Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
ATHENIAN: So much for that. Now, what should we say was the beginning of political constitutions? Isn't this the easiest and best angle from which to see it? CLEINIAS: What angle? ATHENIAN: The same one from which we ought always to watch cities as they move toward virtue, or toward vice, together. CLEINIAS: And where is that? ATHENIAN: From the vantage of a great stretch of time, I think, and of the countless changes that occur across it. CLEINIAS: What do you mean? ATHENIAN: Well — since there have been cities, and human beings living under governments, do you think you could ever grasp how much time has passed? CLEINIAS: Certainly not easily. ATHENIAN: But it would be some immense, unmanageable amount? CLEINIAS: Yes, quite. ATHENIAN: So haven't tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of cities come into being in that time, and, by the same reckoning, no fewer been destroyed? And hasn't each of them, again and again, everywhere, lived under every kind of constitution in turn — sometimes growing from smaller to greater, sometimes shrinking from greater to smaller, becoming worse from better and better from worse? CLEINIAS: It must be so. ATHENIAN: Let's try, then, if we can, to grasp the cause of this change. It might well show us the very first origin of constitutions, and how one gives way to another. CLEINIAS: Well said — and we should be eager for it, you setting out what you think about these things, and we following along.
ATHENIAN: Now then, do the old stories seem to you to hold some truth? CLEINIAS: Which stories? ATHENIAN: That mankind has been destroyed many times over, by floods and plagues and much else besides, so that only a small remnant of the human race was left. CLEINIAS: Yes, all of that sounds entirely believable. ATHENIAN: Come, then — let's picture one of these many destructions, the one that happened by flood. CLEINIAS: What are we to picture about it? ATHENIAN: That the people who escaped that destruction were more or less mountain herdsmen — small sparks of the human race kept alive somewhere on the peaks. CLEINIAS: Clearly. ATHENIAN: And such people, surely, must have been ignorant of the other arts, and of all the devices city-dwellers use against one another for greed and rivalry and whatever other mischief they contrive against each other. CLEINIAS: Likely enough. ATHENIAN: Shall we take it that the cities built on the plains and by the sea were utterly wiped out at that time? CLEINIAS: Let's take it so. ATHENIAN: And that all tools were lost, and that whatever had been carefully worked out in any craft, whether political or some other kind of wisdom, all of it perished at that time? For how, my good man, could anything new ever have been discovered if things had remained arranged exactly as they are set up now, for all time? CLEINIAS: As for that — it escaped the people of that time, it seems, for countless tens of thousands of years, while over the last thousand years, or twice that, some things have come to light through Daedalus, some through Orpheus, some through Palamedes, matters of music through Marsyas and Olympus, matters of the lyre through Amphion, and a great many other things through other people — all of it, so to speak, happening only yesterday or the day before. ATHENIAN: Excellent, Cleinias — except that you left out your friend, the one who really did come along just yesterday. CLEINIAS: You mean Epimenides? ATHENIAN: Yes, him — he leapt far ahead of everyone else, my friend, with the device that Hesiod, long ago, only prophesied in word, while that man actually carried it out in deed, as you people say. CLEINIAS: Yes, that's what we say.
ATHENIAN: Then shall we say that this is how things stood for human beings back when the destruction occurred — an immense, terrifying emptiness, a vast abundance of untouched land, other animals mostly wiped out, with a few herds surviving, and if here and there some stock of goats happened to be left, these too were scarce, and provided the herdsmen's only livelihood in those early days? CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: And of cities, and constitutions, and lawgiving — the very things we're now discussing — do we suppose there was, so to speak, any memory of them at all? CLEINIAS: None whatsoever. ATHENIAN: So everything we have now — cities, constitutions, crafts, laws, along with much wickedness and much virtue too — has grown out of that condition those people were in? CLEINIAS: What do you mean? ATHENIAN: Do we suppose, my dear fellow, that people back then, having no experience of the many fine things found in cities, nor of their opposites, were fully formed either in virtue or in vice? CLEINIAS: Well put — I follow what you mean. ATHENIAN: So as time went forward and our race multiplied, everything advanced to the condition it's in now? CLEINIAS: Quite right. ATHENIAN: Not all at once, presumably, but little by little, over an enormous stretch of time. CLEINIAS: Yes, that fits very well. ATHENIAN: Because coming down from the high places into the plains, I imagine, was something everyone still feared, fresh in memory. CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: And weren't they glad to see one another, precisely because there were so few of them at that time, while means of travel — so that they might go to one another by land or sea — had all but vanished along with the crafts, so to speak? So mixing with one another was, I think, hardly possible at all. Iron, bronze, and all the metals had been swallowed up and lost, so there was no way at all to extract fresh ore, and they were even short of timber to cut. For even if some tool had survived up in the mountains, it would soon wear out and disappear, and no more could be made until the art of metalworking returned to mankind again. CLEINIAS: How could it be otherwise? ATHENIAN: How many generations later, then, do we suppose this happened? CLEINIAS: Clearly, a great many. ATHENIAN: So the crafts that need iron and bronze and all such things would have been lost for that same span of time, or even longer? CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: And, further, civil strife and war too had vanished in many places during that time. CLEINIAS: How so?
ATHENIAN: First, they were fond of one another and treated each other kindly, out of sheer loneliness. Then, food was not something to fight over. Pasture was not scarce, except perhaps for a few at the very beginning, and pasture was the main thing they lived on in that period — they were never short of milk and meat, and hunting, too, provided food that was neither poor nor scanty. And they were well supplied, besides, with clothing and bedding and dwellings and vessels, both those that need fire and those that don't. For the plastic arts and the arts of weaving need no iron at all, and god gave these two crafts to humankind for just this purpose — so that whenever they fell into that kind of want, the human race would still have some growth and increase. So they were not, on that account, terribly poor, nor were they driven by poverty into quarreling with one another; but neither could they ever have become rich, having no gold or silver — which was exactly their situation then. And in a community where neither wealth nor poverty dwells, the noblest characters are likely to arise; for there is no room there for arrogance or injustice, nor for rivalry or envy either. So they were good, for these reasons, and also because of what's called their simplicity: hearing things called noble or shameful, in their simplicity they took what was said to be perfectly true and believed it. No one knew how to suspect a lie, the way people do now, through cleverness; instead, believing that what was said about gods and men was true, they lived by it. That's exactly why they were, in every respect, the sort of people we've just described. CLEINIAS: Well, that's how it seems to me too, and to Megillus here. ATHENIAN: Then shall we say that the many generations who lived this way, in the period before the flood, were bound to be, compared with people now, less skilled and less learned both in the other arts and in the arts of war — whether fought on land or sea — and in that art practiced only within a city, called lawsuits and factions, contrived in word and deed with every device for doing each other harm and injustice — but that they were simpler, braver, more self-controlled, and altogether more just? We've already gone over the reason for this. CLEINIAS: You're right.
