Book 3

SOCRATES’ NARRATION CONTINUES: (386a) SOCRATES: Where the gods are concerned, then, it seems that those are the sorts of stories the future guardians should and should not hear from childhood on, if they are to honor the gods and their parents, and not treat lightly their friendship with one another.

ADEIMANTUS: I am sure we are right about that.

SOCRATES: What about if they are to be courageous? Shouldn’t they be told stories that will make them least likely to fear death? Or do you think (b) that anyone ever becomes courageous if he has that fear in his heart?

ADEIMANTUS: No, by Zeus, I do not.

SOCRATES: What about if someone believes that Hades exists and is full of terrible things? Can anyone with that fear be unafraid of death and prefer it to defeat in battle and slavery?

ADEIMANTUS: Not at all.

SOCRATES: Then we must also supervise those who try to tell such stories, it seems, and ask them not to disparage the life in Hades in this undiscrimi- nating way, but to speak well of it, since what they now tell us is neither (c) true nor beneficial to future warriors.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, we must.

SOCRATES: We will start with the following lines, then, and expunge everything like them: “I would rather labor on earth in another man’s ser- vice, a man who is landless, with little to live on, than be king over all the dead”;1 and this: “He feared that his home should be revealed to mortals and immortals as dreadful, dank, and hated even by the gods;”2 and: “Alas, (d) there survives in the Halls of Hades a soul, a mere phantasm, with its wits completely gone”;3 and this: “He alone can think others to be flitting [1]: Odyssey 11.489–91. Odysseus is being addressed by Achilles in Hades.

[2]: Iliad 20.64–5. Hades is afraid that the earth will split open and reveal what his home is like.

[3]: Iliad 23.103–4.Achilles speaks these lines as the soul of the dead Patroclus leaves for Hades.

shadows”;4 and: “The soul, leaving his limbs, made its way to Hades, lamenting its fate, leaving manhood and youth behind”;5 and this: “His (387a) soul went below the earth like smoke, screeching as it went”;6 and:

As when bats in an awful cave Fly around screeching if one of them falls From the cluster on the ceiling, all clinging to one another, so their souls went screeching.7 (b) We will beg Homer and the rest of the poets not to be angry if we delete these and all similar passages—not because they are not poetic and pleasing to the masses when they hear them, but because the more poetic they are, the more they should be kept away from the ears of children and men who are to be free and to fear slavery more than death.

ADEIMANTUS: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Then, in addition, we must also get rid of the terrible and frightening names that occur in such passages: Cocytus, Styx,8 “those (c) below,” “the sapless ones,” and all the other names of the same pattern that supposedly make everyone who hears them shudder. Perhaps they are use- ful for other purposes, but our fear is that all that shuddering will make our guardians more emotional and soft than they ought to be.

ADEIMANTUS: And our fear is justified.

SOCRATES: Should we remove them, then?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And follow the opposite pattern in speech and poetry?

ADEIMANTUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: Shall we also remove the lamentations and pitiful speeches of (d) famous men?

ADEIMANTUS: If what we did before was necessary, so is that.

SOCRATES: Consider, though, whether we will be right to remove them or not.What we claim is that a good man won’t think that death is a terrible thing for another good one to suffer—even if the latter happens to be his friend.

[4]: Odyssey 10.493–5. Circe speaking to Odysseus about the prophet Tiresias.

[5]: Iliad 16.856–7.The words refer to Patroclus, who has just been mortally wounded by Hector.

[6]: Iliad 23.100.The soul referred to is that of Patroclus.

[7]: Odyssey 14.6–9. The souls are those of Penelope’s suitors, whom Odysseus has killed.

[8]: “Cocytus” means river of wailing or lamenting;“Styx,” river of hatred.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, we do claim that.

SOCRATES: So, he won’t mourn for him as if he had suffered a terrible fate.

ADEIMANTUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: But we also claim this: a good person is most self-sufficient when it comes to living well, and is distinguished from other people by (e) having the least need of anyone or anything else.

ADEIMANTUS: True.

SOCRATES: So it is less terrible for him than for anyone else to be deprived of a son, brother, possessions, or the like.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, much less.

SOCRATES: So, he will lament it the least and bear it the most calmly when some such misfortune overtakes him.

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: We would be right, then, to remove the lamentations of famous men.We would leave them to women (provided they are not excel- (388a) lent women) and cowardly men, so that those we say we are training to guard our land will be ashamed to do such things.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right.

SOCRATES: In addition, then, we will have to ask Homer and the other poets not to represent Achilles, who was the son of a goddess, as:

Lying now on his side, now on his back, now again On his belly; then standing up to wander distracted This way and that on the shore of the unharvested sea;9 (b) or to make him pick up ashes with both hands and pour them over his head, weeping and lamenting to the extent and in the manner Homer describes;10 or to represent Priam, a close descendant of the gods, as “begging and roll- ing around in dung, as he calls upon each of his men by name.”11 And yet more insistently than that, we will ask them at least not to make the gods (a) lament and say: “Woe is me, unfortunate that I am, wretched mother of great son.”12 But, if they do make the gods do such things, at least they must (c) not dare to represent the greatest of the gods in so unlikely a fashion as to make him say:“Alas, with my own eyes I see a man who is most dear to me being [9]: Iliad 24.3–12.

[10]: Iliad 18.23–4.

[11]: Iliad 22.414–5.

[12]: Iliad 18.54. Thetis, the mother of Achilles, is mourning his fate among the Nereids.

chased around the city, and my heart laments”;13 or “Woe is me, that Sarpe- don, who is most dear to me, should be fated to be killed by Patroclus, the son of Menoetius.”14 You see, my dear Adeimantus, if our young people lis- (d) ten seriously to these stories without ridiculing them as not worth hearing, none of them is going to consider such things to be unworthy of a mere human being like himself, or rebuke himself if it occurred to him to do or say any of them. On the contrary, without shame or perseverance, he would chant many dirges and laments at the slightest sufferings. (e) ADEIMANTUS: That’s absolutely true.

SOCRATES: But that must not happen, as our argument has shown—and we must remain persuaded by it until someone shows us a better one.

ADEIMANTUS: No, it must not.

SOCRATES: Moreover, they must not be lovers of laughter either. For whenever anyone gives in to violent laughter, a violent reaction pretty much always follows.

ADEIMANTUS: I agree.

SOCRATES: So, if someone represents worthwhile people as overcome by laughter, we must not accept it, and we will accept it even less if they repre- (389a) sent the gods in that way.

ADEIMANTUS: Much less.

SOCRATES: Then we must not accept the following sorts of sayings about the gods from Homer: “And unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods as they saw Hephaestus limping through the hall.”15 According

to your argument, they must be rejected.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, if you want to attribute it to me, but they must be (b) rejected in any case.

SOCRATES: Moreover, we have to be concerned about truth as well. For if what we said just now is correct and a lie is really useless to the gods, but useful to human beings as a form of drug, it is clear that it must be assigned to doctors, whereas private individuals must have nothing to do with it.

ADEIMANTUS: It is clear.

SOCRATES: It is appropriate for the rulers, then, if anyone, to lie because of enemies or citizens for the good of the city. But no one else may have anything to do with it. On the contrary, we will say that for a private indi- (c) vidual to lie to such rulers is as bad a mistake as for a sick person not to tell [13]: Iliad 22.168–9. Zeus is watching Hector being pursued by Achilles.

[14]: Iliad 16.433–4.

[15]: Iliad 1.599–600.

his doctor or an athlete his trainer the truth about his physical condition, or for someone not to tell the captain the things that are true about the ship and the sailors, or about how he himself or one of his fellow sailors is far- ing—indeed, it is a worse mistake.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s absolutely true. (d) SOCRATES: So, if anyone else is caught telling lies in the city—“any of the craftsmen, whether a prophet, a doctor who heals the sick, or a carpenter who works in wood”16—he will be punished for introducing a practice that is as subversive and destructive of a city as of a ship.

ADEIMANTUS: Indeed it is, at any rate, if what people do is influenced by what he says.

SOCRATES: What about temperance?17 Won’t our young people also need that?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: And aren’t the most important aspects of temperance for the majority of people, at any rate, to obey the rulers and to rule over the plea- (e) sures of drink, sex, and food for themselves?

ADEIMANTUS: That is my view, anyway.

SOCRATES: So we will claim, I imagine, that it is fine to say the sort of thing that Diomedes says in Homer:“Sit down in silence, my friend, and be persuaded by my story”;18 and what follows it: “The Achaeans went in silently, breathing valor, afraid of their commanders”;19 and anything else of that sort.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it is fine. (a) SOCRATES: But what about things like, “You drunkard, with the eyes of dog and the heart of a deer,” and what follows it?20 Are they, then, fine (390a) things to say? And what about all the other headstrong things that private individuals say to their rulers in works of prose or poetry?

ADEIMANTUS: No, they are not fine.

