Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
ATHENIAN: Is it a god, gentlemen, or some human being who gets the credit for laying down your laws? CLEINIAS: A god, stranger, a god — that is the most honest way to put it. Among us it is Zeus; among the Spartans, where this man comes from, I believe they name Apollo. Isn't that so? MEGILLUS: Yes. ATHENIAN: So you follow Homer, then — that Minos used to go every ninth year to commune with his father, and that it was according to the oracles he received from him that he established the laws for your cities?
CLEINIAS: That is indeed the story among us. And what is more, his brother Rhadamanthys — you know the name — is said to have been the most just of men. We Cretans, at any rate, would say he earned that praise fairly, from the way he administered justice in those days. ATHENIAN: A fine renown, and very fitting for a son of Zeus. And since both you and this man here were raised in such law-abiding traditions, I expect you would not find it disagreeable to pass the time today discussing government and laws, talking and listening as we walk. In any case the road from Cnossus to the cave and sanctuary of Zeus is, so we hear, a long one, and there are no doubt resting places along the way — shady spots under the tall trees, welcome in this stifling heat — and at our age it would be fitting to rest in them often, easing the whole journey with conversation and so getting through it comfortably. CLEINIAS: There are indeed, stranger: as you go on there are cypresses in the groves of astonishing height and beauty, and meadows where we could pause and pass the time. ATHENIAN: Well said. CLEINIAS: Quite so — and when we see them we will say it still more. Come, let us set out, and good fortune go with us. ATHENIAN: So be it. Now tell me: on what principle has your law prescribed the common meals, the gymnastic training, and the style of weapons you keep? CLEINIAS: Our customs, stranger, are easy enough for anyone to grasp, I think. You can see that the nature of the whole country of Crete is not flat like Thessaly; that is why they mostly use horses and we use running — our terrain is uneven, better suited to training in foot-races. In such country your weapons must be light, so you can run without being weighed down; and the lightness of bows and arrows seems the right fit. All these things of ours are equipped for war, and the lawgiver, it seems to me, had his eye on war in arranging every one of them. Even the common meals he probably instituted because he saw that whenever men are on campaign, the situation itself forces them to eat together for that whole period, for their own protection. He was, I think, condemning the folly of the many, who fail to understand that everyone is engaged in a continuous, lifelong war against all other cities.
CLEINIAS: And if in wartime men must mess together for security, with officers and rank-and-file organized as their guards, then the same must be done in peace. For what most people call peace is only a name; in fact every city is, by nature, in a permanent undeclared war with every other city. Look at it this way, and you will pretty well find that the Cretan lawgiver arranged all our institutions, public and private, with a view to war, and handed down the laws to be kept on that principle: that nothing else is of any use — not possessions, not pursuits — unless one prevails in war, since all the goods of the defeated pass to the victors. ATHENIAN: You have clearly been well trained, stranger, in understanding Cretan institutions. But explain this to me more precisely: the definition you gave of a well-governed city — you seem to be saying it must be organized so as to defeat other cities in war. Yes? CLEINIAS: Certainly; and I imagine this man agrees. MEGILLUS: How else could any Spartan answer, my excellent friend? ATHENIAN: Then is this standard right for cities against cities, but different for village against village? CLEINIAS: Not at all. ATHENIAN: The same, then? CLEINIAS: Yes. ATHENIAN: And what about household against household within the village, and man against man, one on one — still the same? CLEINIAS: The same. ATHENIAN: And a man in relation to himself — should he think of himself as enemy against enemy? Or how do we put it now? CLEINIAS: Athenian stranger — for I would not want to call you Attic; to my mind you have earned instead a name taken from the goddess — you have made the argument clearer by carrying it back correctly to its starting point. So you will the more easily see that what we said just now was right: all are enemies of all in public, and in private each man is an enemy to himself. ATHENIAN: What do you mean, my remarkable friend? CLEINIAS: Just this, stranger: here too, to conquer oneself is the first and best of all victories, and to be defeated by oneself is of all things the most shameful and the worst. This means that each of us is at war with himself.
ATHENIAN: Then let us turn the argument back around. Since each one of us is either stronger than himself or weaker, should we say that a household, a village, and a city have this same thing within them, or should we not? CLEINIAS: You mean that one is stronger than itself, another weaker? ATHENIAN: Yes. CLEINIAS: A good question, too — for such a thing very much exists, and not least in cities. Wherever the better people prevail over the mass and over the worse, that city could rightly be called stronger than itself, and would most justly be praised for such a victory; and the opposite wherever the opposite happens. ATHENIAN: Whether the worse can ever really be stronger than the better we may leave aside — that would take a longer discussion. But I now understand what you are saying: that sometimes citizens, kinsmen of the same city, being unjust and many, will band together and try to enslave by force the just, who are fewer; and when they win, the city may rightly be called weaker than itself and bad, but where they lose, stronger and good. CLEINIAS: A very strange thing to say, stranger — and yet we can hardly avoid admitting it. ATHENIAN: Hold on. Let us consider this case too. There might be many brothers, sons of one father and one mother, and it would be no wonder if the majority of them turned out unjust and the minority just. CLEINIAS: No wonder at all. ATHENIAN: And it would not be proper for you and me to hunt after this point — that when the wicked win, the household and this whole family would be called weaker than itself, and stronger when they lose. For we are not now examining fine or clumsy expressions by the standard of ordinary speech; we are asking about the rightness and error of laws — what that is, in nature. CLEINIAS: Very true, stranger. MEGILLUS: Well put, in my judgment too — so far, at least. ATHENIAN: Then let us look at this as well: could these brothers we just mentioned have some judge? CLEINIAS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: Which judge would be better — the one who destroyed all the bad ones among them and ordered the better to govern themselves, or the one who made the good ones rule while letting the worse live, and got them to accept being ruled willingly?
