§6. MAGNESIA AND ITS PEOPLE

Now that the fundamental ethical questions of §§1–5 have been dealt with, one might think that the construction of the new state could be started forthwith, and indeed the Athenian starts off in a business-like way by asking for some preliminary information about the territory to be settled and the identity of the new colonists. But it is soon clear that his major interests are for the moment rather different. For instance, the possibility of exporting produce leads to a denunciation of bad habits that can be introduced into the state by foreign merchants, and the question of whether the land produces timber suitable for building ships develops into a sermon on the depraved habits of sailors. (There is an anti-Athenian propaganda here: Athens’ navy and merchant seamen contributed much to her economic and military ascendency.) Again, the fact that the new colonists will come from several other states prompts a discussion of the difficulties of reconciling in a new state a number of different social and religious customs. It is an acutely difficult situation, remarks the Athenian, that may tempt one to despair; but one should not underrate the professional skill of a good legislator. He, however, functions most efficiently if he can enforce his laws with the backing of a dictator in sympathy with his aims – and such a dictator is a very rare bird. (It is not made clear how the new colonists are to be brought to submit to the dictator in the first place; his role seems more appropriate to the reformation of an already existing state.)

The next question is, what constitution should the dictator impose? No straight answer is given; the Athenian is much more concerned to make the negative point that the constitution should not favour particular interests. The government of the state must be conducted rationally in accordance with the divine will, like the government of the human race in the age of Cronus. The laws should not serve the interests of the ruling group; on the contrary, the rulers must themselves obey the laws, and office must be given to those who are most law-abiding. The section closes with a somewhat high-flown harangue to the new colonists (whom the three interlocutors pretend are present), exhorting them to the punctilious fulfilment of their religious duties. This persuasive address serves as a transition to the subsequent discussion of legal preambles (§7).

Clearly, there is no question – yet, at any rate – of the new colonists framing their own constitution and laws; the initiative comes entirely from above. Human nature is too weak to take complete control of human affairs (713c).

NATURAL RESOURCES

ATHENIAN: Well, now, how should we describe our future [BK IV] state? I don’t mean just its name: I’m not asking what it’s [704a] called now, nor what it ought to be called in the future. (This might well be suggested by some detail of the actual foundation or by some spot nearby: perhaps a river or spring or some local gods will give the new state their own style and [b] title.) This is my real question: is it to be on the coast, or inland?

ATHENIAN: Well, what about harbours? Are there any along the coast on that side of the state, or are they entirely absent?

CLEINIAS: No, sir. The state has harbours in that direction which could hardly be bettered.

ATHENIAN: A pity, that. What about the surrounding countryside? [c] Does it grow everything or are there some deficiencies?

CLEINIAS: No, it grows practically everything.

ATHENIAN: Will it have some nearby state for a neighbour?

ATHENIAN: What about plains and mountains and forests? How is it off for each of these?

CLEINIAS: Very much like the rest of Crete in general.

[d] ATHENIAN: Rugged rather than flat, you mean?

CLEINIAS: Yes, that’s right.

ATHENIAN: Then the state will have tolerably healthy prospects of becoming virtuous. If it were going to be founded near the sea and have good harbours, and were deficient in a great number of crops instead of growing everything itself, then a very great saviour indeed2 and lawgivers of divine stature would be needed to stop sophisticated and vicious characters developing on a grand scale: such a state would simply invite it. As it is, we can take comfort in those eighty stades. Even so, it lies nearer the sea than it should, and you say that it is rather well off for harbours, which makes matters worse; but [705a] let’s be thankful for small mercies. For a country to have the sea nearby is pleasant enough for the purpose of everyday life, but in fact it is a ‘salty-sharp and bitter neighbour’3 in more senses than one. It fills the land with wholesaling and retailing, breeds shifty and deceitful habits in a man’s soul, and makes the citizens distrustful and hostile, not only among themselves, but also in their dealings with the world outside. Still, the fact that the land produces everything will be some consolation for these disadvantages, and it is obvious in any [b] case that even if it does grow every crop, its ruggedness will stop it doing so in any quantity; if it yielded a surplus that could be exported in bulk, the state would be swamped with the gold and silver money it received in return – and this, if a state means to develop just and noble habits, is pretty nearly the worst thing that could happen to it, all things considered (as we said, if we remember, earlier in our discussion).4

CLEINIAS: Of course we remember, and we agree that our argument then was right, and still is now.

