Laws
of fictions; and the legislator who desires to propagate this useful
lie, may be encouraged by remarking that mankind have believed the story
of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth, and therefore he may be assured that
he can make them believe anything, and need only consider what fiction
will do the greatest good. That the happiest is also the holiest, this
shall be our strain, which shall be sung by all three choruses alike.
First will enter the choir of children, who will lift up their voices
on high; and after them the young men, who will pray the God Paean to be
gracious to the youth, and to testify to the truth of their words;
then will come the chorus of elder men, between thirty and sixty; and,
lastly, there will be the old men, and they will tell stories enforcing
the same virtues, as with the voice of an oracle. 'Whom do you mean by
the third chorus?' You remember how I spoke at first of the restless
nature of young creatures, who jumped about and called out in a
disorderly manner, and I said that no other animal attained any
perception of rhythm; but that to us the Gods gave Apollo and the Muses
and Dionysus to be our playfellows. Of the two first choruses I have
already spoken, and I have now to speak of the third, or Dionysian
chorus, which is composed of those who are between thirty and sixty
years old. 'Let us hear.' We are agreed (are we not?) that men, women,
and children should be always charming themselves with strains of
virtue, and that there should be a variety in the strains, that they may
not weary of them? Now the fairest and most useful of strains will be
uttered by the elder men, and therefore we cannot let them off. But how
can we make them sing? For a discreet elderly man is ashamed to hear the
sound of his own voice in private, and still more in public. The only
way is to give them drink; this will mellow the sourness of age. No one
should be allowed to taste wine until they are eighteen; from eighteen
to thirty they may take a little; but when they have reached forty
years, they may be initiated into the mystery of drinking. Thus they
will become softer and more impressible; and when a man's heart is warm
within him, he will be more ready to charm himself and others with song.
And what songs shall he sing? 'At Crete and Lacedaemon we only know
choral songs.' Yes; that is because your way of life is military. Your
young men are like wild colts feeding in a herd together; no one takes
the individual colt and trains him apart, and tries to give him the
qualities of a statesman as well as of a soldier. He who was thus
trained would be a greater warrior than those of whom Tyrtaeus speaks,
for he would be courageous, and yet he would know that courage was only
fourth in the scale of virtue. 'Once more, I must say, Stranger, that
you run down our lawgivers.' Not intentionally, my good friend, but
whither the argument leads I follow; and I am trying to find some style
of poetry suitable for those who dislike the common sort. 'Very good.'
In all things which have a charm, either this charm is their good, or
they have some accompanying truth or advantage. For example, in eating
and drinking there is pleasure and also profit, that is to say, health;
and in learning there is a pleasure and also truth. There is a pleasure
or charm, too, in the imitative arts, as well as a law of proportion or
equality; but the pleasure which they afford, however innocent, is not
the criterion of their truth. The test of pleasure cannot be applied
except to that which has no other good or evil, no truth or falsehood.
But that which has truth must be judged of by the standard of truth, and
therefore imitation and proportion are to be judged of by their truth
alone. 'Certainly.' And as music is imitative, it is not to be judged by
the criterion of pleasure, and the Muse whom we seek is the muse not of
pleasure but of truth, for imitation has a truth. 'Doubtless.' And if
so, the judge must know what is being imitated before he decides on the
quality of the imitation, and he who does not know what is true will not
know what is good. 'He will not.' Will any one be able to imitate the
human body, if he does not know the number, proportion, colour, or
figure of the limbs? 'How can he?' But suppose we know some picture or
figure to be an exact resemblance of a man, should we not also require
to know whether the picture is beautiful or not? 'Quite right.' The
judge of the imitation is required to know, therefore, first the
original, secondly the truth, and thirdly the merit of the execution?
'True.' Then let us not weary in the attempt to bring music to the
standard of the Muses and of truth. The Muses are not like human poets;
they never spoil or mix rhythms or scales, or mingle instruments and
human voices, or confuse the manners and strains of men and women, or of
freemen and slaves, or of rational beings and brute animals. They do
not practise the baser sorts of musical arts, such as the 'matured
judgments,' of whom Orpheus speaks, would ridicule. But modern poets
separate metre from music, and melody and rhythm from words, and use the
instrument alone without the voice. The consequence is, that the meaning
of the rhythm and of the time are not understood. I am endeavouring to
show how our fifty-year-old choristers are to be trained, and what
they are to avoid. The opinion of the multitude about these matters is
worthless; they who are only made to step in time by sheer force cannot
be critics of music. 'Impossible.' Then our newly-appointed minstrels
must be trained in music sufficiently to understand the nature of
rhythms and systems; and they should select such as are suitable to
men of their age, and will enable them to give and receive innocent
pleasure. This is a knowledge which goes beyond that either of the poets
or of their auditors in general. For although the poet must understand
rhythm and music, he need not necessarily know whether the imitation
is good or not, which was the third point required in a judge; but our
chorus of elders must know all three, if they are to be the instructors
of youth.
