Greek Texts & Translations

Well, what is it about them that you are now alluding to, and what has come over you?

I will tell you: it is no easy matter to gainsay tens of thousands of tongues.

Come now,—do you believe that the points in which our previous conclusions about laws contradicted ordinary opinion were few and trifling?

Your observation is most just. I take it that you are bidding me, now that the path which is abhorrent to many is attractive to others possibly not less numerous 810e(or if less numerous, certainly not less competent),—you are, I say, bidding me adventure myself with the latter company and proceed boldly along the path of legislation marked out in our present discourse, without flinching.

Certainly.

Then I will not flinch. I verily affirm that we have composers of verses innumerable—hexameters, trimeters, and every meter you could mention,—some of whom aim at the serious, others at the comic; on whose writings, as we are told by our tens of thousands of people, we ought to rear and soak the young, if we are to give them a correct education, making them, by means of recitations, lengthy listeners 811aand large learners, who learn off whole poets by heart. Others there are who compile select summaries of all the poets, and piece together whole passages, telling us that a boy must commit these to memory and learn them off if we are to have him turn out good and wise as a result of a wide and varied range of instruction. ^note Would you have me now state frankly to these poets what is wrong about their declarations and what right?

Of course.

What single statement can I make about all these people 811bthat will be adequate? This, perhaps,—in which everyone will agree with me,—that every poet has uttered much that is well, and much also that is ill; and this being so, I affirm that a wide range of learning involves danger to children.

What advice then would you give the Law-warden?

About what?

About the pattern by which he should be guided in respect of the particular subjects which he permits or forbids all the children to learn. 811cTell us, and without scruple.

My good Clinias, I have had, it would seem, a stroke of luck.

How so?

In the fact that I am not wholly at a loss for a pattern. For in looking back now at the discussions which we have been pursuing from dawn up to this present hour—and that, as I fancy, not without some guidance from Heaven—it appeared to me that they were framed exactly like a poem. And it was not surprising, perhaps, 811dthat there came over me a feeling of intense delight when I gazed thus on our discourses all marshalled, as it were, in close array; for of all the many discourses which I have listened to or learnt about, whether in poems or in a loose flood of speech like ours, they struck me as being not only the most adequate, but also the most suitable for the ears of the young. Nowhere, I think, could I find a better pattern than this to put before the Law-warden who is educator, that he may charge the teachers to teach the children these discourses of ours, and such as resemble 811eand accord with these; and if it should be that in his search he should light on poems of composers, or prose-writings, or merely verbal and unwritten discourses, akin to these of ours, he must in no wise let them go, but get them written down. In the first place, he must compel the teachers themselves to learn these discourses, and to praise them, and if any of the teachers fail to approve of them, he must not employ them as colleagues; only those who agree with his praise of the discourses should he employ, and entrust to them the teaching and training of the youth. 812aHere and herewith let me end my homily concerning writing-masters and writings.

Judged by our original intention, Stranger, I certainly do not think that we have diverged from the line of argument we intended; but about the matter as a whole it is hard, no doubt, to be sure whether or not we are right.

That, Clinias, (as we have often said) will probably become clearer of itself ^note when we arrive at the end of our whole exposition concerning laws. 812b

Very true.

After the writing-master, must we not address the lyre-master next?

Certainly.

When assigning to the lyre-masters their proper duties in regard to the teaching and general training in these subjects, we must, as I think, bear in mind our previous declarations. ^note

Declarations about what?

We said, I fancy, that the sixty-year-old singers of hymns to Dionysus ought to be exceptionally keen of perception 812cregarding rhythms and harmonic compositions, in order that when dealing with musical representations of a good kind or a bad, by which the soul is emotionally affected, they may be able to pick out the reproductions of the good kind and of the bad, and having rejected the latter, may produce the other in public, and charm the souls of the children by singing them, and so challenge them all to accompany them in acquiring virtue by means of these representations.

Very true.