The Republic
and horrors of Cocytus and Styx, ghosts and sapless shades, and the
rest of their Tartarean nomenclature, must vanish. Such tales may have
their use; but they are not the proper food for soldiers. As little can
we admit the sorrows and sympathies of the Homeric heroes:—Achilles,
the son of Thetis, in tears, throwing ashes on his head, or pacing up
and down the sea-shore in distraction; or Priam, the cousin of the
gods, crying aloud, rolling in the mire. A good man is not prostrated
at the loss of children or fortune. Neither is death terrible to him;
and therefore lamentations over the dead should not be practised by men
of note; they should be the concern of inferior persons only, whether
women or men. Still worse is the attribution of such weakness to the
gods; as when the goddesses say, ‘Alas! my travail!’ and worst of all,
when the king of heaven himself laments his inability to save Hector,
or sorrows over the impending doom of his dear Sarpedon. Such a
character of God, if not ridiculed by our young men, is likely to be
imitated by them. Nor should our citizens be given to excess of
laughter—‘Such violent delights’ are followed by a violent re-action.
The description in the Iliad of the gods shaking their sides at the
clumsiness of Hephaestus will not be admitted by us. ‘Certainly not.’
Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood, as we
were saying, is useless to the gods, and only useful to men as a
medicine. But this employment of falsehood must remain a privilege of
state; the common man must not in return tell a lie to the ruler; any
more than the patient would tell a lie to his physician, or the sailor
to his captain.
In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists
in self-control and obedience to authority. That is a lesson which
Homer teaches in some places: ‘The Achaeans marched on breathing
prowess, in silent awe of their leaders;’—but a very different one in
other places: ‘O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog, but the
heart of a stag.’ Language of the latter kind will not impress
self-control on the minds of youth. The same may be said about his
praises of eating and drinking and his dread of starvation; also about
the verses in which he tells of the rapturous loves of Zeus and Here,
or of how Hephaestus once detained Ares and Aphrodite in a net on a
similar occasion. There is a nobler strain heard in the words:—‘Endure,
my soul, thou hast endured worse.’ Nor must we allow our citizens to
receive bribes, or to say, ‘Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend
kings;’ or to applaud the ignoble advice of Phoenix to Achilles that he
should get money out of the Greeks before he assisted them; or the
meanness of Achilles himself in taking gifts from Agamemnon; or his
requiring a ransom for the body of Hector; or his cursing of Apollo; or
his insolence to the river-god Scamander; or his dedication to the dead
Patroclus of his own hair which had been already dedicated to the other
river-god Spercheius; or his cruelty in dragging the body of Hector
round the walls, and slaying the captives at the pyre: such a
combination of meanness and cruelty in Cheiron’s pupil is
inconceivable. The amatory exploits of Peirithous and Theseus are
equally unworthy. Either these so-called sons of gods were not the sons
of gods, or they were not such as the poets imagine them, any more than
the gods themselves are the authors of evil. The youth who believes
that such things are done by those who have the blood of heaven flowing
in their veins will be too ready to imitate their example.
Enough of gods and heroes;—what shall we say about men? What the poets
and story-tellers say—that the wicked prosper and the righteous are
afflicted, or that justice is another’s gain? Such misrepresentations
cannot be allowed by us. But in this we are anticipating the definition
of justice, and had therefore better defer the enquiry.
The subjects of poetry have been sufficiently treated; next follows
style. Now all poetry is a narrative of events past, present, or to
come; and narrative is of three kinds, the simple, the imitative, and a
composition of the two. An instance will make my meaning clear. The
first scene in Homer is of the last or mixed kind, being partly
description and partly dialogue. But if you throw the dialogue into the
‘oratio obliqua,’ the passage will run thus: The priest came and prayed
Apollo that the Achaeans might take Troy and have a safe return if
Agamemnon would only give him back his daughter; and the other Greeks
assented, but Agamemnon was wroth, and so on—The whole then becomes
descriptive, and the poet is the only speaker left; or, if you omit the
narrative, the whole becomes dialogue. These are the three styles—which
of them is to be admitted into our State? ‘Do you ask whether tragedy
and comedy are to be admitted?’ Yes, but also something more—Is it not
doubtful whether our guardians are to be imitators at all? Or rather,
has not the question been already answered, for we have decided that
one man cannot in his life play many parts, any more than he can act
both tragedy and comedy, or be rhapsodist and actor at once? Human
nature is coined into very small pieces, and as our guardians have
their own business already, which is the care of freedom, they will
have enough to do without imitating. If they imitate they should
imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good only; for the mask
which the actor wears is apt to become his face. We cannot allow men to
play the parts of women, quarrelling, weeping, scolding, or boasting
against the gods,—least of all when making love or in labour. They must
not represent slaves, or bullies, or cowards, drunkards, or madmen, or
blacksmiths, or neighing horses, or bellowing bulls, or sounding
rivers, or a raging sea. A good or wise man will be willing to perform
good and wise actions, but he will be ashamed to play an inferior part
which he has never practised; and he will prefer to employ the
descriptive style with as little imitation as possible. The man who has
no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and anything;
sounds of nature and cries of animals alike; his whole performance will
be imitation of gesture and voice. Now in the descriptive style there
are few changes, but in the dramatic there are a great many. Poets and
musicians use either, or a compound of both, and this compound is very
attractive to youth and their teachers as well as to the vulgar. But
our State in which one man plays one part only is not adapted for
complexity. And when one of these polyphonous pantomimic gentlemen
offers to exhibit himself and his poetry we will show him every
observance of respect, but at the same time tell him that there is no
room for his kind in our State; we prefer the rough, honest poet, and
will not depart from our original models (Laws).
