386A–398C Socrates and Adeimantus
398C–417B Socrates and Glaucon
Note
In the first half of this book, Socrates draws out the consequences of the claim of Adeimantus that the choices of young people are heavily influenced by the things they’ve heard praised or glamorized by poets. In the second half, the examination of early education goes back further, to the harmony and rhythm heard by a child before it is old enough to understand words. Socrates claims that good states of character have a look, recognizable only to those whose souls have absorbed harmonious patterns akin to them. The choice of a path in life may depend less on the prevailing opinions surrounding a child than on the earliest attachments formed by an inner resonance that inspires love for the visible harmony in souls. Glaucon begins to display signs of an education in character himself in response to Socrates’ questions. The simple style of life he couldn’t stand the look of in the healthy city described in Book II gets his spirited approval in Book III as a choice to reject luxury for the sake of a gymnastic training more serious than that of athletes. The book ends with one more recommendation, for the telling of one “noble lie.” Spirited young souls that have been inspired by music to a capacity to recognize virtue, and trained by gymnastic discipline to a capacity for the virtues of courage and moderation, still need to believe in something that attaches them to the land they live in and makes them feel a protective kinship toward those who share it with them.
[386A] “As far as gods are concerned, then,” I said, “those are some of the things, it seems, that need to be heard and not heard straight from childhood by people who are going to respect both the gods and their parents and not treat their friendship with one another as a small thing.”
“And for my part,” he said, “I too assume that the way it appears to us is right.”
“And what if they’re going to be courageous? Don’t they need to be told those things that are of the sort to make them least afraid of death? [386B] Or do you think anyone at all could become courageous if he had this terror in him?”
“By Zeus,” he said, “I don’t.”
“What next? Do you imagine that anyone who thinks there’s a realm of Hades and terrible things there is going to be unafraid of death and prefer death in battle over defeat and slavery?”
“Not at all.”
“So it seems that for these stories too, it’s necessary for us to take charge of those who attempt to tell them, and require them not simply to slander the things in Hades’s realm the way they do but instead to praise them, on the grounds that they’re [386C] neither telling the truth nor saying things of benefit to people who’ll be warriors.”
“It’s certainly necessary,” he said.
“Then,” I said, “we’ll delete everything of that sort, starting with this verse,26
I’d rather be a bond-servant to another, tilling the soil
For a man without land of his own and not much to live on
Than be lord over all those wasted away among the dead,
and this,
And the dwelling of the dead would be seen by mortals and immortals,
Gruesome, rotting things that the very gods abominate,
and
Ah me! So there is something after all even in Hades’ house,
A soul and a phantom, but no beating heart in it at all,
and this,
He alone a breathing soul, the rest flitting shades,
and
And the soul, fluttering out of his limbs, went to Hades,
Howling at its fate, leaving behind its manhood and strength,
[387A] and this,
Under the ground, like smoke,
The soul went shrieking,
and
As when bats in the innermost part of an uncanny cavern
Fly around shrieking when one falls out of the chain
Holding onto one another up against the rock,
So the souls went off together shrieking.
[387B] And we’ll beg Homer and the other poets not to take it hard if we cross out these things and everything of the sort, not because they aren’t poetic and pleasant for most people to hear, but the more poetic they are, that much less should they be heard by children and men who need to be free and be more in fear of slavery than of death.”
“Absolutely so.”
“Then too, don’t all the terrible and frightening names [387C] for these things need to be thrown out, Cocytus and Styx,27 beneath the earth, withered, and all the other things of this type that are supposed to make everyone who hears them shudder when they’re named? Maybe they’re okay for some other purpose, but we’re afraid on behalf of our guardians, that they don’t get warmer and softer from that sort of shudder than we need them to be.”
“And we’re right to be afraid,” he said.
“Then they’re to be taken away?”
“Yes.”
“And a general outline opposite to these is to be followed in speaking and writing?”
“That’s clear.”
[387D] “And therefore we’ll take out the complaints and laments of celebrated men?”
“That’s necessary,” he said, “if the earlier things were too.”
“Consider then,” I said, “whether we’ll be taking them out rightly or not. And surely we claim that a decent man will hold that dying is not a terrible thing for a decent man whose comrade he is.”
“We do claim that.”
“Then he wouldn’t wail over him as having suffered something terrible.”
“Certainly not.”
“But surely we also say this, that such a person is the most self-sufficient, [387E] himself for himself, for living well, and to a degree that surpasses others, is least in need of anyone else.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“Therefore it’s least terrible for him to be deprived of a son or brother, or of money or anything else of the sort.”
“Least indeed.”
“Then he’s also least the sort to wail but bears it in the mildest way when any such misfortune overtakes him.”
“Very much so.”
“Then we would rightly take away the lamentations of noteworthy men and give them over to women, and not to women of serious stature, [388A] and among the men all those of the bad sort would make them, in order that those we claim to be raising for guarding the land for us wouldn’t be able to stand acting like those people.”
“That would be right to do,” he said.
“So again we’ll ask Homer28 and the other poets not to write of Achilles, son of a goddess
Lying now on his side, now again
On his back, and now face down,
then standing up [388B] and
Darting back and forth, beside himself, on the barren sea beach,
or
Taking in both hands the grimy ashes
And pouring them over his head,
or wailing and making so many other laments of the kinds that poet wrote, or of Priam, descended from near the gods, pleading and
Rolling in dung,
Calling to each man by name.
And still more by far than about these things, we’ll beg them not to write of the gods at least lamenting and saying [388C]
Poor wretched me, poor wretched mother of the best man.
But if they do write of the gods that way, let them at least not have the nerve to imitate the greatest of the gods in so unlikely a way as to say
Oh no! A truly beloved man being chased around the city
I see with my eyes, and my heart grieves,
and
Ah me! Sarpedon, dearest of men to me
Is fated to be struck down by Patroclus, son of Menoetius.
[388D] Because, dear Adeimantus, if any of our young people would listen to such things seriously, and not laugh them off as things unworthy of being said, he’d hardly regard these things as unworthy of himself, being human, or rebuke himself for them, if it came over him to say or do anything of the sort. Instead, feeling no shame and having no endurance, he’d sing many dirges and lamentations over slight sufferings.”
“What you say is most true,” he said.
[388E] “So one ought not to hear them, as the argument just indicated to us; we have to be persuaded by it until someone persuades us that something else is more beautiful.”
“Then one ought not to hear them.”
“And they ought not to be lovers of laughter either. For just about anytime anyone gives way to a forceful laugh, he’s looking for a forceful change from such a thing.”
“It seems to me he is,” he said.
“Therefore, when anyone writes of human beings worthy to speak of, [389A] much less of gods, as being mastered by laughter, it’s not to be accepted.”
“Much less indeed,” he said.
“Then we won’t accept this sort of thing about gods from Homer either:
And uncontrollable laughter broke out among the blessed gods
As they saw Hephaestus huffing and puffing through the halls.29
According to your30 argument, it’s not to be accepted.”
[389B] “If you want to put it down as mine,” he said; “it’s certainly not to be accepted.”
“But surely truth is also something that needs to be taken seriously. Because if we were speaking rightly just now, and a lie by its very nature is useless to gods, though useful to humans in the form of medicine, it’s clear that such a thing needs to be granted to doctors and not handled by laymen.”
“That’s clear,” he said.
“So it’s appropriate for the rulers of the city, if for anyone at all, to lie for the benefit of the city as far as either enemies or citizens are concerned, but for everyone else, such a thing is not to be touched. [389C] But we’ll declare that for a private citizen to lie to the rulers is the same thing, and a greater fault, as for a sick person not to tell the truth about the things happening to his body to a doctor, or someone in training to a trainer, or as for someone who doesn’t tell the helmsman the things that are about the ship or the sailors concerning the way he or any of his shipmates are doing.”
“Most true,” he said.
[389D] “Then if someone catches anyone else in the city lying,
Any of those who are workmen for the public,
Prophet or healer of sicknesses or joiner of wood,31
he’ll punish him for bringing in a practice as subversive and destructive for a city as for a ship.”
“If in fact deeds should fulfill one’s word,” he said.
“What next? Won’t there be a need for moderation in our young people?”
“How could there not be?”
“And for the majority of people, aren’t such things as these the biggest parts of moderation: [389E] being obedient to rulers and being rulers themselves over the pleasures that have to do with drink and sex and with food?”
“It seems so to me.”
“So I imagine we’ll say that things like these, that Diomedes says in Homer,32 are said beautifully,
Hush, old friend; keep still and obey my word,
as well as those that go along with them,
The Achaeans went breathing courage,
In silence, fearing their commanders,
and all the others of that sort.”