ATHENIAN: And let us name a third judge in point of excellence, if such a one could exist: a judge who, taking in hand a single divided family, would destroy no one, but reconcile them, and by laying down laws for them for the time to come, could keep watch over their relations with one another so that they remained friends. CLEINIAS: Such a judge and lawgiver would be far better. ATHENIAN: And yet the laws he laid down for them would aim at the very opposite of war. CLEINIAS: That is true. ATHENIAN: And what of the man who harmonizes the city? Would he order its life with a view to external war, rather than to the war that arises within the city itself from time to time — what we call civil strife? That is the war everyone would most wish never to see in his own city, and, if it came, to be rid of as quickly as possible. CLEINIAS: Clearly with a view to the latter. ATHENIAN: And which would one prefer: that peace after civil strife come through the destruction of one side and the victory of the other, or that friendship and peace be brought about by reconciliation, with attention then necessarily turned to enemies abroad? CLEINIAS: Everyone would wish the latter for his own city rather than the former. ATHENIAN: And so would the lawgiver? CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: Now, would not every lawgiver enact all his measures for the sake of what is best? CLEINIAS: How could he not? ATHENIAN: But the best is neither war nor civil strife — those are things to pray we never need — but peace with one another together with goodwill. And even a city's victory over itself, it turns out, belongs not among the best things but among the necessary ones. It is as if someone thought a sick body that had received a medical purge was thereby in its finest condition, and never gave a thought to a body that needed no treatment at all. Likewise, anyone who thinks this way about the happiness of a city or an individual will never be a true statesman — looking only and first to external wars — nor a precise lawgiver, unless he legislates matters of war for the sake of peace rather than matters of peace for the sake of war. CLEINIAS: The argument sounds right somehow, stranger; and yet I would be amazed if our institutions, and Sparta's too, were not framed with all their zeal directed at these things.
ATHENIAN: Perhaps so. But we must not battle them harshly now; let us question them gently, since both we and they take these matters very seriously. Follow the argument with me. Let us bring forward Tyrtaeus — Athenian by birth, but made a citizen of these men's city — who of all men was most in earnest about these things, saying: I would not mention a man nor count him as anything — not even, he says, should he outstrip every man alive in riches, not even if he possessed many good things (and he lists nearly all of them) — unless he always proved himself the best in war. You too have surely heard these poems; and this man, I imagine, is saturated with them. MEGILLUS: Certainly. CLEINIAS: Yes, they have reached us too, brought over from Sparta. ATHENIAN: Come then, let us question this poet together, something like this: Tyrtaeus, most divine of poets — you seem to us wise and good, since you have praised so surpassingly those who surpass in war — now I and this man and Cleinias of Cnossus here happen, we think, to agree with you emphatically on this point; but we want to know clearly whether we are speaking of the same men or not. Tell us: are you as certain as we are that war falls into two distinct forms? Or how do you see it? In answer to this, I imagine even a man far inferior to Tyrtaeus would state the truth — that there are two: one is what we all call civil strife, the harshest of all wars, as we said just now; and the other kind of war, I think we would all agree, is the one we wage in our quarrels with outsiders and foreigners, a much milder thing than the first. CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: Well then, which men, and which war, were you praising when you praised some so extravagantly and blamed others? Foreign war, it would seem; at any rate you have said in your poems that you cannot at all abide men who do not dare to look upon bloody slaughter and, standing near, reach out at the enemy. So we would then say: you, Tyrtaeus, it appears, are chiefly praising those who distinguish themselves in the foreign, external kind of war. He would agree to that, presumably, and admit it?
CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: But we for our part say that, good as those men were, the ones who prove themselves best in the greatest war are clearly still better. We too have a poet as witness, Theognis, a citizen of the Megarians in Sicily, who says: 'When faction rages bitter, Cyrnus, a man you can trust outweighs silver and gold in the balance.' This man, we say, shows himself far better in the harsher war of civil conflict than the other kind of man is in ordinary war — about as much better as justice, self-control, and wisdom, joined together with courage, are better than courage alone. For a man could never prove trustworthy and sound in factional strife without the whole of virtue; whereas among the mercenaries Tyrtaeus describes, who cross into battle willingly and are ready to die, there are plenty, but most of them turn out reckless, unjust, violent, and about as senseless as anyone — except for a very few. Now where does this argument of ours end up, and what point was it meant to bring into the open? Clearly this: that the lawgiver here, under Zeus, and any lawgiver worth even a little, will always frame his laws looking above all to the greatest virtue, not to anything less. And this greatest virtue, as Theognis says, is trustworthiness in dangers, which one might call complete justice. As for the virtue Tyrtaeus praised most highly, it is a fine thing, and the poet dressed it up well for the occasion, but it would most correctly be ranked fourth in both number and worth. CLEINIAS: Stranger, we're relegating our own lawgiver to the rank of a lawgiver from far away. ATHENIAN: Not we, my excellent friend, but ourselves — whenever we suppose that Lycurgus and Minos, in laying down the customs of Sparta and of Crete, were looking chiefly to war. CLEINIAS: Then how should we have put it? ATHENIAN: The way, I think, that truth and justice require when one is discussing things divine — not as though he were legislating with an eye to some fragment of virtue, and the meanest fragment at that, but with an eye to the whole of virtue; and we should look for their laws arranged by these kinds, not in the way people nowadays go about proposing 'kinds.'
