Laws
equal; dear also, though unlike, is he who has abundance to him who is
in want. And when either of these friendships becomes excessive, we term
the excess love.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: The friendship which arises from contraries is horrible and
coarse, and has often no tie of communion; but that which arises from
likeness is gentle, and has a tie of communion which lasts through life.
As to the mixed sort which is made up of them both, there is, first of
all, a difficulty in determining what he who is possessed by this third
love desires; moreover, he is drawn different ways, and is in doubt
between the two principles; the one exhorting him to enjoy the beauty of
youth, and the other forbidding him. For the one is a lover of the
body, and hungers after beauty, like ripe fruit, and would fain satisfy
himself without any regard to the character of the beloved; the other
holds the desire of the body to be a secondary matter, and looking
rather than loving and with his soul desiring the soul of the other in
a becoming manner, regards the satisfaction of the bodily love as
wantonness; he reverences and respects temperance and courage and
magnanimity and wisdom, and wishes to live chastely with the chaste
object of his affection. Now the sort of love which is made up of the
other two is that which we have described as the third. Seeing then
that there are these three sorts of love, ought the law to prohibit and
forbid them all to exist among us? Is it not rather clear that we should
wish to have in the state the love which is of virtue and which desires
the beloved youth to be the best possible; and the other two, if
possible, we should hinder? What do you say, friend Megillus?
MEGILLUS: I think, Stranger, that you are perfectly right in what you
have been now saying.
Athenian: I knew well, my friend, that I should obtain your assent,
which I accept, and therefore have no need to analyze your custom any
further. Cleinias shall be prevailed upon to give me his assent at some
other time. Enough of this; and now let us proceed to the laws.
MEGILLUS: Very good.
ATHENIAN: Upon reflection I see a way of imposing the law, which, in one
respect, is easy, but, in another, is of the utmost difficulty.
MEGILLUS: What do you mean?
ATHENIAN: We are all aware that most men, in spite of their lawless
natures, are very strictly and precisely restrained from intercourse
with the fair, and this is not at all against their will, but entirely
with their will.
MEGILLUS: When do you mean?
ATHENIAN: When any one has a brother or sister who is fair; and about
a son or daughter the same unwritten law holds, and is a most perfect
safeguard, so that no open or secret connexion ever takes place between
them. Nor does the thought of such a thing ever enter at all into the
minds of most of them.
MEGILLUS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: Does not a little word extinguish all pleasures of that sort?
MEGILLUS: What word?
ATHENIAN: The declaration that they are unholy, hated of God, and most
infamous; and is not the reason of this that no one has ever said
the opposite, but every one from his earliest childhood has heard men
speaking in the same manner about them always and everywhere, whether in
comedy or in the graver language of tragedy? When the poet introduces
on the stage a Thyestes or an Oedipus, or a Macareus having secret
intercourse with his sister, he represents him, when found out, ready to
kill himself as the penalty of his sin.
MEGILLUS: You are very right in saying that tradition, if no breath of
opposition ever assails it, has a marvellous power.
ATHENIAN: Am I not also right in saying that the legislator who wants
to master any of the passions which master man may easily know how to
subdue them? He will consecrate the tradition of their evil character
among all, slaves and freemen, women and children, throughout the city:
that will be the surest foundation of the law which he can make.
MEGILLUS: Yes; but will he ever succeed in making all mankind use the
same language about them?
ATHENIAN: 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 law 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.
MEGILLUS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: Shall I try and find some sort of persuasive argument which
will prove to you that such enactments are possible, and not beyond
human nature?
CLEINIAS: By all means.
ATHENIAN: Is a man more likely to abstain from the pleasures of love
and to do what he is bidden about them, when his body is in a good
condition, or when he is in an ill condition, and out of training?
CLEINIAS: He will be far more temperate when he is in training.
ATHENIAN: And have we not heard of Iccus of Tarentum, who, with a view
to the Olympic and other contests, in his zeal for his art, and also
because he was of a manly and temperate disposition, never had any
connexion with a woman or a youth during the whole time of his training?