“Beautifully.”
“But what about this sort of thing,
Weighed down with wine, with a dog’s eyes and a deer’s heart,
[390A] and the things following this? Is this beautifully said, or all the other childish remarks any private person has made to rulers in prose or verse?”
“Not beautifully.”
“Because I don’t imagine they’re fit for young people to hear, at least with a view to moderation, but if they provide some other pleasure that’s not at all surprising. Or how does it appear to you?”
“That way.”
“And what about making the wisest man33 say that it seems to him to be the most beautiful of all things when
tables are overflowing [390B]
With bread and meats, and drawing wine from the bowl,
The wine steward brings it and pours it in cups;
does it seem to be fit for a young person to hear for his own self-control? Or this,
The most pitiful thing is to die and meet one’s fate by hunger.
Or the way Zeus, when the other gods and humans were asleep and he was the only one awake making plans, easily forgot all [390C] these things because of a desire for sex, and was so struck by seeing Hera that he wasn’t even willing to go into the house but wanted to have sex right there on the ground, saying he wasn’t so possessed by desire even
When they first made love to one another, with their dear parents unaware,
or the chaining together of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus for other acts of that sort.”
“No, by Zeus,” he said. “They don’t seem fitting to me.”
[390D] “But presumably,” I said, “if any acts of endurance in the face of everything are spoken of and performed by noteworthy men, they’re to be seen and heard, such as this,34
Striking his chest, he scolded his heart with words: bear up
Heart, you put up with something else even more humiliating once.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“And it’s certainly not acceptable for the men to be bribe takers or [390E] money lovers.”
“By no means.”
“And it’s not to be chanted to them that
Gifts persuade gods, gifts persuade awe-inspiring kings,
and Achilles’ tutor Phoenix is not to be praised as having spoken in a level-headed way when he advised him to come to the aid of the Achaeans because he got gifts, but not to give up his wrath without gifts. And we won’t consider it worthy of Achilles himself, or agree that he was so money-loving that he took gifts [391A] from Agamemnon, or that he released a dead body when he got a ransom, but otherwise wasn’t willing to.”
“It certainly wouldn’t be just to praise things like that,” he said.
“I’m reluctant, for Homer’s sake,” I said, “to say that it’s also not pious to allege these things against Achilles, or to believe them when others say them, or that he said to Apollo35
You’ve thwarted me, Attacker from afar, most malignant of all gods;
I’d pay you back, if I had the power,
[391B] or that he was defiant toward the river, which was a god, and was ready to fight it, or said in turn about the locks of hair dedicated to the other river, Spercheius,
I will send my hair for the hero Patroclus to carry,
when Patroclus was a corpse; that he did this is not to be believed. And as for dragging Hector around the tomb of Patroclus, and cutting the throats of live captives on his funeral pyre, we’ll declare that all these things are untruly alleged and we won’t allow our people [391C] to believe that Achilles, who was the son of a goddess and of the very moderate Peleus, a grandson of Zeus, and was brought up by the very wise Chiron, was so mixed-up inside that he had a pair of disorders opposed to one another, the mean-spiritedness that goes with a love of money and also a haughty disdain for gods and humans.”
“You’re speaking rightly,” he said.
“Then we won’t believe this either,” I said, “or let it [391D] be said that Theseus, a son of Poseidon, and Perithous, a son of Zeus, incited such terrible rapes, or that any other hero and son of a god would dare to carry out terrible and unholy deeds of the sort that are now falsely reported about them, but we’ll force the poets either not to claim that those deeds were theirs or not to claim they were sons of gods, but not to say both or try to persuade our young people that the gods generate evils and that demigods are no better than human beings. It’s exactly what we were saying in the earlier cases; [391E] these things are neither pious nor true. For surely we demonstrated that it’s impossible for evils to come from gods.”
“How could it be otherwise?”
“And in fact they’re harmful to those who hear them, because everyone will forgive himself for being bad, in the persuasion that, after all, even those dwelling near the gods did and are doing such things,
Close relatives of Zeus, on Mount Ida’s peak,
Whose altar to ancestral Zeus is in the upper air,
And in them the blood of divinities is not yet extinct.36
For that reason such stories need to be stopped, so they don’t give birth to [392A] a big encouragement toward vice in our young people.”
“Quite right,” he said.
“Well then,” I said, what form of speeches is still left for us to determine the sorts of things to be said and not said about it? How one ought to speak about gods has been discussed, and about divinities and heroes and the things in Hades’ realm.”
“Very much so.”
“So wouldn’t the thing that’s left be what has to do with human beings?”
“Clearly.”
“But it’s not in our power, my friend, to settle this at present.”
“How’s that?”
“Because I assume we’ll say that both poets and prose writers [392B] speak badly about human beings in the most important respects, saying that many unjust people are happy and just people miserable, that doing injustice is profitable if one is undetected, and that justice is someone else’s good but one’s own loss. And we’ll forbid them to say such things and command them to sing and tell stories opposite to them. Don’t you imagine so?”
“I know it very well,” he said.
“Then assuming you agree that I’m speaking rightly, shouldn’t I say you’ve granted what we’ve been looking for all along?”
[392C] “You’ve made a correct assumption,” he said.
“And won’t the time for us to agree that one needs to make such statements about human beings be the time when we discover what sort of thing justice is, and how, by its nature, it profits the one who has it, whether he seems to be that way or not?”
“Very true,” he said.
“Then let that be an end for the things belonging in speeches; but I imagine that what has to do with the style of speech needs to be examined after this, and then both what needs to be said and how it needs to be said will have been completely considered by us.”
And Adeimantus said “I don’t understand what you mean by this.”
[392D] “Well,” I said, “you need to. Maybe you’ll get a better notion of it this way. Isn’t everything said by storytellers and poets a narrative that happens to be about things that have been or are or will be?”
“What else?” he said.
“And don’t they bring this about either by a simple narration or through one that arises from imitation or by means of both?”
“This too,” he said, “I still need to understand more clearly.”
“I seem to be a ridiculous teacher,” I said, “and an unclear one; so just like people who are incompetent at speaking, I’ll try to make clear to you what I mean not as a whole, but by taking out some piece of it. So tell me, do you know the first lines of the Iliad, in which the poet says Chryses begs Agamemnon to release his daughter, but the latter is rough on him, and the former, when he doesn’t meet with success, [393A] appeals to the god about the Achaeans?”
“I do.”
“Then you know that up to these verses,37
and he beseeched all the Achaeans,
But especially the two sons of Ares, marshals of the people,
the poet himself is speaking and makes no attempt to divert us into thinking a different way, that the one speaking is anyone other than himself. But in the lines after this he speaks as though he himself were Chryses, and tries [393B] as hard as he can to make it seem to us that the one speaking is not Homer but the priest, who is an old man. And he wrote pretty much all the rest of his narrative in that way, both about the things that happened in Troy and about those in Ithaca, and the whole Odyssey.”
“Quite so,” he said.
“Then isn’t it narration both when he speaks the speeches on each occasion and when he describes things between the speeches?”
“How could it not be?”
“But when anyone is speaking a speech as though he were someone else, won’t we say [393C] that at that time he makes his style as much as possible like each person he announces as speaking?”
“We’ll say that, sure”
“Isn’t making oneself like another person, either in voice or in gesture, imitating that person one likens oneself to?”
“Why, yes.”
“So in such a case, it seems, both he and the rest of the poets make their narratives by means of imitation.”
“Very much so.”
“But if the poet wouldn’t hide himself anywhere, all his poetry and narration would have taken place without imitation. [393D] And so that you won’t say again that you don’t understand, I’ll explain how this could come about. When Homer said that Chryses came bringing ransom for his daughter and as one asking favor from the Achaeans, and especially from their kings, if after that he spoke not as though he had become Chryses but still as Homer, you know that it would not be imitation but simple narrative. It would have gone this way: I’ll speak without meter, though, since I’m not poetic. When he came, [393E] the priest prayed for the gods to grant it to them to stay safe as they captured Troy, and for them to free his daughter, accepting the compensation and showing reverence to the god. And when he said these things, the rest of the people approved of them and consented, but Agamemnon was angry, commanding him to leave at once and not come back again, or his staff of authority with its wreaths for the god might not protect him; before being released, he said, his daughter would grow old in Argos with [394A] him. And he ordered him to go away and not annoy him, in order to get home safe. And the old man was afraid when he heard him, and left in silence, but when he’d retreated from the camp he made many a prayer to Apollo, calling on him by his ceremonial names and reminding him and insisting that he be repaid if he had ever done anything pleasing to him either in building temples or in making sacrificial offerings. So for the sake of these things, he prayed for him to make the Achaeans pay for his tears with his arrows. [394B] That, my comrade,” I said,” is the way simple narration without imitation is done.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Understand, then,” I said, “that the opposite of this happens in turn when someone takes out the things in between the poet’s speeches and leaves behind the talk back and forth.”