ATHENIAN: For each person now sets forth and pursues whatever he happens to need — one man the laws on inheritances and heiresses, another the law on assault, and others countless other particular topics; but we say that the proper inquiry into laws is the kind we ourselves just began. And I admire very much the way you set about explaining the laws: to begin from virtue, saying that the lawgiver framed his laws for its sake, is correct. But when you went on to say that he was legislating with all this referred to some fragment of virtue, and the smallest fragment at that, there you no longer struck me as speaking rightly, and that is exactly why I said everything I just said. So how, then, would I have wanted you to divide the matter and state it, and how would I myself want to hear it stated? Shall I tell you? CLEINIAS: Please do. ATHENIAN: Stranger, you ought to have said: it is not for nothing that the laws of the Cretans stand out above all others in reputation among the Greeks; they are right, because they make those who live by them happy. For they provide all good things. Now good things are of two kinds: some human, some divine; and the human ones depend on the divine — a city that receives the greater goods gains the lesser as well, but if not, it is deprived of both. Of the lesser goods, health leads, beauty is second, and third is strength for running and for all the other bodily movements, and fourth is wealth — not blind wealth, but wealth that sees clearly, provided it is joined with wisdom. And of the divine goods in turn, wisdom stands first and leads the way; second is a sound, self-controlled disposition of soul; from these, blended with courage, comes justice as third; and fourth is courage itself. All these stand, by nature, ahead of the lesser goods, and the lawgiver too must rank them in this order. After this, he must direct the citizens toward all the remaining ordinances with these in view, the human goods pointing to the divine, and the divine, all of them, pointing to the ruling intelligence — governing everything to do with marriages contracted between people, and afterward the begetting and raising of children, both male and female, from youth through old age, watching over them properly, honoring some and dishonoring others,
ATHENIAN: and in all their dealings with one another, keeping watch over their pains, pleasures, and desires, and the intensity of every kind of passion, and through the laws themselves rightly blaming and praising. Likewise in matters of anger and fear, and all the disturbances that misfortune stirs up in the soul, and the escapes from such things that come with good fortune, and whatever experiences befall people through sickness, war, poverty, or their opposites — in every such case he must teach and define, for each condition, what is noble and what is not. After this the lawgiver must, of necessity, watch over the citizens' property and expenditures, however these come about, and oversee their partnerships and dissolutions of partnership with one another, whether willing or unwilling, in whatever dealings they conduct with each other of this kind — noting where justice is present and where it is lacking, granting honors to those who obey the laws, and fixing penalties for those who disobey — until, having gone through the whole design of the constitution to its very end, he sees what manner of burial is fitting for the dead in each case, and what honors ought to be paid them. And once he has surveyed all this, the one who lays down the laws will set guardians over it all, some proceeding by wisdom, others by true opinion, so that intelligence, binding all these things together, may show them following upon self-control and justice, rather than wealth or ambition. This, strangers, is how I wished you to go through the subject, and I still wish it now — to explain how, in the laws attributed to Zeus and to Pythian Apollo, which Minos and Lycurgus established, all this is present, and how, arranged in some order, it stands revealed to one skilled in the art of law — or in certain customs — even though to the rest of us it is nowhere apparent. CLEINIAS: Then how, Stranger, should we proceed from here? ATHENIAN: I think we should go through it again from the beginning, just as we started, first the practices bearing on courage, and then we shall go through a second kind of virtue, and then another, if you wish; and however we go through the first, let us take it as a model, and in this way, discussing the rest as we go, make the whole journey a kind of pleasant conversation, and afterward, looking back to everything we have now gone through, show how it bears on virtue as a whole — god willing.
MEGILLUS: Well said — and try first to judge this admirer of Zeus for us. ATHENIAN: I shall try — to judge both you and myself, since the argument belongs to us both. Tell me then: do we say that common meals and gymnastic exercises were devised by the lawgiver for the sake of war? MEGILLUS: Yes. ATHENIAN: And a third practice, or a fourth? Perhaps we ought to count in this way concerning the parts — or whatever one should call them — of the rest of virtue as well, simply naming what each one points to. MEGILLUS: A third, then, I would say — and so would any Spartan — is hunting. ATHENIAN: Let us try to name a fourth, or a fifth if we can. MEGILLUS: A fourth I too would try to name: the endurance of pain that is widely practiced among us, both in hand-to-hand contests with one another and in certain forms of raiding that regularly involve a great many blows. There is also what is called the 'crypteia,' a marvelously grueling exercise in endurance — going barefoot in winter, sleeping without bedding, serving oneself without attendants, roaming the whole countryside by night and by day. And again in the naked contests of the young there is fearsome endurance among us, as they fight it out against the power of the heat; and there are a great many other such things, so many that one could hardly finish listing them all. ATHENIAN: Well said, Spartan friend. But come, what shall we say courage is? Is it simply, in this way, a struggle against fears and pains alone, or also against desires and pleasures, and certain terrible flatteries that turn even the spirits of men who think themselves solemn into wax? MEGILLUS: I think it is this — against all of these together. ATHENIAN: If indeed we recall our earlier discussion, this man here spoke of a city, and likewise a man, being weaker than itself. Is that not so, Cnossian stranger? CLEINIAS: It certainly is. ATHENIAN: Now then, do we call the one defeated by pains bad, or the one defeated by pleasures as well? CLEINIAS: The one defeated by pleasures, I think, more so — and I suppose we all more readily call the man overcome by pleasures shamefully weaker than himself than the man overcome by pains.
ATHENIAN: Then surely the lawgiver of Zeus and the Pythian lawgiver did not legislate a lame courage, capable of resisting only on the left, but powerless against what comes from the right, against the smooth and flattering things — did they? Or against both? CLEINIAS: Against both, I would say. ATHENIAN: Then let us say again: what practices are there in both your cities that give people a taste of pleasures instead of avoiding them — just as they did not avoid pains, but led men straight into their midst, and by compulsion and persuasion, backed by honors, made them masters of them? Where in your laws is the same thing arranged with regard to pleasures? Let it be said what it is that produces in you, alike with regard to both pains and pleasures, the same men courageous — winning where they must win, and in no way weaker than the enemies nearest and most dangerous to themselves. MEGILLUS: Well, Stranger, whereas I could name many laws set up against pains, I would perhaps not be so well supplied when it comes to speaking of great and conspicuous instances concerning pleasures; though in small matters perhaps I could manage. CLEINIAS: Nor could I myself point to anything so clearly analogous in the laws of Crete. ATHENIAN: Best of strangers, that is nothing to be surprised at. But if one of us should find fault with something in the other's laws at home, wishing to see both the truth and the best course, let us receive each other's criticism gently rather than harshly. CLEINIAS: Rightly said, Athenian stranger, and we must obey it. ATHENIAN: Yes, Cleinias, for it would not befit men of our age to do otherwise. CLEINIAS: No indeed. ATHENIAN: Whether one rightly or wrongly finds fault with the Spartan or Cretan constitution is another matter; but as to what is commonly said, I might perhaps be able to speak of it better than either of you. For among you, if your laws are even reasonably well constructed, one of the finest of them would be this: not to allow any of the young to inquire which of their institutions are good and which are not, but with one voice and out of one mouth to agree, all of them, that everything is well established, since gods laid it down — and if anyone says otherwise, not to tolerate hearing it at all; whereas if some old man has thoughts about any of your institutions, he is to raise such matters only before a ruler or a man of his own age, and never in front of a young person.
