give them punishments and rewards; and in reference
to all their intercourse with one another, he ought
to consider their pains and pleasures and desires,
and the vehemence of all their passions; he should
keep a watch over them, and blame and praise them
rightly by the mouth of the laws themselves.
Also with regard to anger and terror, and the other
perturbations of the soul, which arise out of misfortune,
and the deliverances from them which prosperity brings,
and the experiences which come to men in diseases,
or in war, or poverty, or the opposite of these; in
all these states he should determine and teach what
is the good and evil of the condition of each.
In the next place, the legislator has to be careful
how the citizens make their money and in what way
they spend it, and to have an eye to their mutual
contracts and dissolutions of contracts, whether voluntary
or involuntary: he should see how they order
all this, and consider where justice as well as injustice
is found or is wanting in their several dealings with
one another; and honour those who obey the law, and
impose fixed penalties on those who disobey, until
the round of civil life is ended, and the time has
come for the consideration of the proper funeral rites
and honours of the dead. And the lawgiver reviewing
his work, will appoint guardians to preside over these
things,—some who walk by intelligence,
others by true opinion only, and then mind will bind
together all his ordinances and show them to be in
harmony with temperance and justice, and not with
wealth or ambition. This is the spirit, Stranger,
in which I was and am desirous that you should pursue
the subject. And I want to know the nature of
all these things, and how they are arranged in the
laws of Zeus, as they are termed, and in those of the
Pythian Apollo, which Minos and Lycurgus gave; and
how the order of them is discovered to his eyes, who
has experience in laws gained either by study or habit,
although they are far from being self-evident to the
rest of mankind like ourselves.
Cleinias: How shall we proceed, Stranger?
Athenian: I think that we must begin again
as before, and first consider the habit of courage;
and then we will go on and discuss another and then
another form of virtue, if you please. In this
way we shall have a model of the whole; and with these
and similar discourses we will beguile the way.
And when we have gone through all the virtues, we will
show, by the grace of God, that the institutions of
which I was speaking look to virtue.
Megillus: Very good; and suppose that you
first criticize this praiser of Zeus and the laws
of Crete.
Athenian: I will try to criticize you and
myself, as well as him, for the argument is a common
concern. Tell me,—were not first the
syssitia, and secondly the gymnasia, invented by your
legislator with a view to war?
Megillus: Yes.
Athenian: And what comes third, and what
fourth? For that, I think, is the sort of enumeration
which ought to be made of the remaining parts of virtue,
no matter whether you call them parts or what their
name is, provided the meaning is clear.