Laws
the whole military force should have to leave the city and carry on
operations of war outside, that those who will have to guard the young
and the rest of the city may be equal to the task; and, on the other
hand, when enemies, whether barbarian or Hellenic, come from without
with mighty force and make a violent assault upon them, and thus compel
them to fight for the possession of the city, which is far from being
an impossibility, great would be the disgrace to the state, if the women
had been so miserably trained that they could not fight for their young,
as birds will, against any creature however strong, and die or undergo
any danger, but must instantly rush to the temples and crowd at the
altars and shrines, and bring upon human nature the reproach, that of
all animals man is the most cowardly!
CLEINIAS: Such a want of education, Stranger, is certainly an unseemly
thing to happen in a state, as well as a great misfortune.
ATHENIAN: Suppose that we carry our law to the extent of saying that
women ought not to neglect military matters, but that all citizens, male
and female alike, shall attend to them?
CLEINIAS: I quite agree.
ATHENIAN: Of wrestling we have spoken in part, but of what I should
call the most important part we have not spoken, and cannot easily speak
without showing at the same time by gesture as well as in word what we
mean; when word and action combine, and not till then, we shall explain
clearly what has been said, pointing out that of all movements wrestling
is most akin to the military art, and is to be pursued for the sake of
this, and not this for the sake of wrestling.
CLEINIAS: Excellent. ATHENIAN: 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 moves
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.
I have described the dances which are appropriate to noble bodies and
generous souls. But it is necessary also to consider and know uncomely
persons and thoughts, and those which are intended to produce laughter
in comedy, and have a comic character in respect of style, song, and
dance, and of the imitations which these afford. For serious things
cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all
without opposites, if a man is really to have intelligence of either;
but he cannot carry out both in action, if he is to have any degree of
virtue. And for this very reason he should learn them both, in order
that he may not in ignorance do or say anything which is ridiculous and
out of place--he should command slaves and hired strangers to imitate
such things, but he should never take any serious interest in them
himself, nor should any freeman or freewoman be discovered taking pains
to learn them; and there should always be some element of novelty in
the imitation. Let these then be laid down, both in law and in our
discourse, as the regulations of laughable amusements which are
generally called comedy. And, if any of the serious poets, as they are
termed, who write tragedy, come to us and say--'O strangers, may we go
to your city and country or may we not, and shall we bring with us our
poetry--what is your will about these matters?'--how shall we answer
the divine men? I think that our answer should be as follows: Best of
strangers, we will say to them, we also according to our ability are
tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest; for our whole
state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to
be indeed the very truth of tragedy. You are poets and we are poets,
both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in the noblest
of dramas, which true law can alone perfect, as our hope is. Do not then
suppose that we shall all in a moment allow you to erect your stage in
the agora, or introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above
our own, and permit you to harangue our women and children, and the
common people, about our institutions, in language other than our own,
and very often the opposite of our own. For a state would be mad which
gave you this licence, until the magistrates had determined whether your
poetry might be recited, and was fit for publication or not. Wherefore,
O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses, first of all show your songs
to the magistrates, and let them compare them with our own, and if they
are the same or better we will give you a chorus; but if not, then,
my friends, we cannot. Let these, then, be the customs ordained by law
about all dances and the teaching of them, and let matters relating
to slaves be separated from those relating to masters, if you do not
object.
CLEINIAS: We can have no hesitation in assenting when you put the matter
thus.
ATHENIAN: There still remain three studies suitable for freemen.
Arithmetic is one of them; the measurement of length, surface, and depth
is the second; and the third has to do with the revolutions of the stars
in relation to one another. Not every one has need to toil through all
these things in a strictly scientific manner, but only a few, and who
they are to be we will hereafter indicate at the end, which will be the
proper place; not to know what is necessary for mankind in general, and
what is the truth, is disgraceful to every one: and yet to enter into
these matters minutely is neither easy, nor at all possible for every
one; but there is something in them which is necessary and cannot be
set aside, and probably he who made the proverb about God originally had
this in view when he said, that 'not even God himself can fight against
necessity;' he meant, if I am not mistaken, divine necessity; for as to
the human necessities of which the many speak, when they talk in this
manner, nothing can be more ridiculous than such an application of the
words.
CLEINIAS: And what necessities of knowledge are there, Stranger, which
are divine and not human?
ATHENIAN: I conceive them to be those of which he who has no use nor any
knowledge at all cannot be a God, or demi-god, or hero to mankind, or
able to take any serious thought or charge of them. And very unlike a
divine man would he be, who is unable to count one, two, three, or
to distinguish odd and even numbers, or is unable to count at all,
or reckon night and day, and who is totally unacquainted with the
revolution of the sun and moon, and the other stars. There would be
great folly in supposing that all these are not necessary parts of
knowledge to him who intends to know anything about the highest kinds of
knowledge; but which these are, and how many there are of them, and
when they are to be learned, and what is to be learned together and what
apart, and the whole correlation of them, must be rightly apprehended
first; and these leading the way we may proceed to the other parts of
knowledge. For so necessity grounded in nature constrains us, against
which we say that no God contends, or ever will contend.
CLEINIAS: I think, Stranger, that what you have now said is very true
and agreeable to nature.
ATHENIAN: Yes, Cleinias, that is so. But it is difficult for the
legislator to begin with these studies; at a more convenient time we
will make regulations for them.
CLEINIAS: You seem, Stranger, to be afraid of our habitual ignorance
of the subject: there is no reason why that should prevent you from
speaking out.
ATHENIAN: I certainly am afraid of the difficulties to which you allude,
but I am still more afraid of those who apply themselves to this sort
of knowledge, and apply themselves badly. For entire ignorance is not so
terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of