“Beginning from childhood they both teach and admonish them as long as they live. For as soon as any one understands what is said, nurse, mother, pedagogue, and the father himself, vie with each other in this, how the boy may become as good as possible; in every word and deed teaching and pointing out to him that this is just, and that unjust, this is honourable and that base, this is holy and that unholy, and this you must do and that you must not do. And if the boy obeys willingly, it is well; but if not, like a tree twisted and bent they make him straight by threats and blows. 43. After this they send him to masters, and give them much more strict injunctions to attend to the children’s morals than to their reading and music: and the masters do attend to this, and when the boys have learnt their letters, and are able to understand what is written, as before words spoken, they place before them on their benches to read, and compel them to learn by heart the compositions of good poets, in which there are many admonitions, and many details, and praises, and encomiums, of good men of former times, in order that the boy may imitate them through emulation, and strive to become such himself. Again, the music-masters, in the same way, pay attention to sobriety of behaviour, and take care that the boys commit no evil: besides this, when they have learnt to play on the harp, they teach them the compositions of other good poets, and those lyric, setting them to music, and they compel rhythm and harmony to become familiar to the boys’ souls, in order that they may become more gentle, and being themselves more rhythmical and harmonious, they may be able both to speak and act; for the whole life of man requires rhythm and harmony. 44. Moreover, besides this, they send them to a teacher of gymnastics, that having their bodies in a better state, they may be subservient to their well-regulated mind, and not be compelled to cowardice, through bodily infirmity, either in war or other actions. And these things they do who are most able; but the richest are the most able, and their sons beginning to frequent masters at the earliest time of life leave them the latest. And when they are set free from masters, the state still further compels them to learn the laws, and to live by them as a pattern, that they may not act at random after their own inclinations, but exactly as writing masters having ruled lines with a pen for those boys who have not yet learnt to write well, so give them the copy-book, and compel them to write according to the direction of the lines, so the state having prescribed laws which were the inventions of good and ancient legislators, compels them both to govern and be governed according to these, but whoso transgresses them, it punishes; and the name given to this chastisement, both among you, and in many other places, is correction, since punishment corrects. 45. So great therefore