“I understand too,” he said, “that this is sort of thing that’s in tragedies.”
“You’ve assumed it most correctly,” I said, “and now I imagine I’m making clear to you what I couldn’t before, that, of poetry and storytelling, [394C] the one sort is wholly done by imitation, just as you say tragedy and comedy are, and another sort by the report of the poet himself, and you’d find it most of all, I suppose, in dithyrambic lyrics. And, in turn, the sort that’s done by both means is in epic poetry and many other places, if you understand me.”
“I do,” he said; “I get what you wanted to say before.”
“Now call to mind what we were saying before this, that the things that need to be said have already been described, but how they need to be said is still to be examined.”
“I remember.”
[394D] “This, then, is the very thing I was saying, that we need to agree whether we’ll let the poets make their narratives for us by imitating, or by imitating some things and not others, and what sort of thing each of those is, or not let them imitate at all.”
“I get the impression,” he said, “that you’re considering whether we’ll admit tragedy and comedy into the city or not.”
“Maybe,” I said; “but maybe there are also more things than these to consider. I don’t yet know exactly. But as with a wind, where the argument takes us, we have to go.”
“You’re saying it beautifully, too,” he said.
[394E] “Consider this, then, Adeimantus, whether our guardians ought to be adept at imitating or not. Or does this too follow from what was said before, that each one person could do a beautiful job at one pursuit, but not at many, and if he were to try it, by taking up many things he would presumably fail in all cases to be noteworthy?”
“How could that not happen?”
“Then doesn’t the same argument apply to imitation, that the same person doesn’t have the power to imitate many things as well as one thing?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
[395A] “Therefore he’s hardly going to work at any of the pursuits worthy of mention and at the same time imitate many things and be an imitator, since presumably the same people don’t even have the power to imitate well in two sorts of imitation that seem to be close to one another, such as writing comedy and tragedy. Weren’t you just now calling this pair imitations?”
“I was. And you’re telling the truth; the same people don’t have that power.”
“And not even to be reciters and actors at the same time either.”
“True.”
[395B] “And really, the same people don’t even have the power to be actors in both comedies and tragedies, though all these are imitations, aren’t they?”
“They’re imitations.”
“And the nature of a human being appears to me, Adeimantus, to be cut up in pieces even smaller than these, so as to be powerless to imitate many things beautifully any more than to do those very things from which the imitations are copied off.”
“Very true,” he said.
“Therefore, if we’re going to maintain our first argument, that our guardians, giving up all other sorts of craftsmanship, need to be [395C] craftsmen of the city’s freedom in a completely precise way, and work at nothing else that doesn’t carry over into this, then there would be a need for them not to do or imitate anything else at all. But if they do engage in imitation, they’d need to imitate, straight from childhood, what’s appropriate for them: people who are courageous, moderate, pious, free, and everything of that sort. But anything fit for slaves, or anything else shameful, they should neither do nor even be clever at imitating, so they don’t start to enjoy being those things from imitating them. Or haven’t you noticed that [395D] imitations, if people persevere long in them from youth, settle into habits and into nature, in both body and voices, and in thinking as well?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“So,” I said, “we won’t permit those we claim to care about, when we need them to become good men, since they are men, to imitate a woman, a young one or an older one, abusing her husband, or feeling rivalry toward the gods and full of big talk because she imagines she’s [E] favored by fortune, or caught up in misfortunes and in wailing and moaning, and still less will we want one who’s sick or in love or in labor.”
“Absolutely not,” he said.
“And not female slaves or male slaves either, doing all the things that belong to slaves.”
“Not that either.”
“And not bad men either, as it seems, who are cowards and do things that are opposite to the ones we mentioned just now, insulting and ridiculing each other, using vile language when they’re drunk [396A] and even when they’re sober, and committing all the other offenses in words and deeds towards themselves and others that such people do. And I don’t imagine they should get in the habit of making themselves like the insane, in words or in deeds; they need a knowledge of people who are insane and of those who are worthless too, both men and women, but they’re not to do or imitate anything that belongs to them.”
“Most true,” he said.
“What next?” I said. “Are metalworkers or any other craftsmen, or those who ply the oars in galleys or drive the oarsmen on, or anything else having to do with [396B] these things to be imitated?”
“How could they,” he said, “when they’re not even allowed to pay any attention to any of those things?”
“Then what about horses whinnying and bulls bellowing and streams gurgling and the sea crashing and thundering and everything else of that sort? Will they imitate those?”
“But they’ve been forbidden,” he said, “either to act insane or make themselves like the insane.”
“So,” I said, “if I’m understanding what you’re saying, there is a certain form [396C] of style and narrative in which someone who’s a gentleman in his very being would tell a story any time he would need to tell one, and a different form, unlike that one, which someone born and raised in a way opposite to that person would always keep to and in which he would tell a story.”
“What sorts are they?” he said.
“It seems to me,” I said, “that when a level-headed man arrives in a narrative at any speech or action of a good man, he’ll be willing to report it as though he himself were that man and not be ashamed of that sort of imitation, especially [396D] if he’s imitating the good man acting in a safe and sound way, but he’ll be willing less often and to a lesser degree if the man is undone by disease or by passions, or else by drunkenness or any other misfortune. But whenever he comes to anyone unworthy of himself, he won’t be willing in seriousness to make himself into an image of a worse person, unless it’s just briefly when that person’s doing something decent; otherwise he’d be ashamed, not being in practice for imitating such things, and at the same time feeling a distaste for molding himself and putting himself into the outlines of worse people, [396E] since he has contempt for the very thought of it, unless it’s for the sake of playfulness.”
“Likely so,” he said.
“Then won’t he use a narration of the sort we were going through a little while ago in connection with Homer’s verses, and won’t the style of it be one that has a share of both imitation and the other sort of narrative, but with a small portion of imitation in a long account? Or is there nothing in what I’m saying?”
“There’s a lot,” he said. “It’s necessary for the general guideline for such a public speaker to be of just that sort.”
[397A] “Then for the one who’s not that sort, on the other hand,” I said, “the lower sort of person he is, the more he’ll narrate everything and not suppose anything to be unworthy of himself, so that he’ll attempt to imitate everything seriously and in front of many people, even the things we were speaking of just now, thunder and noises of winds and hailstorms, axles and pulleys, trumpets and flutes and pipes and sounds of all the instruments, and even the cries of dogs and sheep and birds; [397B] won’t the whole style of this person be by way of imitation in voices and gestures, or have a little bit of narration in it?”
“That too is necessary,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “these are the two forms of style I was talking about.”
“So they are,” he said.
“Of the two, then, the one involves small variations, and if someone gives it a tonal range and rhythm appropriate to its style, won’t he come close, if he’s speaking correctly, to speaking in the same tone of voice and in one range, since the variations are slight, and especially in some rhythm that’s of pretty much the same sort?”
[397C] “Exactly so,” he said; “that’s the way it would be.”
“And what about the form that belongs to the other? Won’t it need the opposite things, all pitches and all rhythms, if it in turn is going to be spoken appropriately, since it involves variations of every shape and sort?”
“That’s emphatically the way it would be.”
“Well then, don’t all poets, and all those who say anything, happen upon one or the other type of style, or one mixed together out of both?”
“Necessarily,” he said.
[397D] “What are we going to do, then?” I said. “Will we accept them all into the city, or one of the unmixed, or the mixed?”
“If my opinion wins out,” he said, “the unmixed imitator of the decent person.”
“But Adeimantus, the mixed sort of imitator is pleasing too, and the one who’s opposite to the person you choose is by far the most pleasing to children and their tutors as well as to the great mass of people.”
“He is most pleasing.”
“But maybe you’d claim he’s not in harmony [397E] with our polity,38 because there’s no twofold or manyfold man among us, since each one does one thing.”
“No, he’s not in harmony.”
“And isn’t that why it’s only in such a city that we’ll find a leatherworker who’s a leatherworker and not a helmsman on top of his leatherworking, and a farmer who’s a farmer and not a judge on top of his farming, and a warrior who’s a warrior and not a moneymaker on top of his war making, and the same way with them all?”