CLEINIAS: That's exactly right, Stranger. Like a seer who wasn't there when the lawgiver worked these things out, you now seem to me to have hit the mark quite well, and to be speaking the plain truth. ATHENIAN: So then, since there are no young people here now, and we ourselves have been let off by the lawgiver, on account of our age, to talk among ourselves, alone with each other, about these very laws — there'd be nothing improper in that? CLEINIAS: That's so. And on this point, don't hold back at all from criticizing our laws. Knowing about something that isn't admirable brings no dishonor — rather, a cure comes out of it, for someone who takes what's said not with resentment but with goodwill. ATHENIAN: Well said. Still, I won't speak of criticizing the laws just yet, not before I've examined them as thoroughly as I can — I'm more at a loss than anything. You see, your lawgiver, alone among Greeks and non-Greeks that we know of, ordered you to hold off from the greatest pleasures and games and not so much as taste them, while about pains and fears — which we've just gone through — he judged that if a person flees from them all his life from childhood on, then whenever he comes up against necessary hardships, fears, and pains, he'll flee before the people who've been trained in those very things, and become their slave. Now I think that same lawgiver had to think the same way about pleasures too, telling himself that if our citizens grow up from childhood inexperienced in the greatest pleasures, and get no practice in holding firm against pleasures and never being forced to do anything shameful, then, because of their soft indulgence toward pleasure, they'll suffer the same thing as those who are overcome by fears — they'll be enslaved, in a different and even more shameful way, to those who can hold firm amid pleasures, to people who have mastered such things, sometimes utterly bad people — and their soul will be part slave, part free, and they won't deserve, without qualification, to be called courageous and free men. Consider, then, whether any of what's now being said seems to you to be said as it should be. CLEINIAS: It seems so to us, at least as the argument is being made. But to put our trust so readily and so quickly in matters of this weight would be more the mark of the young and foolish.
ATHENIAN: Well, if we go through what comes next in our proposal, Cleinias, and you too, Stranger of Sparta — after courage, let's talk about self-control — will we find anything in these constitutions that's different from constitutions run at random, the way we just did with matters of war? MEGILLUS: That's not easy to say. Still, the common meals and the gymnasiums do seem to have been well devised for both. ATHENIAN: It does seem, Strangers, to be a hard thing to make what's said about constitutions match what's actually done, beyond dispute. It's risky — just as with bodies, it seems impossible to prescribe one regimen for one body without it turning out to harm some parts of our bodies while benefiting others. Take these gymnasiums and common meals — right now they benefit our cities in many other ways, but where factional strife is concerned they're dangerous — the young men of Miletus, Boeotia, and Thurii make that plain. And besides, this practice seems to have corrupted an old and natural law — the pleasures of sex, not just among humans but among animals too. And of all people, one would blame your cities first for this, and whichever others take most to the gymnasiums. Whether we should think of such things playfully or seriously, we should bear in mind that when female and male nature come together for the purpose of procreation, the pleasure involved in that seems to be assigned according to nature, but male with male or female with female seems contrary to nature, and the audacity of the first ones to do it came from a lack of self-control before pleasure. We all accuse the Cretans of inventing the story about Ganymede — since their laws were believed to have come down from Zeus, they say, people added this story about Zeus so that, following the god's example, they could enjoy this pleasure too. Well, let the story go its way — but when people are examining laws, nearly the whole inquiry concerns pleasures and pains, in cities and in the characters of individuals. These are the two springs let loose by nature to flow — whoever draws from them where he should, when he should, and as much as he should, is happy, whether a city, a private person, or any living creature, while whoever draws without understanding and outside the right occasions lives the opposite kind of life.
MEGILLUS: What you say sounds well put, Stranger — even so, it leaves us at a loss for what to say in response. Still, it seems right to me that the lawgiver at Sparta directs people to flee from pleasures, while our friend here can speak up, if he's willing, about the laws at Knossos. As for Sparta, it seems to me that our arrangements concerning pleasure are the finest among men. Where people fall hardest into the greatest pleasures, into insolence and every kind of folly, that's exactly what our law has driven out of our whole territory — you won't see it in the fields, nor in the towns that matter to Spartans, any drinking parties or anything that goes along with them stirring up every pleasure they can. And there's no one who, coming across a man reveling in drunkenness, wouldn't at once impose the harshest penalty on him — not even the excuse of a Dionysian festival would get him off, the way I once saw happen among your people, in wagons; and at Tarentum, among our own colonists, I once watched the whole city drunk at the Dionysia. Among us there's nothing of the kind. ATHENIAN: Stranger of Sparta, all such restraints are praiseworthy where there's some capacity to hold firm, but where things are let loose, they're rather feeble-minded. Someone defending our own ways could quickly seize on you in turn, pointing to the license granted to women among you. To all such objections — whether at Tarentum, among us, or among you — there seems to be one single answer that clears the practice of being wrong and shows it to be right: everyone answering a foreign visitor who's astonished at seeing something unfamiliar in their customs will say, 'Don't be astonished, Stranger — this is our law; perhaps you have a different one about these very things.' But our discussion now, friends, isn't about people in general — it's about the vice and virtue of lawgivers themselves. So let's say more about drunkenness as a whole, since it's no small practice, and no trivial matter to judge correctly. I don't mean the drinking of wine at all, whether or not — I mean drunkenness itself: whether one should indulge in it the way the Scythians and Persians do, and the Carthaginians too, and the Celts, Iberians, and Thracians — all warlike peoples — or the way you Spartans do. You, as you say, abstain from it altogether, while the Scythians and Thracians indulge in unmixed wine without any restraint at all — the women too, right along with the men — and pour it over their clothes, and consider this a fine and blessed practice to follow. The Persians indulge heavily too, in other luxuries besides, the ones you reject, but with more order than those others.