SOCRATES: That, I imagine, is because they are not suitable for inculcating temperance in the young people who hear them. But it would not be surpris- ing if they were found pleasant in some other context.What do you think?

[16]: Odyssey 17.384.

[18]: Iliad 4.412. Agamemnon has unfairly rebuked Diomedes for cowardice.

Diomedes’ squire protests, but Diomedes quiets him with these words. By obeying, the squire exhibits the kind of moderation that most people can come to possess.

[19]: A mix of Iliad 3.8 and 4.431.

[20]: Iliad 1.225.Achilles is insulting his commander,Agamemnon.

ADEIMANTUS: The same as you.

SOCRATES: What about making the wisest man say that the best thing of all, as it seems to him, is when “the tables are well laden with bread and (b) meat, and the wine-bearer draws wine from the mixing bowl, brings it, and pours it in the cups”?21 Do you think that hearing things like that is suitable for inculcating self-mastery in young people? Or that “death by starvation is the most pitiful fate”?22 Or about how Zeus stayed awake alone deliberat-

ing, when all the other gods and mortals were asleep, and then easily forgot (c) all his plans because of his sexual appetite, and was so overcome by the sight of Hera that he did not even want to go to their bedroom, but to possess her there on the ground, saying that his appetite for her was even greater than it was when they first made love to one another “without their par- ents’ knowledge”?23 Or what about the chaining together of Ares and Aph- rodite by Hephaestus24 for similar reasons?

ADEIMANTUS: No, by Zeus, that does not seem suitable to me.

SOCRATES: On the other hand, if there are any words or deeds of famous (d) men that express perseverance in the face of everything, surely they must be seen and heard. For example, “He struck his chest and spoke to his heart:

‘Bear up, my heart, you have suffered more shameful things than this.’”25

ADEIMANTUS: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: And we must not, of course, allow our men to be bribable with gifts or to be money-lovers. (e) ADEIMANTUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then they must not sing: “Gifts persuade gods, and gifts per- suade revered kings.”26 Nor must we praise Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, for being moderate, when he advises Achilles to take the gifts and defend the Achaeans, but not to lay aside his anger without gifts.27 Nor should we agree that Achilles himself was such a money-lover as to accept the gifts of Agamemnon, or to release a corpse when he got paid for it, but otherwise to refuse.28 (391a) ADEIMANTUS: No, it certainly is not right to praise such things.

[21]: Odyssey 9.8–10.

[22]: Odyssey 12.342. Eurylochus urges the men to slay the cattle of Helios in Odysseus’ absence.

[23]: Iliad 14.294–341.

[24]: Odyssey 8.266ff.

[25]: Odyssey 20.17–8.The speaker is Odysseus.

[26]: The source of the passage is unknown. Cf. Euripides, Medea 964.

[27]: Iliad 9.602–3.

[28]: Iliad 19.278ff., 24.594.

SOCRATES: It is only out of respect for Homer, indeed, that I hesitate to say that it is positively impious to accuse Achilles of such things, or to believe them when others say them. Or to believe that he said to Apollo:

“You have injured me, Farshooter, most deadly of the gods; And I would punish you, if only I had the power.”29 Or that he disobeyed the river—a god—and was ready to fight it.30 Or that he consecrated hair to the dead (b) Patroclus, which he had already consecrated to the other river, Sphercheius:

“To the hero, Patroclus, I give my hair to take with him.”31 We must not believe that he did that. Nor is it true that he dragged the dead Hector around the tomb of Patroclus32 or massacred the captives on his pyre.33 So we will deny these things. Nor will we allow our people to believe that (c) Achilles—the son of a goddess and of Peleus (who was himself the most temperate of men and the grandson of Zeus), and the pupil of the most wise Cheiron—was so full of inner disorder as to have two opposite diseases within him: illiberality accompanied by the love of money on the one hand, and arrogance toward gods and humans on the other.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Moreover, we will neither believe nor allow it to be said that Theseus, the son of Poseidon, and Peirithous, the son of Zeus, ever attempted those terrible rapes,34 nor that any other child of a god and hero (d) dared to do any of the terrible and impious deeds that are now falsely attributed to them. We will compel the poets either to deny that they did such things, or else to deny that they were children of the gods. But they must not say both or attempt to persuade our young people that the gods produce evils, nor that heroes are no better than humans. After all, as we (e) were saying earlier, these things are neither pious nor true. For we demon- strated, I take it, that it is impossible for the gods to produce evils.35 ADEIMANTUS: We certainly did.

SOCRATES: And they are also positively harmful to those who hear them.You see, everyone will be ready to excuse himself when he is bad, if he has been persuaded that similar things are done and were done by “close descendants of the gods, near kin of Zeus, whose ancestral altar is in the ether on Ida’s peak,” and “in whom the blood of daimons has not [29]: Iliad 22.15, 20.

[30]: Iliad 21.232ff.

[31]: Iliad 23.151–2.

[32]: Iliad 14.14–8.

[33]: Iliad 23.175.

[34]: According to some legends,Theseus and Peirithous abducted Helen and tried to abduct Persephone from Hades.

[35]: See 380b8–383c7.

weakened.”36 That is why we must put a stop to such stories; if we do (392a) not, they will produce in our young people a very casual attitude to evil.

ADEIMANTUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: What kind of stories are still left, then, about which we must determine whether or not they may be told? I mean, we have discussed how gods, heroes, daimons, and things in Hades should be portrayed.

ADEIMANTUS: We have.

SOCRATES: Then wouldn’t stories about human beings be left?

ADEIMANTUS: Obviously so.

SOCRATES: But it is not possible, my friend, to discuss them here.

ADEIMANTUS: Why not?

SOCRATES: Because what we are going say, I imagine, is that poets and prose writers get the most important things about human beings wrong. (b) They say that many unjust people are happy and many just ones wretched, that doing injustice is profitable if it escapes detection, and that justice is another’s good but one’s own loss.We will forbid them to say such things, I imagine, and order them to sing and tell the opposite. Don’t you think so?

ADEIMANTUS: No, I know so.

SOCRATES: Well, then, if you agree that what I said is correct, won’t I say to you that you have conceded the point we were investigating all along?

ADEIMANTUS: And your claim would be correct.

SOCRATES: Then we won’t come to an agreement about what stories (c) should be told about human beings until we have discovered what sort of thing justice is, and how, given its nature, it profits the one who has it, whether he is believed to be just or not.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s absolutely right.

SOCRATES: Our discussion of the content of stories is complete, then. Our next task, I take it, is to investigate their style. And then we will have com- pletely investigated both what they should say and how they should say it.

ADEIMANTUS: I don’t understand what you mean.

SOCRATES: Well, we must see that you do. Maybe this will help you to (d) grasp it better: isn’t everything said by poets and storytellers a narration of past, present, or future events?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: And don’t they proceed by narration alone, narration through imitation, or both?

[36]: Thought to be from Aeschylus’ lost play Niobe.

ADEIMANTUS: I need a still clearer understanding of that, too.

SOCRATES: What a ridiculously unclear teacher I seem to be! So, I will do (a) what incompetent speakers do: I won’t try to deal with the subject as whole. Instead, I will take up a particular example and use that to explain (e) what I mean. Tell me, do you know the beginning of the Iliad where the poet tells us that Chryses begged Agamemnon to release his daughter, that Agamemnon got angry, and that Chryses, having failed to get what he wanted, prayed to his god37 to punish the Achaeans? (393a) ADEIMANTUS: I do.

SOCRATES: You know, then, that up to the lines, “He begged all the Achaeans, but especially the commanders of the army, the two sons of Atreus,”38 the poet himself is speaking and is not trying to make us think

that the speaker is anyone but himself. After that, however, he speaks as if he himself were Chryses, and tries as hard as he can to make us think that (b) the speaker is not Homer, but the priest himself, who is an old man. And all the rest of his narration of the events in Ilium and Ithaca, and all of the Odyssey, are written in pretty much the same way.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, they are.

SOCRATES: Now, each of the speeches, as well as the material between them, is narration, isn’t it?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: But when he makes a speech as if he were someone else, won’t (c) we say that he makes his own style as much like that of the person he tells us is about to speak?

ADEIMANTUS: We certainly will.

SOCRATES: Now, to make oneself like someone else in voice or appear- ance is to imitate the person one makes oneself like, isn’t it?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: Then in a passage of that sort, it seems, he, and the rest of poets as well, produce their narration through imitation.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: But if the poet never disguised himself, his entire poem would (d) be narration without imitation.To prevent you from saying that you still do not understand, I will tell you what that would be like. If Homer said that Chryses came with a ransom for his daughter to supplicate the Achaeans, especially the kings, and if after that Homer had gone on speaking, not as if [37]: Apollo.