“True,” he said.
[398A] “So as it seems, if a man who had the power by wisdom to come to be of every sort, and to imitate all things, were to come into our city, wanting to give a display of himself and his poems, we’d bow down before him as someone holy, wondrous, and pleasing, but we’d say that there’s no such man in our city and that it’s not divinely sanctioned for one to come among us. And we’d send him off to another city, anointing his head with perfume and crowning him with wool, while we ourselves would make use of a more austere and less [398B] pleasing poet and storyteller for our benefit, who’d imitate the style of a decent person for us and say what he says within those guidelines that we set up as laws at the beginning, when we set ourselves the task of educating the soldiers.”
“That’s exactly what we’d do,” he said, “if it were up to us.”
“So now, my friend,” I said, “we’re liable to be completely finished with the part of music that has to do with speeches and stories; what’s to be said and how it’s to be said have been described.”
“That’s the way it seems to me about it too,” he said.
[398C] “After this, then,” I said, “isn’t the thing that’s left what has to do with the style of lyric poetry and songs?”
“Clearly.”
“But by now couldn’t everyone find what’s to be said by us about what sorts they’d have to be if we’re going to be in harmony with the things we said before?”
And Glaucon, laughing, said “Then, Socrates, I’m in danger of being left out of ‘everyone’; at least I’m not sufficiently able at present to contribute anything about the sorts of things we need to say, though I have a suspicion.”
“At any rate, I presume,” I said, “that to start with you’re sufficiently able to say [398D] this, that song is composed of three things, speech, melody, and rhythm.”
“Yes,” he said, “at least that.”
“Then as much of it as is speech is presumably no different from speech that’s not sung in respect to its needing to be spoken within the same guidelines we were describing just before, and in the same manner.”
“True,” he said.
“And surely the melody and rhythm need to follow the speech.”
“How could it be otherwise?”
“But we claimed that there was no more need for dirges and lamentations in the speeches.”
“No indeed.”
[398E] “Then what are the dirge-like modes?39 Tell me, since you’re knowledgeable about music.”
“Mixolydian,” he said, “and taut Lydian, and some of that sort.”
“Then don’t these need to be eliminated?” I said. “Because they’re of no use even for women, who ought to be decent, much less for men.”
“Very much so.”
“But surely drunkenness is most inappropriate for guardians, as well as soft living and laziness.”
“How could it be otherwise?”
“So which of the modes are soft and suited to drinking parties?”
“In the Ionian and also Lydian ones,” he said, “some varieties are called relaxed.”
[399A] “Is it possible, my friend, that you’d use these for warlike men?”
“Not at all,” he said; “it’s pretty much the Dorian and Phrygian ones you’ve got left.”
“I don’t know the modes,” I said; “just leave us that mode that would appropriately imitate the sounds and intonations of someone who’s courageous in a warlike action and in every sort of work involving force, even when he’s had bad luck or when he’s heading toward wounds [399B] or toward death, or has fallen into some other misfortune, repelling the assaults of chance with a spirit of discipline and endurance. And also leave us another one for him when he’s involved in an interaction that’s peaceable and not forcible but voluntary, when he’s either winning someone over about something he’s asking for, whether a god by prayer or a human being by instruction and admonition, or on the contrary when he’s submitting himself to someone else who’s requesting something by teaching him or changing his mind, while he responds to these things as he thinks fit, not behaving arrogantly but acting moderately and in a measured way [399C] in all these matters and being content with the outcome. These two modes, a forcible one, a voluntary one, for the unfortunate, for the fortunate, of the moderate, of the courageous, whichever ones most beautifully imitate their sounds—leave us these.”
“Well,” he said, “you’re asking me to leave none other than the ones I just mentioned.”
“Therefore,” I said, “there’ll be no need of many-stringed or all-modal music in our lyric poetry and songs.”
“It doesn’t appear so to me,” he said.
“Therefore we won’t maintain craftsmen for three-cornered lutes and Panpipes and [399D] all the other instruments that are many-stringed and multi-modal.”
“We obviously won’t.”
“And what about this? Will you admit flute makers or flute players into the city? Isn’t the flute the most many-stringed instrument, and aren’t the all-modal ones just imitations of the flute?”
“That’s clear,” he said.
“So,” I said, “you’ve got the lyre and cithara left as useful in the city, and there’d also be some sort of pipe for the herdsmen in the fields.”
“That’s the way our argument is pointing at any rate,” he said.
“At least we’re not doing anything new, my friend,” I said, “in judging [399E] Apollo and Apollo’s instruments superior to Marsyas40 and his instruments.”
“By Zeus,” he said, “we don’t look like it to me.”
“And by the dog,”41 I said, “without noticing it, we’ve been making a city pure again that we just now claimed was living in luxury.”
“We’re moderate, anyway,” he said.
“Come then,” I said, “let’s purify it the rest of the way. Because following on the modes we’d have what concerns rhythm, so we don’t chase after intricate ones with every sort of metric feet, but see which rhythms [400A] belong to an orderly and courageous life. And once we’ve seen that, we’ll require the foot, as well as the melody, to go with the speech of that sort of life, rather than have the speech follow the foot and melody. It’s your job to say which of the rhythms these would be, just as with the modes.”
“By Zeus, I just can’t tell,” he said. “I could say from having seen them that there are three particular forms out of which the metric feet are woven,42 just as, among tones, there are four that all the modes come from, but which sorts are imitations of what sort of life I can’t say.”
[400B] “Well,” I said, “we’ll also take counsel with Damon43 about which are the appropriate feet for slavishness or insolence or insanity or other vices, and what rhythms need to be left for their opposites. I believe I’ve heard him, unclearly, naming a certain compound ‘armored march’ rhythm that was dactylic and heroic as well, arranging it I know not how and setting it out as equal on the upbeat and downbeat when it passes into a short or a long syllable; I believe he also [400C] named one rhythm iambic and another one trochaic and applied longs and shorts to them. And in some of these I believe he criticized and approved of the ways of pacing the foot no less than the rhythms themselves, or else both together somehow—I can’t really tell. But as I was saying, let these things be referred back to Damon, since distinguishing them is no matter for a short discussion. Do you imagine it is?”
“By Zeus, I sure don’t.”
“But do you have the power to distinguish them in this respect at least, that what belongs to gracefulness or gracelessness follows a well-proportioned rhythm or a lack of rhythm?”
“How could it not?”
“But what’s well-proportioned rhythmically or lacks rhythm goes along, in the one case, with [400D] a beautiful style, likening itself to it, or in the other case to an opposite style, and what’s well harmonized or lacks harmony works the same way, if indeed rhythm and harmony follow speech, as we were just saying, and speech doesn’t follow them.”
“Certainly,” he said, “these things need to follow speech.”
“And what about the speech,” I said, “and the manner of its style? Don’t they go with the character in the soul?”
“How could they not?”
“But the other things go with the style?”
“Yes.”
“Therefore goodness of speaking, harmoniousness, gracefulness, and [400E] rhythmic proportion follow goodness of character, not the mindlessness we condescendingly refer to as good-naturedness, but the thinking that has literally done a beautiful job of building a character that’s good.”
“Absolutely so,” he said.
“Then don’t these things need to be pursued everywhere by young people, if they’re going to act in ways appropriate to them?”
“They certainly need to be pursued.”
[401A] “And presumably the art of painting is filled with these attributes, as is all such craftsmanship; weaving and embroidery and architecture are filled with them, and also every sort of workmanship of other furnishings, and in addition the nature of our bodies and that of other growing things. In all these a gracefulness or gracelessness is present. And gracelessness, lack of rhythm, and lack of harmony are in close kinship with bad speaking and bad character, while their opposites are close kin and imitations of the opposite sort, a moderate and good character.”
“Totally so,” he said.
[401B] “Then is it only the poets we need to take charge of, requiring them to produce the image of good character in their poems or else not produce poems among us, or do we need to have charge of the other craftsmen as well, and prevent them from producing this bad character, an intemperate, slavish, and graceless one, either in images of animals or in buildings or in any other work of craftsmanship? And shouldn’t one who is incapable of this not be allowed to work at his craft among us, so that our guardians won’t be nourished on images of vice as though in a bad pasture, each day, little by little, [401C] gathering up and feeding on a great deal from many places that will, without their knowing it, build up into some one great evil in their soul? Shouldn’t we instead look for those craftsmen who are naturally gifted to seek out the nature of the beautiful and graceful so that the young will draw benefit from everything, as though dwelling in a healthy place44 where something from the beautiful works around them will strike their sight or their hearing, like a breeze wafting health from auspicious regions, and straight from childhood it will, without their knowing it, [401D] draw them into likeness, friendship, and harmony with beautiful speech?”
