Laws
between men and women; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of
women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was
originally due to unbridled lust. The Cretans are always accused of
having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus because they wanted
to justify themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the
practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver.
Leaving the story, we may observe that any speculation about laws turns
almost entirely on pleasure and pain, both in states and in individuals:
these are two fountains which nature lets flow, and he who draws from
them where and when, and as much as he ought, is happy; and this
holds of men and animals--of individuals as well as states; and he who
indulges in them ignorantly and at the wrong time, is the reverse of
happy.
MEGILLUS: I admit, Stranger, that your words are well spoken, and I
hardly know what to say in answer to you; but still I think that the
Spartan lawgiver was quite right in forbidding pleasure. Of the Cretan
laws, I shall leave the defence to my Cnosian friend. But the laws of
Sparta, in as far as they relate to pleasure, appear to me to be the
best in the world; for that which leads mankind in general into the
wildest pleasure and licence, and every other folly, the law has clean
driven out; and neither in the country nor in towns which are under the
control of Sparta, will you find revelries and the many incitements of
every kind of pleasure which accompany them; and any one who meets a
drunken and disorderly person, will immediately have him most severely
punished, and will not let him off on any pretence, not even at the time
of a Dionysiac festival; although I have remarked that this may happen
at your performances 'on the cart,' as they are called; and among our
Tarentine colonists I have seen the whole city drunk at a Dionysiac
festival; but nothing of the sort happens among us.
ATHENIAN: O Lacedaemonian Stranger, these festivities are praiseworthy
where there is a spirit of endurance, but are very senseless when they
are under no regulations. In order to retaliate, an Athenian has only
to point out the licence which exists among your women. To all such
accusations, whether they are brought against the Tarentines, or us, or
you, there is one answer which exonerates the practice in question from
impropriety. When a stranger expresses wonder at the singularity of
what he sees, any inhabitant will naturally answer him:--Wonder not, O
stranger; this is our custom, and you may very likely have some other
custom about the same things. Now we are speaking, my friends, not
about men in general, but about the merits and defects of the lawgivers
themselves. Let us then discourse a little more at length about
intoxication, which is a very important subject, and will seriously task
the discrimination of the legislator. I am not speaking of drinking,
or not drinking, wine at all, but of intoxication. Are we to follow the
custom of the Scythians, and Persians, and Carthaginians, and Celts, and
Iberians, and Thracians, who are all warlike nations, or that of your
countrymen, for they, as you say, altogether abstain? But the Scythians
and Thracians, both men and women, drink unmixed wine, which they pour
on their garments, and this they think a happy and glorious institution.
The Persians, again, are much given to other practices of luxury which
you reject, but they have more moderation in them than the Thracians and
Scythians.
MEGILLUS: O best of men, we have only to take arms into our hands, and
we send all these nations flying before us.
ATHENIAN: Nay, my good friend, do not say that; there have been, as
there always will be, flights and pursuits of which no account can be
given, and therefore we cannot say that victory or defeat in battle
affords more than a doubtful proof of the goodness or badness of
institutions. For when the greater states conquer and enslave the
lesser, as the Syracusans have done the Locrians, who appear to be the
best-governed people in their part of the world, or as the Athenians
have done the Ceans (and there are ten thousand other instances of the
same sort of thing), all this is not to the point; let us endeavour
rather to form a conclusion about each institution in itself and say
nothing, at present, of victories and defeats. Let us only say that such
and such a custom is honourable, and another not. And first permit me to
tell you how good and bad are to be estimated in reference to these very
matters.
MEGILLUS: How do you mean?
ATHENIAN: All those who are ready at a moment's notice to praise or
censure any practice which is matter of discussion, seem to me to
proceed in a wrong way. Let me give you an illustration of what I
mean:--You may suppose a person to be praising wheat as a good kind
of food, whereupon another person instantly blames wheat, without ever
enquiring into its effect or use, or in what way, or to whom, or with
what, or in what state and how, wheat is to be given. And that is just
what we are doing in this discussion. At the very mention of the word
intoxication, one side is ready with their praises and the other with
their censures; which is absurd. For either side adduce their witnesses
and approvers, and some of us think that we speak with authority because
we have many witnesses; and others because they see those who abstain
conquering in battle, and this again is disputed by us. Now I cannot say
that I shall be satisfied, if we go on discussing each of the remaining
laws in the same way. And about this very point of intoxication I should
like to speak in another way, which I hold to be the right one; for if
number is to be the criterion, are there not myriads upon myriads of
nations ready to dispute the point with you, who are only two cities?
MEGILLUS: I shall gladly welcome any method of enquiry which is right.