And the same is said of Crison and Astylus and Diopompus and many
others; and yet, Cleinias, they were far worse educated in their minds
than your and my citizens, and in their bodies far more lusty.
CLEINIAS: No doubt this fact has been often affirmed positively by the
ancients of these athletes.
ATHENIAN: And had they the courage to abstain from what is ordinarily
deemed a pleasure for the sake of a victory in wrestling, running, and
the like; and shall our young men be incapable of a similar endurance
for the sake of a much nobler victory, which is the noblest of all, as
from their youth upwards we will tell them, charming them, as we hope,
into the belief of this by tales and sayings and songs?
CLEINIAS: Of what victory are you speaking?
ATHENIAN: Of the victory over pleasure, which if they win, they will
live happily; or if they are conquered, the reverse of happily. And,
further, may we not suppose that the fear of impiety will enable them to
master that which other inferior people have mastered?
CLEINIAS: I dare say.
ATHENIAN: And since we have reached this point in our legislation,
and have fallen into a difficulty by reason of the vices of mankind, I
affirm that our ordinance should simply run in the following terms:
Our citizens ought not to fall below the nature of birds and beasts in
general, who are born in great multitudes, and yet remain until the age
for procreation virgin and unmarried, but when they have reached the
proper time of life are coupled, male and female, and lovingly pair
together, and live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence,
abiding firmly in their original compact: surely, we will say to them,
you should be better than the animals. But if they are corrupted by the
other Hellenes and the common practice of barbarians, and they see
with their eyes and hear with their ears of the so-called free love
everywhere prevailing among them, and they themselves are not able to
get the better of the temptation, the guardians of the law, exercising
the functions of lawgivers, shall devise a second law against them.
CLEINIAS: And what law would you advise them to pass if this one failed?
ATHENIAN: Clearly, Cleinias, the one which would naturally follow.
CLEINIAS: What is that?
ATHENIAN: Our citizens should not allow pleasures to strengthen with
indulgence, but should by toil divert the aliment and exuberance of them
into other parts of the body; and this will happen if no immodesty be
allowed in the practice of love. Then they will be ashamed of frequent
intercourse, and they will find pleasure, if seldom enjoyed, to be a
less imperious mistress. They should not be found out doing anything of
the sort. Concealment shall be honourable, and sanctioned by custom and
made law by unwritten prescription; on the other hand, to be detected
shall be esteemed dishonourable, but not, to abstain wholly. In this way
there will be a second legal standard of honourable and dishonourable,
involving a second notion of right. Three principles will comprehend all
those corrupt natures whom we call inferior to themselves, and who form
but one class, and will compel them not to transgress.
CLEINIAS: What are they?
ATHENIAN: The principle of piety, the love of honour, and the desire of
beauty, not in the body but in the soul. These are, perhaps, romantic
aspirations; but they are the noblest of aspirations, if they could only
be realised in all states, and, God willing, in the matter of love
we may be able to enforce one of two things--either that no one shall
venture to touch any person of the freeborn or noble class except his
wedded wife, or sow the unconsecrated and bastard seed among harlots, or
in barren and unnatural lusts; or at least we may abolish altogether the
connection of men with men; and as to women, if any man has to do with
any but those who come into his house duly married by sacred rites,
whether they be bought or acquired in any other way, and he offends
publicly in the face of all mankind, we shall be right in enacting that
he be deprived of civic honours and privileges, and be deemed to be, as
he truly is, a stranger. Let this law, then, whether it is one, or ought
rather to be called two, be laid down respecting love in general, and
the intercourse of the sexes which arises out of the desires, whether
rightly or wrongly indulged.
MEGILLUS: I, for my part, Stranger, would gladly receive this law.
Cleinias shall speak for himself, and tell you what is his opinion.
CLEINIAS: I will, Megillus, when an opportunity offers; at present, I
think that we had better allow the Stranger to proceed with his laws.
MEGILLUS: Very good.
ATHENIAN: We had got about as far as the establishment of the common
tables, which in most places would be difficult, but in Crete no
one would think of introducing any other custom. There might arise a
question about the manner of them--whether they shall be such as they