“Very much so,” he said; “they’d be nourished most beautifully in that way.”
“And isn’t it for the sake of these consequences, Glaucon,” I said, “that nourishment on music is of supreme importance? Aren’t rhythm and harmony infused to the greatest possible extent into the inward part of the soul, and don’t they take hold of it most vigorously with the gracefulness they bring, and make it graceful if [401E] one nourishes it rightly, or the opposite if one doesn’t? And wouldn’t the person who’d been nourished as one ought to be in that area also have the most acute perception of things left inadequate and not beautifully crafted or not formed beautifully by nature, and from having a rightful disdain for them, wouldn’t he appreciate beautiful things and delight in them, and by admitting them into his soul wouldn’t he take nourishment from [402A] them and become gentlemanly? And wouldn’t the person nourished in that way rightly find fault with ugly things and hate them while he was still young, before having the power to grasp reason, so that when reason comes he’ll embrace it most eagerly, recognizing it by a feeling of kinship?”
“It seems to me, at any rate,” he said, “that nurture on music is for the sake of just such things.”
“Then it’s just like what has to do with written words,” I said; “we were competent with them when the letters, though there are few of them, couldn’t elude us in any of the combinations in which they’re passed around, and we didn’t look down on them in either a small [402B] or a large instance as not needing to be noticed, but were eager to recognize them everywhere, because we weren’t going to be literate before we had that ability.”
“True.”
“And if images of written words were to show up anywhere, either in water or in mirrors, we won’t recognize them, will we, before we know the words themselves? Don’t they belong to the same art and endeavor?”
“Absolutely so.”
“Before the gods, then, is it the way I’m saying, that we’re not [402C] going to be musically literate, and neither are those whom we claim need to be educated by us as guardians, before we recognize the look45 of moderation and of courage and generosity and greatness of manner and all their near kin, and also their opposites, everywhere they pass around us, and notice their presence in the things they’re found in, both they themselves and their images, and not look down on them in either small or large instances, but consider them to belong to the same art and endeavor?”
“That’s a big necessity,” he said.
[402D] “So if beautiful states of character present in someone’s soul coincide with something in the look of that person in agreement and harmony with those states of character, sharing the same contours, wouldn’t that be a most beautiful sight for someone able to see it?”
“Very much so.”
“And surely what is most beautiful most inspires love?”
“How could it not?”
“Then someone really musical, most of all, would love such people, but if someone were lacking in harmony he wouldn’t love that person.”
“He wouldn’t if something was lacking in the soul; if, however, there was some defect in the body, he’d be tolerant enough to accept him willingly.”
[402E] “I understand,” I said; “you have, or had, a boy of that sort that you loved, and I go along with what you say. But tell me this: is there anything in common with moderation in extreme pleasure?”
“How could there be?” he said. “It drives someone out of his mind no less than pain does.”
“How about with any other virtue?”
[403A] “Not at all.”
“With what then? Insolence and intemperance?”
“Most of all.”
“And can you name a greater and more acute pleasure than the one connected with sex?”
“I can’t,” he said. “And none that makes one more insane.”
“But the right sort of passion of love is to love what’s orderly and beautiful in a moderate and musical way?”
“Very much indeed,” he said.
“Then nothing insane or akin to intemperance is to be brought into the right sort of love?”
“It’s not to be brought into it.”
[403B] “Then that sort of pleasure is not to be brought into it, and the lover and the boys he loves are not to take part in it if they love and are loved in the right way?”
“Certainly not, by Zeus,” he said; “it’s not to be brought into it, Socrates.”
“So it seems likely that, in the city that’s being founded, you’ll make it a law for a lover to kiss, be with, and touch a boy as he would a son, for enjoyment of what’s beautiful, if he persuades him, but to associate in other respects with the boy he’s serious about in such a way that they will never seem [403C] to be involved together farther than that. Otherwise he’ll incur blame for lacking the good taste inspired by music and by an experience of beauty.”
“That’s how it will be,” he said.
“Does it appear to you too,” I said, “that our discussion about music stands at an end? It has ended up where it ought to end, anyway; presumably what has to do with music ought to end in what has to do with love of the beautiful.”
“I fully agree,” he said.
“So after music, the young people are to be brought up on gymnastic exercise.”
“Certainly.”
[403D] “It’s necessary in this too for them to be brought up in a definite way from childhood throughout life. The way it is, as I imagine it, is the following, but you consider it too. Now it doesn’t appear to me that what’s sound in a body by its virtue makes a soul good, but on the contrary, a good soul by its virtue allows a body to be the best it can be. How does it appear to you?”
“That way to me as well,” he said.
“Then if after giving sufficient care to the power of thinking, we left it to it to figure out precisely the things involving the body, while we guided [403E] it as far as the general outlines, in order not to be long-winded, would we be doing rightly?”
“Entirely so.”
“Well, we were saying that drunkenness needed to be abstained from by them, since it’s surely more permissible for anyone except a guardian to be drunk, not knowing where on earth he is.”
“It would be ridiculous,” he said, “for a guardian to need a guardian.”
“And what about food? These men are athletes in the most important competition, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
[404A] “Then would the conditioning of those in training among us be appropriate for these?”
“Maybe.”
“But that’s a routine that dozes off,” I said; “and it’s a shaky basis for health. Or don’t you see that those athletes drowse their lives away, and if they deviate a little from a prescribed routine, they get sick in big and intense ways?”
“I do see.”
“So for athletes fit for war,” I said, “there’s need for a more advanced kind of training, since they have to be like sleepless dogs and as sharp as possible at seeing and hearing, [404B] and, on their campaigns, adjust to many changes of water and other food, and of the sun’s heat and storms, without being fastidious about their health.”
“It looks that way to me.”
“So wouldn’t the best gymnastic training be closely kin to the sort of music we were going over a little earlier?”
“How do you mean?”
“A simple and decent sort of gymnastic training, and one especially adapted to the things involved in war.”
“In what way, exactly?”
“Even from Homer,” I said, “one could learn that sort of thing. You know that, in the feasts of the heroes on the campaign, [404C] he doesn’t feast them with fish, even though they’re by the sea at the Hellespont, or with boiled meats either, but only roasted ones, which would be the most readily available to soldiers, since everywhere, one might say, to use the fire itself is easier than to carry around pots.”
“Very much so.”
“And I don’t believe Homer ever made any mention of sauces. Don’t even the others in training know this, that it’s necessary for a body that’s going to be in good shape to abstain from everything like that?”
“And rightly,” he said, “both in the knowing and in the abstaining.”
[404D] “Then, my friend, it looks like you aren’t recommending a table set in Syracusan style with a Sicilian variety in delicacies if those things seem right to you.”
“I don’t seem to be.”
“Then you also object to a Corinthian girl as a lover for men who’re going to keep their bodies in good condition.”
“Absolutely so.”
“And to what are supposed to be the delights of Athenian pastries?”
“Necessarily.”
“Because I imagine if we likened that style of eating and living as a whole to the all-modal style of song- making and to lyric poetry [404E] written in all rhythms, we’d be making a correct likeness.”
“How could it be otherwise?”
“And doesn’t variety engender intemperance there, and disease here, while simplicity in music makes for moderation in souls, and simplicity in gymnastic training makes for health in bodies?”
“Most true,” he said.
[405A] “And when intemperance and diseases become prevalent in a city, don’t a lot of law courts and medical clinics open their doors, and don’t the arts of lawyering and doctoring puff themselves up when lots of free men take them with great seriousness?”
“How could that not happen?”
“And will you get any greater indication of a bad and shameful education in a city than its needing top-notch doctors and judges not only for the common people and manual laborers but also for those who pass themselves off as having been brought up in a style fit for someone [405B] who’s free? Or doesn’t it seem shameful and a great indication of being uneducated, for each person, from a lack of his own resources, to be forced to use a justice coming from other people, as though they were his masters and judges?”
“That’s the most shameful thing of all,” he said.
“Does that really seem to you to be more shameful than this,” I said, “when someone not only wastes most of his life in law courts defending and prosecuting, but is even persuaded by his inexperience of beauty to pride himself on that very thing, because he’s clever at [405C] being unjust and competent at turning all the twists, squirming through all the loopholes until he twists himself crooked to avoid submitting to a just penalty, and this for the sake of small and worthless things, since he’s ignorant of how much better and more beautiful it would be to arrange his life so he’d have no need of a drowsy judge?”