ATHENIAN: Let me put the matter thus:--Suppose a person to praise the
keeping of goats, and the creatures themselves as capital things to
have, and then some one who had seen goats feeding without a goatherd
in cultivated spots, and doing mischief, were to censure a goat or any
other animal who has no keeper, or a bad keeper, would there be any
sense or justice in such censure?
MEGILLUS: Certainly not.
ATHENIAN: Does a captain require only to have nautical knowledge in
order to be a good captain, whether he is sea-sick or not? What do you
say?
MEGILLUS: I say that he is not a good captain if, although he have
nautical skill, he is liable to sea-sickness.
ATHENIAN: And what would you say of the commander of an army? Will he be
able to command merely because he has military skill if he be a coward,
who, when danger comes, is sick and drunk with fear?
MEGILLUS: Impossible.
ATHENIAN: And what if besides being a coward he has no skill?
MEGILLUS: He is a miserable fellow, not fit to be a commander of men,
but only of old women.
ATHENIAN: And what would you say of some one who blames or praises any
sort of meeting which is intended by nature to have a ruler, and is well
enough when under his presidency? The critic, however, has never seen
the society meeting together at an orderly feast under the control of a
president, but always without a ruler or with a bad one:--when observers
of this class praise or blame such meetings, are we to suppose that what
they say is of any value?
MEGILLUS: Certainly not, if they have never seen or been present at such
a meeting when rightly ordered.
ATHENIAN: Reflect; may not banqueters and banquets be said to constitute
a kind of meeting?
MEGILLUS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: And did any one ever see this sort of convivial meeting
rightly ordered? Of course you two will answer that you have never seen
them at all, because they are not customary or lawful in your country;
but I have come across many of them in many different places, and
moreover I have made enquiries about them wherever I went, as I may say,
and never did I see or hear of anything of the kind which was carried on
altogether rightly; in some few particulars they might be right, but in
general they were utterly wrong.
CLEINIAS: What do you mean, Stranger, by this remark? Explain. For we,
as you say, from our inexperience in such matters, might very likely
not know, even if they came in our way, what was right or wrong in such
societies.
ATHENIAN: Likely enough; then let me try to be your instructor: You
would acknowledge, would you not, that in all gatherings of mankind, of
whatever sort, there ought to be a leader?
CLEINIAS: Certainly I should.
ATHENIAN: And we were saying just now, that when men are at war the
leader ought to be a brave man?
CLEINIAS: We were.
ATHENIAN: The brave man is less likely than the coward to be disturbed
by fears?
CLEINIAS: That again is true.
ATHENIAN: And if there were a possibility of having a general of an
army who was absolutely fearless and imperturbable, should we not by all
means appoint him?
CLEINIAS: Assuredly.
ATHENIAN: Now, however, we are speaking not of a general who is to
command an army, when foe meets foe in time of war, but of one who is to
regulate meetings of another sort, when friend meets friend in time of
peace.
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: And that sort of meeting, if attended with drunkenness, is apt
to be unquiet.
CLEINIAS: Certainly; the reverse of quiet.
ATHENIAN: In the first place, then, the revellers as well as the
soldiers will require a ruler?
CLEINIAS: To be sure; no men more so.
ATHENIAN: And we ought, if possible, to provide them with a quiet ruler?
CLEINIAS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: And he should be a man who understands society; for his duty
is to preserve the friendly feelings which exist among the company
at the time, and to increase them for the future by his use of the
occasion.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: Must we not appoint a sober man and a wise to be our master of
the revels? For if the ruler of drinkers be himself young and drunken,
and not over-wise, only by some special good fortune will he be saved
from doing some great evil.
CLEINIAS: It will be by a singular good fortune that he is saved.
ATHENIAN: Now suppose such associations to be framed in the best way
possible in states, and that some one blames the very fact of their
existence--he may very likely be right. But if he blames a practice
which he only sees very much mismanaged, he shows in the first place
that he is not aware of the mismanagement, and also not aware that
everything done in this way will turn out to be wrong, because done
without the superintendence of a sober ruler. Do you not see that a
drunken pilot or a drunken ruler of any sort will ruin ship, chariot,
army--anything, in short, of which he has the direction?
CLEINIAS: The last remark is very true, Stranger; and I see quite
clearly the advantage of an army having a good leader--he will give
victory in war to his followers, which is a very great advantage; and
so of other things. But I do not see any similar advantage which either
individuals or states gain from the good management of a feast; and I
want you to tell me what great good will be effected, supposing that
this drinking ordinance is duly established.
ATHENIAN: If you mean to ask what great good accrues to the state from
the right training of a single youth, or of a single chorus--when the
question is put in that form, we cannot deny that the good is not very
great in any particular instance. But if you ask what is the good of
education in general, the answer is easy--that education makes good
men, and that good men act nobly, and conquer their enemies in battle,
because they are good. Education certainly gives victory, although