[c] ATHENIAN: The next point is this: how well is the surrounding district supplied with timber for building ships?

ATHENIAN: That too is a feature of the country which will do it no harm.

CLEINIAS: Oh?

ATHENIAN: It’s a good thing that a state should find it difficult to lower itself to copy the wicked customs of its enemies. [d]

CLEINIAS: And what on earth has been said to prompt that remark?

ATHENIAN: My dear sir, cast your mind back to the beginning of our discussion and watch what I’m up to. Do you remember the point we made about the laws of the Cretans having only one object, and how in particular the two of you asserted that this was warfare? I took you up on the point and argued that in so far as such institutions were established with virtue as their aim, they were to be approved; but I took strong exception to their aiming at only a part of virtue instead of the whole.5 Now it’s your turn: keep a sharp eye on this present [e] legislation, in case I lay down some law which is not conducive to virtue, or which fosters only a part of it. I’m going on the assumption that a law is well enacted only if it constantly aims, like an archer, at that unique target which is the only [706a] object of legislation to be invariably and uninterruptedly attended by some good result; the law must ignore everything else (wealth or anything like that), if it happens not to meet the requirements I have stipulated.6 This ‘disgraceful copying of enemies’ to which I was referring occurs when people live by the sea and are plagued by such foes as Minos, who once forced the inhabitants of Attica to pay a most onerous tribute7 [b] (though of course in saying this I’ve no wish at all to hark back to our old grudges against you). Minos exercised tremendous power at sea, whereas the Athenians had not yet acquired the fighting ships they have today, nor was their country so rich in supplies of suitable timber that they could readily construct a strong fleet; consequently they couldn’t turn themselves into sailors at a moment’s notice and repel the enemy by copying the Cretan use of the sea. Even if they had been able to do that, it would have done them more good to lose seven boys [c] over and over again rather than get into bad habits by forming themselves into a navy. They had previously been infantrymen, and infantrymen can stand their ground; but sailors have the bad habit of dashing forward at frequent intervals and then beating a very rapid retreat indeed back to their ships. They see nothing disgraceful at all in a craven refusal to stand their ground and die as the enemy attacks, nor in the plausible excuses they produce so readily when they drop their weapons and take to their heels – or, as they put it, ‘retreat without dishonour’. This is the sort of terminology you must expect if you make your soldiers into sailors; these [d] expressions are not ‘beyond praise’ (far from it): men ought never to be trained in bad habits, least of all the citizen-élite. Even from Homer, I suspect, you can see that this is bad policy. He has Odysseus pitching into Agamemnon for ordering the ships to be put to sea just when the Achaeans were being hard put to it in their fight with the Trojans. In his anger, Odysseus says to him:

So Homer too realized that it is bad tactics to have triremes lined up at sea in support of infantry in the field. This is the sort of habit-training that will soon make even lions run away from deer. And that’s not all. When a state which owes its power to its navy wins a victory, the bravest soldiers never get the credit for it, because the battle is won thanks to the [b] skill of steersman, boatswain and rower and the efforts of a motley crowd of ragamuffins, which means that it is impossible to honour each individual in the way he deserves. Rob a state of its power to do that, and you condemn it to failure.

CLEINIAS: I suppose that’s more or less inevitable. But in spite of that, sir, it was by fighting at sea at Salamis against the barbarians that the Greeks saved their country – according to us Cretans, anyway.

ATHENIAN: Yes, that’s what most people say, Greek and non-Greek alike. Still, my friend, we – Megillus here and myself – [c] are arguing in favour of two battles fought on land: Marathon, which first got the Greeks out of danger, and Plataea, which finally made them really safe. We maintain that these battles improved the Greeks, whereas the fighting at sea had the opposite effect. I hope this isn’t too strong language to use about battles that at the time certainly helped to ensure our survival (and I’ll concede you the battle at Artemisium as well as the one at Salamis).9 That’s all very well, but when we examine the natural features of a country and its legal system, [d] our ultimate object of scrutiny is of course the quality of its social and political arrangements. We do not hold the common view that a man’s highest good is to survive and simply continue to exist. His highest good is to become as virtuous as possible and to continue to exist in that state as long as life lasts. But I think we’ve already taken this line before.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Then we need consider only one thing: is the method we are following the same as before? Can we assume it is the best way to found a state and legislate for it?

