Laws
justly say: 'O Darius, how came you to bring up Xerxes in the same way
in which Cyrus brought up Cambyses, and not to see his fatal mistake?'
For Xerxes, being the creation of the same education, met with much the
same fortune as Cambyses; and from that time until now there has never
been a really great king among the Persians, although they are all
called Great. And their degeneracy is not to be attributed to chance, as
I maintain; the reason is rather the evil life which is generally led
by the sons of very rich and royal persons; for never will boy or man,
young or old, excel in virtue, who has been thus educated. And this,
I say, is what the legislator has to consider, and what at the present
moment has to be considered by us. Justly may you, O Lacedaemonians, be
praised, in that you do not give special honour or a special education
to wealth rather than to poverty, or to a royal rather than to a private
station, where the divine and inspired lawgiver has not originally
commanded them to be given. For no man ought to have pre-eminent honour
in a state because he surpasses others in wealth, any more than because
he is swift of foot or fair or strong, unless he have some virtue in
him; nor even if he have virtue, unless he have this particular virtue
of temperance.
MEGILLUS: What do you mean, Stranger?
ATHENIAN: I suppose that courage is a part of virtue?
MEGILLUS: To be sure.
ATHENIAN: Then, now hear and judge for yourself:--Would you like to
have for a fellow-lodger or neighbour a very courageous man, who had no
control over himself?
MEGILLUS: Heaven forbid!
ATHENIAN: Or an artist, who was clever in his profession, but a rogue?
MEGILLUS: Certainly not.
ATHENIAN: And surely justice does not grow apart from temperance?
MEGILLUS: Impossible.
ATHENIAN: Any more than our pattern wise man, whom we exhibited as
having his pleasures and pains in accordance with and corresponding to
true reason, can be intemperate?
MEGILLUS: No.
ATHENIAN: There is a further consideration relating to the due and undue
award of honours in states.
MEGILLUS: What is it?
ATHENIAN: I should like to know whether temperance without the other
virtues, existing alone in the soul of man, is rightly to be praised or
blamed?
MEGILLUS: I cannot tell.
ATHENIAN: And that is the best answer; for whichever alternative you had
chosen, I think that you would have gone wrong.
MEGILLUS: I am fortunate.
ATHENIAN: Very good; a quality, which is a mere appendage of things
which can be praised or blamed, does not deserve an expression of
opinion, but is best passed over in silence.
MEGILLUS: You are speaking of temperance?
ATHENIAN: Yes; but of the other virtues, that which having this
appendage is also most beneficial, will be most deserving of honour, and
next that which is beneficial in the next degree; and so each of them
will be rightly honoured according to a regular order.
MEGILLUS: True.
ATHENIAN: And ought not the legislator to determine these classes?
MEGILLUS: Certainly he should.
ATHENIAN: Suppose that we leave to him the arrangement of details. But
the general division of laws according to their importance into a first
and second and third class, we who are lovers of law may make ourselves.
MEGILLUS: Very good.
ATHENIAN: We maintain, then, that a State which would be safe and happy,
as far as the nature of man allows, must and ought to distribute honour
and dishonour in the right way. And the right way is to place the goods
of the soul first and highest in the scale, always assuming temperance
to be the condition of them; and to assign the second place to the
goods of the body; and the third place to money and property. And if any
legislator or state departs from this rule by giving money the place of
honour, or in any way preferring that which is really last, may we not
say, that he or the state is doing an unholy and unpatriotic thing?
MEGILLUS: Yes; let that be plainly declared.
ATHENIAN: The consideration of the Persian governments led us thus far
to enlarge. We remarked that the Persians grew worse and worse. And we
affirm the reason of this to have been, that they too much diminished
the freedom of the people, and introduced too much of despotism, and so
destroyed friendship and community of feeling. And when there is an end
of these, no longer do the governors govern on behalf of their subjects
or of the people, but on behalf of themselves; and if they think that
they can gain ever so small an advantage for themselves, they devastate
cities, and send fire and desolation among friendly races. And as they
hate ruthlessly and horribly, so are they hated; and when they want
the people to fight for them, they find no community of feeling or
willingness to risk their lives on their behalf; their untold myriads
are useless to them on the field of battle, and they think that their
salvation depends on the employment of mercenaries and strangers whom
they hire, as if they were in want of more men. And they cannot help
being stupid, since they proclaim by their actions that the ordinary
distinctions of right and wrong which are made in a state are a trifle,
when compared with gold and silver.
MEGILLUS: Quite true.
ATHENIAN: And now enough of the Persians, and their present
mal-administration of their government, which is owing to the excess of
slavery and despotism among them.
MEGILLUS: Good.