Next as to the music. A song or ode has three parts,—the subject, the
harmony, and the rhythm; of which the two last are dependent upon the
first. As we banished strains of lamentation, so we may now banish the
mixed Lydian harmonies, which are the harmonies of lamentation; and as
our citizens are to be temperate, we may also banish convivial
harmonies, such as the Ionian and pure Lydian. Two remain—the Dorian
and Phrygian, the first for war, the second for peace; the one
expressive of courage, the other of obedience or instruction or
religious feeling. And as we reject varieties of harmony, we shall also
reject the many-stringed, variously-shaped instruments which give
utterance to them, and in particular the flute, which is more complex
than any of them. The lyre and the harp may be permitted in the town,
and the Pan’s-pipe in the fields. Thus we have made a purgation of
music, and will now make a purgation of metres. These should be like
the harmonies, simple and suitable to the occasion. There are four
notes of the tetrachord, and there are three ratios of metre, 3/2, 2/2,
2/1, which have all their characteristics, and the feet have different
characteristics as well as the rhythms. But about this you and I must
ask Damon, the great musician, who speaks, if I remember rightly, of a
martial measure as well as of dactylic, trochaic, and iambic rhythms,
which he arranges so as to equalize the syllables with one another,
assigning to each the proper quantity. We only venture to affirm the
general principle that the style is to conform to the subject and the
metre to the style; and that the simplicity and harmony of the soul
should be reflected in them all. This principle of simplicity has to be
learnt by every one in the days of his youth, and may be gathered
anywhere, from the creative and constructive arts, as well as from the
forms of plants and animals.
Other artists as well as poets should be warned against meanness or
unseemliness. Sculpture and painting equally with music must conform to
the law of simplicity. He who violates it cannot be allowed to work in
our city, and to corrupt the taste of our citizens. For our guardians
must grow up, not amid images of deformity which will gradually poison
and corrupt their souls, but in a land of health and beauty where they
will drink in from every object sweet and harmonious influences. And of
all these influences the greatest is the education given by music,
which finds a way into the innermost soul and imparts to it the sense
of beauty and of deformity. At first the effect is unconscious; but
when reason arrives, then he who has been thus trained welcomes her as
the friend whom he always knew. As in learning to read, first we
acquire the elements or letters separately, and afterwards their
combinations, and cannot recognize reflections of them until we know
the letters themselves;—in like manner we must first attain the
elements or essential forms of the virtues, and then trace their
combinations in life and experience. There is a music of the soul which
answers to the harmony of the world; and the fairest object of a
musical soul is the fair mind in the fair body. Some defect in the
latter may be excused, but not in the former. True love is the daughter
of temperance, and temperance is utterly opposed to the madness of
bodily pleasure. Enough has been said of music, which makes a fair
ending with love.
Next we pass on to gymnastics; about which I would remark, that the
soul is related to the body as a cause to an effect, and therefore if
we educate the mind we may leave the education of the body in her
charge, and need only give a general outline of the course to be
pursued. In the first place the guardians must abstain from strong
drink, for they should be the last persons to lose their wits. Whether
the habits of the palaestra are suitable to them is more doubtful, for
the ordinary gymnastic is a sleepy sort of thing, and if left off
suddenly is apt to endanger health. But our warrior athletes must be
wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured to all changes of food and
climate. Hence they will require a simpler kind of gymnastic, akin to
their simple music; and for their diet a rule may be found in Homer,
who feeds his heroes on roast meat only, and gives them no fish
although they are living at the sea-side, nor boiled meats which
involve an apparatus of pots and pans; and, if I am not mistaken, he
nowhere mentions sweet sauces. Sicilian cookery and Attic confections
and Corinthian courtezans, which are to gymnastic what Lydian and
Ionian melodies are to music, must be forbidden. Where gluttony and
intemperance prevail the town quickly fills with doctors and pleaders;
and law and medicine give themselves airs as soon as the freemen of a
State take an interest in them. But what can show a more disgraceful
state of education than to have to go abroad for justice because you