Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: But it is hardly an exaggeration to say that in our corner of the world this is exactly what happens in pretty nearly every state. When an official has performed a public sacrifice, a chorus—or rather a mob of choruses—arrives and takes up position not far from the altar and sometimes [d] right next to it. Then they swamp the holy offerings with a flood of absolute blasphemy. With words and rhythms and music of the most morbid kind they work up the emotions of their audience to a tremendous pitch, and the prize is awarded to the chorus which succeeds best in making the community burst into tears—the very community which has just offered sacrifice. Well, that’s certainly a ‘nome’ on which we must pass an unfavorable verdict, isn’t it? If there is ever any real need for the public to listen to such lugubrious noises, on days that are unclean and [e] unlucky, it will be much better, and entirely appropriate, to hire some foreign choruses to sing such songs (just as one hires mourners to accompany funerals with Carian dirges). In particular, the costume appropriate for such funeral dirges will not be garlands or trappings of gilt, but—to polish off the topic as quickly as possible—quite the opposite kind of thing. I merely repeat the question we’re always asking ourselves: are we happy to adopt this, for a start, as one of our model rules of singing?

  CLINIAS: What?

  ATHENIAN: The rule of auspicious language. This is the characteristic [801] that is absolutely vital for our kind of song. Or shall I simply lay down the rule without repeating the question?

  CLINIAS: Lay it down by all means: your law’s been approved without a single vote against it.

  ATHENIAN: After auspicious language, then, what will be the second law of music? Surely this: that the gods to whom we sacrifice should always be offered our prayers.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: And the third law, I suppose, will be this: poets should appreciate that prayers are requests for something from the gods, so they must take great care that they never inadvertently request an evil under [b] the impression that it is a benefit. What a ludicrous calamity it would be to offer that kind of prayer!

  CLINIAS: It certainly would.

  ATHENIAN: Now didn’t our remarks a short time ago11 persuade us that ‘Gold and Silver, the gods of Wealth, ought to have neither temple nor home in our state’?

  CLINIAS: Absolutely.

  ATHENIAN: So what lesson can we say this doctrine holds for us? Surely this: that authors in general are quite unable to tell good from bad. We [c] conclude that a composer who embodies this error in his words or even in his music, and who produces mistaken prayers, will make our citizens pray improperly when it comes to matters of importance—and, as we were saying, we shan’t find many more glaring mistakes than that. So can we establish this as one of our model laws of music?

  CLINIAS: What?

  [d] ATHENIAN: That a poet should compose nothing that conflicts with society’s conventional notions of justice, goodness and beauty. No one should be allowed to show his work to any private person without first submitting it to the appointed assessors and to the Guardians of the Laws, and getting their approval. (In effect, we’ve got our assessors already appointed—I mean the legislators we chose to regulate the arts, and the person we elected as Minister of Education.) Well then, here’s the same question yet again: are we satisfied to adopt this as our third principle and our third model law? Or what do you think?

  CLINIAS: Of course we’ll adopt it.

  [e] ATHENIAN: The next point is that it will be proper to sing hymns and panegyrics, combined with prayers, in honor of the gods. After the gods, we may similarly give the spirits and heroes their meed of praise, and pray to each of them as appropriate.

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: And the next law, which should be adopted quite ungrudgingly, will run as follows: deceased citizens who by their physical efforts or force of personality have conspicuous and strenuous achievements to their credit, and who have lived a life of obedience to the laws, should be regarded as proper subjects for our panegyrics.

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  [802] ATHENIAN: But to honor a man with hymns and panegyrics during his lifetime is to invite trouble: we must wait until he has come to the end of the course after running the race of life successfully. (Men and women who have shown conspicuous merit should qualify for all these honors without distinction of sex.)

  The following arrangements should be made with regard to singing and dancing. Among the works we’ve inherited from the past there are a great many grand old pieces of music—dances too, for occasions when we want to exercise our bodies—from which we should not hesitate to choose those [b] suitable and appropriate for the society we are organizing. Censors of at least fifty years of age should be appointed to make the selection, and any ancient composition that seems to come up to standard should be approved; absolutely unsuitable material must be totally rejected, and substandard pieces revised and re-arranged, on the advice of poets and musicians. (Although we shall exploit the creative talents of these people, we [c] shan’t—with rare exceptions—put our trust in their tastes and inclinations. Instead, we shall interpret the wishes of the lawgiver and arrange to his liking our dancing and singing and chorus performances in general.) Music composed in an undisciplined style is always infinitely improved by the imposition of form, even if that makes it less immediately attractive. But music doesn’t have to be disciplined to be pleasant. Take someone who has right from childhood till the age of maturity and discretion grown familiar with a controlled and restrained style of music. Play him some [d] of the other sort, and how he’ll loathe it! ‘What vulgar stuff!’ he’ll say. Yet, if he’s been brought up to enjoy the strong appeal of popular music, it’s the disciplined kind he’ll call frigid and repellent. So as I said just now, on the score of pleasure or the lack of it, neither type is superior nor inferior to the other. The difference is simply this: the one musical environment is invariably a good influence, the other a bad.

