Cleinias:  The last would be by far the best sort of judge and legislator.

Athenian:  And yet the aim of all the laws which he gave would be the reverse of war.

Cleinias:  Very true.

Athenian:  And will he who constitutes the state and orders the life of man have in view external war, or that kind of intestine war called civil, which no one, if he could prevent, would like to have occurring in his own state; and when occurring, every one would wish to be quit of as soon as possible?

Cleinias:  He would have the latter chiefly in view.

Athenian:  And would he prefer that this civil war should be terminated by the destruction of one of the parties, and by the victory of the other, or that peace and friendship should be re-established, and that, being reconciled, they should give their attention to foreign enemies?

Cleinias:  Every one would desire the latter in the case of his own state.

Athenian:  And would not that also be the desire of the legislator?

Cleinias:  Certainly.

Athenian:  And would not every one always make laws for the sake of the best?

Cleinias:  To be sure.

Athenian:  But war, whether external or civil, is not the best, and the need of either is to be deprecated; but peace with one another, and good will, are best.  Nor is the victory of the state over itself to be regarded as a really good thing, but as a necessity; a man might as well say that the body was in the best state when sick and purged by medicine, forgetting that there is also a state of the body which needs no purge.  And in like manner no one can be a true statesman, whether he aims at the happiness of the individual or state, who looks only, or first of all, to external warfare; nor will he ever be a sound legislator who orders peace for the sake of war, and not war for the sake of peace.

Cleinias:  I suppose that there is truth, Stranger, in that remark of yours; and yet I am greatly mistaken if war is not the entire aim and object of our own institutions, and also of the Lacedaemonian.

Athenian:  I dare say; but there is no reason why we should rudely quarrel with one another about your legislators, instead of gently questioning them, seeing that both we and they are equally in earnest.  Please follow me and the argument closely:—­And first I will put forward Tyrtaeus, an Athenian by birth, but also a Spartan citizen, who of all men was most eager about war:  Well, he says,

’I sing not, I care not, about any man,

even if he were the richest of men, and possessed every good (and then he gives a whole list of them), if he be not at all times a brave warrior.’  I imagine that you, too, must have heard his poems; our Lacedaemonian friend has probably heard more than enough of them.

Megillus:  Very true.