ATHENIAN: Let all this, then, and everything that follows from it, stand as said, for this purpose: so that we might grasp what need people back then had of laws, and who their lawgiver was. CLEINIAS: Well said indeed. ATHENIAN: So those people had no need of lawgivers, nor was it yet the fashion, in those times, for such a thing to arise? For writing did not yet exist for the people living in that stretch of the cycle; they lived instead by following custom and what's called ancestral law. CLEINIAS: Likely enough. ATHENIAN: And this already amounts to a certain form of government. CLEINIAS: Which one? ATHENIAN: It seems to me that everyone calls the constitution of that time a chieftainship — which still exists in many places today, among both Greeks and non-Greeks. Homer, too, says it existed among the Cyclopes, when he says: 'They have no assemblies for counsel, and no established laws, but they dwell on the peaks of high mountains, in hollow caves, and each one lays down law for his children and his wives, and they take no heed of one another.' CLEINIAS: This poet of yours does seem to have been a clever one. Indeed we've gone through other passages of his that are quite charming — though not many, since we Cretans don't make much use of foreign poetry. MEGILLUS: We do use it, on our side, and this sort of poet seems to be dominant among us — though he traces out a life that's more Ionian than Spartan in style. Still, right now he does seem to bear out your account well, tracing their primitive condition back to its wildness through his storytelling. ATHENIAN: Yes, he does confirm it — let's take him as our witness that such constitutions do sometimes arise. CLEINIAS: Good. ATHENIAN: So, then — didn't these constitutions arise out of people scattered by household and by clan, because of the hardship caused by those destructions, in which the eldest rules, because his rule for them derives from father and mother, and the others, following him just as birds do, form a single flock, governed by their father's law and ruled under the most just of all kingships? CLEINIAS: Quite so.
ATHENIAN: After this, though, making larger cities by pooling several smaller ones together, they gather in greater numbers, and they turn first to farming the foothill regions, and they build stone-walled enclosures as defenses against wild animals, fashioning one large, shared household. CLEINIAS: That's likely enough to have happened that way. ATHENIAN: And what about this — isn't this too likely? CLEINIAS: What is? ATHENIAN: As these larger households grew out of the smaller, original ones, wouldn't each of the small groups be present within it still under its own eldest member as ruler, keeping its own particular customs, since they had lived apart from one another — customs differing from household to household, since their forebears and those who raised them differed, customs concerning the gods and their own conduct which they had grown used to, more orderly ones among the more orderly, more manly ones among the more manly — and each group, in this fashion, stamping their own preferences onto their children and their children's children, would arrive, as we say, at the larger community bringing their own particular laws with them. CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: And surely it's inevitable that each group is pleased with its own laws, and only later with those of others. CLEINIAS: Just so. ATHENIAN: So we've stumbled, it seems, without noticing, onto the very beginning of lawgiving. CLEINIAS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: The next necessary step, then, is for these people, once joined together, to choose certain men in common from among themselves, who, having reviewed everyone's customs, will single out those that please their own people best and present them openly to the leaders and heads of the various groups — to kings, so to speak — offering them for their choice; these men will be called lawgivers, and once they've established the rulers, turning the chieftaincies into a kind of aristocracy, or perhaps some kind of kingship, they will live under this transformed form of government. CLEINIAS: Yes, that's the natural order in which it would happen, step by step. ATHENIAN: Let's describe, then, a third form of constitution arising still further on, in which every kind and every experience of constitutions and of cities alike happens to come together. CLEINIAS: And what is this one? ATHENIAN: The one that comes after the second, which Homer too pointed to, saying that the third arose in this way. For he says somewhere that Dardania was founded — since sacred Ilium was not yet built as a city on the plain, the people still living on the foothills of many-fountained Ida.
ATHENIAN: Yes, he says these things, and also what he says about the Cyclopes, in a way inspired by god and true to nature. For the poetic kind, being divine and possessed by inspiration, touches upon much of what actually happens, in company with certain Graces and Muses each time it sings. CLEINIAS: Very much so. ATHENIAN: Let's go further forward in the story that has come up for us now, since it may indicate something relevant to our purpose. Shouldn't we? CLEINIAS: By all means. ATHENIAN: The city was founded, we say, coming down from the highlands into a great and beautiful plain—Ilium—on a hill that was not high, with many rivers flowing down from Ida above it. CLEINIAS: So they say, anyway. ATHENIAN: Don't we suppose this happened a good many ages after the flood? CLEINIAS: Of course it must have been many ages after. ATHENIAN: They seem to have had, at any rate, an extraordinary forgetfulness of the destruction we've been discussing, since they founded their city beneath so many rivers pouring down from the heights, trusting in hills that were not especially high. CLEINIAS: Clearly, then, they were altogether far removed in time from that catastrophe. ATHENIAN: And I suppose many other cities were already inhabited by then too, since mankind had multiplied. CLEINIAS: Naturally. ATHENIAN: And these cities, no doubt, made war on Ilium—perhaps even by sea, since by then everyone used the sea without fear. CLEINIAS: So it appears. ATHENIAN: And the Achaeans, staying about ten years, laid Troy waste. CLEINIAS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: Now during that ten-year siege of Ilium, many troubles arose at home for each of the besiegers, among the younger generation—troubles connected with civil strife. These young men did not receive the returning soldiers properly or justly, in their cities and homes, but brought about deaths, slaughters, and a great many exiles. And these exiles, driven out again, came back under a new name—called Dorians instead of Achaeans, because the man who had gathered together those exiles was named Dorieus. And from this point on, you Spartans carry the story forward and complete it in your own telling. MEGILLUS: Quite right.