MEGILLUS: My good man, we chase all those peoples off, once we take up arms in our hands. ATHENIAN: My excellent friend, don't say that. Many routs and pursuits have happened, and will happen, whose outcome tells us nothing certain — so we could never call that a clear standard, but rather a disputed one, when it comes to deciding what practices are admirable and what aren't, if we're going by victory and defeat in battle. After all, larger cities beat smaller ones in battle and enslave them — the Syracusans beat the Locrians, who are thought to have had the best-governed laws of anyone in that region, and the Athenians beat the Ceans. We could find countless other examples like that. So let's try to persuade ourselves by discussing each practice on its own merits, and for now set victories and defeats outside our discussion — let's say instead that this sort of thing is admirable, and that sort isn't. First, hear me out on how we ought to examine what's beneficial and what isn't in questions of just this kind. MEGILLUS: What is your point, then? ATHENIAN: It seems to me that everyone who takes up some practice in argument, and sets out right away to blame or praise it as soon as it's mentioned, is going about it in entirely the wrong way — they're doing the same thing as someone who, when another person praises wheat as good food, immediately criticizes it without first finding out how it's grown and prepared, in what manner, for whom, together with what, in what condition, and how it's meant to be served. That's exactly what we seem to be doing right now in our discussion — as soon as we hear the mere word 'drunkenness,' some of us blame it outright, others praise it, and both quite absurdly. Each side calls up witnesses and supporters to back its praise — some think it settles the matter because they can produce many such witnesses, others because they see that people who don't drink win in battle; and this too is disputed among us. If we're going to go through every other custom in this same way, it won't turn out to my liking at all. Instead, in a different way — the way that seems right to me — I'm willing to speak about this very thing, drunkenness, trying, if I can, to show you the correct method for examining all such matters, since countless peoples upon countless peoples dispute about them, and could argue endlessly against the two of you, cities as you are.
MEGILLUS: Well, if we have any correct way of examining such things, we shouldn't shrink from hearing it. ATHENIAN: Let's examine it, then, somewhat like this. Suppose someone praises the raising of goats, and the animal itself as a fine possession, while someone else, who's seen goats grazing loose without a goatherd doing damage in cultivated ground, criticizes them for it — and having seen any creature at all without a ruler, or under bad rulers, faults it on that basis — would we think such a person's fault-finding was ever sound, about anything whatsoever? MEGILLUS: How could it be? ATHENIAN: And is a ruler on board ship a good one if he simply has seamanship, whether or not he gets seasick — or how should we put it? MEGILLUS: Not at all, if along with his skill he also suffers from that very thing you mention. ATHENIAN: What about a commander of armies? Is he fit to command just because he has military knowledge, even if he's a coward who gets seasick with fear the moment danger appears? MEGILLUS: How could he be? ATHENIAN: And what if he lacks the skill besides, and is a coward too? MEGILLUS: You're describing someone thoroughly worthless — no commander of men at all, but fit to command certain very womanish women. ATHENIAN: And what of someone who praises or blames any partnership whatsoever — one that's naturally suited to have a leader, and is beneficial together with that leader — while the one doing the praising or blaming has never once seen it working rightly, joined together under a leader, but has only ever encountered it leaderless or under bad leaders? Do we suppose such observers of such partnerships will ever praise or blame anything soundly? MEGILLUS: How could they, having never seen or taken part in any such partnership rightly formed? ATHENIAN: Hold on, then — among the many kinds of partnership, should we count drinking companions and drinking parties as one sort of gathering? MEGILLUS: Very much so. ATHENIAN: Now has anyone ever yet seen this kind of gathering happening rightly? For the two of you it's easy to answer that you never have at all — since it's not your custom or your law — but I myself have come across many such gatherings, in many places, and moreover I've made inquiries of pretty much all of them, and I can say I've scarcely seen or heard of a single one conducted rightly as a whole — only small, occasional parts of one here and there, while for the most part, one might say, the whole business goes wrong from start to finish.
CLEINIAS: What exactly do you mean by this, stranger? Put it more plainly. Because we, as you said, are so unpracticed in such things that even if we met with them we probably wouldn't right away recognize what's correct and what's not in them. ATHENIAN: Fair enough. But try to follow as I explain. You'd agree that in every gathering, every partnership formed for any purpose whatsoever, it's right that each such group have a leader? CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: And we said just now that where there's fighting, the leader must be a man of courage. CLEINIAS: Naturally. ATHENIAN: And a courageous man is less rattled by fear than a coward is. CLEINIAS: That too. ATHENIAN: Now if there were some way to put in command of an army a man who felt no fear at all and was never rattled, wouldn't we do everything we could to arrange it? CLEINIAS: Absolutely. ATHENIAN: But right now we're not talking about someone who'll command an army, men facing enemies in war. We're talking about friends at peace sharing goodwill with friends. CLEINIAS: True. ATHENIAN: And a gathering of that kind, if it involves drinking, is anything but free of commotion, is it? CLEINIAS: Certainly not — quite the opposite, I'd say. ATHENIAN: So here too, first of all, a leader is needed? CLEINIAS: Yes indeed — for this business more than for any other. ATHENIAN: Should we then try, if at all possible, to provide such a group with a leader who himself stays free of the commotion? CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: And surely he also needs to be a sensible man where the gathering itself is concerned — since he becomes the guardian of the friendship already present among them, and further sees to it that the occasion strengthens rather than damages it. CLEINIAS: Very true. ATHENIAN: So we must set over drinking men a leader who is sober and wise, not the reverse? Because a leader who is himself drunk, and young besides, and not wise, presiding over drunken men — unless he's extraordinarily lucky — will end up doing some great harm. CLEINIAS: Extraordinarily lucky indeed. ATHENIAN: So if someone finds fault with such gatherings when they're managed in cities as correctly as they can be, and objects to the practice itself, his objection might well be justified. But if someone attacks a custom he sees being practiced as badly as it could possibly be practiced, plainly he doesn't realize, first, that this very thing is being done wrong, and second, that anything at all will look rotten when it's carried on without a sober master and leader in charge.
