the other perturbations of the soul, which arise out of misfortune, and
the deliverances from them which prosperity brings, and the experiences
which come to men in diseases, or in war, or poverty, or the opposite
of these; in all these states he should determine and teach what is
the good and evil of the condition of each. In the next place, the
legislator has to be careful how the citizens make their money and in
what way they spend it, and to have an eye to their mutual contracts and
dissolutions of contracts, whether voluntary or involuntary: he should
see how they order all this, and consider where justice as well as
injustice is found or is wanting in their several dealings with one
another; and honour those who obey the law, and impose fixed penalties
on those who disobey, until the round of civil life is ended, and the
time has come for the consideration of the proper funeral rites and
honours of the dead. And the lawgiver reviewing his work, will appoint
guardians to preside over these things,--some who walk by intelligence,
others by true opinion only, and then mind will bind together all his
ordinances and show them to be in harmony with temperance and justice,
and not with wealth or ambition. This is the spirit, Stranger, in which
I was and am desirous that you should pursue the subject. And I want to
know the nature of all these things, and how they are arranged in the
laws of Zeus, as they are termed, and in those of the Pythian Apollo,
which Minos and Lycurgus gave; and how the order of them is discovered
to his eyes, who has experience in laws gained either by study or habit,
although they are far from being self-evident to the rest of mankind
like ourselves.
CLEINIAS: How shall we proceed, Stranger?
ATHENIAN: I think that we must begin again as before, and first consider
the habit of courage; and then we will go on and discuss another and
then another form of virtue, if you please. In this way we shall have
a model of the whole; and with these and similar discourses we will
beguile the way. And when we have gone through all the virtues, we will
show, by the grace of God, that the institutions of which I was speaking
look to virtue.
MEGILLUS: Very good; and suppose that you first criticize this praiser
of Zeus and the laws of Crete.
ATHENIAN: I will try to criticize you and myself, as well as him, for
the argument is a common concern. Tell me,--were not first the syssitia,
and secondly the gymnasia, invented by your legislator with a view to
war?
MEGILLUS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And what comes third, and what fourth? For that, I think, is
the sort of enumeration which ought to be made of the remaining parts
of virtue, no matter whether you call them parts or what their name is,
provided the meaning is clear.
MEGILLUS: Then I, or any other Lacedaemonian, would reply that hunting
is third in order.
ATHENIAN: Let us see if we can discover what comes fourth and fifth.