Greek Texts & Translations

Then where should we put the best element in the State,—that which by age and judgment alike is the most influential it contains,—so that by singing its noblest songs it might do most good? Or shall we be so foolish as to dismiss that section which possesses the highest capacity for the noblest and most useful songs?

We cannot possibly dismiss it, judging from what you now say.

What seemly method can we adopt about it? Will the method be this?

What?

Every man as he grows older becomes reluctant to sing songs, and takes less pleasure in doing so; and when compelled to sing, 665ethe older he is and the more temperate, the more he will feel ashamed. Is it not so?

It is.

Surely, then, he will be more than ever ashamed to get up and sing in the theater, before people of all sorts. Moreover, if old men like that were obliged to do as the choristers do, who go lean and fasting when training their voices for a competition, they would assuredly find singing an unpleasant and degrading task, and they would undertake it with no great readiness. 666a

That is beyond a doubt.

How then shall we encourage them to take readily to singing? Shall we not pass a law that, in the first place, no children under eighteen may touch wine at all, teaching that it is wrong to pour fire upon fire either in body or in soul, before they set about tackling their real work, and thus guarding against the excitable disposition of the young? And next, we shall rule that the young man under thirty may take wine in moderation, 666bbut that he must entirely abstain from intoxication and heavy drinking. But when a man has reached the age of forty, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysus, above all other gods, inviting his presence at the rite (which is also the recreation) of the elders, which he bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls 666cmay lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire. Will not this softer disposition, in the first place, render each one of them more ready and less ashamed to sing chants and “incantations” (as we have often called them), in the presence, not of a large company of strangers, but of a small number of intimate friends?

Yes! much more ready.

So then, for the purpose of inducing them 666dto take a share in our singing, this plan would not be altogether unseemly.

By no means.

What manner of song will the men raise? Will it not, evidently, be one that suits their own condition in every case?

Of course.

What song, then, would suit godlike men? Would a choric song ^note?

At any rate, Stranger, we and our friends here would be unable to sing any other song than that which we learnt by practice in choruses.

Naturally; for in truth you never attained to 666ethe noblest singing. For your civic organization is that of an army rather than that of city-dwellers, and you keep your young people massed together like a herd of colts at grass: none of you takes his own colt, dragging him away from his fellows, in spite of his fretting and fuming, and puts a special groom in charge of him, and trains him by rubbing him down and stroking him and using all the means proper to child-nursing, that so he may turn out not only a good soldier, 667abut able also to manage a State and cities—in short, a man who (as we said at the first) is more of a warrior than the warriors of Tyrtaeus, inasmuch as always and everywhere, both in States and in individuals, he esteems courage as the fourth in order of the virtues, not the first.

Once again, Stranger, you are—in a sort of a way—disparaging our lawgivers.

It is not intentionally, my friend, that I do so—if I am doing it but whither the argument leads us, thither, if you please, let us go. If we know of a music that is superior to that of the choirs or to that of the public theaters, 667blet us try to supply it to those men who, as we said, are ashamed of the latter, yet are eager to take a part in that music which is noblest.

Certainly.

^note Now, in the first place, must it not be true of everything which possesses charm as its concomitant, that its most important element is either this charm in itself, or some form of correctness, or, thirdly, utility? For instance, meat and drink and nutriment in general have, as I say, for concomitant that charm which we should term pleasure; 667cbut as regards their correctness and utility, what we call the wholesomeness of each article administered is precisely the most perfect element they contain.

Certainly.

Learning, too, is accompanied by the element of charm, which is pleasure; but that which produces its correctness and utility, its goodness and nobleness, is truth.

Quite so.