no natural kinship with this matter cannot be made akin to it by quickness of learning or memory ; for it cannot be engendered at all in natures which are foreign to it. Therefore, if men are not by nature kinship allied to justice and all other things that are honourable, though they may be good at learning and remembering other knowledge of various kinds — or if they have the kinship but are slow learners and have no memory — none of all these will ever learn to the full the truth about virtue and vice. For both must be learnt together ; and together also must be learnt, by complete and long continued study, as I said at the beginning, the true and the false about all that has real being. After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers. Therefore EVERY MAN of worth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing. In one word, then, it may be known from this that, if one sees written treatises composed by anyone, either the laws of a lawgiver, or in any other form whatever, these are not for that man the things of most worth, if he is a man of worth, but that his treasures are laid up in the fairest spot that he possesses. But if these things were worked at by him as things of real worth, and committed to writing, then surely, not gods, but men “have themselves bereft him of his wits.” LETTERS LETTER VII

The policy which would best serve to secure your real “well-doing” is that which I shall now endeavor as best I can to describe to you. And I hope that my advice will not only be salutary to you (though to you in special), but also (8.352c) to all the Syracusans, in the second place, and, in the third, to your enemies and your foes, unless any of them be a doer of impious deeds ; for such deeds are irremediable and none could ever wash out their stain. Mark, then, what I now say. Now that the tyranny is broken down over the whole of Sicily all your fighting rages round this one subject of dispute, the one party desiring to recover the headship, and the other to put the finishing touch to the expulsion of the tyrants. Now the majority of men always believe that the right advice about these matters (8.352d) is the advising of such action as will do the greatest possible harm to one’s enemies and the greatest possible good to one’s friends ; whereas it is by no means easy to do much harm to others without also suffering in turn much harm oneself. And without going far afield one may see such consequences clearly in the recent events in Sicily itself, where the one faction is trying to inflict injury and the other to ward off the injurers ; and the tale thereof, if ever you told it to others, (8.352e) would inevitably prove a most impressive lesson. Of such policies, one may say, there is no lack ; but as for a policy which would prove beneficial to all alike, foes as well as friends, or at least as little detrimental as possible to either, such a policy is neither easy to discern, nor, when discerned, easy to carry out ; and to advise such a policy or attempt to describe it is much like saying a prayer. Be it so, then, that this is nothing but a prayer (and in truth EVERY MAN ought always (8.353a) to begin his speaking and his thinking with the gods) ; yet may it attain fulfilment in indicating some such counsel as this : — Now and almost ever since the war began both you and your enemies have been ruled continuously by that one family which your fathers set on the throne in the hour of their greatest distress, when Greek Sicily was in the utmost danger of being entirely overrun by the Carthaginians and barbarized. On that occasion they chose Dionysius because of his youth and warlike prowess to take charge of (8.353b) the military operations for which he was suited, with Hipparinus, who was older, as his fellow-counsellor, appointing them dictators for the safeguarding of Sicily, with the title, as men say, of “tyrants.” But whether one prefers to suppose that the cause which ultimately brought about their salvation was divine Fortune and the Deity, or the virtue of the rulers, or possibly the combination of both assisted by the citizens of that age — as to this let everyone form his own notion ; in any case this was the way in which salvation for the men of that generation came about. Seeing, then, that they proved themselves men of such a quality, (8.353c) it is surely right that they should be repaid with gratitude by all those whom they saved. But if in after times the tyrant’s house has wrongly abused the bounty of the city, the penalty for this it has suffered in part, and in part it will have to pay. What, then, is the penalty rightly to be exacted from them under existing circumstances ? If you were able to get quit of them easily, without serious dangers and trouble, or if they were able to regain the empire without difficulty, then, in either case, it would not have been possible for me so much as to offer the advice which I am now about to utter ; but as it is, both of you ought to bear in mind (8.353d) and remember how many times each party has hopefully imagined that it lacked but a little of achieving complete success almost every time ; and, what is more, that it is precisely this little deficiency which is always turning out to be the cause of great and numberless evils. And of these evils no limit is ever reached, but what seems to be the end of the old is always being linked on to the beginning of a new brood ; and because of this endless chain of evil (8.353e) the whole tribe of tyrants and democrats alike will be in danger of destruction. But should any of these consequences — likely as they are though lamentable — come to pass, hardly a trace of the Greek tongue will remain in all Sicily, since it will have been transformed into a province or dependency of Phoenicians or Opicians. Against this all the Greeks must with all zeal provide a remedy. If, therefore, any man knows of a remedy that is