705aFor the sea is, in very truth, “a right briny and bitter neighbor,” note although there is sweetness in its proximity for the uses of daily life; for by filling the markets of the city with foreign merchandise and retail trading, and breeding in men's souls knavish and tricky ways, it renders the city faithless and loveless, not to itself only, but to the rest of the world as well. But in this respect
705bour State has compensation in the fact that it is all-productive; and since it is hilly, it cannot be highly productive as well as all-productive; if it were, and supplied many exports, it would be flooded in return with gold and silver money—the one condition of all, perhaps, that is most fatal, in a State, to the acquisition of noble and just habits of life,—as we said, if you remember, in our previous discourse. noteClinias
We remember, and we endorse what you said both then and now.
705cAthenian
Well, then, how is our district off for timber for ship-building?
Clinias
There is no fir to speak of, nor pine, and but little cypress; nor could one find much larch or plane, which shipwrights are always obliged to use for the interior fittings of ships.
Athenian
Those, two, are natural features which would not be bad for the country.
Clinias
Why so?
705dAthenian
That a State should not find it easy to copy its enemies in bad habits is a good thing.
Clinias
To which of our statements does this observation allude?
Athenian
My dear Sir, keep a watch on me, with an eye cast back on our opening note statement about the Cretan laws. It asserted that those laws aimed at one single object; and whereas you declared that this object was military strength, I made the rejoinder that, while it was right that such enactments should have virtue for their aim, I did not at all approve of that aim being restricted to a part, instead of applying to the whole.
705eSo do you now, in turn, keep a watch on my present lawmaking, as you follow it, in case I should enact any law either not tending to virtue at all, or tending only to a part of it. For I lay it down as an axiom that no law is rightly enacted which does not aim always, like an archer, at that object, and that alone, which is constantly
706aaccompanied by something ever-beautiful,—passing over every other object, be it wealth or anything else of the kind that is devoid of beauty. To illustrate how the evil imitation of enemies, which I spoke of, comes about, when people dwell by the sea and are vexed by enemies, I will give you an example (though with no wish, of course, to recall to you painful memories). When Minos, once upon a time, reduced the people of Attica
706bto a grievous payment of tribute, he was very powerful by sea, whereas they possessed no warships at that time such as they have now, nor was their country so rich in timber that they could easily supply themselves with a naval force. Hence they were unable quickly to copy the naval methods of their enemies and drive them off by becoming sailors themselves. And indeed it would have profited them to lose seventy times seven children
706crather than to become marines instead of staunch foot-soldiers; for marines are habituated to jumping ashore frequently and running back at full speed to their ships, and they think no shame of not dying boldly at their posts when the enemy attack; and excuses are readily made for them, as a matter of course, when they fling away their arms and betake themselves to what they describe as “no dishonorable flight.” These “exploits” are the usual result of employing naval soldiery, and they merit, not “infinite praise,” but precisely the opposite;
706dfor one ought never to habituate men to base habits, and least of all the noblest section of the citizens. That such an institution is not a noble one might have been learnt even from Homer. For he makes Odysseus abuse Agamemnon for ordering the Achaeans to haul down their ships to the sea, when they were being pressed in fight by the Trojans; and in his wrath he speaks thus:—
706e
Dost bid our people hale their fair-benched ships
Seaward, when war and shouting close us round?
So shall the Trojans see their prayers fulfilled,
And so on us shall sheer destruction fall!
For, when the ships are seaward drawn, no more
Will our Achaeans hold the battle up,
But, backward glancing, they will quit the fray:
707a
Thus baneful counsel such as thine will prove.
Hom. Il. 14.96So Homer, too, was aware of the fact that triremes lined up in the sea alongside of infantry fighting on land are a bad thing: why, even lions, if they had habits such as these, would grow used to running away from does! Moreover, States dependent upon navies for their power give honors, as rewards for their safety, to a section of their forces that is not the finest; for they owe their safety to the arts of the pilot, the captain and the rower—
707bmen of all kinds and not too respectable,—so that it would be impossible to assign the honors to each of them rightly. Yet, without rectitude in this, how can it still be right with a State? noteClinias
It is well-nigh impossible. None the less, Stranger, it was the sea-fight at Salamis, fought by the Greeks against the barbarians, which, as we Cretans at least affirm, saved Greece.
Athenian
Yes, that is what is said by most of the Greeks and barbarians.