ATHENIAN: So, coming back to where we first turned aside in our discussion of laws, having gotten sidetracked into music and drinking parties, we've now arrived back at the same point, as if guided by god, and the argument gives us, so to speak, a fresh handhold. For it has come round to the very founding of Sparta, which you rightly said was settled under laws that are, so to speak, sisters of Crete's. Now we have this much advantage from the wandering course of our discussion: we've gone through several constitutions and foundings of cities. We observed a first, a second, and a third city, each following the other, as we suppose, in its founding across vast stretches of time. And now here comes a fourth city for us—or if you like, a people—that was once being founded and is now established. From all of this, if we can grasp anything of what was founded well or badly, and which laws preserve what is preserved among them and which destroy what is destroyed, and what changes, replacing which practices with which, would make a city happy—Megillus and Cleinias, we should discuss these things again as if from the beginning, unless we have some objection to what's been said. MEGILLUS: Well, stranger, if some god promised us that if we take up this second inquiry into legislation, we would hear an account no worse and no shorter than what's just been said, I for one would go a long way for it, and today would seem short to me. And yet it's nearly the day the god turns from summer toward winter. ATHENIAN: Then we must look into this, it seems. MEGILLUS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: Let's put our minds back to that time when Sparta, Argos, Messenia, and their allied territories had come sufficiently under the control of your ancestors, Megillus. After that, as the story goes, they decided to divide the army into three parts and found three cities: Argos, Messenia, and Sparta. MEGILLUS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: And Temenus became king of Argos, Cresphontes of Messenia, and Procles and Eurysthenes of Sparta. MEGILLUS: Of course. ATHENIAN: And all the people of that time swore to these kings that they would come to their aid if anyone tried to destroy their kingship. MEGILLUS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: But by Zeus, is a kingship ever overthrown—or has any rule ever been overthrown—by anyone other than itself? Or did we just now, a little while ago when we came upon this very topic, establish that this is so, and have we already forgotten it? MEGILLUS: How could we have?
ATHENIAN: Then let's now confirm this point even more firmly. Having come upon actual events, it seems we've arrived back at the same conclusion, so that we won't be investigating something empty, but something that actually happened and holds truth. Here is what happened: three kingships, ruling three cities, swore mutual oaths to each other according to laws they had established in common for ruling and being ruled—the kings pledging not to make their rule harsher as time and generations passed, and the people, so long as the rulers kept to this, pledging never themselves to overthrow the kingships nor to allow others to attempt it; and kings would come to the aid of kings who were wronged, and peoples to the aid of peoples and of wronged kings. Isn't that how it was? MEGILLUS: Yes, that's how it was. ATHENIAN: Now wasn't this the most important feature in the constitutional arrangements set up in the three cities, whether the kings themselves were the lawgivers or others were? MEGILLUS: What feature? ATHENIAN: That the other two would always come to the aid of the one city that disobeyed the established laws. MEGILLUS: Clearly so. ATHENIAN: And indeed this is what most people demand of lawgivers—that they establish such laws as the people and the masses will accept willingly, just as if someone were to instruct trainers or doctors to treat and heal the bodies under their care pleasantly. MEGILLUS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: But it's often something to be grateful for if one can produce healthy, sound bodies with even a moderate amount of pain. MEGILLUS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: And there was another advantage those men of that time had, no small one, for easing the establishment of their laws. MEGILLUS: What was that? ATHENIAN: The lawgivers didn't face the greatest of complaints—the one that arises in many other law-governed cities when someone tries to establish equality of property, and someone seeks to redistribute land and cancel debts, seeing that without these measures adequate equality could never come about. Whenever a lawgiver attempts to move anything of this sort, everyone opposes him, saying not to disturb what shouldn't be disturbed, and they curse anyone who proposes redistributing land or canceling debts, so that every man is driven to desperation. But for the Dorians, this problem didn't exist—things went well and without resentment: they divided the land without dispute, and there were no large old debts. MEGILLUS: True. ATHENIAN: Then how, best of men, did their founding and legislation turn out so badly?
MEGILLUS: What exactly are you criticizing, and how do you mean it? ATHENIAN: That out of the three settlements, two of them quickly ruined both their constitution and their laws, and only one remained—yours. MEGILLUS: That's not an easy question. ATHENIAN: But we must, in examining and investigating this now—playing this sober old man's game about laws—travel the road without pain, as we said when we began our journey. MEGILLUS: Certainly, and we must do as you say. ATHENIAN: What finer subject of study could we undertake concerning laws than these, the ones that ordered these cities? Or what cities more celebrated or greater in their foundings could we examine? MEGILLUS: It's not easy to name others in their place. ATHENIAN: Now it's fairly clear that the men of that time intended this arrangement to serve not only as protection for the Peloponnese but for all the Greeks, should any of the barbarians wrong them—just as the people living around Ilium at that time, trusting in the power of the Assyrians centered on Nineveh, grew bold enough to stir up the war against Troy. For the outward form of that empire, though diminished, was still not small; as we dread the Great King in our own day, so the men of that time dreaded that assembled power. For the second capture of Troy was a great grievance against them, since Troy was part of their empire. Against all this, the arrangement of the army of that time, divided into three cities under brother kings, sons of Heracles, was devised and organized—well, as it seemed, and better than the expedition that had gone against Troy. First, they considered the Heraclids better rulers than the Pelopids had been; and second, they held that this army was superior in courage to the one that went to Troy—for the Dorians had conquered where the Achaeans, who had been Dorians' inferiors, had been conquered themselves. Isn't this the sort of thinking with which the men of that time are supposed to have set up their arrangement? MEGILLUS: Quite so.