ATHENIAN: Or don't you see this — that a drunken helmsman, or any leader at all who is drunk, capsizes everything, whether it's ships or chariots or an army, whatever it is he's steering? CLEINIAS: What you've just said is absolutely true, stranger. But tell us next: if this custom concerning drinking is carried out correctly, what good would it actually do us? Take what we said just now — if an army has the right leadership, victory in war results for those who follow, which is no small good, and so on for the rest. But if a drinking party is properly conducted, what great benefit could come of it for private citizens or for the city? ATHENIAN: Well, what great benefit would we say comes to the city from the proper upbringing of one child, or even of a single chorus? If we were asked that plainly, we'd say that from one child alone the city gains only a small benefit — but if you ask more broadly what great benefit education in general brings the city through those it educates, it isn't hard to answer: well-educated people become good men, and being such, they act well in everything else, and moreover they defeat their enemies in battle. So education brings victory too, though victory sometimes brings a loss of education — many men have grown more arrogant from military victories and, through that arrogance, been filled with countless other evils. Education has never once turned out to be a 'Cadmean victory,' but plenty of victories of that ruinous sort have happened to men, and will happen again. CLEINIAS: It seems to us, my friend, that you're saying shared time spent over wine, when done rightly, contributes a great deal to education. ATHENIAN: Well, doesn't it? CLEINIAS: Could you go on, then, and show us that what's just been said is true? ATHENIAN: Whether it's actually true as I claim, stranger — that's a matter for a god to settle with certainty, since so many dispute it. But if I should say how it appears to me, there's no reason not to, seeing that we've already set out to discuss laws and government. CLEINIAS: Exactly — let's try to grasp what you think about the very points now in dispute. ATHENIAN: Then we must do this: you two must try to follow, and I must try, somehow or other, to make it clear, and let's press on with the argument. First, hear me out on this point. All Greeks assume that our city is fond of talk and talks a great deal, while they assume Sparta is a city of few words, and that Crete cultivates depth of thought more than abundance of words —
ATHENIAN: So I'm watching myself, lest I give you the impression of going on at great length about a small matter — drunkenness, a small subject — and dragging up an enormous discussion to clear it up. Yet its correction, in keeping with its nature, could never be grasped clearly or adequately in argument apart from the correctness of music, and music in turn could never be grasped apart from education as a whole — and these are matters of endless discussion. So think about what we should do: shall we set all this aside for now and move on to some other topic concerning the laws? MEGILLUS: Athenian stranger, perhaps you don't realize that our house happens to hold the office of proxenos for your city. Perhaps every child, as soon as he hears that his family holds the proxeny of some city, feels from childhood on a certain goodwill toward that city, as if it were a second homeland after his own — and that's exactly what's happened to me. Ever since I was young, whenever I heard the other boys either blaming or praising the Athenians — saying, 'your city, Megillus, did this well' or 'did this badly' — hearing that, and always fighting on your behalf against those who spoke against your city, I came to feel complete goodwill toward it. Even now your accent is dear to me, and the saying repeated by so many, that the good men among the Athenians are good in an altogether exceptional way, seems to me perfectly true — for they alone are good spontaneously, without external compulsion, truly by a divine allotment and not through mere pretense. So as far as I'm concerned, speak freely and say as much as you like. CLEINIAS: And for my part too, stranger, once you've heard and accepted what I have to say, you may speak as freely as you wish. Perhaps you've heard how Epimenides became a divine man among us — one of our own — who came to your city, in accordance with the god's oracle, ten years before the Persian Wars, and offered certain sacrifices which the god had prescribed. And when the Athenians were afraid of the Persian expedition, he told them that for ten years the Persians would not come, and when they did come, they would go away again having accomplished none of what they hoped, having suffered, and having done, more harm than good.
CLEINIAS: That's when our ancestors formed a bond of guest-friendship with yours, and from that time on both I and my forebears have held goodwill toward you. ATHENIAN: Well, it seems you're ready enough to hear about your own affairs. As for mine, I'm willing too, but it's not at all easy — still, I must try. First, then, let's define for our discussion what education actually is, and what power it has, since it's through education, we say, that the argument we've now taken up must travel, until it reaches the god. CLEINIAS: By all means, let's do that, if it suits you. ATHENIAN: As I state what we ought to call education, consider whether what I say pleases you. CLEINIAS: Go on and speak. ATHENIAN: Here is what I say: I claim that anyone who is going to be a good man at anything must practice that very thing from childhood on, both in play and in earnest, in whatever pursuits belong to it. For instance, the boy who's going to be a good farmer, or a good builder, should play at building toy buildings, and the future farmer at farming, and whoever is raising them should provide each with small tools modeled on the real ones. And they should learn beforehand whatever lessons are necessary — the boy destined for carpentry should pick up measuring and plumb-line work in his play, and the one destined for war should take up riding as a game, or do some other such thing — and through these games we should try to turn the children's pleasures and desires toward that final goal which they must reach as adults. We say, in sum, that the chief point of education is the right upbringing, one that will most draw the soul of the one at play into a love for that very thing in which he'll need to be perfect once he's grown into a man. So consider whether, up to this point at least, what I've said pleases you. CLEINIAS: Of course it does. ATHENIAN: But let's not leave what we're calling education undefined either. Right now, when we praise or blame someone's upbringing, we say that one of us is educated and another uneducated — even applying 'educated' sometimes to men thoroughly trained in retail trade or shipping or other such things. But our present discussion, it seems, isn't concerned with that kind of thing as education — it means, rather, education toward virtue from childhood, which makes one desire and long to become a perfect citizen, knowing how to rule and be ruled with justice.
ATHENIAN: This upbringing, marked off from the rest, is what our argument now, I think, wants to call education alone — while the training aimed at wealth, or at physical strength, or at some other cleverness devoid of mind and justice, it would call vulgar, ignoble, and not worthy at all to be called education. Let's not quarrel with each other over the name, though — let the point we've just agreed on stand: that a right education makes men good, as a general rule, and that education must never be dishonored anywhere, since it's the first of the finest things that comes to the best of men. And if it ever goes astray, but can be set right, that correction must be pursued by everyone throughout life, as far as each is able. CLEINIAS: Rightly said, and we agree with what you say. ATHENIAN: And indeed we agreed long ago that those capable of ruling themselves are good, and those who aren't are bad. CLEINIAS: Quite rightly put. ATHENIAN: Let's take up again, then, still more clearly, just what we mean by this. And allow me to try to make it clear to you through an image, if I can manage it. CLEINIAS: Go on and speak. ATHENIAN: Shall we set down each one of us as a single self? CLEINIAS: Yes. ATHENIAN: And as possessing within himself two opposed and unwise advisers, which we call pleasure and pain? CLEINIAS: That's so. ATHENIAN: And in addition to these two, beliefs about the future, which share the common name of expectation, but individually: fear, when expectation looks toward pain, and confidence, when it looks toward the opposite. And over and above all these, calculation as to which of them is better or worse — and when this becomes a shared decision of the city, it's given the name law. CLEINIAS: I'm following, though with some difficulty — go on, though, as if I were keeping up. MEGILLUS: I'm in the same state myself. ATHENIAN: Let's think about these things this way. Let's suppose each of us living creatures is a divine puppet, whether framed as a plaything of the gods or for some serious purpose — that we don't know. But this much we do know: that these feelings within us, like cords or strings, pull at us and, being opposed to one another, drag us toward opposite actions, and it's exactly there, at that dividing line, that virtue and vice lie.
ATHENIAN: The argument says that a person must follow one pull alone without ever deserting it, and use it to pull back against all the other cords—that this is the golden and sacred leading-string of reasoning, called the city's common law, while the others are hard and iron, and this one is soft, since it's golden, and the rest resemble every sort of thing. So one must always join in with the finest leading-string, that of law. For since reasoning is beautiful but gentle rather than violent, its guidance needs assistants, so that the golden kind in us may conquer the other kinds. And so the story about us being puppets of a sort would be preserved as an image of virtue, and the notion of being stronger or weaker than oneself would become somehow clearer in what it really means—and that a city and a private person alike, once they have grasped a true account within themselves about these pulls, must live following it; while a city must take that account either from some god or from the person who has understood these things, and having laid it down as law, use it in dealing with itself and with other cities. In this way both vice and virtue would be more clearly articulated for us. And once that becomes more evident, education too and the other pursuits will probably become clearer as well—including this business about spending time with wine, which might seem, at first, a great deal of talk wasted on something trivial, but may turn out, perhaps, not unworthy of all those words after all. CLEINIAS: Well said—let's finish whatever is worth pursuing in our present discussion. ATHENIAN: Go on, then: if we hold this puppet up against drunkenness, what exactly do we find it produces? CLEINIAS: What are you aiming at with that question? ATHENIAN: Nothing in particular yet—I only want to know, taken as a whole, what sort of thing results when the two come together. Let me try to put what I mean more clearly. I'm asking this: does drinking wine intensify pleasures and pains, angers and desires? CLEINIAS: Very much so. ATHENIAN: And what about perceptions, memories, opinions, and thoughts? Are these likewise intensified—or do they abandon a person entirely, once he is thoroughly steeped in drink? CLEINIAS: Yes, they abandon him entirely. ATHENIAN: So he arrives at the very same condition of soul he was in as a young child? CLEINIAS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: At that moment, then, he would be least in control of himself.
CLEINIAS: Least of all. ATHENIAN: So we'd say such a man is at his very worst? CLEINIAS: Very much so. ATHENIAN: It seems, then, that not only the old man becomes a child a second time, but the drunk man does too. CLEINIAS: Beautifully put, stranger. ATHENIAN: Is there any argument, then, that will try to persuade us that we ought to taste this practice, rather than flee it with all our might? CLEINIAS: There seems to be—you yourself said so, and you were ready to make the case just now. ATHENIAN: You remember correctly. And I'm ready now too, since the two of you said you'd be eager to hear it. CLEINIAS: Of course we'll listen—if for no other reason, then out of sheer wonder and strangeness, that a man should ever willingly hurl himself into utter degradation. ATHENIAN: You mean degradation of soul? CLEINIAS: Yes. ATHENIAN: But what about the body, my friend—into weakness, ugliness, and incapacity? Would we be surprised if someone willingly arrived at such a state? CLEINIAS: Of course we would. ATHENIAN: Well then—do we imagine that people who walk into doctors' offices to drink medicine are unaware that shortly afterward, and for many days, they'll have a body such that, if they had to keep it that way permanently, they wouldn't choose to go on living? Or don't we know that people who go to the gymnasium and take up hard labor become weak, for the moment? CLEINIAS: We know all that. ATHENIAN: And that they go there willingly, for the sake of the benefit that comes afterward? CLEINIAS: Quite right. ATHENIAN: Shouldn't we think about the other practices in the same way? CLEINIAS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: So we ought to think about spending time with wine in the same way too, if indeed it's possible to think rightly about it along these lines. CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: If it turns out to offer some benefit no less than what bodily training offers, then right from the start it beats physical exercise in this respect: the one comes with pain, the other does not. CLEINIAS: Rightly said—though I'd be amazed if we could discover anything of the sort in it. ATHENIAN: That's exactly what we must now try to explain. Tell me: can we make out two kinds of fear, more or less opposite to each other? CLEINIAS: Which kinds do you mean? ATHENIAN: These: we fear bad things, expecting them to happen to us. CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And we often fear a reputation, thinking we'll be thought bad if we do or say something shameful—this fear, at least, we call shame, and I think everyone else does too. CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: These, then, are the two fears I meant. One of them is opposed to pains and the other fears, and opposed too to most of the greatest pleasures. CLEINIAS: Quite right. ATHENIAN: So doesn't the lawgiver—indeed anyone of even the smallest use—hold this fear in the highest honor, and call it reverence, naming the boldness opposed to it shamelessness, and reckon it the greatest evil for every person alike, private and public? CLEINIAS: Rightly said. ATHENIAN: And doesn't this fear save us in countless great matters besides, and does nothing so powerfully produce victory and safety in war, one against one, as this? For two things bring about victory: boldness before the enemy, and fear of shameful disgrace before one's friends. CLEINIAS: That's so. ATHENIAN: Each of us, then, must become both fearless and prone to fear—for the reasons we've now distinguished. CLEINIAS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: And indeed, when we want to make someone fearless of many fears, we produce that result by leading him into fear together with law. CLEINIAS: So it appears. ATHENIAN: And what about when we try to make someone prone to fear rightly? Mustn't we pit him against shamelessness and train him to conquer it in a struggle against his own pleasures? Or is it that only by fighting the cowardice within himself and conquering it can anyone become complete in courage—while whoever is inexperienced and untrained in such contests can't become even half himself as regards virtue; and can anyone become fully temperate without having fought and conquered, through reason and action and skill, both in play and in earnest, against the many pleasures and desires that urge him toward shamelessness and wrongdoing—rather than remaining untouched by all such things? CLEINIAS: That, at least, would not be a reasonable account. ATHENIAN: Well then?
ATHENIAN: Is there some god who gave mankind a drug against fear, such that the more one is willing to drink of it, the more, with every drink, he comes to think himself unlucky, and fears everything present and to come, until at last even the most courageous man falls into utter terror—but once he sleeps it off and is rid of the drink, he becomes himself again each time? CLEINIAS: And what drink of that sort, stranger, could we say has ever existed among men? ATHENIAN: None. But if such a thing did somehow exist, would it be of any use to a lawgiver for producing courage? For instance, we could put a case to such a lawgiver something like this: Come now, lawgiver—whether you're legislating for Cretans or for anyone else—would you want to be able, first of all, to test your citizens for courage and cowardice? CLEINIAS: Clearly everyone would say yes. ATHENIAN: And what about this—safely, and without great risks, or with the opposite? CLEINIAS: Everyone will agree to that too—safely. ATHENIAN: And would you use it, leading them into these fears and testing them under such experiences, so as to compel them to become fearless—urging them on, admonishing them, honoring the one, and dishonoring whoever refuses to become the sort of person you demand in every case; and would you let anyone who trains well and bravely go without penalty, but impose a penalty on one who trains badly? Or would you not use it at all, holding nothing against the drink? CLEINIAS: Of course he'd use it, stranger. ATHENIAN: Such training, my friend, compared to what we have now, would be marvelously easy—one could do it alone, or with a few, or with as many as one pleased at any time. And whether a man, alone in solitude, out of shame, thinking he shouldn't be seen before he was in good shape, trained himself against fears in this way—preparing just this one drink in place of countless troubles—he'd be acting rightly. Or if someone, trusting in his own nature and practice to be well prepared, felt no hesitation in training openly, displaying his power to outrun and master the necessary confusion of the drink among a larger group of drinking companions, so that through excellence he never once stumbled badly or was changed for the worse by any unseemliness—but withdrew before reaching the final round of drinking, fearing defeat at the hands of the drink, a thing that defeats every man—
CLEINIAS: Yes—such a man, acting that way, would indeed be showing self-control, stranger. ATHENIAN: Let's say this again to the lawgiver: Well then, lawgiver—no god has given mankind such a drug against fear, nor have we devised one ourselves (I don't count sorcerers at a feast)—but is there a drink for fearlessness, for excessive and untimely boldness in things one shouldn't be bold about, or how do we put it? CLEINIAS: He'll say there is, no doubt, meaning wine. ATHENIAN: And doesn't this work the very opposite of what we just described? Doesn't it, the moment a man drinks it, make him more cheerful with himself right away than before, and the more he tastes of it, the more he becomes filled with high hopes and a sense of power, in his own estimation? And in the end, doesn't such a man become full of complete outspokenness, thinking himself wise, and of complete freedom, and of complete fearlessness, so that he speaks anything at all without hesitation, and likewise acts just as boldly? Everyone, I think, would agree to this. CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: Let's remember, then, that we said two things in our souls need cultivating: one, that we become as bold as possible; the other, on the contrary, that we become as fearful as possible. CLEINIAS: What you called the matter of shame, I believe. ATHENIAN: Well remembered. Now, since courage and fearlessness must be trained through fears, we must consider whether the opposite quality ought to be cultivated through its opposite. CLEINIAS: That's likely, at any rate. ATHENIAN: So in those conditions that naturally make us exceptionally bold and rash, it would seem we ought to train ourselves to be as little shameless and full of rashness as possible—and instead fearful of ever daring to say, suffer, or do anything shameful. CLEINIAS: So it seems. ATHENIAN: And aren't all these the conditions in which we are like that: anger, lust, insolence, ignorance, love of gain, cowardice—and further, wealth, beauty, strength, and everything that intoxicates and drives people out of their senses through pleasure? Now, as a cheap and relatively harmless way, first, to put these to the test, and then to train against them—apart from the testing-ground and play of wine—what pleasure can we name that is better measured, provided it's approached with any degree of caution at all?
ATHENIAN: Let's think it through. Take a soul that's difficult and wild, the sort from which countless wrongs spring — is it riskier to test it by putting it into business dealings, gambling on the outcome, or by keeping company with it under the license of Dionysus? Or take a soul that gives way before sexual pleasure — is it riskier to put it to the proof by handing over your own daughters and sons and wife, so that you're gambling with what you hold dearest in order to observe the soul's true character? I could go on citing countless cases, but no one could ever fully capture how much better it is to examine character through play than to examine it any other way, without pay, and at a costly risk. On this point at least, I don't think the Cretans or anyone else in the world would dispute that this is a fair way for people to test one another, and that it beats every other kind of trial for cheapness, safety, and speed. CLEINIAS: That's true. ATHENIAN: This, then, would be one of the most useful things — knowing the natures and dispositions of souls — for the art whose business it is to look after them. And that art is, I think we'd agree, the political art. Isn't that so? CLEINIAS: Absolutely.