And now we will resume the original argument, which may be summed up as
follows: A convivial meeting is apt to grow tumultuous as the drinking
proceeds; every man becomes light-headed, and fancies that he can rule
the whole world. 'Doubtless.' And did we not say that the souls of the
drinkers, when subdued by wine, are made softer and more malleable at
the hand of the legislator? the docility of childhood returns to them.
At times however they become too valiant and disorderly, drinking out
of their turn, and interrupting one another. And the business of the
legislator is to infuse into them that divine fear, which we call shame,
in opposition to this disorderly boldness. But in order to discipline
them there must be guardians of the law of drinking, and sober generals
who shall take charge of the private soldiers; they are as necessary in
drinking as in fighting, and he who disobeys these Dionysiac commanders
will be equally disgraced. 'Very good.' If a drinking festival were well
regulated, men would go away, not as they now do, greater enemies, but
better friends. Of the greatest gift of Dionysus I hardly like to speak,
lest I should be misunderstood. 'What is that?' According to tradition
Dionysus was driven mad by his stepmother Here, and in order to revenge
himself he inspired mankind with Bacchic madness. But these are stories
which I would rather not repeat. However I do acknowledge that all men
are born in an imperfect state, and are at first restless, irrational
creatures: this, as you will remember, has been already said by us. 'I
remember.' And that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus gave us harmony
and rhythm? 'Very true.' The other story implies that wine was given
to punish us and make us mad; but we contend that wine is a balm and a
cure; a spring of modesty in the soul, and of health and strength in
the body. Again, the work of the chorus is co-extensive with the work of
education; rhythm and melody answer to the voice, and the motions of the
body correspond to all three, and the sound enters in and educates
the soul in virtue. 'Yes.' And the movement which, when pursued as
an amusement, is termed dancing, when studied with a view to the
improvement of the body, becomes gymnastic. Shall we now proceed to
speak of this? 'What Cretan or Lacedaemonian would approve of your
omitting gymnastic?' Your question implies assent; and you will easily
understand a subject which is familiar to you. Gymnastic is based on the
natural tendency of every animal to rapid motion; and man adds a sense
of rhythm, which is awakened by music; music and dancing together form
the choral art. But before proceeding I must add a crowning word about
drinking. Like other pleasures, it has a lawful use; but if a state or
an individual is inclined to drink at will, I cannot allow them. I
would go further than Crete or Lacedaemon and have the law of the
Carthaginians, that no slave of either sex should drink wine at all, and
no soldier while he is on a campaign, and no magistrate or officer while
he is on duty, and that no one should drink by daylight or on a bridal
night. And there are so many other occasions on which wine ought to
be prohibited, that there will not be many vines grown or vineyards
required in the state.
BOOK III. If a man wants to know the origin of states and societies, he
should behold them from the point of view of time. Thousands of cities
have come into being and have passed away again in infinite ages,
every one of them having had endless forms of government; and if we
can ascertain the cause of these changes in states, that will probably
explain their origin. What do you think of ancient traditions about
deluges and destructions of mankind, and the preservation of a remnant?
'Every one believes in them.' Then let us suppose the world to have
been destroyed by a deluge. The survivors would be hill-shepherds, small
sparks of the human race, dwelling in isolation, and unacquainted with
the arts and vices of civilization. We may further suppose that the
cities on the plain and on the coast have been swept away, and that all
inventions, and every sort of knowledge, have perished. 'Why, if all
things were as they now are, nothing would have ever been invented. All
our famous discoveries have been made within the last thousand years,
and many of them are but of yesterday.' Yes, Cleinias, and you must not
forget Epimenides, who was really of yesterday; he practised the lesson
of moderation and abstinence which Hesiod only preached. 'True.' After
the great destruction we may imagine that the earth was a desert, in
which there were a herd or two of oxen and a few goats, hardly enough
to support those who tended them; while of politics and governments
the survivors would know nothing. And out of this state of things have
arisen arts and laws, and a great deal of virtue and a great deal of
vice; little by little the world has come to be what it is. At first,
the few inhabitants would have had a natural fear of descending into the
plains; although they would want to have intercourse with one another,
they would have a difficulty in getting about, having lost the arts,
and having no means of extracting metals from the earth, or of felling
timber; for even if they had saved any tools, these would soon have been
worn out, and they could get no more until the art of metallurgy had
been again revived. Faction and war would be extinguished among them,
for being solitary they would incline to be friendly; and having
abundance of pasture and plenty of milk and flesh, they would have
nothing to quarrel about. We may assume that they had also dwellings,