ATHENIAN: And it was reasonable for them to believe this arrangement would hold firmly and endure a long time, since they had shared many labors and dangers with each other, and were organized under one family of brother kings, and moreover had made use of many prophets, including the Delphic Apollo. MEGILLUS: How could it not be reasonable? ATHENIAN: Yet these great expectations, it seems, quickly flew away—except, as we just said, for the small part concerning your own region, and even that has never stopped fighting against the other two parts, right up to the present day. For if the plan of that time had held together and been in harmony as one, it would have possessed an irresistible power in war. MEGILLUS: How could it not? ATHENIAN: Then how and by what means was it destroyed? Isn't it worth examining what fortune could possibly have ruined so great and so remarkable a system? MEGILLUS: Indeed, one could hardly find any other subject whose study would reveal laws or other constitutions that preserve fine and great achievements—or, on the contrary, utterly destroy them—if one neglected this one. ATHENIAN: Then it seems we've stumbled, quite fortunately, upon a worthwhile line of inquiry. MEGILLUS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: Isn't it true, my friend, that all men—including us just now—fail to notice this: each time we think we see something fine that has come about, and imagine what wonders might be accomplished if only someone knew how to use it properly, we may in fact, right now, be thinking about this very matter neither correctly nor in accordance with nature—and indeed this may be true of all men regarding everything they think about in this way? MEGILLUS: What exactly do you mean, and what do you say this remark applies to most? ATHENIAN: My good man, I laughed at myself just now. For looking at this expedition we've been discussing, it struck me as an altogether splendid and marvelous possession that fell to the Greeks—as I said, if only someone had made good use of it at the time. MEGILLUS: Well, didn't you say all that soundly and sensibly, and didn't we approve of it? ATHENIAN: Perhaps. Yet I notice that everyone who sees something great, possessing much power and strength, immediately feels this same thing—that if only its possessor knew how to use something so great and so powerful, he would accomplish many marvelous things and be happy.
MEGILLUS: Isn't that right too? Or what do you say? ATHENIAN: Consider what the person who gives this kind of praise about anything is really looking at when he speaks correctly. First, about the very thing we're now discussing: if the men who organized the army back then had known how to arrange it properly, would they have hit their mark in some way? I mean, wouldn't it be if they had built it securely and kept it safe forever, so that they themselves were free and ruled over others as they wished, and in general, among all people, Greek and non-Greek alike, could do whatever they and their descendants desired? Isn't that the reason they'd be praised? MEGILLUS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: So when someone sees great wealth, or exceptional honors of birth, or anything else like that, and says the same sort of thing, isn't he looking toward this same goal when he speaks — as if because of it, everything or most of what is most worth mentioning that he desires will come to be his? MEGILLUS: It does seem so. ATHENIAN: Well then, is there some one desire common to all people, which our argument now points to, as the argument itself claims? MEGILLUS: What sort? ATHENIAN: That events should happen according to the command of one's own soul — ideally all events, but if not, at least human affairs. MEGILLUS: Of course. ATHENIAN: So since we all want this always, both as children and as old men, wouldn't we necessarily pray for exactly this, all the way through? MEGILLUS: How could we not? ATHENIAN: And surely we'd join our friends in praying for the same things they pray for themselves. MEGILLUS: Of course. ATHENIAN: A son is friend to his father, being a child to a grown man. MEGILLUS: How could he not be? ATHENIAN: And yet many of the things the son prays will happen to himself, the father would pray to the gods never happen, in line with the son's prayers. MEGILLUS: You mean when the son is foolish and still young and prays that way? ATHENIAN: And also when the father himself, whether an old man or very much a young one, understanding nothing of what's good and just, prays fervently, caught up in feelings like those that struck Theseus toward the unfortunate Hippolytus who died — but the son understands. Do you think, in that case, the son will join his father in that prayer? MEGILLUS: I follow what you're saying. You seem to mean that we shouldn't pray for, or press toward, having everything follow our own wishing — rather, our wishing should follow far more our own understanding. And this is what both a city and each one of us should pray for and strive toward: that we come to possess reason.
ATHENIAN: Yes, and I've reminded myself, and I'm reminding you too, that a statesman acting as lawgiver must always keep this goal in view when he lays down the ordering of his laws — if we remember what was said at the start. Your instruction was that the good lawgiver must frame all lawful arrangements for the sake of war. Mine was that this would have laws made with a view to just one of the four virtues, when there are four; whereas we must look to all of them, and especially to the first, the one that leads the whole of virtue — that would be wisdom, and reason, and right judgment, together with the love and desire that follow them. So the argument comes back around to the same point, and I, speaking now, say again what I said then — if you like, in play; if you prefer, in earnest — that to use prayer without having gained understanding is a dangerous thing, since it results in the very opposite of one's wishes. And if you'd rather I speak in earnest, take it that way — for I fully expect you'll now discover, following the argument we set out a little earlier, that it was not cowardice that caused the destruction of the kings and the whole scheme, nor ignorance of warfare on the part of the rulers and the ruled, but corruption arising from every other kind of vice, and above all from ignorance about the most important human affairs. That this is how things happened then, and that it still happens now wherever it does, and that in future it will turn out no differently unless you're willing to change it — this I'll try, if you wish, to track down as we proceed and to make clear to you, as friends, to the best of my ability. CLEINIAS: To praise you in words, stranger, would be rather heavy-handed; but we'll praise you thoroughly in deed — we'll follow eagerly what you say, and in that a free man's praise, or its absence, becomes most evident. MEGILLUS: Excellent, Cleinias — let's do as you say. CLEINIAS: It shall be so, god willing. Just speak. ATHENIAN: Well then, continuing along the remaining path of the argument, we say that the greatest ignorance destroyed that power back then, and that the same thing by nature still does this now — so that the lawgiver, if this is so, must try to instill as much wisdom as possible into cities, and to root out folly as far as he can. CLEINIAS: Clearly so.
