But the poet not only poses himself: he makes his audience, his reader, his performer pose. The boy who recites the dying speech of Aias in Sophocles’ play is posing as Aias, pretending to be Aias, and adopting the tone and the traits of Aias. The boy who dances in the dithyramb _Semelé_ is trying to enter into Semelé’s feelings and moods, being helped by the music and the gestures and the words.[713] Such posing, if begun in early years, will invade the character and change it: the boy will become like the personages whom he is accustomed to act. Hence Plato lays down strict laws dealing with the recitations and dances of the young.[714] “If they speak in character, it must only be in the character of those who are, what they themselves must be when they are grown up, brave, temperate, pious gentlemen. They must have no skill in taking unsuitable characters, lest from their dramatic representation of what is vulgar and base they become infected with the reality of vulgarity and baseness. For imitation, if begun in early years and carried far, sinks into a boy’s habits and nature, and influences his voice, his gestures, and his ideas.… So boys must not be allowed to take the character of a woman, young or old, abusing her husband or blaspheming against the gods or uttering lamentations,――certainly not of a woman in sickness or in love or in pangs; nor the character of slaves performing slavish duties; nor of bad men, cowards, insulting or mocking one another, using foul language, drunk or sober; nor yet of madmen.”[715] It will be seen that this will exclude much of Hellenic drama, especially of the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes. Comedy, according to Plato, should only be acted by foreigners, and should serve as an awful warning of everything that a gentleman ought not to do. The new music is subjected to similar rules. “Boys must not imitate blacksmiths at the forge, or craftsmen occupied in any trade, or sailors rowing, or boatswains giving them orders, or anything of the sort; nor yet horses neighing, or bulls roaring, or the noise of rivers or the sea or thunder or wind or hail or chariot-wheels or pulleys or trumpets or flutes or pipes …; nor the sounds made by dogs and sheep and birds.” So the proper style of poetry for educational purposes will be mostly narrative, with occasional dramatisation of virtuous men. To accompany this simplified and purified poetry only the Dorian and Phrygian “harmonies” will be required: all the others may be rejected. Simple instruments alone will be wanted: many-stringed lyres and the flute can be banished. The seven-stringed lyre and the shepherd’s pipe will be left. Plato finds it too difficult to carry these principles into rhythm, since he is not an expert in the subject. But he thinks that the metres could be regulated in accordance with his canons; the expert Damon declared that some had a demoralising tendency.