[38]: Iliad 1.15ff.

he had become Chryses, but still as Homer, you know that it would not be imitation but narration pure and simple. It would have gone something like this—I will speak without meter since I am not a poet: the priest came and (e) prayed that the gods would grant it to the Achaeans to capture Troy and have (a) safe return home, and he entreated them to accept the ransom and free his daughter, out of reverence for the god.39 When he had said this, the others approved of it and consented. But Agamemnon was angry and ordered him to leave and never return, or else his priestly wand and the wreaths of the god would not protect him. He said that the priest’s daughter would grow old in Argos by his side sooner than be freed. He ordered Chryses to leave and not make him angry if he wanted to get home safely.When the old man (394a) heard this, he was frightened and went off in silence. And once he had left the camp, he prayed at length to Apollo, invoking the cult names of the god, reminding him of his past gifts, and asking to be repaid for any that had found favor with him, whether they were temples he had built or victims he had sacrificed. He prayed that, in return for these things, the arrows of the god would make the Achaeans pay for his tears.That, comrade, is how we (b) get pure narration without any imitation.

ADEIMANTUS: I understand.

SOCRATES: Also understand, then, that the opposite occurs when one omits the words between the speeches and leaves the speeches on their own.

ADEIMANTUS: I understand that, too; it is what happens in tragedies, for example.

SOCRATES: You have got it absolutely right. And now I think I can make clear to you what I could not before. One sort of poetry and storytelling (c) employs only imitation—tragedy, as you said, and comedy. Another sort, which you find primarily in dithyrambs,40 employs only narration by the poet himself. A third sort, which uses both, is what we find in epic poetry and many other places. Do you follow me?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, now I understand what you meant.

SOCRATES: And before that, as you remember, we said that we had already dealt with content, but that we had yet to investigate style.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, I remember. (d) SOCRATES: What I meant, then, was just this: we need to come to an agreement about whether to allow our poets to narrate as imitators, or as imitators of some things, but not others—and what sorts of things these are; or not to allow them to imitate at all.

[39]: Apollo as at 393a1 and 394a3.

[40]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. dithyramb.

ADEIMANTUS: I imagine that you are considering whether we will admit tragedy and comedy into our city or not.

SOCRATES: Perhaps so, but it may be an even wider question than that. I really do not know yet. But wherever the wind of argument blows us, so to speak, that is where we must go.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, well put.

SOCRATES: What I want you to consider, then, Adeimantus, is whether (e) our guardians should be imitators or not. Or does the answer follow from what we have said already—namely, that whereas each individual can prac- tice one pursuit well, he cannot practice many well, and if he tried to do this and dabbled in many things, he would surely fail to achieve distinction in all of them?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.Why wouldn’t it?

SOCRATES: Then doesn’t the same principle also apply to imitation— namely, that a single individual cannot imitate many things as well as he can imitate one?

ADEIMANTUS: No, he cannot.

SOCRATES: Then he will hardly be able to practice any pursuit worth talk- (395a) ing about while at the same time imitating lots of things and being an imi- tator. For, as you know, even when two sorts of imitation are thought to be closely akin, the same people are not able to practice both of them well simultaneously. The writing of tragedy and comedy is an example. Didn’t you just call both of these imitations?

ADEIMANTUS: I did, and you are quite right; the same people cannot do both.

SOCRATES: Nor can they be both rhapsodes and actors simultaneously.

ADEIMANTUS: True.

SOCRATES: Indeed, the same men cannot be used as both tragic and comic (b) actors.And all these are imitations, aren’t they?

ADEIMANTUS: They are.

SOCRATES: And human nature, Adeimantus, seems to me to be minted in even smaller coins than this, so that an individual can neither imitate many things well nor perform well the actions themselves of which those imita- tions are likenesses.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s absolutely true.

SOCRATES: So, if we are to preserve our first argument, that our guardians must be kept away from all other crafts so as to be the most exact craftsmen (c) of the city’s freedom, and practice nothing at all except what contributes to this, then they must neither do nor imitate anything else. But if they imitate

anything, they must imitate right from childhood what is appropriate for them—that is to say, people who are courageous, temperate, pious, free, and everything of that sort. On the other hand, they must not be clever at (a) doing or imitating illiberal or shameful actions, so that they won’t acquire taste for the real thing from imitating it. Or haven’t you noticed that imita- (d) tions, if they are practiced much past youth, get established in the habits and nature of body, tones of voice, and mind?

ADEIMANTUS: I have indeed.

SOCRATES: Since those we claim to care about are men, then, and men who must become good, we won’t allow them to imitate a woman, young or old, as she abuses her husband, quarrels with the gods, brags because she thinks herself happy, or suffers misfortune and is possessed by sorrows and (e) lamentations—and still less a woman who is ill, passionately in love, or in labor.

ADEIMANTUS: Absolutely not.

SOCRATES: Nor must they imitate either male or female slaves doing ser- vile actions.

ADEIMANTUS: No, they must not.

SOCRATES: Nor cowardly, bad men, it seems, or those whose actions are the opposite of what we described just now—men who libel and ridicule each other, and use shameful language when drunk or even when sober, or who wrong themselves and others by word or deed in the other ways that (396a) are typical of such people. And they must not get into the habit, I take it, of acting or talking like madmen.They must know, of course, about mad and evil men and women, but they must not do or imitate anything they do.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s absolutely true.

SOCRATES: What about metalworkers or other craftsmen, or those who (b) row in triremes, or their coxswains, or the like—should they imitate them?

ADEIMANTUS: No, they should not, since they are not allowed even to pay any mind to those pursuits.

SOCRATES: And what about neighing horses, bellowing bulls, roaring riv- ers, the crashing sea, thunder, or the like—will they imitate them?

ADEIMANTUS: No, they have already been forbidden to be mad or to imi- tate madmen.

SOCRATES: So you are saying, if I understand you, that there is one kind of style and narration that a really good and fine person would use whenever he had to say something, and another kind, unlike that one, which his (c) opposite by nature and education would always favor, and in which he would narrate his story.

ADEIMANTUS: What kinds are they?

SOCRATES: In my view, when a moderate man comes upon the words or actions of a good man in the course of a narration, he will be willing to report them as if he were that man himself, and he won’t be ashamed of that sort of imitation. He will be most willing to imitate the good man when he is (d) acting in a faultless and intelligent manner, but less willing and more reluctant to do so when he is upset by disease, passion, drunkenness, or some other misfortune.When he comes upon a character who is beneath him, however, he will be unwilling to make himself resemble this inferior character in any serious way—except perhaps for a brief period in which he is doing some- thing good. On the contrary, he will be ashamed to do something like that, both because he is unpracticed in the imitation of such people, and also because he cannot stand to shape and mold himself on an inferior pattern. In (e) his mind he despises that, except when it is for the sake of amusement.

ADEIMANTUS: Probably so.

SOCRATES: Won’t he use the sorts of narration, then, that we described in dealing with the Homeric epics a moment ago? And though his style of speaking will involve both imitation and the other sort of narration, won’t imitation play a small part even in a long story? Or am I talking nonsense?

ADEIMANTUS: Not at all.That must indeed be the pattern followed by that sort of speaker.

SOCRATES: As for the other sort of speaker, the more inferior he is, the (397a) more willing he will be to narrate anything and to consider nothing beneath him. Hence he will undertake to imitate, before a large audience and in a serious way, all the things we just mentioned: thunder and the sounds of winds, hail, axles, and pulleys; trumpets, flutes, pipes, and all the other instruments; and even the cries of dogs, sheep, and birds. And his (b) style will consist entirely of imitation in voice and gesture, won’t it, with possibly a small bit of plain narration thrown in?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that must be so, too.

SOCRATES: Well, then, that is what I meant when I said that there are two kinds of style.

ADEIMANTUS: And you were right; there are.

SOCRATES: Now, one of them involves little variation.41 Hence if an appropriate harmony and rhythm are provided for this style, won’t anyone who speaks in it correctly come close to speaking in a single harmony and, what is more, in a rhythm of pretty much the same sort, since the variations (c) involved in it are slight?

[41]: Metabolê: variation in general, but also a technical term in music for the transition from one harmony to another.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that’s precisely what he will do.

SOCRATES: What about the other kind of style? Won’t it need the oppo- site: namely, every harmony and every rhythm, if it, too, is going to be spo- ken in properly, since it is multifarious in the forms of its variations?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that’s very much what it is like.

SOCRATES: Now, doesn’t every poet and speaker adopt a style that fits one or the other of these patterns, or a mixture of both?

ADEIMANTUS: Necessarily.

SOCRATES: What are we to do, then? Shall we admit all of these into our (d) city, or one of the pure sorts, or the mixed one?

ADEIMANTUS: If my view prevails, we will admit only the pure imitator of the good person.

SOCRATES: And yet, Adeimantus, the mixed style is pleasing. And the one that is most pleasing to children, their tutors, and the vast majority of peo- ple is the opposite of the one you chose.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it is the most pleasing.

SOCRATES: But perhaps you would say that it does not harmonize with (e) our constitution, because there is no twofold or manifold man among us, since each does only one job.

ADEIMANTUS: Indeed, it does not harmonize with it.