CLEINIAS: Yes, it’s by far the best.

THE NEW COLONISTS

ATHENIAN: Now for the next point. Tell me, what people will [e] you be settling? Will your policy be to accept all comers from the whole of Crete, on the grounds that the population in the individual cities has exceeded the number that can be supported by the land? I don’t suppose you’re taking all comers from the Greeks in general – though in fact I notice that some settlers from Argos and Aegina and other parts of [708a] Greece have come to settle in your country. But tell me what you intend on this occasion: where do you think your citizen body will come from this time?

CLEINIAS: They will probably come from all over Crete: as for the other Greeks, I imagine settlers from the Peloponnese will be particularly welcome. You are quite right in what you said just now, that there are some here from Argos: they include the Gortynians, the most distinguished of the local people, who hail from the well-known Gortyn in the Peloponnese.

[b] ATHENIAN: So it won’t be all that easy for the Cretan states to found their colony. The emigrants, you see, haven’t the unity of a swarm of bees: they are not a single people from a single territory settling down to form a colony with mutual goodwill between themselves and those they have left behind. Such migrations occur because of the pressures of land-shortage or some similar misfortune: sometimes a given section of the community may be obliged to go off and settle elsewhere because it is harassed by civil war, and on one occasion a whole state took to its heels after being overcome by an attack [c] it could not resist. In all these cases to found a state and give it laws is, in some ways, comparatively easy, but in others it’s rather difficult. When a single people speaks the same language and observes the same laws you get a certain feeling of community, because everyone shares the same religious rites and so forth; but they certainly won’t find it easy to accept law or political systems that differ from their own. Sometimes, when it’s bad laws that have stimulated the revolt, and the rebels try in their new home to keep to the same familiar habits that ruined them before, their reluctance to [d] toe the line presents the founder and lawgiver with a difficult problem. On the other hand, a miscellaneous combination of all kinds of different people will perhaps be more ready to submit to a new code of laws – but to get them to ‘pull and puff as one’ (as they say of a team of horses) is very difficult and takes a long time. There’s no escaping it: founding a state and legislating for it is a superb test that separates the men from the boys.

CLEINIAS: I dare say; but what do you mean? Please be a little clearer.

THE NEED FOR A BENEVOLENT DICTATOR

ATHENIAN: My dear fellow, now that I’m going back to considering [e] legislators again, I think I’m actually going to insult them: but no matter, so long as the point is relevant. Anyway, why should I have qualms about it? It seems true of pretty nearly all human affairs.

CLEINIAS: What are you getting at?

ATHENIAN: I was going to say that no man ever legislates at all. Accidents and calamities occur in a thousand different [709a] ways, and it is they that are the universal legislators of the world. If it isn’t pressures of war that overturn a constitution and rewrite the laws, it’s the distress of grinding poverty; and disease too forces us to make a great many innovations, when plagues beset us for years on end and bad weather is frequent and prolonged. Realizing all these possibilities, you may jump to conclusions and say what I said just now, that no mortal ever passes any law at all, and that human affairs are almost [b] entirely at the mercy of chance. Now of course this same view could equally plausibly be taken of the profession of the steersman or doctor or general – but at the same time there’s another point that could be made about all these examples, and with no less justification.

CLEINIAS: What?

CLEINIAS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: So the same will apply in the other cases too, and legislation in particular must be allowed to play the same role. If a state is to live in happiness, certain local conditions must be present, and when all these coincide, what the community needs to find is a legislator who understands the right way to go about things.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

[d] ATHENIAN: So a professional man in each of the fields we’ve enumerated could hardly go wrong if he prayed for conditions in which the workings of chance needed only to be supplemented by his own skill.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And all the other people we’ve instanced would of course be able to tell you what conditions they were praying for, if you asked them.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: And I fancy a legislator would do just the same.

CLEINIAS: I agree.

ATHENIAN: ‘Well now, legislator,’ let’s say to him, ‘tell us your [e] requirements. What conditions in the state we are going to give you will enable you to run it properly on your own from now on?’ What’s the right answer to a question like that? (We’re giving the legislator’s answer for him, I take it.)

CLEINIAS: Yes.

CLEINIAS: I think the ‘essential adjunct’ our companion means, Megillus, is self-control. Right?

ATHENIAN: Yes, Cleinias – but the everyday kind, not the self-control that by an exaggerated and twisted use of language can be identified with good judgement. I mean the spontaneous instinct that flowers early in life in children and animals and in some cases succeeds in imposing a certain restraint in the search for pleasure, but fails in others. We said11 that if this quality existed in isolation from the many [b] other merits we are discussing, it was not worth consideration. You see my point, I take it.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: This is the innate quality our dictator must have, in addition to the others, if the state is going to get, as quickly and efficiently as possible, a political system that will enable it to live a life of supreme happiness. You see, there is no quicker or better method of establishing a political system than this one, nor could there ever be.

CLEINIAS: Well sir, how can a man convince himself that he is [c] talking sense in maintaining all this? What arguments are there for it?

ATHENIAN: It’s easy enough, surely, to see that the very facts of the case make the doctrine true.

CLEINIAS: What do you mean? If we were to get a dictator, you say, who is young, restrained, quick to learn, with a retentive memory, courageous and elevated –

ATHENIAN: – and don’t forget to add ‘lucky’ too, in this one point: he should be the contemporary of a distinguished lawgiver, and be fortunate enough to come into contact with him.12 If that condition is fulfilled, God will [d] have done nearly all that he usually does when he wants to treat a state with particular favour. The next best thing would be a pair of such dictators; the third best would be several of them. The difficulties are in direct proportion to the numbers.

CLEINIAS: It looks as if your position is this: the best state will be the product of a dictatorship, thanks to the efforts of a first-rate legislator and a well-behaved dictator, and this will be the quickest and easiest way to bring about the transformation. The second best will be to start with an oligarchy – is that your point, or what? – and the third to start with a [e] democracy.

ATHENIAN: Certainly not.13 The ideal starting point is dictatorship, the next best is constitutional kingship and the third is some sort of democracy. Oligarchy comes fourth, because it has the largest number of powerful people, so that it admits the growth of a new order only with difficulty. And we maintain, of course, that such a growth takes place when circumstances throw up a genuine lawgiver who comes to share a degree of power with the most influential persons in the state. [711a] Where the most influential element is both extremely powerful and numerically as small as it could be, as in a dictatorship, you usually get a rapid and trouble-free transition.

CLEINIAS: How? We don’t understand.

ATHENIAN: We’ve made the point more than once, I think. Perhaps you two have not so much as seen a state under the control of a dictator.

CLEINIAS: No, and I don’t particularly want to, either.

[b] ATHENIAN: Still, suppose you did: you’d notice something we remarked on just now.

CLEINIAS: What’s that?

ATHENIAN: That when a dictator wants to change the morals of a state, he doesn’t need to exert himself very much or spend a lot of time on the job. He simply has to be the first to set out on the road along which he wishes to urge the citizens – whether to the practice of virtue or vice – and give them a complete moral blueprint by setting his own personal [c] example; he must praise and commend some courses of action and censure others, and in every field of conduct he must see that anyone who disobeys is disgraced.

CLEINIAS: And why should we expect the citizens to obey, with such alacrity, a man who combines persuasion with compulsion like that?

ATHENIAN: My friends, there’s no quicker or easier way for a state to change its laws than to follow the leadership of those in positions of power; there is no other way now, nor will there be in the future, and we shouldn’t let anyone persuade us to the contrary. Actually, you see, it’s not simply this that [d] is impossible or difficult to achieve. What is difficult, and a very rare occurrence in the history of the world, is something else; but when it does occur, the state concerned reaps the benefit on a grand scale – indeed, there’s no blessing that will pass it by.

CLEINIAS: What occurrence do you mean?

ATHENIAN: A situation in which an inspired passion for the paths of restraint and justice guides those who wield great power. The passion may seize a single supreme ruler, or perhaps men who owe their power to exceptional wealth or high birth; or you may get a reincarnation of Nestor, who, [e] superior as he was to all mankind for the vigour of his speech, is said to have put them in the shade even more by his qualities of restraint. In Trojan times, they say, such a paragon did exist, but he is certainly unheard of today. Still, granted someone like that did in fact exist in the past or is going to in the future, or is alive among us now, blessed is the life of this man of moderation, and blessed they who listen to the words that fall from his lips. And whatever the form of government, the same doctrine holds true: where supreme power in a man [712a] joins hands with wise judgement and self-restraint, there you have the birth of the best political system, with laws to match; you’ll never achieve it otherwise. So much for my somewhat oracular fiction! Let’s take it as established that though in one sense it is difficult for a state to acquire a good set of laws, in another sense nothing could be quicker or easier – granted, of course, the conditions I’ve laid down.

CLEINIAS: HOW SO?

WHAT CONSTITUTION IS TO BE IMPOSED?

ATHENIAN: What about pretending the fiction14 is true of your [b] state, Cleinias, and having a shot at making up its laws? Like children, we old men love a bit of make-believe.

CLEINIAS: Yes, what are we waiting for? Let’s get down to it.

ATHENIAN: Let us therefore summon God to attend the foundation of the state. May he hear our prayers, and having heard, come graciously and benevolently to help us settle our state and its laws.

CLEINIAS: May he come indeed.

ATHENIAN: Well now, what political system do we intend to [c] impose on the state?

CLEINIAS: Please be a little more explicit about what you really mean by that question. Do you mean we have to choose between a democracy, an oligarchy and an aristocracy? Presumably you’re hardly contemplating a dictatorship – or so we’d think, at any rate.

ATHENIAN: Well then, which of you would be prepared to answer first and tell us which of these terms fits the political system of your homeland?

MEGILLUS: Isn’t it right and proper for me to answer first, as the elder?

[d] CLEINIAS: Perhaps so.

MEGILLUS: Very well. When I consider the political system in force at Sparta, sir, I find it impossible to give you a straight answer: I just can’t say what one ought to call it. You see, it really does look to me like a dictatorship (it has the ephors, a remarkably dictatorial institution), yet on occasions I think it gets very close to being run democratically. But then again, [e] it would be plain silly to deny that it is an aristocracy; and there is also a kingship (held for life), which both we and the rest of the world speak of as the oldest kingship of all. So when I’m asked all of a sudden like this, the fact is, as I said, that I can’t distinguish exactly which of these political systems it belongs to.

CLEINIAS: I’m sure I’m in the same predicament as you, Megillus. I find it acutely difficult to say for sure that the constitution we have in Cnossos comes into any of these categories.

CLEINIAS: What god is that?

THE AGE OF CRONUS

ATHENIAN: Well, perhaps we ought to make use of this fiction a little more, if we are going to clear up the question at issue satisfactorily.

CLEINIAS: Yes, that will be the right procedure.

ATHENIAN: It certainly will. Well now, countless ages before the formation of the states we described earlier,16 they say [b] there existed, in the age of Cronus, a form of government and administration which was a great success, and which served as a blueprint for the best run of our present-day states.

CLEINIAS: Then I think we simply must hear about it.

ATHENIAN: Yes, I agree. That’s just why I introduced it into the discussion.

CLEINIAS: You were quite right to do so, and seeing how relevant it is, you’ll be entirely justified in giving a systematic account of what happened. [c]

ATHENIAN: I must try to meet your wishes. The traditional account that has come down to us tells of the wonderfully happy life people lived then, and how they were provided with everything in abundance and without any effort on their part. The reason is alleged to be this: Cronus was of course aware that human nature, as we’ve explained,17 is never able to take complete control of all human affairs without being filled with arrogance and injustice. Bearing this in mind, he appointed kings and rulers for our states; they were not men, [d] but beings of a superior and more divine order – spirits. We act on the same principle nowadays in dealing with our flocks of sheep and herds of other domesticated animals: we don’t put cattle in charge of cattle or goats in charge of goats, but control them ourselves, because we are a superior species. So Cronus too, who was well-disposed to man, did the same: he placed us in the care of the spirits, a superior order of beings, who were to look after our interests – an easy enough task [e] for them, and a tremendous boon to us, because the result of their attentions was peace, respect for others, good laws, justice in full measure, and a state of happiness and harmony among the races of the world. The story has a moral for us even today, and there is a lot of truth in it: where the ruler of a state is not a god but a mortal, people have no respite from toil and misfortune. The lesson is that we should make every effort to imitate the life men are said to have led under Cronus; we should run our public and our private lives, our homes and our cities, in obedience to what little spark of immortality [714a] lies in us, and dignify this dispensation of reason with the name of ‘law’.18 But take an individual man or an oligarchy, or even a democracy, that lusts in its heart for pleasure and demands to have its fill of everything it wants – the perpetually unsatisfied victim of an evil greed that attacks it like the plague – well, as we said just now, if a power like that controls a state or an individual and rides roughshod over the laws, it’s impossible to escape disaster. This is the doctrine we have [b] to examine, Cleinias, and see whether we are prepared to go along with it – or what?

CLEINIAS: Of course we must go along with it.

LAW SHOULD BE SUPREME

ATHENIAN: You realize that some people maintain that there are as many different kinds of laws as there are of political systems? (And of course we’ve just run through the many types of political systems there are popularly supposed to be.) Don’t think the question at issue is a triviality: it’s supremely important, because in effect we’ve got back to arguing about the criteria of justice and injustice. These people take the line [c] that legislation should be directed not to waging war or attaining complete virtue, but to safeguarding the interests of the established political system, whatever that is, so that it is never overthrown and remains permanently in force. They say that the definition of justice that measures up to the facts is best formulated like this.

CLEINIAS: How?

ATHENIAN: It runs: ‘Whatever serves the interest of the stronger’.

CLEINIAS: Be a little more explicit, will you?

ATHENIAN: The point is this: according to them, the element in control at any given moment lays down the law of the land. Right?

CLEINIAS: True enough.

ATHENIAN: ‘So do you imagine,’ they say, ‘that when a democracy [d] has won its way to power, or some other constitution has been established (such as dictatorship), it will ever pass any laws, unless under pressure, except those designed to further its own interests and ensure that it remains permanently in power? That’ll be its main preoccupation, won’t it?’

CLEINIAS: Naturally.

ATHENIAN: So the author of these rules will call them ‘just’ and claim that anyone who breaks them is acting ‘unjustly’, and punish him?

CLEINIAS: Quite likely.

ATHENIAN: So this is why such rules will always add up to ‘justice’.

CLEINIAS: Certainly, on the present argument.

CLEINIAS: What claims?

ATHENIAN: The ones we examined before, when we asked who should rule whom. It seemed that parents should rule children, the elder the younger, and the noble those of low birth; and there was a large number of other titles to authority, if you remember, some of which conflicted with others. The claim we’re talking about now20 was certainly one of these: we said, I think, that Pindar turned it into a law of nature – which meant that he ‘justified the use of force extreme’, to quote his actual words.21 [715a]

CLEINIAS: Yes, those are the points that were made.

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: When offices are filled competitively, the winners take over the affairs of state so completely that they totally deny the losers and the losers’ descendants any share of power. Each side passes its time in a narrow scrutiny of the other, [b] apprehensive lest someone with memories of past injustices should gain some office and lead a revolution. Of course, our position is that this kind of arrangement is very far from being a genuine political system; we maintain that laws which are not established for the good of the whole state are bogus laws, and when they favour particular sections of the community, their authors are not citizens but party-men; and people who say those laws have a claim to be obeyed are wasting their breath. We’ve said all this because in your new state we aren’t going to appoint a man to office because of his wealth or [c] some other claim like that, say strength or stature or birth. We insist that the highest office in the service of the gods must be allocated to the man who is best at obeying the established laws and wins that sort of victory in the state; the man who wins the second prize must be given second rank in that service, and so on, the remaining posts being allocated in order on the same system. Such people are usually referred to as ‘rulers’, and if I have called them ‘servants of the laws’ it’s [d] not because I want to mint a new expression but because I believe that the success or failure of a state hinges on this point more than on anything else. Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state, in my view, is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state. That’s the way I see it.

CLEINIAS: By heaven, sir, you’re quite right. You’ve the sharp eye of an old man for these things.

ATHENIAN: Yes, when we’re young, we’re all pretty blind to [e] them; old age is the best time to see them clearly.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ADDRESS TO THE NEW COLONISTS

ATHENIAN: Well, what now? I suppose we should assume our colonists have arrived and are standing before us. So we shall have to finish off the topic by addressing them.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Now then, our address should go like this: ‘Men, according to the ancient story, there is a god who holds in his hands the beginning and end and middle of all things, and straight he marches in the cycle of nature. Justice, who takes [716a] vengeance on those who abandon the divine law, never leaves his side. The man who means to live in happiness latches on to her and follows her with meekness and humility. But he who bursts with pride, elated by wealth or honours or by physical beauty when young and foolish, whose soul is afire with the arrogant belief that so far from needing someone to control and lead him, he can play the leader to others – there’s a man whom God has deserted. And in his desolation he [b] collects others like himself, and in his soaring frenzy he causes universal chaos. Many people think he cuts a fine figure, but before very long he pays to Justice no trifling penalty and brings himself, his home and state to rack and ruin. Thus it is ordained. What action, then, should a sensible man take, and what should his outlook be? What must he avoid doing or thinking?’

CLEINIAS: This much is obvious: every man must resolve to belong to those who follow in the company of God.

ATHENIAN: ‘So what conduct recommends itself to God and [c] reflects his wishes? There is only one sort, epitomized in the old saying “like approves of like” (excess apart, which is both its own enemy and that of due proportion). In our view it is God who is pre-eminently the “measure of all things”, much more so than any “man”, as they say.22 So if you want to recommend yourself to someone of this character, you must do your level best to make your own character reflect his, and on this principle the moderate man is God’s friend, being like [d] him, whereas the immoderate and unjust man is not like him and is his enemy; and the same reasoning applies to the other vices too.

‘Let’s be clear that the consequence of all this is the following doctrine (which is, I think, of all doctrines the finest and truest): If a good man sacrifices to the gods and keeps them constant company in his prayers and offerings and every kind of worship he can give them, this will be the best and noblest policy he can follow; it is the conduct that fits his character [e] as nothing else can, and it is his most effective way of achieving a happy life. But if the wicked man does it, the results are bound to be just the opposite. Whereas the good man’s soul is clean, the wicked man’s soul is polluted, and it is never right for a good man or for God to receive gifts from unclean [717a] hands – which means that even if impious people do lavish a lot of attention on the gods, they are wasting their time, whereas the trouble taken by the pious is very much in season. So this is the target at which we should aim – but what “missiles” are we to use to hit it, and what “bow” is best carried to shoot them? Can we name these “weapons”? The first weapon in our armoury will be to honour the gods of the underworld next after those of Olympus, the patron-gods of the state; the former should be allotted such secondary [b] honours as the Even and the Left, while the latter should receive superior and contrasting honours like the Odd.23 That’s the best way a man can hit his target, piety. After these gods, a sensible man will worship the spirits, and after them the heroes. Next in priority will be rites celebrated according to law at private shrines dedicated to ancestral gods.24 Last come honours paid to living parents. It is meet and right that a debtor should discharge his first and greatest obligation and pay the debt which comes before all others; he must consider [c] that all he has and holds belongs to those who bore and bred him, and he is meant to use it in their service to the limit of his powers. He must serve them first with his property, then with hand and brain, and so give to the old people what they desperately need in view of their age: repayment of all that anxious care and attention they lavished on him, the long-standing “loan” they made him as a child. Throughout his life the son must be very careful to watch his tongue in addressing his parents, because there is a very heavy penalty [d] for careless and ill-considered language; Retribution, messenger of Justice, is the appointed overseer of these things. If his parents get angry, he must submit to them, and whether they satisfy their anger in speech or in action, he must forgive them; after all, he must reflect, it’s natural enough for a father to get very angry if he thinks he’s being harmed by his own son. When the parents die, the most modest burial will be best, and the ceremonies should not be more elaborate than custom demands nor inferior to those with which his forefathers laid their own parents to rest. Year by year he should [e] honour the departed by similar acts of devotion; he will honour them best by never failing to provide a perpetual memorial to them, spending on the dead a proper proportion [718a] of the money he happens to have available. If we do that, and live in accordance with these rules, each of us will get the reward we deserve from the gods and such beings as are superior to ourselves, and live in a spirit of cheerful confidence for most of the years of our life.’