“No,” he said, “this is even more shameful than that was.”
“And the need for doctoring,” I said, “that’s not for wounds [405D] or for any of the seasonal illnesses that overtake people, but from lack of exercise and from a style of life of the sort we were going over, because they’re filled like a swamp with fluids and gases that force the ingenious followers of Asclepius46 to make up the names ‘bloats’ and ‘fluxes’ for diseases—doesn’t that seem shameful?”
“Very much so,” he said; “and these names for diseases are truly newfangled and absurd.”
“And of a sort, I imagine, that weren’t around in Asclepius’s time,” I said. “I take as a sign of this that his sons at Troy, when [405E] the wounded Eurypylus was given Pramneian wine to drink, with a lot of barley [406A] and grated cheese sprinkled on it, which are considered to be inflammatory, they didn’t find fault with the woman who gave it to him to drink or blame Patroclus who was treating him.”
“Well,” he said, “it was a strange potion for someone in that condition.”
“Not if you keep in mind,” I said, “that this coddling of diseases by the current medical art was not in use by the followers of Asclepius formerly, as people claim, until Herodicus came along. Herodicus, who was an athletic trainer who became sickly, mixed gymnastic exercise [406B] with medical treatment, and worried to death, first and foremost, himself, then many others in later times.”
“In what way, exactly?” he said.
“By making himself die a long death,” I said. “Though he paid close attention to his disease, he wasn’t able to cure himself, because it was a deadly one, I imagine, so he lived out his life giving himself treatments with no leisure for anything else, worried if he deviated in any way from his habitual routine, and by his wisdom he reached old age in a constant struggle with death.”
“A lovely reward he was brought by his art,” he said.
[406C] “Of a fitting sort,” I said, “for someone who didn’t know that it wasn’t from ignorance or inexperience of this form of medical treatment that Asclepius didn’t reveal it to his offspring, but because he knew that for all people living under good laws, a certain job is assigned to each person in the city, which it’s necessary to work at, and no one has leisure to spend his life sick and being treated. Ridiculously, we recognize that in the case of those with trades, but we don’t recognize it when it comes to rich people who are supposedly happy.”
“How so?” he said.
“When a carpenter is sick,” I said, “he expects to swallow medicine [406D] from the doctor in order to heave up the disease or be purged of it below, or to suffer burning or cutting to get rid of it, but if anyone prescribes a long course of treatment for him, putting cloths on his head and the things that go with them,47 he says without hesitation that he has no leisure to be sick and that it’s not profitable to live that way, keeping one’s attention on a disease while neglecting his appointed work. After [406E] that, he says goodbye to that sort of doctor, steps back into his accustomed routine, gets healthy, and lives doing the things that belong to him; but if his body isn’t adequate to bear up, he’s set free from troubles by dying.”
“For that sort of person, anyway,” he said, “it does seem appropriate to use the medical art that way.”
[407A] “Is that because he had some work to do,” I said, “and if he couldn’t do it living was not profitable?”
“Clearly,” he said.
“But what we’re claiming is that the rich person has no such work appointed to him, which, if he were forced to refrain from it, would make his life not worth living.”
“There’s not said to be any, at least.”
“Don’t you listen to Phocylides,”48 I said, “the way he claims that when someone already has a living, he needs to work at virtue?”
“Before that too, I imagine,” he said.
“Let’s not fall out with him over that,” I said, “but teach ourselves whether this is something the rich person needs to exert himself over and whether [407B] life is not worth living for someone when he doesn’t make that effort, or whether nursing a disease is an impediment to paying attention to carpentry and the other arts but doesn’t impede Phocylides’ exhortation.”
“Yes it does, by Zeus,” he said. “This excessive care for the body that goes beyond gymnastic exercise is just about the most obstructive thing of all. It’s a pain for running a household and on military service, and for ruling functions in a city that people carry out sitting down.”
“But the most important thing is that it also makes it difficult for any sort of [407C] learning, reflecting, or studying within oneself, by constantly suspecting some kind of strain or dizziness in the head and claiming that it comes from philosophy, so that, wherever virtue is being practiced and put to that sort of test, nursing diseases is obstructive in every way. It makes someone constantly imagine he’s sick and never leave off being in agony about his body.”
“Very likely,” he said.
“So won’t we claim it was because Asclepius knew these things that it was for people whose bodies are in a healthy condition by nature and their way of living, but who [407D] have some isolated disease in them, that he introduced, for those in this condition, an art of medicine so he could drive out diseases by means of drugs and surgery and prescribe their accustomed routines, so as not to interfere with the life of the city? Won’t we claim that for bodies diseased internally throughout, he made no attempt to bleed off a little of this and pour in a little of that according to regimens, to produce a long bad life for a human being, in order for him to beget, in all likelihood, other offspring [407E] with such lives, but that he didn’t believe he ought to treat someone who lacks the power to live in his established course of life, since it wouldn’t be profitable to that person or to his city?”
“That’s a civic-minded Asclepius you’re describing,” he said.
“Clearly,” I said. “And don’t you see that, because he was [408A] that way, his sons too showed themselves to be good men at the war in Troy and used a medical art like the one I’m describing? Or don’t you recall that they treated the wound Pandarus inflicted on Menelaus
By squeezing out the blood and rubbing on soothing salves.49
And they didn’t prescribe what he ought to drink or eat after that any more than they did for Eurypylus, taking the medicines to be sufficient to heal men who were healthy before their wounds and [408B] orderly in their way of living, even if they happened to drink a miscellaneous concoction there on the spot. But for people sickly by nature and intemperate, they believed that living was not profitable for themselves or anyone else, and that it wasn’t to these that their art should be applied and they weren’t obliged to treat them, even if they were richer than Midas.”
“Those are very fastidious sons of Asclepius you’re describing,” he said.
“Fittingly so,” I said, “and yet the tragic poets and Pindar, unpersuaded by us, claim that even though Asclepius was the son of Apollo, he was induced by gold to cure a rich man [408C] who was already at the point of death, and that he was struck by a thunderbolt for that reason. But according to what we said before, we aren’t persuaded by them of both things, but if he was a god’s son, we’ll claim, he wasn’t out for sordid gain, and if he was out for sordid gain he wasn’t a god’s son.”
“And most rightly on that point,” he said. “But what do you say about this, Socrates? Isn’t there a need to get good doctors in the city? And these would presumably be especially all those of the sort who’ve had hands-on experience with the greatest numbers of people both healthy and sick, and [408D] the same way that with judges too, the best would be those who’ve gotten familiar with all sorts of natures.”
“I’m talking about good ones,” I said, “very much so. But do you know the ones I consider to be of that sort?”
“If you tell me,” he said.
“Well, I’ll try,” I said, “but you asked in the same question about things that aren’t alike.”
“How so?” he said.
“Doctors,” I said, “would get to be the most clever if, starting from childhood, in addition to learning the art, they familiarized themselves with [408E] as many bodies as possible that were as sick as possible, and if they themselves got sick with every disease and weren’t entirely healthy by nature. That’s because it’s not with a body, I assume, that they treat a body, since then it wouldn’t be possible for those to be or become bad, but they treat a body with a soul, and it’s not possible for it to treat anything well once it has come to be and is bad.”
“That’s right,” he said.
[409A] “But a judge, my friend, rules over a soul with a soul, and it’s not acceptable for it to have been brought up from youth among corrupt souls and become familiar with them, and for it to have gone through all sorts of unjust deeds by having committed them, so as to judge the signs of unjust deeds in others acutely from itself, as with diseases in a body. Instead, it needs to have come through without experience of, and unmixed with, bad states of character while it’s young, if it’s going to judge what’s just in a healthy way as a soul with the beauty of goodness.50 That’s why decent people, when young, appear to be simpletons, easily deceived by unjust people, since [409B] they have no patterns in themselves of a like nature with corrupt people.”
“Exactly,” he said; “that’s just the experience they have.”
“And for just that reason,” I said, “a good judge needs to be not young but old, a latecomer to learning about what injustice is like, not from having observed it as a presence at home in his own soul, but from having studied it over a long time as something alien in the souls of other people to discern how it’s naturally bad, having made use of knowledge, not his own experience.”
[409C] “At any rate,” he said, “that sort of judge would be the most true-born.”
“And a good one,” I said, “which is what you were asking about. For someone with a good soul is good. But that clever and suspicious person who, having committed many injustices himself, assumes that he’s amoral and wise, when he’s in the company of those like himself, looks formidable because he’s on high alert against them, going by the looks of the patterns in himself. But when he’s around good people who are older, he now looks clueless, being distrustful [409D] at the wrong times and unaware of what a healthy state of character is, since he has no pattern of that sort. But since he meets up with corrupt people more often than with honest ones, he seems to himself and to others to be more wise than stupid.”
