Greek Texts & Translations

Nay, Stranger, we are both inexpressibly desirous to listen.

Let us listen, then. And do not be surprised if you find me taking the subject up again from an early point. For we are now enjoying leisure, 781eand there is no pressing reason to hinder us from considering laws from all possible points of view.

Very true.

Let us, then, revert again to our first statements. ^note Thus much at least every man ought to understand,—that either the human race never had a beginning at all, 782aand will never have an end, but always was and always will be, or else it must have been in existence an incalculable length of time from the date when it first began.

Undoubtedly.

Well then, do we not suppose that all the world over and in all sorts of ways there have been risings and fallings of States, and institutions of every variety of order and disorder, and appetites for food—both meats and drinks—of every kind, and all sorts of variations in the seasons, during which it is probable that the animals underwent 782binnumerable changes?

Certainly.

Are we to believe, then, that vines, not previously existing, appeared at a certain stage; and olives, likewise, and the gifts of Demeter and Kore? ^note And that some Triptolemus was the minister of such fruits? And during the period that these fruits were as yet non-existent, must we not suppose that the animals turned, as they do now, to feeding on one another.

Of course. 782c

The custom of men sacrificing one another is, in fact, one that survives even now among many peoples; whereas amongst others we hear of how the opposite custom existed, when they were forbidden so much as to eat an ox, and their offerings to the gods consisted, not of animals, but of cakes of meal and grain steeped in honey, and other such bloodless sacrifices, and from flesh they abstained as though it were unholy to eat it or to stain with blood the altars of the gods; instead of that, those of us men who then existed lived what is called an “Orphic life,” keeping wholly to inanimate food and, 782dcontrariwise, abstaining wholly from things animate.

Certainly what you say is widely reported and easy to credit.

Someone might ask us— “For what purpose have you now said all this?”

A correct surmise, Stranger.

So I will try, if I can, Clinias, to explain the subject which comes next in order.

Say on.

I observe that with men all things depend on a threefold need and desire, wherein if they proceed rightly, 782ethe result is goodness, if badly, the opposite. Of these desires they possess those for food and drink as soon as they are born; and about the whole sphere of food every creature has an instinctive lust, and is full of craving, and quite deaf to any suggestion that they ought to do anything else than satisfy their tastes and desires for all such objects, and thus rid themselves entirely of all pain. 783aThirdly comes our greatest need and keenest lust, which, though the latest to emerge, influences the soul of men with most raging frenzy—the lust for the sowing of offspring that burns with utmost violence. These three morbid states ^note we must direct towards what is most good, instead of what is (nominally) most pleasant, trying to check them by means of the three greatest forces—fear, law, and true reasoning,—reinforced by the Muses and the Gods of Games, so as to quench thereby their increase and inflow. 783bSo let us place the subject of the production of children next after that of marriage, and after their production, their nurture and education. If our discourse proceeds on these lines, possibly each of our laws will attain completion, and when we come to the public meals, by approaching these at close quarters we shall probably discern more clearly whether such associations ought to be for men only, or for women as well; and thus we shall not only prescribe the preliminaries that are still without legal regulation, and place them as fences