and any of the old poems which they deem sufficient they shall include; any that are deficient or altogether unsuitable, they shall either utterly throw aside, or examine and amend, taking into their counsel poets and musicians, and making use of their poetical genius; but explaining to them the wishes of the legislator in order that they may regulate dancing, music, and all choral strains, according to the mind of the judges; and not allowing them to indulge, except in some few matters, their individual pleasures and fancies.  Now the irregular strain of music is always made ten thousand times better by attaining to law and order, and rejecting the honeyed Muse—­not however that we mean wholly to exclude pleasure, which is the characteristic of all music.  And if a man be brought up from childhood to the age of discretion and maturity in the use of the orderly and severe music, when he hears the opposite he detests it, and calls it illiberal; but if trained in the sweet and vulgar music, he deems the severer kind cold and displeasing.  So that, as I was saying before, while he who hears them gains no more pleasure from the one than from the other, the one has the advantage of making those who are trained in it better men, whereas the other makes them worse.

Cleinias:  Very true.

Athenian:  Again, we must distinguish and determine on some general principle what songs are suitable to women, and what to men, and must assign to them their proper melodies and rhythms.  It is shocking for a whole harmony to be inharmonical, or for a rhythm to be unrhythmical, and this will happen when the melody is inappropriate to them.  And therefore the legislator must assign to these also their forms.  Now both sexes have melodies and rhythms which of necessity belong to them; and those of women are clearly enough indicated by their natural difference.  The grand, and that which tends to courage, may be fairly called manly; but that which inclines to moderation and temperance, may be declared both in law and in ordinary speech to be the more womanly quality.  This, then, will be the general order of them.

Let us now speak of the manner of teaching and imparting them, and the persons to whom, and the time when, they are severally to be imparted.  As the shipwright first lays down the lines of the keel, and thus, as it were, draws the ship in outline, so do I seek to distinguish the patterns of life, and lay down their keels according to the nature of different men’s souls; seeking truly to consider by what means, and in what ways, we may go through the voyage of life best.  Now human affairs are hardly worth considering in earnest, and yet we must be in earnest about them—­a sad necessity constrains us.  And having got thus far, there will be a fitness in our completing the matter, if we can only find some suitable method of doing so.  But what do I mean?  Some one may ask this very question, and quite rightly, too.