“That’s absolutely true,” he said.
“Then it’s not that sort of person one needs to look for,” I said, “to be a good and wise judge, but the previous one. For vice could never know both virtue and itself, but virtue in an educated nature will in time acquire a knowledge of itself and vice [409E] at once. This person comes to be wise, as it seems to me, but the bad one doesn’t.”
“It seems that way to me in common with you,” he said.
“Then will you establish by law in the city a medical art of the sort we were talking about, together with this sort of judicial art? They’ll care for the [410A] bodies and souls of your citizens, those with good natures that is, but for those who lack them, they’ll allow all those so lacking in body to die off, and they themselves will put to death those who are of an evil nature in soul and not curable.”
“That has at any rate shown itself to be the best way,” he said, “for the people themselves that it happens to as well as for the city.”
“Then it’s clear,” I said, “that your young citizens will be guarded against coming into need of the judge’s art, being used to that simple sort of music that we claimed gives rise to moderation.”
“Certainly,” he said.
[410B] “And won’t someone who’s instilled with music get hold of a gymnastic art, if he wants one, by following those same tracks, so that he won’t need the medical art except as a matter of necessity?”
“It seems that way to me.”
“And he’ll work hard at the exercises and exertions themselves with an eye toward the spirited side of his nature and to awaken that, rather than looking toward strength, unlike the other sorts of athletes, who arrange their diets and workouts as a means toward bodily power.”
“Most rightly,” he said.
“So then, Glaucon,” I said, “is it also the case that those who instituted [410C] educating people by music and gymnastic exercise didn’t institute them for the purpose that some imagine, to care for the body with one and for the soul with the other?”
“For what instead?” he said.
“They’re liable,” I said, “to have instituted both for the sake of the soul above all.”
“How so?”
“Don’t you notice,” I said, “how their thinking itself is channeled in those who devote themselves to gymnastic exercise throughout life and have no contact with music? Or in turn in those who are directed the opposite way?”
“What are you referring to?” he said.
[410D] “To brutality and hardness, and in the other case to softness and tameness,” I said.
“I do notice,” he said, “that people who avail themselves of unmixed gymnastic exercise come away more brutal than they ought to be, while people who do so with music become softer than what would be the more beautiful thing for them.”
“And surely,” I said, “what’s brutal would be derived from the spirited side of one’s nature, and if rightly nurtured it would be courageous, but when it’s stretched tighter than it ought to be, it would, likely, become hard and harsh.”
“It seems that way to me,” he said.
[410E] “What then? Wouldn’t the philosophic nature have what’s tame, and if it’s relaxed more than it ought to be it would be too soft, but when beautifully nurtured it would be tame and orderly?”
“That’s how it is.”
“But we claim the guardians need to have this pair of natures both together.”
“They do need to.”
“Then don’t the natures need to be harmonized with one another?”
“Of course.”
[411A] “And the soul of the person who has them harmonized is moderate and courageous?”
“Entirely.”
“But the soul of the unharmonized person is cowardly and brutish?”
“Very much so.”
“So when anyone allows music to go completely unchecked and to pour into his soul through his ears, as if through a funnel, the sweet, soft, dirge-like modes we were just talking about, and is continually humming his whole life, enchanted by song, doesn’t he first, if he had anything spirited in him, soften it up like iron and make it [411B] usable instead of useless and hard? But when he doesn’t let up from pouring it on, but is enthralled, the next thing after this is that he’s melting and dissolving his spiritedness until he melts it away and it’s as if he cuts the guts out of his soul and makes himself a ‘soft spearman.’”51
“Very much so,” he said.
“And if, to start with,” I said, “he got a soul lacking in spiritedness by nature, he accomplishes this quickly, but if it’s spirited, once he’s made his spirit weak, it ends up being volatile, quickly flaring up at small things [411C] and quickly snuffed out. Then they’ve become sharp-tempered and irritable instead of spirited, full of crankiness.”
“Totally so.”
“Then what about someone who works out a lot at gymnastic exercise and eats very well, but has no contact with music and philosophy? At first, with his body in good condition, doesn’t he fill up with proud conceit and spiritedness, and get so that he’s more courageous than he is himself?”
“Very much so.”
“But what about when he does nothing else and participates in nothing at all in common with any of the [411D] Muses? Even if there was any love of learning in his soul, because of not getting a taste of any learning or of the quest for it, or taking part in discourse or anything else belonging to music, doesn’t his soul become weak, deaf, and blind, since it’s not awakened or nourished and its powers of perception aren’t clarified?”
“That’s the way of it,” he said.
“It’s exactly this sort of person, I imagine, who becomes a hater of discourse and devoid of music, and has no use any more for persuasion by speech, but gets his point across about [411E] everything by violence and brutality, like a wild animal, and lives in ham-fisted stupidity without grace or rhythm.”
“That’s absolutely how it is,” he said.
“So since, as it seems, there is this pair of things in the soul, I would claim that some god gave human beings two arts, musical and gymnastic, for the spirited and philosophic parts, not for a soul and a body except as a side-effect, but for that pair, so that [412A] they might be harmonized with each other by being tightened and loosened to the appropriate degree.”
“That does seem likely,” he said.
“Therefore, someone who applies to his soul gymnastic exercise that’s most beautifully mixed and balanced with music is the one we could most correctly claim is musical and in harmony to complete perfection, much more so than someone who tunes the strings of an instrument to one another.”
“Very likely so, Socrates,” he said.
“Then won’t there also be a need in our city, Glaucon, for [412B] someone of this sort always to preside, if the polity is going to be kept secure?”
“There will certainly be a need, the greatest one there could be.”
“So these would be the general outlines of their education and upbringing. As for their dances, why should anyone go through such things, or their hunting with and without dogs, or their competitions in gymnastic events or on horses? Because it’s pretty obvious that they need to be in keeping with those outlines, and it’s no longer difficult to figure them out.”
“Not as difficult,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, “what would be the next thing after that for us to distinguish? [412C] Wouldn’t it be which of these same people will rule and which will be ruled?”
“Sure.”
“And it’s clear that the older ones should be the rulers and the younger should be ruled?”
“That’s clear.”
“And that it should be the best among them?”
“That too.”
“And aren’t the best farmers the ones most adept at farming?”
“Yes.”
“But since in this case they need to be the best among the guardians, don’t they need to be the most adept at safeguarding the city?”
“Yes.”
“So don’t they need, to start with, to be intelligent at that as well as capable, and also protective of the city?”
[412D] “That’s so.”
“But someone would be most protective of that which he happened to love.”
“Necessarily.”
“And surely someone would love that thing most which he regarded as having the same things advantageous to it as to himself, and believed that when it fared well it followed that he himself fared well, and the other way around when it didn’t.”
“That’s the way it is,” he said.
“Therefore the men who need to be selected from among the rest of the guardians are those who appear to us, when we examine the whole course of their lives, [412E] as if they most of all would do wholeheartedly whatever they’d regard as advantageous to the city, and who wouldn’t be willing in any way to do what was not.”
“They’d be suited to it,” he said.
“It seems to me, then, that they need to be observed in all stages of life to see if they’re adept guardians of this way of thinking, and don’t drop it when they’re bewitched or subjected to force, forgetting their opinion that they ought to do what’s best for the city.”
“What do you mean by dropping?” he said.
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “It appears to me that an opinion goes away from one’s thinking [413A] either willingly or unwillingly. A false one goes away willingly from someone who learns differently, but every true one unwillingly.”
“The case of the willing dropping I understand,” he said, “but I need to learn about the unwilling case.”
“What?” I said. “Don’t you too believe human beings are deprived of good things unwillingly but of bad ones willingly? Isn’t it a bad thing to think falsely about the truth and a good thing to think truly? Or doesn’t believing things that are seem to you to be thinking truly?”
“You’re certainly speaking rightly,” he said, “and it does seem to me that people are unwilling to be deprived of the truth.”
[413B] “And don’t they suffer this by being robbed, bewitched, or overpowered?”
“Now I’m not understanding again,” he said.
“I guess I’m speaking like a tragedy,”52 I said. “By those who are robbed, I mean people who are persuaded to change their minds and people who forget, because from the latter, time, and from the former, speech takes opinions away without their noticing it. Now presumably you understand?”
“Yes.”
“And by those who are overpowered I mean people that some grief or pain causes to change their opinions.”