SOCRATES: And isn’t that the reason that it is only in a city like ours that we will find a shoemaker who is a shoemaker, not a ship’s captain who also makes shoes; and a farmer who is a farmer, not a juror who also farms; and (a) soldier who is a soldier, not a moneymaker who also soldiers, and so on?

ADEIMANTUS: True, it is.

SOCRATES: Suppose, then, that a man whose wisdom enabled him to (398a) become multifarious and imitate everything were to arrive in person in our city and want to give a performance of his poems. It seems that we would bow down before him as someone holy, amazing, and pleasing. But we would tell him that there is no man like him in our city, and that it is not in accord with divine law for there to be one.Then we would anoint his head with perfumes, crown him with a woolen wreath,42 and send him away to another city. But, for our own benefit, we would employ a more austere (b) and less pleasant poet and storyteller ourselves—one who would imitate the speech of a good person and make his stories fit the patterns we laid down at the beginning, when we undertook to educate our soldiers.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that is certainly what we would do, if it were up to us.

[42]: As was traditionally done to statues of the gods.

SOCRATES: And now, my friend, it looks to me as though we have com- pleted our discussion of the branch of musical training that deals with speech and stories. After all, we have discussed both what is to be said and how it is to be said.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it seems that way to me, too.

SOCRATES: Wouldn’t what is left for us to discuss next, then, be lyric odes (c) and songs?

ADEIMANTUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And couldn’t anyone discover by now what to say about what they must be like, if indeed it is going to be concordant with what has already been said?

And Glaucon laughed and said: I am afraid, Socrates, that “anyone” does not include me.You see, it is not sufficiently clear to me at the moment what we are to say, though I have my suspicions. (a) SOCRATES: Nonetheless, you are sufficiently clear about this: first, that (d) song consists of three elements—speech, harmony, and rhythm.

GLAUCON: Yes, I do know that, at least.

SOCRATES: Now, as far as speech is concerned, at any rate, it is no differ- ent, is it, from speech that is not part of a song, in that it must still be spo- ken in conformity to the patterns we established just now?

GLAUCON: True.

SOCRATES: Further, the harmony and rhythm must fit the speech.

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: But we said that there is no longer a need for dirges and lam- entations in words.43 GLAUCON: No, there is not.

SOCRATES: What are the lamenting harmonies, then? You tell me; you are (e) musical.

GLAUCON: The mixo-Lydian, the syntono-Lydian, and some others of that sort.

SOCRATES: Shouldn’t we exclude them, then? After all, they are even use- less for helping women to be as good as they should be, let alone men.

GLAUCON: We certainly should. [43]: 387d–388e.

SOCRATES: Now, surely drunkenness is also entirely inappropriate for our guardians, and softness and idleness as well.

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: What, then, are the soft harmonies, and the ones suitable for drinking parties?

GLAUCON: There are some Ionian ones that are called “relaxed,” and also some Lydian ones.

SOCRATES: Could you use any of them, my friend, on men who are (399a) warriors?

GLAUCON: No, never. So it looks as though you have got the Dorian and Phrygian left.

SOCRATES: I do not know the harmonies, so just leave me that harmony that would appropriately imitate the vocal sounds and tones44 of a coura- geous person engaged in battle or in other work that he is forced to do, and who—even when he fails and faces wounds or death or some other misfor- (b) tune—always grapples with what chances to occur, in a disciplined and res- olute way. And also leave me another harmony for when he is engaged in peaceful enterprises, or in those he is not forced to do but does willingly; (a) or for when he is trying to persuade someone of something, or entreating god though prayer, or a human being through instruction and advice; or for when he is doing the opposite—patiently listening to someone else, who is entreating or instructing him, or trying to change his mind through persuasion. Leave me the harmony that will imitate him, when he does not behave arrogantly when these things turn out as he intends; but, on the contrary, is temperate and moderate in all these enterprises, and satisfied (c) with their outcomes. Leave me these two harmonies, then—the forced and the willing—that will best imitate the voices of temperate and courageous men in good fortune and in bad.

GLAUCON: You are asking to be left with the very ones I just mentioned.

SOCRATES: Well, then, we will have no need for multi-stringed or poly- harmonic instruments to accompany our odes and songs.

GLAUCON: No, it seems to me we won’t.

SOCRATES: Then we won’t maintain craftsmen who make triangular lutes, (d) harps, and all other such multi-stringed and polyharmonic instruments.

GLAUCON: Apparently not. (a) [44]: Phthongos, prosôdia: phthongos is a human voice, an animal cry, or more generally sound of some sort; prosôdia is the tone or accent of a syllable, or a song accompanied by music.

SOCRATES: What about flute-makers and flute players? Will you allow them into the city? Or isn’t the flute the most multi-stringed of all?45 And aren’t polyharmonic instruments all imitations of it?

GLAUCON: Clearly, they are.

SOCRATES: You have the lyre and the cithara left, then, as useful in our city; and in the countryside, by contrast, there would be a sort of pipe for the herdsman to play.

GLAUCON: That is what our argument suggests, anyway.

SOCRATES: Well we are certainly not doing anything new, my friend, in preferring Apollo and his instruments to Marsyas and his.46 (e) GLAUCON: No, by Zeus, I suppose we aren’t.

SOCRATES: And, by the dog,47 we have certainly been unwittingly re- purifying the city we described as luxurious a while ago.

GLAUCON: That just shows how temperate we are.

SOCRATES: Then let’s complete the purification. Now, the next topic after harmonies is the discussion of rhythms.We should not chase after complex- ity or multifariousness in the basic elements.48 On the contrary, we should try to discover the rhythms of a life that is ordered and courageous, and then adapt the metrical foot and the melody to the speech characteristic of (400a) it, not the speech to them.What rhythms these would be is for you to say, just as you did in the case of the harmonies.

GLAUCON: No, by Zeus, I cannot tell you that. However, I can tell you from observation that there are three kinds of metrical feet49 out of which the others are constructed, just as there are four, in the case of voices, from which come all the harmonies.50 But I cannot tell you which sort imitates which sort of life.

SOCRATES: Well, then, we will also have to consult with Damon, on this (b) point, and ask him which metrical feet suit illiberality, arrogance, madness, [45]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. flute. It is characterized as multi-stringed because of the number of different notes it is capable of producing.

[46]: After Athena had invented the flute, she discarded it because playing it distorted her features. It was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was foolish enough to chal- lenge Apollo (inventor of the lyre) to a musical contest. He was defeated, and Apollo flayed him alive. Satyrs were bestial in their behavior and desires—especially their sexual desires.

[47]: Nê ton kuna: probably the dog-headed Egyptian god Anubis, as at Gorgias 428b5.

[48]: Rhythm is poetic meter, and the elements are the metrical feet.

[49]: Probably those in which the foot is divided in the ratio of: (1) 2:2—e.g., the dactyl (¯ ˘ ˘) or the spondee (¯ ¯); (2) 3:2—e.g., the paeon (˘ ˘ ˘ ¯); (3) 1:2 or 2:1—e.g., the iamb (˘ ¯) or the trochee (¯ ˘).

[50]: The precise reference is unclear.

and the other vices, and which their opposites. I think I have heard him using the unclear terms “warlike,” “complex,” “fingerlike,”51 and “heroic”

to describe one foot, which he arranged, I do not know how, to be equal up and down in the interchange of long and short.52 And I think he called one foot an iamb and another a trochee, and assigned long and short quan- (c) tities to them. In the case of some of these, I think he approved or disap- proved of the tempo of the foot as much as of the rhythm itself, or of some combination of the two—I cannot tell you which. But, as I said, we will leave these things to Damon, since to decide them would take a long dis- cussion. Or do you think we should try it?

GLAUCON: No, by Zeus, I do not.

SOCRATES: But you are able to decide this, at least, aren’t you: that grace goes along with good rhythm and lack of grace with bad rhythm?

GLAUCON: Of course. (d) SOCRATES: Furthermore, good rhythm goes along with fine speaking and is similar to it, while bad rhythm goes along with the opposite sort, and the same goes for harmony and disharmony; since, as we said just now, rhythm and harmony must conform to speech, and not vice versa.

GLAUCON: Yes, they certainly must conform to speech.

SOCRATES: And what about the style of speaking and what is said? Don’t they go along with the character of the speaker’s soul?

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: And don’t all the rest go along with the style of speaking?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Fine speech, then, as well as harmony, grace, and rhythm, go (a) along with naiveté. I do not mean the stupidity for which naiveté53 is (e) euphemism, but the quality a mind has when it is equipped with a truly good and fine character.

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: And mustn’t our young people try to achieve these on every occasion, if they are going to do the job that is really theirs?

[51]: Reading daktulikÒn with Jackson and Waterfield.

[52]: The foot being described is probably the dactyl (¯ ˘ ˘): it is warlike and heroic, because Greek heroic poetry was written in dactylic hexameter; complex, because it consists of a long syllable and two short ones; equal up and down in the interchange of long and short, because a long syllable is equal in length to two short ones; and fingerlike, because the first joint on a finger is roughly equal in length to the other two.