  CLINIAS: Well said!

  ATHENIAN: In addition, we shall have to distinguish, in a rough and ready way, the songs suitable for men and those suitable for women, and [e] give each its proper mode and rhythm. It would be terrible if the words failed to fit the mode, or if their meter were at odds with the beat of the music, which is what will happen if we don’t match properly the songs to each of the other elements in the performance—elements which must therefore be dealt with, at any rate in outline, in our legal code. One possibility is simply to ensure that the songs men and women sing are accompanied by the rhythms and modes imposed by the words in either case; but our regulations about female performances must be more precise than this and be based on the natural difference between the sexes. So an elevated manner and courageous instincts must be regarded as characteristic of the male, while a tendency to modesty and restraint must be presented—in theory and law alike—as a peculiarly feminine trait.

  Now to deal with how this doctrine should be taught and handed on. [803] What method of instruction should we use? Who should be taught, and when should the lessons take place? Well, you know that when a shipwright is starting to build a boat, the first thing he does is to lay down the keel as a foundation and as a general indication of the shape. I have a feeling my own procedure now is exactly analogous. I’m trying to distinguish for you the various ways in which our character shapes the kind of life we live; I really am trying to ‘lay down the keel’, because I’m giving proper consideration to the way we should try to live—to the ‘character-keel’ [b] we need to lay if we are going to sail through this voyage of life successfully. Not that human affairs are worth taking very seriously—but take them seriously is just what we are forced to do, alas. Still, perhaps it will be realistic to recognize the position we’re in and direct our serious efforts to some suitable purpose. My meaning?—yes, you’d certainly be right to take me up on that.

  CLINIAS: Exactly. [c]

  ATHENIAN: I maintain that serious matters d
eserve our serious attention, but trivialities do not; that all men of good will should put God at the center of their thoughts; that man, as we said before,12 has been created as a toy for God; and that this is the great point in his favor. So every man and every woman should play this part and order their whole life accordingly, engaging in the best possible pastimes—in a quite different frame of mind to their present one.

  CLINIAS: How do you mean? [d]

  ATHENIAN: The usual view nowadays, I fancy, is that the purpose of serious activity is leisure—that war, for instance, is an important business, and needs to be waged efficiently for the sake of peace. But in cold fact neither the immediate result nor the eventual consequences of warfare ever turn out to be real leisure or an education that really deserves the name—and education is in our view just about the most important activity of all. So each of us should spend the greater part of his life at peace, and [e] that will be the best use of this time. What, then, will be the right way to live? A man should spend his whole life at ‘play’—sacrificing, singing, dancing—so that he can win the favor of the gods and protect himself from his enemies and conquer them in battle. He’ll achieve both these aims if he sings and dances in the way we’ve outlined; his path, so to speak, has been marked out for him and he must go on his way confident that the poet’s words are true.

  [804] Some things, Telemachus, your native wit will tell you,

  And Heaven will prompt the rest. The very gods, I’m sure,

  Have smiled upon your birth and helped to bring you up.13

  And those we bring up, too, must proceed in the same spirit. They must expect that although our advice is sound as far as it goes, their guardian deity will make them further suggestions about sacrifices and dancing—[b] telling them the various divinities in whose honor they should hold their various games, and on what occasions, so as to win the gods’ good will and live the life that their own nature demands, puppets that they are, mostly, and hardly real at all.

  MEGILLUS: That, sir, is to give the human race a very low rating indeed.

  CLINIAS: Don’t be taken aback, Megillus. You must make allowances for me. I said that with my thoughts on God, and was quite carried away. So, if you like, let’s take it that our species is not worthless, but something [c] rather important.

  To resume, then. So far, we have provided for the public gymnasia and the state schools to be housed in three groups of buildings at the center of the city; similarly, on three sites in the suburbs, there should be training grounds for horses, and open spaces adapted for archery and the discharge of other long-range missiles, where the young may practice and learn these skills. Anyway, if we haven’t explained all this adequately before, let’s do so now, and put our requirements into legal form.

  [d] Foreign teachers should be hired to live in these establishments and provide the pupils with complete courses of instruction in both military and cultural subjects. Children must not be allowed to attend or not attend school at the whim of their father; as far as possible, education must be compulsory for ‘every man and boy’ (as the saying is), because they belong to the state first and their parents second.

  Let me stress that this law of mine will apply just as much to girls as to boys. The girls must be trained in precisely the same way, and I’d like [e] to make this proposal without any reservations whatever about horse-riding or athletics being suitable activities for males but not for females. You see, although I was already convinced by some ancient stories I have heard, I now know for sure that there are pretty well countless numbers of women, generally called Sarmatians, round the Black Sea, who not only [805] ride horses but use the bow and other weapons. There, men and women have an equal duty to cultivate these skills, so cultivate them equally they do. And while we’re on the subject, here’s another thought for you. I maintain that if these results can be achieved, the state of affairs in our corner of Greece, where men and women do not have a common purpose and do not throw all their energies into the same activities, is absolutely stupid. Almost every state, under present conditions, is only half a state, and develops only half its potentialities, whereas with the same cost and effort, it could double its achievement. Yet what a staggering blunder for [b] a legislator to make!

  CLINIAS: I dare say. But a lot of these proposals, sir, are incompatible with the average state’s social structure. However, you were quite right when you said we should give the argument its head, and only make up our minds when it had run its course. You’ve made me reproach myself for having spoken. So carry on, and say what you like. [c]

  ATHENIAN: The point I’d like to make, Clinias, is the same one as I made a moment ago, that there might have been something to be said against our proposal, if it had not been proved by the facts to be workable. But as things are, an opponent of this law must try other tactics. We are not going to withdraw our recommendation that so far as possible, in education and everything else, the female sex should be on the same footing as the [d] male. Consequently, we should approach the problem rather like this. Look: if women are not to follow absolutely the same way of life as men, then surely we shall have to work out some other program for them?

  CLINIAS: Inevitably.

  ATHENIAN: Well then, if we deny women this partnership we’re now prescribing for them, which of the systems actually in force today shall we adopt instead? What about the practice of the Thracians and many other peoples, who make their women work on the land and mind sheep and cattle, so that they turn into skivvies indistinguishable from slaves? [e] Or what about the Athenians and all the other states in that part of the world? Well, here’s how we Athenians deal with the problem: we ‘concentrate our resources’, as the expression is, under one roof, and let our women take charge of our stores and the spinning and wool-working in general. Or we could adopt the Spartan system, Megillus, which is a compromise. You make your girls take part in athletics and you give them a compulsory [806] education in the arts; when they grow up, though dispensed from working wool, they have to ‘weave’ themselves a pretty hard-working sort of life which is by no means despicable or useless: they have to be tolerably efficient at running the home and managing the house and bringing up children—but they don’t undertake military service. This means that even if some extreme emergency ever led to a battle for their state and the lives [b] of their children, they wouldn’t have the expertise to use bows and arrows, like so many Amazons, nor could they join the men in deploying any other missile. They wouldn’t be able to take up shield and spear and copy Athena,14 so as to terrify the enemy (if nothing more) by being seen in some kind of battle-array gallantly resisting the destruction threatening their native land. Living as they do, they’d never be anything like tough enough to imitate the Sarmatian women, who by comparison with such [c] femininity would look like men. Anyone who wants to commend your Spartan legislators for this state of affairs, had better get on with it: I’m not going to change my mind. A legislator should go the whole way and not stick at half-measures; he mustn’t just regulate the men and allow the women to live as they like and wallow in expensive luxury. That would be to give the state only half the loaf of prosperity instead of the whole of it.

  MEGILLUS: What on earth are we to do, Clinias? Are we going to let our visitor run down Sparta for us like this?

  [d] CLINIAS: Yes, we are. We told him he could be frank, and we must give him his head until we’ve properly worked through every section of our legal code.

  MEGILLUS: Very well.

  ATHENIAN: So I suppose I should try to press straight on with the next topic?

  CLINIAS: Naturally.

  ATHENIAN: Now that our citizens are assured of a moderate supply of necessities, and other people have taken over the skilled work, what will [e] be their way of life? Suppose that their farms have been entrusted to slaves, who provide them with sufficient produce of the land to keep them in modest comfort; suppose they take their meals in separate messes, one for themselves, another nearby for their families, in
cluding their daughters and their daughters’ mothers; assume the messes, are presided over by officials, male and female as the case may be, who have the duty of dismissing their respective assemblies after the day’s review and scrutiny [807] of the diners’ habits; and that when the official and his company have poured libations to whatever gods that day and night happen to be dedicated, they all duly go home. Now, do such leisured circumstances leave them no pressing work to do, no genuinely appropriate occupation? Must each of them get plumper and plumper every day of his life, like a fatted beast? No: we maintain that’s not the right and proper thing to do. A man who lives like that won’t be able to escape the fate he deserves; and the fate of an idle fattened beast that takes life easy is usually to be torn to pieces [b] by some other animal—one of the skinny kind, who’ve been emaciated by a life of daring and endurance. (Our ideal, of course, is unlikely to be realized fully so long as we persist in our policy of allowing individuals to have their own private establishments, consisting of house, wife, children and so on.15 But if we could ever put into practice the second-best scheme we’re now describing, we’d have every reason to be satisfied.) So we must insist that there is something left to do in a life of leisure, and it’s only [c] fair that the task imposed, far from being a light or trivial one, should be the most demanding of all. As it is, to dedicate your life to winning a victory at Delphi or Olympia keeps you far too busy to attend to other tasks; but a life devoted to the cultivation of every physical perfection and every moral virtue (the only life worth the name) will keep you at least [d] twice as busy. Inessential business must never stop you taking proper food and exercise, or hinder your mental and moral training. To follow this regimen and to get the maximum benefit from it, the whole day and the whole night is scarcely time enough.