ATHENIAN: And what strain will they sing, and what muse will they hymn? The strain should clearly be one suitable to them. CLEINIAS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: And what strain is suitable for heroes? Shall they sing a choric strain? CLEINIAS: Truly, Stranger, we of Crete and Lacedaemon know no strain other than that which we have learnt and been accustomed to sing in our chorus. ATHENIAN: I dare say; for you have never acquired the knowledge of the most beautiful kind of song, in your military way of life, which is modelled after the camp, and is not like that of dwellers in cities; and you have your young men herding and feeding together like young colts. No one takes his own individual colt and drags him away from his fellows against his will, raging and foaming, and gives him a groom to attend to him alone, and trains and rubs him down privately, and gives him the qualities in education which will make him not only a good soldier, but also a governor of a state and of cities. Such an one, as we said at first, would be a greater warrior than he of whom Tyrtaeus sings; and he would honour courage everywhere, but always as the fourth, and not as the first part of virtue, either in individuals or states. CLEINIAS: Once more, Stranger, I must complain that you depreciate our lawgivers. ATHENIAN: Not intentionally, if at all, my good friend; but whither the argument leads, thither let us follow; for if there be indeed some strain of song more beautiful than that of the choruses or the public theatres, I should like to impart it to those who, as we say, are ashamed of these, and want to have the best. CLEINIAS: Certainly. ATHENIAN: When things have an accompanying charm, either the best thing in them is this very charm, or there is some rightness or utility possessed by them;--for example, I should say that eating and drinking, and the use of food in general, have an accompanying charm which we call pleasure; but that this rightness and utility is just the healthfulness of the things served up to us, which is their true rightness. CLEINIAS: Just so. ATHENIAN: Thus, too, I should say that learning has a certain accompanying charm which is the pleasure; but that the right and the profitable, the good and the noble, are qualities which the truth gives to it. CLEINIAS: Exactly. ATHENIAN: And so in the imitative arts--if they succeed in making likenesses, and are accompanied by pleasure, may not their works be said to have a charm? CLEINIAS: Yes. ATHENIAN: But equal proportions, whether of quality or quantity, and not pleasure, speaking generally, would give them truth or rightness. CLEINIAS: Yes. ATHENIAN: Then that only can be rightly judged by the standard of pleasure, which makes or furnishes no utility or truth or likeness, nor on the other hand is productive of any hurtful quality, but exists solely for the sake of the accompanying charm; and the term 'pleasure' is most appropriately applied to it when these other qualities are absent.