[53]: See 348c12 note.

GLAUCON: Yes, they must indeed.

SOCRATES: Now, surely painting and all the crafts similar to it are full of (401a) these qualities—weaving is full of them, as are embroidery, architecture, and likewise the manufacture of implements generally; and so, furthermore, is the nature of bodies and that of the other things that grow. For in all these there is grace or the lack of it.And lack of grace, bad rhythm, and dis- harmony are akin to bad speech and bad character, while their opposites are akin to and imitate their opposite—a character that is temperate and good.

GLAUCON: Absolutely. (b) SOCRATES: Is it only poets we have to supervise, then, compelling them either to embody the image of a good character in their poems or else not to practice their craft among us? Or mustn’t we also supervise all the other craftsmen, and forbid them to represent a character that is bad, intemperate, illiberal, and graceless, in their images of living beings, in their buildings, or in any of the other products of their craft? And mustn’t the one who finds this impossible be prevented from practicing in our city, so that our guard- (c) ians will not be brought up on images of evil as in a meadow of bad grass, where they crop and graze every day from all that surrounds them until, lit- tle by little, they unwittingly accumulate a large amount of evil in their souls? Instead, mustn’t we look for craftsmen who are naturally capable of pursuing what is fine and graceful in their work, so that our young people will live in a healthy place and be benefited on all sides as the influence exerted by those fine works affects their eyes and ears like a healthy breeze from wholesome regions, and imperceptibly guides them from earliest (d) childhood into being similar to, friendly toward, and concordant with the beauty of reason?

GLAUCON: Yes, that would be by far the best education for them.

SOCRATES: Then aren’t these the reasons, Glaucon, that musical training is most important? First, because rhythm and harmony permeate the inner- most element of the soul, affect it more powerfully than anything else, and bring it grace, such education makes one graceful if one is properly trained, (e) and the opposite if one is not. Second, because anyone who has been prop- erly trained will quickly notice if something has been omitted from a thing, or if that thing has not been well crafted or well grown. And so, since he feels distaste correctly, he will praise fine things, be pleased by them, take them into his soul, and, through being nourished by them, become fine (402a) and good. What is ugly or shameful, on the other hand, he will correctly condemn and hate while he is still young, before he is able to grasp the rea- son. And, because he has been so trained, he will welcome the reason when it comes and recognize it easily because of its kinship with himself.

GLAUCON: Yes, it seems to me that these are the goals of musical training.

SOCRATES: It is like learning to read, then. We became adequately profi- cient only when the few letters that there are did not escape us in any of the different words in which they are scattered about; and when we did not dis- regard them, either in a small word or a big one, as if they were not worth (b) noticing; but tried hard to distinguish them wherever they occur, knowing that we would not be competent readers until we knew our letters.

GLAUCON: True.

SOCRATES: And isn’t it also true that if there are images of letters reflected in water or mirrors, we won’t know them until we know the letters them- selves, for both abilities are parts of the same craft and discipline?

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Then, by the gods, aren’t I right in saying that neither we (c) nor the guardians we claim to be educating will be musically trained until we know the different forms of temperance, courage, generosity, high- mindedness, and all their kindred, and their opposites, too, which are car- ried around everywhere; and see them in the things in which they are, both themselves and their images; and do not disregard them, either in small things or in large, but accept that the knowledge of both belongs to the same craft and discipline?

GLAUCON: Yes, that necessarily follows. (d) SOCRATES: Then, if the fine habits in someone’s soul and those in his physical form agree and are in concord with one another, so that both share the same pattern, wouldn’t that be the most beautiful sight for anyone capa- ble of seeing it?

GLAUCON: By far.

SOCRATES: And surely the most beautiful is also the most loveable, isn’t it?

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: A really musical person, then, would passionately love people who are most like that. But a disharmonious person, he would not passion- ately love.

GLAUCON: No, he would not—at least, not if the defect were in the soul.

If it were only in the body, however, he would put up with it and still be (e) willing to embrace the boy who had it.

SOCRATES: I understand that you love or have loved such a boy yourself, and I agree with you. But tell me this: does excessive pleasure share any- thing in common with temperance?

GLAUCON: How can it? It surely drives one no less mad than pain does.

SOCRATES: What about with any other virtue?

(403a) GLAUCON: Never.

SOCRATES: Then, what about with arrogance and intemperance?

GLAUCON: Yes, with them most of all.

SOCRATES: Can you think of any pleasure that is greater or keener than sexual pleasure?

GLAUCON: No, I cannot—or of a more insane one either.

SOCRATES: But isn’t the right sort of passion a naturally moderate and musically educated passion for order and beauty?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then nothing insane and nothing akin to dissoluteness can be involved in the right love?

GLAUCON: No, they cannot. (b) SOCRATES: Then sexual pleasure must not be involved, must it, and the lover and the boy who passionately love and are loved in the right way must have no share in it?

GLAUCON: No, by Zeus, Socrates, it must not be involved.

SOCRATES: It seems, then, that you will lay it down as a law in the city we are founding that a lover—if he can persuade his boyfriend to let him— may kiss him, be with him, and touch him, as a father would a son, for the sake of beautiful things. But in all other respects, his association with the (c) one he cares about must never seem to go any further than this. Otherwise, he will be reproached as untrained in music, and as lacking in appreciation for beautiful things.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Do you agree, then, that our account of musical training has come to an end? At any rate, it ought to end where it has ended; for surely training in the musical crafts ought to end in a passion for beauty.

GLAUCON: I agree.

SOCRATES: Now, after musical training, our young people must be given physical training.

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: And in this, too, they must have a careful training, which starts in childhood and continues throughout life. It would, I believe, be some- (d) thing like this—but you should consider what you think, too.You see, I, for my part, do not believe that a healthy body, by means of its own virtue, (a) makes the soul good. On the contrary, I believe that the opposite is true: good soul, by means of its own virtue, makes the body as good as possible.

What do you think?

GLAUCON: I think so, too.

SOCRATES: Then if we give adequate care to the mind, entrust it with the detailed supervision of the body, and content ourselves with indicating the general patterns to be followed rather than going on at great length, (e) wouldn’t we be proceeding in the right way?

GLAUCON: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: Now, we said that our prospective guardians must avoid drunkenness.54 For surely a guardian is the last person who should get so drunk that he does not know where on earth he is.

GLAUCON: Yes, it would be ridiculous for a guardian to need a guardian himself!

SOCRATES: What about food? These men are athletes in the greatest con- test, aren’t they?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then would the regimen of ordinary, trained athletes be suit- (404a) able for them?

GLAUCON: Maybe.

SOCRATES: But it seems to be a soporific sort of regimen and unreliable as regards health. Or haven’t you noticed that these athletes sleep their lives away, and that if they deviate even a little from their orderly regimen, they become seriously and violently ill?

GLAUCON: I have noticed that.

SOCRATES: Then we need a more refined sort of training for our warrior- athletes, since they must be like sleepless hounds, as it were, who have the keenest possible sight and hearing, and whose health is not so precarious that it cannot sustain the frequent changes of water and diet generally, and (b) the heat waves and winter storms typical of war.

GLAUCON: I agree.

SOCRATES: Wouldn’t the best physical training, then, be akin to the simple musical training we described a moment ago?

GLAUCON: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean a simple and good physical training, and one that is especially adapted to the conditions of war.

GLAUCON: In what way?

SOCRATES: You could learn that even from Homer. For you know that when his heroes are at war, he does not portray them banqueting on [54]: 398e6.

fish55—even though they are by the sea in the Hellespont—or boiled meat, (c) but roasted meat only, which is the sort most easily available to soldiers. For it is pretty much always easier to use an open fire than to carry pots and pans around everywhere.

GLAUCON: Quite right.

SOCRATES: Nor, I believe, does Homer mention rich sauces anywhere. In fact, isn’t everyone else who is in training also aware that if he is planning to stay in good physical condition, he must avoid such things altogether?

GLAUCON: Yes, and they are certainly right to be aware of it and to avoid them.

SOCRATES: If you think they are right to do that, my dear Glaucon, you (d) apparently do not approve of Syracusan cuisine or complex Sicilian relishes.

GLAUCON: I suppose not.

SOCRATES: Then you also object to men having a Corinthian girlfriend, if they are planning to be in good physical condition.56 GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: And also to their enjoying the reputed delights of Attic pastries?

GLAUCON: I would have to.

SOCRATES: And the reason for that, I take it, is that we would be right to compare this sort of diet, and this lifestyle, to the polyharmonic songs and (e) lyric odes that make use of every sort of rhythm.

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: There complexity engendered intemperance, didn’t it, and here it engenders illness; whereas simplicity in musical training engenders temperance in the soul, and in physical training health in the body?

GLAUCON: That’s absolutely true. (405a) SOCRATES: And as intemperance and disease breed in a city, aren’t many law courts and surgeries opened? And don’t the legal and medical profes- sions give themselves airs when even free men in large numbers take them very seriously?