“I understand that too,” he said, “and you’re speaking rightly.”
[413C] “And I imagine that you too would claim that people are bewitched who change their opinions when they’re either entranced by pleasure or in dread of something frightening.”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s likely that everything that fools people is bewitching.”
“Then as I was just saying, one needs to find out which of them are the best guardians of the way of thinking they have at their sides, that the thing they always need to do is to do what seems to them to be best for the city. So they need to be observed right from childhood by people who set tasks for them in which someone would be most likely to forget such a thing or be fooled out of it; anyone who remembers it and [413D] is hard to fool is to be chosen and anyone who doesn’t is to be rejected. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“And laborious jobs, painful sufferings, and competitions also need to be set up for them in which these same things are to be observed.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Thus a contest needs to be made,” I said, “for the third form as well, that of bewitchment, and it needs to be watched. The same way people check out whether colts are frightened when they lead them into noisy commotions, the guardians, when young, need to be taken into some terrifying situations and then quickly shifted [413E] into pleasant ones, so as to test them much more than gold is tested in a fire. If someone shows himself hard to bewitch and composed in everything, a good guardian of himself and of the musical style that he learned, keeping himself to a rhythm and harmony well-suited to all these situations, then he’s just the sort of person who’d be most valuable both to himself and to a city. And that one among the children and the youths and the men who is tested and always [414A] comes through unscathed is to be appointed as ruler of the city as well as guardian, and honors are to be given to him while he’s living and upon his death, when he’s allotted the most prized of tombs and other memorials. Anyone not of that sort is to be rejected. It seems to me, Glaucon,” I said, “that the selection and appointment of rulers and guardians is something like that, described in outline, not with precision.”
“It looks to me too like it would be done some such way,” he said.
[414B] “Isn’t it most correct, then, to call these the guardians in the true sense, complete guardians for outside enemies and also for friends inside, so that the latter won’t want to do any harm and the former won’t have the power to? The young ones that we’ve been calling guardians up to now, isn’t it most correct to call auxiliaries and reinforcements for the decrees of the rulers?”
“It seems that way to me,” he said.
“Then could we come up with some contrivance,” I said, “from among the lies that come along in case of need, the ones we were talking about just now,53 some one [414C] noble lie told to persuade at best even the rulers themselves, but if not, the rest of the city?”
“What sort of thing?” he said.
“Nothing new,” I said, “but something Phoenician54 that has come into currency in many places before now, since the poets assert it and have made people believe; but it hasn’t come into currency in our time and I don’t know if it could—it would take a lot of persuading.”
“You seem a lot like someone who’s reluctant to speak,” he said.
“And I’ll seem to you very appropriately reluctant,” I said, “when I do speak.”
“Speak,” he said. “Don’t be shy.”
[414D] “I’ll speak, then. And yet I don’t know how I’ll get up the nerve or find the words to tell it. First I’ll try my hand at persuading the rulers themselves and the soldiers, and then also the rest of the city, that, after all, the things we nurtured and educated them on were like dreams; they seemed to be experiencing all those things that seemed to be happening around them, but in truth they themselves were at the time under the soil inside the earth being molded and cultivated, and their weapons and other gear were being crafted, and when [414E] they were completely formed, the earth, that was their mother, made them spring up. So now, as if the land they dwell in were a mother and nurse, it’s up to them to deliberate over it, to defend it if anyone were to attack, and to take thought on behalf of the rest of the citizens as their earthborn siblings.”
“It’s not without reason,” he said, “that you were ashamed for so long to tell the lie.”
[415A] “It was entirely reasonable,” I said. “But all the same, listen to the rest of the story as well. What we’ll say in telling them the story is: ‘All of you in the city are brothers, but the god, when he molded those of you who are competent to be rulers, mixed gold into them at their formation––that’s why they’re the most honorable––but all the auxiliaries have silver in them, and there’s iron and bronze in the farmers and other skilled workers. So since you’re all kin, for the most part [415B] you’ll produce children like yourselves, but it’s possible for a silver offspring sometimes to be born from a gold parent, and a gold from a silver, and all the others likewise from one another. So the god exhorts the rulers first and foremost to be good guardians of their children, of nothing more diligently than that, and to keep watch for nothing so diligently as for what they have intermixed in their souls. And if a child of theirs is born [415C] with bronze or iron mixed in it, they’ll by no means give way to pity, but paying it the honor appropriate to its nature, they’ll drive it out among the craftsmen or farmers, and if in turn any children are born from those parents with gold or silver mixed in them, they’ll honor them and take them up, some to the guardian group, the others to the auxiliary, because there’s an oracle foretelling that the city will be destroyed when an iron or bronze guardian has guardianship over it.’ So do you have any contrivance to get them to believe this story?”
“There’s no way,” he said, “at least for these people themselves. There might be one, though, for [415D] their sons and the next generation and the rest of humanity after that.”
“But even that,” I said, “would get things going well toward their being more protective of the city and of one another, because I understand pretty well what you mean. And that’s that it will carry on the way an oral tradition leads it. But once we’ve armed these offspring of the earth, let’s bring them forth with their rulers in the lead. And when they’ve come, let them look for the most beautifully situated spot in the city to set up a military camp, from which they [415E] could most effectively restrain the people in the city if any of them were unwilling to obey the laws, and defend against those outside it if any enemy, like a wolf, were to attack the flock. And when they’ve set up the camp and offered sacrifices to those whom they ought, let them make places to sleep. Or how should it be?”
“That way,” he said.
“The sort of places that would be adequate to give shelter in both winter and summer?”
“Of course,” he said, “because you seem to be talking about dwellings.”
“Yes,” I said, “dwellings for soldiers anyway, but not for moneymakers.”
[416A] “How do you mean the one differs from the other?” he said.
“I’ll try to tell you,” I said. “Because it’s surely the most dreadful and shameful of all things for a shepherd to raise dogs as auxiliaries for the flock that are of the sort and brought up in such a way that, from intemperance or hunger or some bad habit of another kind, the dogs themselves try to do harm to the sheep, acting like wolves instead of dogs.”
“It is dreadful,” he said; “how could it be anything else?”
[416B] “Then isn’t there a need to be on guard in every way so that our auxiliaries won’t do that sort of thing to the citizens, since they’re the stronger, becoming like savage masters instead of benevolent allies?”
“There’s a need to be on guard,” he said.
“And wouldn’t they have been provided with the most effective safeguard if they’ve been beautifully educated in their very being?”
“But surely they have been,” he said.
And I said, “That’s not something that deserves to be asserted with certainty, Glaucon my friend. What we were saying just now does deserve to be, though, that they need [416C] to get the right education, whatever it is, if they’re going to what’s most important for being tame, both toward themselves and toward those who are guarded by them.”
“That’s certainly right,” he said.
“Now in addition to this education, any sensible person would claim that they need to be provided with dwellings and other property of that sort, whatever it takes for them not to be stopped from being [416D] the best possible guardians and not to be tempted to do harm to the citizens.”
“And he’ll be claiming something true.”
“Then see whether they need to live and be housed in some such way as this,” I said, “if they’re going to be that sort of people. First, no private property that’s not completely necessary is to be possessed by any of them. Next, there’s to be no house or treasure room belonging to any of them except one that everyone who wants to will enter. Provisions, of all things men need who are moderate and courageous fighters [416E] in war, they’re to receive at fixed times from the other citizens as recompense55 for guarding them, of such an amount that they have nothing over and nothing lacking each year. Going regularly to public dining halls, they’re to live in common like soldiers in a camp. About gold and silver, it’s to be said to them that they have the divine sort from gods always in their souls, and have no further need of the human sort, and that it’s not pious to defile their possession of the former by mixing with it the possession of mortal [417A] gold, because many impious deeds have occurred over the currency most people use, while the sort they have with them is uncorrupted. And for them alone of those in the city, it’s not lawful to handle or touch gold and silver, or even to go under the same roof with them, or wear them as ornaments, or drink out of silver or gold cups.
“And in this way they’d keep themselves and the city safe. But whenever they possess private land and houses and currency, they’ll be heads of households and farm owners instead of guardians, and they’ll [417B] become hostile masters instead of allies of the other citizens, and spend their whole lives hating and being hated, and plotting and being plotted against, fearing those inside the city instead of and much more than the enemies outside it, as they and the rest of the city race onward, already very close to destruction.
“For all these reasons, then,” I said, “we’ll declare that’s the way the guardians need to be provided for in the matter of housing and the rest, and we’ll set these things down as laws, won’t we?”
“Very much so,” said Glaucon.