truer and better than that which I am now about to propose, (8.354a) and puts it openly before us, he shall have the best right to the title “Friend of Greece.” The remedy, however, which commends itself to me I shall now endeavor to explain, using the utmost freedom of speech and a tone of impartial justice. For indeed I am speaking somewhat like an arbitrator, and addressing to the two parties, the former despot and his subjects, as though each were a single person, the counsel I gave of old. And now also my word of advice to every despot would be that he should shun the despot’s title and his task, and change his despotism for kingship. (8.354b) That this is possible has been actually proved by that wise and good man Lycurgus ; for when he saw that the family of his kinsmen in Argos and in Messene had in both cases destroyed both themselves and their city by advancing from kingship to despotic power, he was alarmed about his own city as well as his own family, and as a remedy he introduced the authority of the Elders and of the Ephors to serve as a bond of safety for the kingly power ; and because of this they have already been kept safe (8.354c) and glorious all these generations since Law became with them supreme king over men instead of men being despots over the laws. And now also I urgently admonish you all to do the same. Those of you who are rushing after despotic power I exhort to change their course and to flee betimes from what is counted as “bliss” by men of insatiable cravings and empty heads, and to try to transform themselves into the semblance of a king, and to become subject to kingly laws, owing their possession of the highest honors to the voluntary goodwill of the citizens and to the laws. And (8.354d) I should counsel those who follow after the ways of freedom, and shun as a really evil thing the yoke of bondage, to beware lest by their insatiable craving for an immoderate freedom they should ever fall sick of their forefathers’ disease, which the men of that time suffered because of their excessive anarchy, through indulging an unmeasured love of freedom. For the Siceliots of the age before Dionysius and Hipparinus began to rule were living blissfully, as they supposed, being in luxury and ruling also over their rulers ; and they even stoned to death the ten generals (8.354e) who preceded Dionysius, without any legal trial, to show that they were no slaves of any rightful master, nor of any law, but were in all ways altogether free. Hence it was that the rule of the despots befell them. For as regards both slavery and freedom, when either is in excess it is wholly evil, but when in moderation wholly good ; and moderate slavery consists in being the slave of God, immoderate, in being the slave of men ; (8.355a) and men of sound sense have Law for their God, but men without sense Pleasure. Since these things are naturally ordained thus, I exhort Dion’s friends to declare what I am advising to all the Syracusans, as being the joint advice both of Dion and myself ; and I will be the interpreter of what he would have said to you now, were he alive and able to speak. “Pray then,” someone might say, “what message does the advice of Dion declare to us concerning the present situation ?” It is this : “Above all else, O ye Syracusans, accept such laws (8.355b) as do not appear to you likely to turn your minds covetously to money-making and wealth ; but rather — since there are three objects, the soul, the body, and money besides, — accept such laws as cause the virtue of the soul to be held first in honor, that of the body second, subordinate to that of the soul, and the honor paid to money to come third and last, in subjection to both the body and the soul. The ordinance which effects this (8.355c) will be truly laid down by you as law, since it really makes those who obey it blessed ; whereas the phrase which terms the rich “blessed” is not only a miserable one in itself, being the senseless phrase of women and children, but also renders those who believe it equally miserable. That this exhortation of mine is true you will learn by actual experience if you make trial of what I am now saying concerning laws ; for in all matters experience is held to be the truest test. And when you have accepted laws of this kind, inasmuch as (8.355d) Sicily is beset with dangers, and you are neither complete victors nor utterly vanquished, it will be, no doubt, both just and profitable for you all to pursue a middle course — not only those of you who flee from the harshness of the tyranny, but also those who crave to win back that tyranny — the men whose ancestors in those days performed the mightiest deed in saving the Greeks from the barbarians, with the result that it is possible for us now to talk about constitutions ; whereas, if they had then been ruined, no place would have been left at all for either talk or hope. So, then, let the one party of you gain freedom by the aid of kingly rule, (8.355e) and the other gain a form of kingly rule that is not irresponsible, with the laws exercising despotic sway over the kings themselves as well as the rest of the citizens, in case they do anything illegal. On these conditions set up kings for all of you, by the help of the gods and with honest and sound intent, — my own son first in return for twofold favors, namely that conferred by me and that conferred by my father ; for he delivered the city from barbarians in his own day, while I, in the present day, have twice delivered it from tyrants, (8.356a) whereof you yourselves are witnesses. And as your second king create the man who possesses the same name as my father and is son to Dionysius, in return for his present assistance and for his pious disposition ; for he, though he is sprung from a tyrant’s loins, is in act of delivering the city of his own free will, gaining thereby for himself and for his race everlasting honor in place of a