GLAUCON: How could it be otherwise? (a) SOCRATES: Could you find better evidence that a city’s education is in bad and shameful state than when eminent doctors and lawyers are needed, not only by inferior people and handicraftsmen, but by those who claim to [55]: Fish was a luxury item in Plato’s Athens. See James Davidson, Courtesans and Fish- cakes:The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (NewYork: St. Martin’s, 1998).

[56]: Corinthian prostitutes enjoyed an international reputation in the Classical period.

have been brought up in the manner of free men? Indeed, don’t you think (b) it is shameful and strong evidence of lack of education to be forced to make use of a justice imposed by others, as if they were one’s masters and judges, because one lacks such qualities oneself?

GLAUCON: That is the most shameful thing of all.

SOCRATES: Do you really think so? Isn’t it even more shameful not just to spend a good part of one’s life in court defending oneself and prosecuting someone else, but to be so vulgar that one is persuaded to take pride in this and regard oneself as amazingly clever at doing injustice, and as so accom- (c) plished at every trick and turn that one can wiggle through any loophole, and avoid punishment—and to do all that for the sake of little worthless things, and because one is ignorant of how much better and finer it is to arrange one’s own life so that one won’t need to find a judge57 who is asleep?

GLAUCON: Yes, that is even more shameful.

SOCRATES: What about needing the craft of medicine for something besides wounds or some seasonal illnesses? What about needing it because (d) idleness and the regimen we described has filled one full of gasses and phlegm, like a stagnant swamp, so that sophisticated Asclepiad doctors are forced to come up with names like “flatulence” and “catarrh” to describe one’s diseases? Don’t you think that is shameful?

GLAUCON: Yes, it is; and those truly are strange new names for diseases.

SOCRATES: And of a sort that I do not imagine even existed in the time of (e) Asclepius himself. My evidence for this is that his sons at Troy did not crit- icize the woman who treated the wounded Eurypylus with Pramneian wine that had lots of barley meal and grated cheese sprinkled on it, even (406a) though such treatment is now thought to cause inflammation. Moreover, they did not criticize Patroclus, who prescribed the treatment.58 GLAUCON: Yet, surely it was a strange drink for someone in that condition.

SOCRATES: Not if you recall that the sort of modern medicine that cod- dles the disease was not used by the Asclepiads before the time of Herodi- (a) cus. Herodicus was a physical trainer who became ill and, through combination of physical training and medicine, tormented first and fore- (b) most himself, and then lots of other people as well.

GLAUCON: How did he do that?

SOCRATES: By making his death a lengthy process.You see, although he was always tending his illness, he was not able to cure it, since it was terminal.

[57]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. judge.

[58]: At Iliad 11.580ff. Eurypylus is wounded, but not treated in this way (see 11.828–36).

However, Machaon, the son of Asclepius, does receive this treatment at 11.624–50.

And so he spent his life under medical treatment, with no free time for any- thing else whatsoever. He suffered torments if he departed even a little from his accustomed regimen; but, thanks to his wisdom, he struggled against death and reached old age.

GLAUCON: A fine reward for his craft that was!

SOCRATES: And appropriate for someone who did not know that it was (c) not because of ignorance or inexperience of this kind of medicine that Asclepius failed to teach it to his sons, but because he knew that everyone in a well-regulated city has his own work to do, and that no one has the time to be ill and under treatment all his life. We see how ridiculous this would be in the case of craftsmen, but we do not see it in the case of those who are supposedly happy—the rich.

GLAUCON: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: When a carpenter is ill, he expects to get a drug from his doc- (d) tor that will make him throw up what is making him sick or evacuate it through his bowels; or to get rid of his disease through surgery or cautery.

If anyone prescribes a lengthy regimen for him and tells him that he should rest with his head bandaged and so on, he quickly replies that he has no time to be ill, and that it is not profitable for him to live like that, always (e) minding his illness and neglecting the work at hand. After that, he says goodbye to his doctor, resumes his usual regimen, lives doing his own job, and recovers his health; alternatively, if his body cannot withstand the ill- ness, he dies and escapes his troubles.

GLAUCON: That does seem to be the correct way for someone like that to use the craft of medicine.

SOCRATES: Isn’t that because he had a job to do, and that if he could not (407a) do it, it would not profit him to go on living?

GLAUCON: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But a rich person, it is said, has no job assigned to him of the sort that would make his life not worth living if he had to keep away from it.

GLAUCON: So it is said, at least.

SOCRATES: What, have you not heard the saying of Phocylides that once one has the means of life, one must practice virtue?59 GLAUCON: And even earlier, in my view.

SOCRATES: Let’s not quarrel with him about that. But let’s try to find out for ourselves whether this virtue is something a rich person must practice, and if his life is not worth living if he does not practice it; or whether [59]: Phocylides of Miletus was a mid-sixth–century elegiac and hexameter poet best known for his epigrams.

(b) nursing an illness, while an obstacle to putting your mind to carpentry and other crafts, is no obstacle whatever to taking Phocylides’ advice.

GLAUCON: But, by Zeus, it is: excessive care of the body that goes beyond (a) simple physical training is pretty much the biggest obstacle of all. For it’s nuisance in household management, in military service, and even in seden- tary political office.

SOCRATES: And most important of all, surely, is that it makes any sort of (c) learning, thought, or private meditation difficult, by forever causing imagi- nary headaches or dizziness and accusing philosophy of causing them. Hence, wherever this sort of virtue is practiced and submitted to philosophical scru- tiny, excessive care of the body hinders it. For it is constantly making you imagine that you are ill and never lets you stop agonizing about your body.

GLAUCON: Yes, probably so.

SOCRATES: Then won’t we say that Asclepius knew this, too, and that he invented the craft of medicine for people whose bodies are healthy in (d) nature and habit, but have some specific disease in them? That is the type of person and condition for which he invented it. He rid them of their disease by means of drugs or surgery, and then prescribed their normal regimen, so that affairs of politics would not be harmed. However, he did not attempt to prescribe regimens for those whose bodies were riddled with disease, so that by drawing off a little here and pouring in a little there, he could make their life a prolonged misery and enable them to produce offspring in all probability like themselves. He did not think that he should treat someone who could not live a normal life, since such a person would profit neither (e) himself nor his city.

GLAUCON: Asclepius was a true man of politics, in your view.

SOCRATES: Clearly so. And it was because he was like that, don’t you see, (408a) that his sons, too, turned out to be good men in the war at Troy, and prac- ticed the craft of medicine as I say they did. Don’t you remember that they “sucked out the blood and applied gentle drugs” to the wound Pandarus inflicted on Menelaus? But they no more prescribed what he should eat or drink after that than they did for Eurypylus?60 That was because they assumed that their drugs were sufficient to cure men who were healthy and living an orderly life before being wounded, even if they happened to drink (b) wine mixed with barley and cheese right afterward. But they thought that the lives of naturally sick and intemperate people were profitable neither to themselves nor to anyone else, that the craft of medicine shouldn’t be prac- ticed on them, and that they should not be given treatment, not even if they were richer than Midas.

[60]: Iliad 4.218–9. In the extant text, Machaon is acting alone.

GLAUCON: The sons of Asclepius were indeed very sophisticated, in your view.

SOCRATES: It is the right view to hold of them. And yet it is on just this point that Pindar and the tragedians are not persuaded by us.They say that Asclepius, even though he was the son of Apollo, was bribed with gold to heal a rich man who was already dying, and that that is why he was struck (c) by lightning. But, in view of what we said before, we won’t accept both claims from them. On the contrary, we will say that if Asclepius was the son of a god, he was not a money-grubber; and that if he was a money- grubber, he was not the son of a god.

GLAUCON: That’s absolutely right. But what do you say about the follow- ing, Socrates? Won’t we need to have good doctors in our city? And the best, I take it, will be those who have treated the greatest number of healthy and diseased people. In the same way, the best judges61 will be those who (d) have associated with people with multifarious natures.

SOCRATES: I certainly agree that we need good ones. But do you know which ones I regard as such?

GLAUCON: I will, if you will tell me.

SOCRATES: Well, I will try. However, you ask about things that are not alike in the same question.

GLAUCON: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Doctors, it is true, would become cleverest if, in addition to learning the craft of medicine, they associated with the greatest possible number of the most diseased bodies right from childhood,62 had themselves

(e) experienced every illness, and were not, by nature, very healthy. After all, they do not treat a body with a body. If they did, we would not allow their bodies to be or become bad. But it is with a soul that a body is treated, and it is not possible for a soul to treat anything well if it is or has become bad itself.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: But a judge, my friend, does rule a soul with a soul. And it is (409a) not possible for a soul to be nurtured among bad souls from childhood, to have associated with them, and to have itself indulged in every sort of injus- tice, so as to be able to draw exact inferences from itself about the injustices of others, as in the case of diseases of the body. On the contrary, it itself must have no experience of, and be uncontaminated by, bad characters while it is young, if as a fine and good soul itself, it is going to make judg- ments about what is just in a healthy way. That is precisely the reason, indeed, that good people are thought to be naïve when they are young and [61]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. judge.

[62]: See 341e4–6.

(b) easily deceived by unjust ones: they do not have models within themselves of the behavior of bad ones.

GLAUCON: Yes, indeed, that is precisely what happens to them.

SOCRATES: That is why a good judge must not be young, but old—a late learner of what sort of thing injustice is, who has become aware of it, not as something at home in his own soul, but as an alien thing present in other people’s souls. He must have trained himself over many years to discern how naturally bad it is by using his theoretical knowledge, not his own inti- (c) mate experience of it.

GLAUCON: At any rate, it would seem that the noblest judge would be like that.

SOCRATES: And so is the good one you asked about, since the one who has (a) good soul is good.The clever and suspicious person, on the other hand, who has committed many injustices himself and thinks of himself to be unscrupulous and wise, appears clever when he associates with those like himself, because he is on his guard and looks to the models within himself.

But when he meets with good people who are older, he is seen to be stu- pid, distrustful at the wrong time, and ignorant of what a healthy character (d) is, since he has no model of this within himself. But because he meets bad people more often than good ones, he seems more wise than foolish, both to himself and to them as well.

GLAUCON: That’s absolutely true.

SOCRATES: Then we must not look for a good judge among people like that, but among the sort we described earlier. For while a bad person could never come to know either vice or virtue, a naturally virtuous person, when educated, will in time acquire knowledge of both virtue and vice.

And it is someone like that, and not a bad person, who becomes a wise (e) judge in my view.

GLAUCON: And I share your view.

SOCRATES: Then won’t you establish by law in your city both the craft of medicine we mentioned and this craft of judging along with it? And these crafts will care for such of your citizens as have naturally good bodies and (410a) souls; but those whose bodies are not like that they will allow to die, while those whose souls are naturally and incurably bad they will themselves put to death.

GLAUCON: Yes, we have seen that that is best both for those who receive such treatment and for the city.

SOCRATES: And so it is clear that your young people will be wary of com- ing to need a judge, since they employ that simple sort of musical training, which we said engenders temperance.

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: And won’t a person who is musically trained hunt for a type of (b) physical training by following these same tracks, and catch it, if he chooses?

And won’t the result be that he will have no need of the craft of medicine, except when absolutely necessary?

GLAUCON: That’s my view, at any rate.

SOCRATES: And he will undertake even the regimens and exertions of physical training with an eye less to strength than to arousing the spirited part of his nature, unlike all other athletes who use diets and exertions only to gain muscle power.

GLAUCON: That’s absolutely right.

SOCRATES: Then, doesn’t it follow, Glaucon, that those who established musical training and physical training did not establish them with the aim (c) that some people attribute to them: namely, to treat the body with the former and the soul with the latter?

GLAUCON: What was it then?

SOCRATES: It looks as though they established both chiefly for the sake of the soul.

GLAUCON: How so?

SOCRATES: Have you never noticed the mind-set of those who have a life- long association with physical training but stay away from musical training? Or, again, that of those who do the opposite?

GLAUCON: What do you mean? (d) SOCRATES: Savagery and toughness, in the one case; softness and over- cultivation, in the other.

GLAUCON: I have certainly noticed that people who devote themselves exclusively to physical training turn out to be more savage than they should, while those who devote themselves to musical training turn out to be softer than is good for them.

SOCRATES: And surely the savageness derives from the spirited element of their nature, which, if rightly nurtured, becomes courageous, but, if over- strained, is likely to become hard and harsh.

GLAUCON: So it seems.

SOCRATES: What about the cultivation? Wouldn’t it derive from the philo- (e) sophic element of their nature, which, if relaxed too much, becomes softer than it should, but, if well nurtured, is cultivated and orderly?

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Now, we said that our guardians must have both these natures.63 GLAUCON: Yes, they must.

SOCRATES: And mustn’t the two be harmonized with one another?

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: And isn’t the soul of the person thus harmonized temperate (411a) and courageous?

GLAUCON: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And that of the inharmonious person, cowardly and savage?

GLAUCON: Exactly.

SOCRATES: So when someone gives himself over to musical training and lets the flute pour into his soul through his ears, as through a funnel, those sweet, soft, and plaintive harmonies we mentioned; and when he spends his whole life humming, entranced by song, the first result is that whatever spirit he had, he softens the way he would iron and makes useful, rather (b) than useless and brittle. But when he keeps at it unrelentingly and charms his spirit, the next result is that he melts it and dissolves it completely until he has cut out, so to speak, the very sinews of his soul and makes himself “a feeble warrior.”64 GLAUCON: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: And if he has a spiritless nature to begin with, this happens quickly. But if he has a spirited one, his spirit becomes weak and unstable, quickly inflamed by trivial things and quickly extinguished. As a result, (c) people like that become quick-tempered and prone to anger, instead of spirited, and filled with peevishness.

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: On the other hand, what about someone who works hard at physical training, eats very well, and never touches musical training or phi- losophy? At first, because his body is in good strong condition, isn’t he full of pride and spirit, and more courageous than he was before?

GLAUCON: He certainly is.

SOCRATES: But what happens if he does nothing but this and never enters into partnership with a Muse? Even if there was some love of learning in (d) his soul, because it never tastes any sort of instruction or investigation, and never participates in any discussion or in any of the rest of musical training, [63]: 375c6–8.

[64]: Iliad 17.588.

doesn’t it become weak, deaf, and blind, because it never receives any stim- ulation or nourishment, and its senses are never purified?

GLAUCON: Yes, it does.

SOCRATES: Then a person like that, I take it, becomes an unmusical hater of argument65 who no longer uses argument to persuade people, but force (e) and savagery, behaves like a wild beast, and lives in awkward ignorance without rhythm or grace.

GLAUCON: That’s exactly how it is.

SOCRATES: So I, for one, would claim that it is to deal with these two things, so it seems, that a god has given two crafts to human beings—musi- cal training and physical training—to deal with the philosophical and spir- ited elements, and not, except as a byproduct, with the soul and the body; but with these two, so that they might be harmonized with one another by (412a) being stretched and relaxed to the appropriate degree.

GLAUCON: Yes, it seems so.

SOCRATES: Then it is the person who makes the best blend of musical and physical training, and applies them in the most perfect proportion to his soul, that we would be most correct to describe as completely trained in music and as most in harmony—far more so than the one who merely attunes his strings to one another.

GLAUCON: Probably so, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Then won’t we also need this sort of person in our city, Glaucon, as a permanent overseer, if indeed its constitution is to be preserved? (b) GLAUCON: Yes, we will need him most of all.

SOCRATES: Those, then, would be the patterns of their education and upbringing. For why should we enumerate their dances, hunts, chases with hounds, athletic contests, and horse races? After all, it is pretty much clear that they should be consistent with these patterns, and so there should no longer be any difficulty in discovering them.

GLAUCON: No, presumably there should not.

SOCRATES: All right. Now, what is the next question we have to settle?

Isn’t it which of these same people will rule and which be ruled? (c) GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: Well, isn’t it clear that the older ones must rule, whereas the younger ones must be ruled?

GLAUCON: Yes, it is clear.

[65]: Misologos: the opposite of a philosopher, who is a philologos, a lover of argument. See Laches 188c4–189b7, Phaedo 89d1–91b7.

SOCRATES: And that the rulers must be the best among them?

GLAUCON: Yes, that’s clear, too.

SOCRATES: And aren’t the best farmers the ones who are best at farming?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: In the present case, then, since the rulers must be the best of the guardians, mustn’t they be the ones who are best at guarding the city?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then mustn’t they be knowledgeable and capable in this mat- ter, and, in addition, mustn’t they care for the city? (d) GLAUCON: Yes, they must.

SOCRATES: But a person would care most for what he loved.

GLAUCON: Necessarily.

SOCRATES: And he would love something most if he thought that the same things were advantageous both for it and for himself, and if he thought that when it did well, he would do well, too; and that if it didn’t, the opposite would happen.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Then we must choose from among our guardians the sort of men who seem on the basis of our observation to be most inclined, throughout their entire lives, to do what they believe to be advantageous (e) for the city, and most unwilling to do the opposite.

GLAUCON: Yes, they would be suitable for the job.

SOCRATES: I think, then, that we will have to observe them at every stage of their lives to make sure that they are good guardians of this conviction, and that neither compulsion nor sorcery will cause them to discard or for- get their belief that they must do what is best for the city.

GLAUCON: What do you mean by discarding?

SOCRATES: I will tell you. It seems to me that the departure of a belief from someone’s mind is either voluntary or involuntary—voluntary when (413a) he learns that the belief is false; involuntary in the case of all true beliefs.

GLAUCON: I understand the voluntary sort, but I still need instruction about the involuntary.

SOCRATES: What? Don’t you know that people are involuntarily deprived of good things, but voluntarily deprived of bad ones? And isn’t being deceived about the truth a bad thing, whereas possessing the truth is a good one? Or don’t you think that to believe things that are is to possess the truth?

GLAUCON: No, you are right. And I do think that people are involuntarily deprived of true beliefs.

SOCRATES: Then isn’t it through theft, sorcery, and compulsion that this (b) happens?

GLAUCON: Now I do not understand again.

SOCRATES: I suppose I am making myself as clear as a tragic poet!66 By those who have their beliefs stolen from them, I mean those who are over- persuaded, or those who forget; because argument, in the one case, and time, in the other, takes away their beliefs without their noticing.You understand now, don’t you?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Well then, by those who are compelled, I mean those who are made to change their beliefs by some suffering or pain.

GLAUCON: I understand that, too, and you are right. (c) SOCRATES: And the victims of sorcery, I think you would agree, are those who change their beliefs because they are charmed by pleasure or terrified by some fear.

GLAUCON: It seems to me that all deception is a form of sorcery.

SOCRATES: Well then, as I was just saying, we must discover which of them are best at safeguarding within themselves the conviction that they must always do what they believe to be best for the city. We must watch them right from childhood, and set them tasks in which a person would be most likely to forget such a conviction or be deceived out of it. And we (d) must select the ones who remember and are difficult to deceive, and reject the others. Do you agree?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: And we must also subject them to labors, pains, and contests, and watch for the same things there.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Then we must also set up a third kind of competition for sor- cery. Like those who lead colts into noise and tumult to see if they are afraid, we must subject our young people to fears and then plunge them once again into pleasures, so as to test them much more thoroughly than (e) people test gold in a fire. And if any of them seems to be immune to sor- cery, preserves his composure throughout, is a good guardian of himself and [66]: Tragikôs: The participles Socrates has used at 413b1–2—klapentes (theft), goê- teuthentes (sorcery), biasthentes (compulsion)—are, like much tragic poetry, both met- aphorical and grand.

of the musical training he has received, and proves himself to be rhythmical and harmonious in all these trials—he is the sort of person who would be (a) most useful, both to himself and to the city. And anyone who is tested as child, youth, and adult, and always emerges as being without impurities, (414a) should be established as a ruler of the city as well as a guardian, and should be honored in life and receive the most prized tombs and memorials after his death. But those who do not should be rejected.That is the sort of way, Glaucon, that I think rulers and guardians should be selected and estab- lished.Though I have provided only a pattern, not the precise details.

GLAUCON: I also think much the same. (b) SOCRATES: Then wouldn’t it really be most correct to call these people complete guardians—the ones who guard against external enemies and internal friends, so that the former will lack the power, and the latter the desire, to do any evil; but to call the young people to whom we were refer- ring as guardians just now, auxiliaries and supporters of the guardians’ con- victions?

GLAUCON: Yes, I think it would.

SOCRATES: How, then, could we devise one of those useful lies we were talking about a while ago,67 a single noble lie that would, preferably, per- (c) suade even the rulers themselves; but, failing that, the rest of the city?

GLAUCON: What sort of lie?

SOCRATES: Nothing new, but a sort of Phoenician story68 about some- thing that happened in lots of places prior to this—at least, that is what the poets say and have persuaded people to believe. It has not happened in our day, and I do not know if it could happen. It would take a lot of persuasion to get people to believe it.

GLAUCON: You seem hesitant to tell the story.

SOCRATES: You will realize that I have every reason to hesitate, when I do tell it.

GLAUCON: Out with it. Do not be afraid.

SOCRATES: All right, I will—though I do not know where I will get the (d) audacity or the words to tell it. I will first be trying to persuade the rulers and the soldiers, and then the rest of the city, that the upbringing and the education we gave them were like dreams; that they only imagined they were undergoing all the things that were happening to them, while in fact [67]: 382a4–d3.

[68]: Apparently a reference, first, to the legend of the Phoenician hero, Cadmus, who sowed the earth with dragon’s teeth from which giants grew; and, second, to the Odyssey, and the tales Odysseus tells to the Phaeacians.

they themselves were at that time down inside the earth being formed and nurtured, and that their weapons and the rest of their equipment were also (e) manufactured there. When they were entirely completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up, so that now, just as if the land in which they live were their mother and nurse, they must deliberate on its behalf, defend it if anyone attacks it, and regard the other citizens as their earthborn brothers.

GLAUCON: It is not for nothing that you were ashamed to tell your lie earlier.

SOCRATES: No, it was only to be expected. But all the same, you should (415a) listen to the rest of the story.“Although all of you in the city are brothers,” we will say to them in telling our story, “when the god was forming you, he mixed gold into those of you who are capable of ruling, which is why they are the most honorable; silver into the auxiliaries; and iron and bronze into the farmers and other craftsmen. For the most part, you will produce children like yourselves; but, because you are all related, a silver (b) child will occasionally be born to a golden parent, a golden child to a silver parent, and so on. Therefore, the first and most important command from the god to the rulers is that there is nothing they must guard better or watch more carefully than the mixture of metals in the souls of their off- spring. If an offspring of theirs is born with a mixture of iron or bronze, they must not pity him in any way, but assign him an honor appropriate to (c) his nature and drive him out to join the craftsmen or the farmers. On the other hand, if an offspring of the latter is found to have a mixture of gold or silver, they will honor him and take him up to join the guardians or the auxiliaries. For there is an oracle that the city will be ruined if it ever has an iron or a bronze guardian.” So, have you a device that will make them believe this story?

GLAUCON: No, none that would make this group believe it themselves. (d) But I do have one for their sons, for later generations, and for all other peo- ple who come after them.

SOCRATES: Well, even that would have a good effect, by making them care more for the city and for each other. For I think I understand what you mean—namely, that all this will go where tradition leads.What we can do, however, when we have armed our earthborn people, is lead them forth with their rulers at their head. They must go and look for the best place in the city for a military encampment, a site from which they can (e) most easily control anyone in the city who is unwilling to obey the laws, or repel any outside enemy who, like a wolf, attacks the fold. And when they have established their camp and sacrificed to the appropriate gods, they must make their sleeping quarters, mustn’t they?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: And mustn’t these provide adequate shelter against the storms of winter and the heat of summer?

GLAUCON: Yes, of course. After all, I assume you are talking about their living quarters.

SOCRATES: Yes, but ones for soldiers, not moneymakers. (416a) GLAUCON: What difference do you think there is between the two, again?

SOCRATES: I will try to tell you.You see, it is surely the most terrible and most shameful thing in the world for shepherds to rear dogs as auxiliaries to help them with their flocks in such a way that those dogs themselves— because of intemperance, hunger, or some other bad condition—try to do evil to the sheep, acting not like sheepdogs but like wolves.

GLAUCON: Of course, that is terrible. (b) SOCRATES: So, mustn’t we use every safeguard to prevent our auxiliaries from treating the citizens like that—because they are stronger—and becoming savage masters rather than gentle allies?

GLAUCON: Yes, we must.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t they have been provided with the greatest safe- guard possible if they have been really well educated?

GLAUCON: But surely they have been.

SOCRATES: That is not something that deserves to be asserted so confi- dently, my dear Glaucon. But what does deserve it is what we were saying just now, that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if they are (c) going to have what will do most to make them gentle to one another and to the ones they are guarding.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: But anyone with any sense will tell us that, besides this educa- tion, they must be provided with living quarters and other property of the sort that will neither prevent them from being the best guardians nor (d) encourage them to do evil to the other citizens.

GLAUCON: And he would be right.

SOCRATES: Consider, then, whether or not they should live and be housed in some such way as this, if they are going to be the sort of men we described. First, none of them should possess any private property that is not wholly necessary. Second, none should have living quarters or store- rooms that are not open for all to enter at will. Such provisions as are required by temperate and courageous men, who are warrior-athletes, they (e) should receive from the other citizens as a salary for their guardianship, the amount being fixed so that there is neither a shortfall nor a surplus at the end of the year.They should have common messes to go to, and should live

together like soldiers in a camp.We will tell them that they have gold and silver of a divine sort in their souls as a permanent gift from the gods, and have no need of human gold in addition. And we will add that it is impious for them to defile this divine possession by possessing an admixture of mor- tal gold, because many impious deeds have been done for the sake of the (417a) currency of the masses, whereas their sort is pure. No, they alone among the city’s population are forbidden by divine law to handle or even touch gold and silver.They must not be under the same roof as these metals, wear them as jewelry, or drink from gold or silver goblets. And by behaving in that way, they would save both themselves and the city. But if they acquire private land, houses, and money themselves, they will be household man- agers and farmers instead of guardians—hostile masters of the other citi- (b) zens, instead of their allies. They will spend their whole lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, much more afraid of inter- nal than of external enemies—already rushing, in fact, to the brink of their own destruction and that of the rest of the city as well. For all these reasons, let’s declare that that is how the guardians must be provided with housing and the rest, and establish it as a law. Or don’t you agree?

GLAUCON: Of course I do.