ATHENIAN: What then would rightly be called the greatest ignorance? Consider whether you both agree with what I propose — I set it down as this. CLEINIAS: What is it? ATHENIAN: When someone judges something to be fine or good and does not love it but hates it, while loving and embracing what he judges wicked and unjust. I call this discord between pain and pleasure on one side and rational judgment on the other the ultimate ignorance — and the greatest, because it belongs to the mass, the multitude, of the soul. For that part of the soul which feels pain and pleasure is like the common people, the multitude, within a city. So whenever the soul opposes knowledge or judgment or reason — the parts naturally suited to rule — I call this folly; and it is the same for a city, whenever the multitude fails to obey its rulers and laws; and likewise for a single man, whenever fine principles present in the soul accomplish nothing, but rather the complete opposite occurs. All these I would call the most discordant forms of ignorance, whether in a city or in each individual citizen — not the ignorance of craftsmen, if you follow what I mean, strangers. CLEINIAS: We follow, friend, and we agree with what you say. ATHENIAN: Then let this be laid down and agreed as stated: that citizens afflicted with this kind of ignorance must never be entrusted with any office, and must be reproached as ignorant even if they are highly skilled in calculation and thoroughly trained in every clever accomplishment that quickens the soul; while those in the opposite condition must be called wise, even if, as the saying goes, they know neither their letters nor how to swim, and offices must be given to them as to people of sound mind. For how, my friends, could even the smallest form of wisdom arise without harmony? It cannot — rather, the finest and greatest of harmonies would most justly be called the greatest wisdom, and whoever lives by reason has a share in it, while whoever falls short of it will always show himself, whether as household-wrecker or as no savior at all to his city, but in every way its ignorant undoing. Let this, then, stand as said, just as we stated a moment ago. CLEINIAS: Let it stand so. ATHENIAN: Now, rulers and ruled must surely exist in cities, mustn't they? CLEINIAS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: Very well. What then are the claims to rule and to be ruled, and how many are there, both in large cities and small, and likewise in households? Isn't one of them the claim of father and mother — that parents in general should rightly rule their offspring everywhere? CLEINIAS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: And following this, that the well-born should rule the low-born; and third, following these, that the older must rule and the younger be ruled. CLEINIAS: Of course. ATHENIAN: Fourth, that slaves should be ruled and masters should rule. CLEINIAS: How could it be otherwise? ATHENIAN: Fifth, I think, that the stronger should hold rule and the weaker submit to it. CLEINIAS: That's a very compelling kind of rule you've named. ATHENIAN: And indeed the most widespread among all living creatures, and according to nature, as Pindar the Theban once said. But the greatest claim, it seems, would be a sixth: that the one without knowledge must follow, while the one who has understanding should lead and rule. And yet this, wisest Pindar, I would say is scarcely against nature, but according to it — the rule of law over willing subjects, not a rule of force. CLEINIAS: Very rightly put. ATHENIAN: And when we speak of a seventh kind of rule, favored by the gods and by fortune, we bring people forward to some kind of lottery, and say it's most just that the one drawn by lot should rule, and the one who draws badly should step aside and be ruled. CLEINIAS: Very truly said. ATHENIAN: Do you see, then, lawgiver — we might say, teasing a little, to someone who takes up lawmaking too lightly — how many claims to rule there are, and how they're by nature opposed to one another? For we've now discovered a certain source of civil strife, which you must attend to. First, examine with us how and in what way the kings of Argos and Messenia, straying from these principles, destroyed both themselves and the power of the Greeks, which at that time was remarkable. Was it not from failing to recognize that Hesiod hit the mark exactly when he observed that the half frequently amounts to more than the whole? Whenever taking the whole would be ruinous, and the half is moderate, he judged the moderate more than the immoderate, since it is better than the worse. CLEINIAS: Quite right. ATHENIAN: Do we think, then, that this failing arises and corrupts kings first, or rather among the common people?
CLEINIAS: It's likely, and generally true, that this is a disease of kings living arrogantly amid luxury. ATHENIAN: Isn't it clear, then, that this was the first fault the kings of that time fell into — grasping for more than the laws laid down, and that what they praised in word and by oath they did not keep in harmony with themselves; and this discord, which we say is the greatest ignorance though it seems like wisdom, ruined all of that through its harsh discordance and lack of harmony? CLEINIAS: So it seems. ATHENIAN: Well then — what should the lawgiver at that time have been careful to guard against, to prevent this affliction from arising? By the gods, is it not something not at all wise to recognize now, nor hard to state — but if it had been foreseen back then, the one who foresaw it would have been wiser than we are? MEGILLUS: What do you mean? ATHENIAN: Looking at what happened among your people, Megillus, it's now easy to see, once one has observed it, and easy to say, having observed it, what should have happened back then. MEGILLUS: Speak still more clearly. ATHENIAN: The clearest way to put it would be this. MEGILLUS: What is it? ATHENIAN: If someone gives greater power to lesser things, neglecting due measure — sails to ships too large for them, food to bodies beyond what's fitting, offices of rule to souls unprepared — everything is overturned; bodies rush into disease from excess, and souls into injustice, the offspring of arrogance. So what are we really saying? Something like this: that there is no nature of a mortal soul, my friends, that will ever be able to bear the greatest rule among men while young and unaccountable, without having its understanding filled with the greatest disease, folly, and coming to hate those nearest and dearest to it — which, once it happens, quickly destroys the soul itself and wipes out all its power. Guarding against this, recognizing due measure, is the task of great lawgivers. As for what likely happened then, we can now make our best guess at the most moderate reckoning of it — and it seems to be this— MEGILLUS: What is it?
ATHENIAN: Some god who cared for you, foreseeing what was to come, planted for you a double line of kings out of a single stock and so drew it back toward due measure. And after that, a certain human nature blended with some divine power, seeing that your rule was still inflamed, mixed the sober strength of old age into the self-willed vigor of the royal blood, making the power of the twenty-eight elders equal in vote, on the greatest matters, to the power of the kings. Then your third savior, seeing the government still swelling and hot-tempered, threw a kind of curb-chain over it — the power of the ephors, brought near to a power chosen by lot. And so, by this account, kingship among you, having become compounded of the elements it needed and possessing measure, was itself preserved and became the cause of preservation for the rest. For under Temenus and Cresphontes and the lawgivers of that day — whoever those lawgivers actually were — not even Aristodemus's portion would ever have been preserved; they were not sufficiently experienced in legislation. They would hardly ever have thought that oaths could moderate a young soul that had received a power out of which tyranny could grow. But as it is, the god has shown what kind of rule needed to exist then, and needs to now, if it is to endure. That we recognize these things today, as I said before, takes no wisdom — it is not hard to see from a completed example — but if there had been someone then who foresaw all this and was able to temper the offices and make one out of the three, he would have saved every fine idea of that era, and no Persian expedition, nor any other, would ever have set out against Greece in contempt of us as people worth little. CLEINIAS: True. ATHENIAN: At any rate, Cleinias, the way they repelled the Persians was shameful. And by shameful I do not mean that the men of that day failed to win fine victories by land and sea — they did. What I call shameful then is this: first, that of those three cities only one defended Greece, while the other two were so badly corrupted that one of them actually prevented Sparta from coming to her aid, fighting her with all its might, and the other, the city of the original settlement's first rank, the one around Argos, when called upon to repel the barbarian, neither answered nor helped. One could recount many things about that war that would reflect no credit whatever on Greece.