transitory and unrighteous tyranny. And, thirdly, you ought to invite to become king of Syracuse — as willing king of a willing city — him who is now (8.356b) commander of your enemies’ army, Dionysius, son of Dionysius, if so be that he is willing of his own accord to transform himself into a king, being moved thereto by fear of fortune’s changes, and by pity for his country and the untended state of her temples and her tombs, lest because of his ambition he utterly ruin all and become a cause of rejoicing to the barbarians. And these three, — whether you grant them the power of the Laconian kings or curtail that power by a common agreement, — you should establish as kings in some such manner as the following, (8.356c) which indeed has been described to you before, yet listen to it now again. If you find that the family of Dionysius and Hipparinus is willing to make an end of the evils now occurring in order to secure the salvation of Sicily provided that they receive honors both in the present and for the future for themselves and for their family, then on these terms, as was said before, convoke envoys empowered to negotiate a pact, such men as they may choose, whether they come from Sicily or from abroad or both, and in such numbers as may be mutually agreed. (8.356d) And these men, on their arrival, should first lay down laws and a constitution which is so framed as to permit the kings to be put in control of the temples and of all else that fitly belongs to those who once were benefactors. And as controllers of war and peace they should appoint Law-wardens, thirty-five in number, in conjunction with the People and the Council. And there should be various courts of law for various suits, but in matters involving death or exile the Thirty-five should form the court ; and in addition to these there should be judges selected (8.356e) from the magistrates of each preceding year, one from each magistracy — the one, that is, who is approved as the most good and just ; and these should decide for the ensuing year all cases which involve the death, imprisonment or transportation of citizens ; and it should not be permissible for a king to be a judge of such suits, but he, like a priest, (8.357a) should remain clean from bloodshed and imprisonment and exile. This is what I planned for you when I was alive, and it is still my plan now. With your aid, had not Furies in the guise of guests prevented me, I should then have overcome our foes, and established the State in the way I planned ; and after this, had my intentions been realized, I should have resettled the rest of Sicily by depriving the barbarians of the land they now hold — excepting those who fought in defence of the common liberty against the tyranny — (8.357b) and restoring the former occupiers of the Greek regions to their ancient and ancestral homes. And now likewise I counsel you all with one accord to adopt and execute these same plans, and to summon all to this task, and to count him who refuses as a common enemy. Nor is such a course impossible ; for when plans actually exist in two souls, and when they are readily perceived upon reflection to be the best, he who pronounces such plans impossible is hardly a man of understanding. And by the “two souls” (8.357c) I mean the soul of Hipparinus the son of Dionysius and that of my own son ; for should these agree together, I believe that all the rest of the Syracusans who have a care for their city will consent. Well then, when you have paid due honor, with prayer, to all the gods and all the other powers to whom, along with the gods, it is due, cease not from urging and exhorting both friends and opponents by gentle means and every means, until, like a heaven-sent dream presented to waking eyes, (8.357d) the plan which I have pictured in words be wrought by you into plain deeds and brought to a happy consummation.” LETTERS LETTER VIII

How admirable are his words ! And the great blessing of riches, I do not say to EVERY MAN, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally ; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to this peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes ; and therefore I say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense this is in my opinion the greatest. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

And the other, said I, of which we were speaking before is lighter still — I mean the duty of degrading the offspring of the guardians when inferior, and of elevating into the rank of guardians the offspring of the lower classes, when naturally superior. The intention was, that, in the case of the citizens generally, each individual should be put to the use for which nature intended him, one to one work, and then EVERY MAN would do his own business, and be one and not many ; and so the whole city would be one and not many. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

I am amused, I said, at your fear of the world, which makes you guard against the appearance of insisting upon useless studies ; and I quite admit the difficulty of believing that in EVERY MAN there is an eye of the soul which, when by other pursuits lost and dimmed, is by these purified and reillumined ; and is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen. Now there are two classes of persons : one class of those who will agree with you and will take your words as a revelation ; another class to whom they will be utterly unmeaning, and who will naturally deem them to be idle tales, for they see no sort of profit which is to be obtained from them. And therefore you had better decide at once with which of the two you are proposing to argue. You will very likely say with neither, and that your chief aim in carrying on the argument is your own improvement ; at the same time you do not grudge to others any benefit which they may receive. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII