are right or wrong; but with one mouth and one voice they must all
agree that the laws are all good, for they came from God; and any
one who says the contrary is not to be listened to. But an old man who
remarks any defect in your laws may communicate his observation to a
ruler or to an equal in years when no young man is present.

  Cle. Exactly so, Stranger; and like a diviner, although not there at
the time, you seem to me quite to have hit the meaning of the
legislator, and to say what is most true.

  Ath. As there are no young men present, and the legislator has given
old men free licence, there will be no impropriety in our discussing
these very matters now that we are alone.

  Cle. True. And therefore you may be as free as you like in your
censure of our laws, for there is no discredit in knowing what is
wrong; he who receives what is said in a generous and friendly
spirit will be all the better for it.

  Ath. Very good; however, I am not going to say anything against your
laws until to the best of my ability I have examined them, but I am
going to raise doubts about them. For you are the only people known to
us, whether Greek or barbarian, whom the legislator commanded to
eschew all great pleasures and amusements and never to touch them;
whereas in the matter of pains or fears which we have just been
discussing, he thought that they who from infancy had always avoided
pains and fears and sorrows, when they were compelled to face them
would run away from those who were hardened in them, and would
become their subjects. Now the legislator ought to have considered
that this was equally true of pleasure; he should have said to
himself, that if our citizens are from their youth upward unacquainted
with the greatest pleasures, and unused to endure amid the temptations
of pleasure, and are not disciplined to refrain from all things
evil, the sweet feeling of pleasure will overcome them just as fear
would overcome the former class; and in another, and even a worse
manner, they will be the slaves of those who are able to endure amid
pleasures, and have had the opportunity of enjoying them, they being
often the worst of mankind. One half of their souls will be a slave,
the other half free; and they will not be worthy to be called in the
true sense men and freemen. Tell me whether you assent to my words?

  Cle. On first hearing, what you say appears to be the truth; but
to be hasty in coming to a conclusion about such important matters
would be very childish and simple.

  Ath. Suppose, Cleinias and Megillus, that we consider the virtue
which follows next of those which we intended to discuss (for after
courage comes temperance), what institutions shall we find relating to
temperance, either in Crete or Lacedaemon, which, like your military
institutions, differ from those of any ordinary state.

  Meg. That is not an easy question to answer; still I should say that
the common meals and gymnastic exercises have been excellently devised
for the promotion both of temperance and courage.

  Ath. There seems to be a difficulty, Stranger, with regard to
states, in making words and facts coincide so that there can be no
dispute about them. As in the human body, the regimen which does
good in one way does harm in another; and we can hardly say that any
one course of treatment is adapted to a particular constitution. Now
the gymnasia and common meals do a great deal of good, and yet they
are a source of evil in civil troubles; as is shown in the case of the
Milesian, and Boeotian, and Thurian youth, among whom these
institutions seem always to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient
and natural custom of love below the level, not only of man, but of
the beasts. The charge may be fairly brought against your cities above
all others, and is true also of most other states which especially
cultivate gymnastics. Whether such matters are to be regarded
jestingly or seriously, I think that the pleasure is to be deemed
natural which arises out of the intercourse between men and women; but
that the intercourse of men with men, or of women with women, is
contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was originally due to
unbridled lust. The Cretans are always accused of having invented
the story of Ganymede and Zeus because they wanted to justify
themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the practice
of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver. Leaving
the story, we may observe that any speculation about laws turns almost
entirely on pleasure and pain, both in states and in individuals:
these are two fountains which nature lets flow, and he who draws
from them where and when, and as much as he ought, is happy; and
this holds of men and animals-of individuals as well as states; and he
who indulges in them ignorantly and at the wrong time, is the
reverse of happy.

  Meg. I admit, Stranger, that your words are well spoken, and I
hardly know what to say in answer to you; but still I think that the
Spartan lawgiver was quite right in forbidding pleasure. Of the Cretan
laws, I shall leave the defence to my Cnosian friend. But the laws
of Sparta, in as far as they relate to pleasure, appear to me to be
the best in the world; for that which leads mankind in general into
the wildest pleasure and licence, and every other folly, the law has
clean driven out; and neither in the country nor in towns which are
under the control of Sparta, will you find revelries and the many
incitements of every kind of pleasure which accompany them; and any
one who meets a drunken and disorderly person, will immediately have
him most severely punished, and will not let him off on any
pretence, not even at the time of a Dionysiac festival; although I
have remarked that this may happen at your performances "on the cart,"
as they are called; and among our Tarentine colonists I have seen
the whole city drunk at a Dionysiac festival; but nothing of the