ATHENIAN: Indeed, one could not even rightly say that Greece defended herself. If the joint resolve of the Athenians and the Spartans had not fended off the approaching slavery, by now virtually all the Greek stocks would have been mixed up with one another, and barbarian with Greek and Greek with barbarian — just as the peoples the Persians tyrannize today live scattered, dispersed and herded together in wretched fragments. These, Cleinias and Megillus, are the criticisms we can bring against the so-called statesmen and lawgivers of the past and of the present, so that by searching out their causes we may discover what ought to have been done instead. So we said just now: one must not legislate great offices, nor unmixed ones, bearing in mind that a city must be free and sensible and a friend to itself, and the lawgiver must legislate with his eye on these things. And let us not be surprised that we have several times now set up certain aims and said the lawgiver must legislate looking to them, and the aims proposed have not seemed the same each time. We must reckon that when we say one should look to temperance, or to wisdom, or to friendship, this aim is not different but the same; and many other such phrases, if they occur, should not confuse us. CLEINIAS: We will try to bear that in mind as we go back over the arguments. But now, about friendship and wisdom and freedom — tell us what you were going to say the lawgiver ought to aim at. ATHENIAN: Then listen. There are two constitutions that are, as it were, mothers, from which one would rightly say the rest are born. One is properly named monarchy, the other democracy; the Persian race holds the extreme of the former, we of the latter. Nearly all the others, as I said, are variegated blends of these. Now a constitution must and inevitably will partake of both, if there is to be freedom and friendship together with wisdom — which is what our argument means to enjoin, when it says that no city deprived of these things can ever be finely governed. CLEINIAS: How could it be?
ATHENIAN: Well then, one of them cherished the monarchic principle, the other the free, each more exclusively than it should have, and neither has kept these in due measure; but your constitutions, the Laconian and the Cretan, have done better. The Athenians and the Persians were once, in a way, moderate here, but are less so now. Shall we go through the causes? Yes? CLEINIAS: By all means — if, that is, we intend to finish what we set out to do. ATHENIAN: Then listen. The Persians, in Cyrus's day, when they kept more of a mean between slavery and freedom, first became free themselves and then became masters of many others. For as rulers who gave the ruled a share of freedom and drew them toward equality, the soldiers were friendlier to their generals and showed themselves eager in dangers; and if any among them was wise and able to give counsel, the king was not jealous but granted free speech and honored those able to advise on anything, and so made the power of wisdom a common resource, open to all. And everything then went forward for them, through freedom and friendship and a sharing of intelligence. CLEINIAS: It does seem that what is reported happened somewhat like that. ATHENIAN: How then was it ruined under Cambyses, and nearly saved again under Darius? Shall we use a kind of divination to think it through? CLEINIAS: It certainly leads toward the very question we set ourselves. ATHENIAN: My divination about Cyrus, then, is this: in other respects he was a good general and a lover of his city, but he never touched right education at all, and never turned his mind to household management. CLEINIAS: How should we take that? ATHENIAN: It seems he campaigned all his life from youth on, and handed his sons over to the women to raise. And they raised them as though they were happy already from childhood, blessed from the start and lacking nothing — forbidding anyone to oppose them in anything, on the ground that they were sufficiently blessed, and compelling everyone to praise whatever they said or did. That is the kind of men they raised. CLEINIAS: A splendid upbringing, by the sound of it. ATHENIAN: A womanish one, rather — from royal women newly grown rich, raising the children in the absence of men, who had no leisure because of wars and constant dangers. CLEINIAS: That stands to reason.
ATHENIAN: And their father meanwhile kept acquiring flocks and sheep and herds of men and much else in droves, but did not know that those to whom he was going to hand it all were not being educated in their father's craft — the Persian craft, the Persians being shepherds, offspring of a rugged country: a hard craft, capable of producing very strong herdsmen, able to sleep in the open and keep watch and campaign when campaigning was needed. He overlooked the fact that his sons were educated in the Median education, corrupted by so-called happiness, by women and eunuchs — which is why they turned out as one would expect people to turn out who were reared with a rearing that never rebuked them. So when the sons took over at Cyrus's death, stuffed with luxury and unchastened, first one killed the other, unable to bear an equal, and after that he himself, mad with drink and want of education, lost his empire to the Medes and to the man then called the Eunuch, who despised the foolishness of Cambyses. CLEINIAS: So the story goes, and it does seem to have happened roughly so. ATHENIAN: And the story further tells that rule passed back into Persian hands through Darius and the Seven. CLEINIAS: Indeed. ATHENIAN: Then let us watch how the account continues. Darius was no king's son, and was not brought up on a pampered education. He came to power, took it as one of seven, and cut the empire into seven parts, of which small dream-traces remain even now; and he thought it right to govern by laws he laid down, introducing a certain common equality, and he bound into the law the tribute Cyrus had promised the Persians, providing friendship and community to all Persians, winning over the Persian people with money and gifts. And so his armies, out of goodwill, gained for him no fewer lands than Cyrus had left. But after Darius came Xerxes, brought up once more on the royal, pampered education — Darius, one might say with perfect justice, you did not learn Cyrus's mistake, but raised Xerxes in the same habits in which Cyrus raised Cambyses! — and Xerxes, being the offspring of the same education, ended by re-enacting much the same fortunes as Cambyses. And from that time to this, hardly a single truly great king has arisen among the Persians — great in name only.
ATHENIAN: And the cause, on my account, is not chance, but the bad life which the sons of exceptionally rich men and of tyrants mostly live; for never will boy or man or old man raised on that nurture become outstanding in virtue. This, we say, is what the lawgiver must consider — and we too, in our present task. It is only just, men of Sparta, to grant your city this: that you assign no honor or nurture whatever that differs by poverty or wealth, private station or kingship, beyond what your divine founder pronounced for you from some god at the beginning. For a city should not let its highest honors go to a man simply for outstanding wealth — nor, for that matter, for speed or good looks or bodily strength unaccompanied by any virtue, nor for a virtue lacking temperance. MEGILLUS: What do you mean by that, stranger? ATHENIAN: Courage is one part of virtue, isn't it? MEGILLUS: Of course. ATHENIAN: Then hear the argument and judge for yourself: would you accept as housemate or neighbor a man extremely courageous, but not temperate — licentious rather? MEGILLUS: Say no such thing! ATHENIAN: What about a man skilled and clever in his craft, but unjust? MEGILLUS: Not at all. ATHENIAN: And yet the just character never springs up where temperance is missing. MEGILLUS: How could it? ATHENIAN: Nor does the wise man we put forward just now — the man whose pleasures and pains are in tune with right reason and follow it. MEGILLUS: No indeed. ATHENIAN: Then let us consider this further point, for the sake of the honors given in cities — which are rightly given in each case, and which not. MEGILLUS: What point? ATHENIAN: Temperance, isolated in some soul apart from all the rest of virtue — would it justly be a thing of honor or of dishonor? MEGILLUS: I do not know what to say. ATHENIAN: And you have answered fittingly. Had you said either of the alternatives I asked about, you would have struck a false note, in my view. MEGILLUS: Then it has turned out well. ATHENIAN: Quite. An accessory of the things that merit honor or dishonor deserves not speech, but rather a kind of speechless silence. MEGILLUS: You seem to mean temperance. ATHENIAN: Yes. And of the rest, whatever benefits us most, when joined with that accessory, would most rightly be honored with the highest honor, and the second in benefit with the second; and so on down the sequence — each thing, receiving in turn the honors that follow in order, would receive them rightly.
MEGILLUS: So it is. ATHENIAN: Well then, shall we say that this too belongs to the lawgiver, to distribute? MEGILLUS: Very much so. ATHENIAN: Do you want us to hand over to him the task of distributing everything, down to the smallest detail, in every single case, but to try ourselves, since we too are in some sense lovers of laws, to divide it three ways and mark off separately the first, second, and third things in importance? MEGILLUS: By all means. ATHENIAN: We say, then, it seems, that a city that is going to be preserved and to prosper, so far as is humanly possible, must and inevitably will distribute honors and dishonors correctly. And the correct way is this: the goods of the soul are to be ranked as most honorable and first, provided the soul possesses self-control; second come the fine and good things of the body; and third, the things said to belong to property and money. If any lawgiver or city steps outside this order, promoting money or honors, or ranking something that should come later ahead of something earlier, that city would be doing something neither pious nor politically sound. Shall we let this stand, or how do we see it? MEGILLUS: Let it stand, clearly stated. ATHENIAN: Our examination of the Persian constitution led us to say all this at greater length. We find that the Persians have become still worse, and we say the reason is that by stripping the common people of freedom to excess, and bringing in a degree of despotism beyond what was fitting, they destroyed the bond of friendship and community in the city. And once that was destroyed, the counsel of the rulers no longer takes thought for the ruled and for the people, but only for their own rule, so that if they think some slight advantage will fall to them at any given moment, they lay waste to cities, lay waste to friendly nations by fire, hating with hatred that knows no pity and are hated in return. And when the moment comes that they must call on the people to do their fighting, they discover among them no shared eagerness to face danger and give battle; instead, though they possess countless myriads beyond counting, all of them are useless for war, and as if short of men, they hire mercenaries, imagining that they will one day be saved by hired foreigners.
ATHENIAN: On top of this they are compelled into ignorance, showing in practice that whatever is called honorable and fine in the city is nonsense compared to gold and silver. MEGILLUS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: Let that be the end of our discussion of the Persians, of how their affairs are now mismanaged because of excessive slavery and despotism. MEGILLUS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: Next we ought to go through the Attic constitution in the same way, showing that total freedom released from every kind of rule is not a little worse than rule that has due measure exercised by others. In our own case, at the time when the Persian assault fell upon the Greeks—and, one might almost say, upon everyone living in Europe—we had an ancient constitution, with certain offices based on four property classes, and a kind of reverence dwelt among us like a master, in obedience to which we were willing to live under the laws then in force. And besides this, the sheer size of the expedition, by land and sea, cast upon us a helpless fear, and made us still more enslaved to our rulers and our laws, and through all this a strong bond of friendship grew up among us toward one another. For about ten years before the sea battle at Salamis, Datis arrived leading a Persian fleet, sent explicitly by Darius against the Athenians and the Eretrians, with orders to enslave and bring them back, and death threatened him if he failed to do this. And Datis in a short time took Eretria completely by force with vast numbers, and sent a frightening report to our city that not one Eretrian had escaped him; for, joining hands, his soldiers had swept the whole of Eretria as with a net. This report, whether true or however it reached us, terrified the other Greeks and especially the Athenians, and when they sent embassies everywhere for help, no one was willing to come except the Spartans. And the Spartans, held back by their war with Messenia then in progress, and perhaps by something else too—we do not know what is said—arrived too late, after the battle of Marathon had been fought, by a single day. After this, great preparations, so it was said, and countless threats kept coming from the King.
ATHENIAN: As time went on, Darius was said to have died, and his son, young and impetuous, took over the rule and by no means gave up the campaign. The Athenians thought all this preparation was aimed at them because of what had happened at Marathon, and hearing that Athos was being cut through and the Hellespont bridged, and of the great number of ships, they concluded that neither land nor sea offered them any way to safety. No one, they thought, would come to help them—remembering that even when the Persians came before and destroyed Eretria, no one had come to help them or risked fighting alongside them then; they expected the same to happen again on land. And by sea they saw every avenue of safety closed off, with more than a thousand ships bearing down on them. They thought of one refuge, thin and desperate, but the only one, looking to what had happened before: that then too victory in battle had come out of a hopeless situation. Borne along by this hope, they saw that no shelter remained to them except themselves and the gods. All this created among them a bond of friendship with one another—the fear then present, and that which had grown out of the earlier laws, the reverence under which they had lived as slaves to the former laws, which we have often in our earlier discussion called reverence, and to which we said those who are to become good must be enslaved—reverence, of which the coward is free and unafraid. If fear had not gripped them then, they would never have come together to defend themselves, nor would they have defended their temples, their tombs, their homeland, and all their own people and friends together, as they did help then; instead each of us would have been scattered then in small groups, this way and that. MEGILLUS: You have spoken well indeed, stranger, both fittingly for yourself and for your homeland. ATHENIAN: That is so, Megillus. It is right to speak of what happened in that time to you, who share by nature in the deeds of your fathers. But you and Cleinias should also consider whether what we are saying is relevant to lawgiving—for I am not going through this for the sake of storytelling, but for the sake of what I am arguing. Look: since a fate in some way the same as the Persians' befell us too—theirs leading their people to total slavery, ours in the opposite direction driving the masses to total freedom—what then shall we say next, given that our earlier discussion has, in a certain way, been well put?
MEGILLUS: You put it well. Try to make what you are now saying still clearer to us. ATHENIAN: So it shall be. Under the old laws, friends, the people were not sovereign over anything among us, but in a sense willingly made themselves the laws' servants. MEGILLUS: Which laws are those? ATHENIAN: Those concerning music, first, as it then was, so that we may go through from the beginning the excessive growth of the free life. Music at that time was divided among us into certain kinds and forms of its own: one kind of song was prayers to the gods, called by the name of hymns; and opposite to this was another kind of song—one might best call them dirges—and paeans were another kind, and another, the birth of Dionysus I believe, called the dithyramb. And they called this very name 'nomes,' songs of another sort still; these were sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. Once these and certain others were arranged in order, it was not permitted to misuse one kind of melody for another. And the authority to know these things, and having known them, to judge, and to punish the one who did not obey, was not a pipe, nor tuneless shouts from a crowd, as happens now, nor applause given as praise; rather, those who had been trained in education were resolved to listen in silence to the end, while for children and their attendants and the greater mass of people, the rod of a marshal provided the correction. So the mass of citizens was willing to be ruled in this orderly way and not dare to judge through noisy uproar. But afterward, as time went on, poets arose who were leaders of a lawless disregard for music—poets by nature, but ignorant of what is just and lawful in the Muse's realm, possessed by a frenzy and carried away more than they should be by pleasure, mixing dirges with hymns and paeans with dithyrambs, imitating flute-tunes with lyre-tunes, and bringing everything together into everything, and unwittingly, through folly, misrepresenting music as having no standard of correctness at all, but as judged most correctly by the pleasure of the one who enjoys it, whether he be better or worse.
ATHENIAN: By composing poems of this sort, and adding words to match, they instilled in the many a disregard for law in matters of music, and the audacity to think themselves competent to judge; so that theaters, from being silent, became vocal, as though they understood what was fine and what was not in the arts of the Muses, and in place of aristocracy there arose in this domain a kind of vicious theater-rule. For if only a democracy of free men had arisen in this domain, what had happened would not have been so very terrible; but as it was, there began among us, from music, the conceit that everyone is wise about everything and a disregard for law, and freedom followed close behind. People became fearless, as though they knew, and this lack of restraint bred shamelessness; for not to fear the opinion of the better sort out of sheer boldness—this, more or less, is precisely vicious shamelessness, arising from a freedom pushed too far in its daring. MEGILLUS: Very true. ATHENIAN: Following upon this freedom would come the unwillingness to be enslaved to rulers, and next after that, the flight from the authority and admonition of father and mother and elders; and as they near the end of this road, they seek to be no longer subject to the laws, and right at the very end, they cease to care for oaths, pledges, and the gods altogether, displaying and imitating what is called the ancient nature of the Titans, arriving again at that same condition, living a harsh existence with no end to their troubles. Now for what purpose have we said all this again? It seems to me we must, like a horseman, keep pulling in the argument at every point, and not let it, as if it had an unbridled mouth, carry us off by force, so that, as the proverb says, we fall off some donkey—rather we should keep asking again what we just asked: for the sake of what was this said? MEGILLUS: Well put. ATHENIAN: This, then, was said for the sake of the following. MEGILLUS: For the sake of what? ATHENIAN: We said that the lawgiver must aim at three things in making laws: that the city being legislated for shall be free, shall be a friend to itself, and shall possess understanding. That was it, was it not? MEGILLUS: Quite so. ATHENIAN: For this reason we chose the most despotic constitution and the most free, and we are now examining which of the two governs correctly. Taking a certain moderate degree of each—of ruling in the one case, and of freedom in the other—we observed that it was precisely then that they flourished exceedingly; but when each was carried to an extreme, of slavery on one side and of the opposite on the other, it benefited neither the one nor the other.
MEGILLUS: That's very true. ATHENIAN: And indeed it was for their sake that we also examined the Dorian army settling down, and the foothills of Dardanus, and the settlement by the sea, and the earliest people who survived the destruction, and further back still the discussions we had before that about music and drunkenness, and things earlier even than those. All of this was said so that we could see how a city might be governed best, and how a person, privately, might best lead his own life. But if we've actually accomplished something useful, what test could we apply to ourselves, Megillus and Cleinias? CLEINIAS: I think I can see one, stranger. It seems that by some stroke of luck everything we've discussed has happened just for this: I find myself, right about now, in real need of it, and by a happy coincidence you and Megillus here have turned up at the very moment. I won't hide from you two what's happening to me at present—in fact I'm treating it as a kind of sign. Most of Crete is undertaking to found a colony, and it has put the Cnossians in charge of managing the business, and the city of Cnossus has put it in my hands and those of nine others. At the same time it instructs us to lay down laws, taking either our own local ones, if any please us, or ones from elsewhere, with no regard for their being foreign, provided they look better. So let's do this favor for me and for yourselves: let's pick out what's useful from what's been said and put together, in words, a city—founding it, as it were, from scratch. That way we'll get the very inquiry we're after, and at the same time I might soon make use of this construction for the city that's coming. ATHENIAN: That's no declaration of war you're making, Cleinias! Unless it's somehow unwelcome to Megillus, consider everything of mine at your disposal, as far as I'm able. CLEINIAS: Well said. MEGILLUS: And mine as well. CLEINIAS: You've both spoken beautifully. Well then, let's try, first in words, to found the city.