ATHENIAN: Next, we must pass in review the government of Attica in like
manner, and from this show that entire freedom and the absence of all
superior authority is not by any means so good as government by others
when properly limited, which was our ancient Athenian constitution at
the time when the Persians made their attack on Hellas, or, speaking
more correctly, on the whole continent of Europe. There were four
classes, arranged according to a property census, and reverence was our
queen and mistress, and made us willing to live in obedience to the laws
which then prevailed. Also the vastness of the Persian armament, both by
sea and on land, caused a helpless terror, which made us more and more
the servants of our rulers and of the laws; and for all these reasons an
exceeding harmony prevailed among us. About ten years before the naval
engagement at Salamis, Datis came, leading a Persian host by command
of Darius, which was expressly directed against the Athenians and
Eretrians, having orders to carry them away captive; and these orders
he was to execute under pain of death. Now Datis and his myriads soon
became complete masters of Eretria, and he sent a fearful report to
Athens that no Eretrian had escaped him; for the soldiers of Datis had
joined hands and netted the whole of Eretria. And this report, whether
well or ill founded, was terrible to all the Hellenes, and above all to
the Athenians, and they dispatched embassies in all directions, but
no one was willing to come to their relief, with the exception of the
Lacedaemonians; and they, either because they were detained by the
Messenian war, which was then going on, or for some other reason of
which we are not told, came a day too late for the battle of Marathon.
After a while, the news arrived of mighty preparations being made, and
innumerable threats came from the king. Then, as time went on, a rumour
reached us that Darius had died, and that his son, who was young and
hot-headed, had come to the throne and was persisting in his design.
The Athenians were under the impression that the whole expedition was
directed against them, in consequence of the battle of Marathon; and
hearing of the bridge over the Hellespont, and the canal of Athos, and
the host of ships, considering that there was no salvation for them
either by land or by sea, for there was no one to help them, and
remembering that in the first expedition, when the Persians destroyed
Eretria, no one came to their help, or would risk the danger of an
alliance with them, they thought that this would happen again, at least
on land; nor, when they looked to the sea, could they descry any hope
of salvation; for they were attacked by a thousand vessels and more. One
chance of safety remained, slight indeed and desperate, but their only
one. They saw that on the former occasion they had gained a seemingly
impossible victory, and borne up by this hope, they found that their
only refuge was in themselves and in the Gods. All these things created
in them the spirit of friendship; there was the fear of the moment,
and there was that higher fear, which they had acquired by obedience
to their ancient laws, and which I have several times in the preceding
discourse called reverence, of which the good man ought to be a willing
servant, and of which the coward is independent and fearless. If this
fear had not possessed them, they would never have met the enemy, or
defended their temples and sepulchres and their country, and everything
that was near and dear to them, as they did; but little by little they
would have been all scattered and dispersed.
MEGILLUS: Your words, Athenian, are quite true, and worthy of yourself
and of your country.
ATHENIAN: They are true, Megillus; and to you, who have inherited the
virtues of your ancestors, I may properly speak of the actions of that
day. And I would wish you and Cleinias to consider whether my words have
not also a bearing on legislation; for I am not discoursing only for the
pleasure of talking, but for the argument's sake. Please to remark that
the experience both of ourselves and the Persians was, in a certain
sense, the same; for as they led their people into utter servitude, so
we too led ours into all freedom. And now, how shall we proceed? for I
would like you to observe that our previous arguments have good deal to
say for themselves.
MEGILLUS: True; but I wish that you would give us a fuller explanation.
ATHENIAN: I will. Under the ancient laws, my friends, the people was not
as now the master, but rather the willing servant of the laws.
MEGILLUS: What laws do you mean?
ATHENIAN: In the first place, let us speak of the laws about
music,--that is to say, such music as then existed--in order that we may
trace the growth of the excess of freedom from the beginning. Now music
was early divided among us into certain kinds and manners. One sort
consisted of prayers to the Gods, which were called hymns; and there
was another and opposite sort called lamentations, and another termed
paeans, and another, celebrating the birth of Dionysus, called, I
believe, 'dithyrambs.' And they used the actual word 'laws,' or nomoi,
for another kind of song; and to this they added the term 'citharoedic.'
All these and others were duly distinguished, nor were the performers
allowed to confuse one style of music with another. And the authority
which determined and gave judgment, and punished the disobedient,
was not expressed in a hiss, nor in the most unmusical shouts of the
multitude, as in our days, nor in applause and clapping of hands. But
the directors of public instruction insisted that the spectators
should listen in silence to the end; and boys and their tutors, and the
multitude in general, were kept quiet by a hint from a stick. Such was
the good order which the multitude were willing to observe; they would
never have dared to give judgment by noisy cries. And then, as time
went on, the poets themselves introduced the reign of vulgar and lawless
innovation. They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what
is just and lawful in music; raging like Bacchanals and possessed with
inordinate delights--mingling lamentations with hymns, and paeans with
dithyrambs; imitating the sounds of the flute on the lyre, and making
one general confusion; ignorantly affirming that music has no truth,