Greek Texts & Translations

Splendid, O Stranger of Lacedaemon! But come now, as to courage, how shall we define it? Shall we define it quite simply as battling against fears and pains only, 633dor as against desires also and pleasures, with their dangerous enticements and flatteries, which melt men's hearts like wax—even men most reverenced in their own conceit.

The latter definition is, I think, the right one: courage is battling against them all.

Earlier in our discourse (if I am not mistaken) Clinias here used the expression “self-inferior” of a State or an individual: did you not do so, O Stranger of Cnosus?

Most certainly. 633e

At present do we apply the term “bad” to the man who is inferior to pains, or to him also who is inferior to pleasures?

To the man who is inferior to pleasures more than to the other, in my opinion. All of us, indeed, when we speak of a man who is shamefully self-inferior, mean one who is mastered by pleasures rather than one who is mastered by pains. 634a

Then surely the lawgiver of Zeus and he of Apollo did not enact by law a lame kind of courage, able only to defend itself on the left and unable to resist attractions and allurements on the right, but rather one able to resist on both sides?

On both sides, as I would maintain.

Let us, then, mention once more the State institutions in both your countries which give men a taste of pleasures instead of shunning them,—just as they did not shun pains but plunged their citizens into the midst of them and so compelled them, 634bor induced them by rewards, to master them. Where, pray, in your laws is the same policy adopted in regard to pleasures? Let us declare what regulation of yours there is which causes the same men to be courageous toward pains and pleasures alike, conquering where they ought to conquer and in no wise worsted by their nearest and most dangerous enemies.

Although, Stranger, I was able to mention a number of laws that dealt with mastery over pains, in the case of pleasures I may not find it equally easy to produce important and conspicuous examples; 634cbut I might perhaps furnish some minor instances.

Neither could I in like manner give myself clear examples from the Cretan laws.

And no wonder, my most excellent friends. If then, in his desire to discover what is true and superlatively good, any one of us should find fault with any domestic law of his neighbors, let us take one another's remarks in good part and without resentment. 634d

You are right, Stranger: that is what we must do.

Yes, for resentment would ill become men of our years.

Ill indeed.

Whether men are right or wrong in their censures of the Laconian polity and the Cretan—that is another story; anyhow, what is actually said by most men I, probably, am in a better position to state than either of you. For in your case (your laws being wisely framed) one of the best of your laws will be that which enjoins that none of the youth shall inquire which laws are wrong 634eand which right, but all shall declare in unison, with one mouth and one voice, that all are rightly established by divine enactment, and shall turn a deaf ear to anyone who says otherwise; and further, that if any old man has any stricture to pass on any of your laws, he must not utter such views in the presence of any young man, but before a magistrate or one of his own age.

A very sound observation, Stranger; and just like a diviner, 635afar away though you are from the original lawgiver, you have fairly spotted, as I think, his intention, and described it with perfect truth.

Well, there are no young people with us now; so we may be permitted by the lawgiver, old as we are, to discuss these matters among ourselves privately without offence.

That is so. Do you, then, have no scruple in censuring our laws; for there is nothing discreditable in being told of some flaw; rather it is just this which leads to a remedy, if the criticism be accepted not peevishly 635bbut in a friendly spirit.

Good! But until I have investigated your laws as carefully as I can I shall not censure them but rather express the doubts I feel. You alone of Greeks and barbarians, so far as I can discover, possess a lawgiver who charged you to abstain from the greatest of pleasures and amusements and taste them not; but concerning pains and fears, as we said before, he held the view that anyone who shuns them continuously from childhood onward, when confronted with 635cunavoidable hardships and fears and pains, will be put to flight by the men who are trained in such things, and will become their slave. Now I presume that this same lawgiver should have held the same view about pleasures as well, and should have argued with himself that, if our citizens grow up from their youth unpracticed in the greatest pleasures, the consequence must be that, when they find themselves amongst pleasures without being trained in the duty of resisting them and of refusing to commit any disgraceful act,