6. The Guardians' Gymnastic Education.
After music comes gymnastics, in which our youth are next to be trained.
Certainly. Gymnastics as well as music should begin in early years; the training in it should be
careful and should continue through life. Now my belief is - and this is a matter upon which I should
like to have your opinion in confirmation of my own, but my own belief is - not that the good body
by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that the good soul, by her own
excellence, improves the body as far as this may be possible. What do you say?
Yes, I agree.
Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in handing over the more particular
care of the body; and in order to avoid prolixity we will now only give the general outlines of the subject.
Very good.
That they must abstain from intoxication has been already remarked by us; for of all persons a guardian
should be the last to get drunk and not know where in the world he is.
Yes, he said; that a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.
But next, what shall we say of their food; for the men are in training for the great contest of all - are they not?
Yes, he said.
And will the habit of body of our ordinary athletes be suited to them?
Why not?
I am afraid, I said, that a habit of body such as they have is but a sleepy sort of thing, and rather
perilous to health. Do you not observe that these athletes sleep away their lives, and are liable to most
dangerous illnesses if they depart, in ever so slight a degree, from their customary regimen?
Yes, I do.
Then, I said, a finer sort of training will be required for our warrior athletes, who are to be like wakeful
dogs, and to see and hear with the utmost keenness; amid the many changes of water and also of food, of
summer heat and winter cold, which they will have to endure when on a campaign, they must not be liable to break down in health.
That is my view.
The really excellent gymnastics is twin sister of that simple music which we were just now describing.
How so?
Why, I conceive that there is a gymnastics which, like our music, is simple and good; and especially the military gymnastics.
What do you mean?
My meaning may be learned from Homer; he, you know, feeds his heroes at their feasts, when they are
campaigning, on soldiers' fare; they have no fish, although they are on the shores of the Hellespont, and
they are not allowed boiled meats, but only roast, which is the food most convenient for soldiers,
requiring only that they should light a fire, and not involving the trouble of carrying about pots and pans.
True.
And I can hardly be mistaken in saying that sweet sauces are nowhere mentioned in Homer. In proscribing
them, however, he is not singular; all professional athletes are well aware that a man who is to be
in good condition should take nothing of the kind.
Yes, he said; and knowing this, they are quite right in not taking them.
Then you would not approve of Syracusan dinners, and the refinements of Sicilian cookery?
I think not.
Nor, if a man is to be in condition, would you allow him to have a Corinthian girl as his fair friend?
Certainly not.
Neither would you approve of the delicacies, as they are thought, of Athenian confectionery?
Certainly not.
All such feeding and living may be rightly compared by us to melody and song composed in the panharmonic
style, and in all the rhythms. Exactly.
There complexity engendered license, and here disease; whereas simplicity in music was the parent of
temperance in the soul; and simplicity in gymnastics of health in the body.
Most true, he said.
But when intemperance and diseases multiply in a State, halls of justice and medicine are always
being opened; and the arts of the doctor and the lawyer give themselves airs, finding how keen is
the interest which not only the slaves but the freemen of a city take about them.
Of course.
And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state of education than this,
that not only artisans and the meaner sort of people need the skill of first-rate physicians and
judges, but also those who would profess to have had a liberal education? Is it not disgraceful,
and a great sign of the want of good-breeding, that a man should have to go abroad for his law and
physic because he has none of his own at home, and must therefore surrender himself into the hands
of other men whom he makes lords and judges over him?
Of all things, he said, the most disgraceful.
Would you say "most," I replied, when you consider that there is a further stage of the evil
in which a man is not only a life-long litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as
plaintiff or defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his litigiousness;
he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into
and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for
what? - in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his
life as to be able to do without a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing.
Is not that still more disgraceful?
Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful.
Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has to be cured, or
on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by indolence and a habit of life such as we
have been describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were
a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such
as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace?
Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names to diseases.
Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases in the days of Asclepius; and
this I infer from the circumstance that the hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded in Homer,
drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well besprinkled with barley-meal and grated cheese, which are
certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons of Asclepius who were at the Trojan war do not blame the
damsel who gives him the drink, or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his case.
Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to be given to a person in his condition.
Not so extraordinary, I replied, if you bear in mind that in former days, as is commonly said,
before the time of Herodicus, the guild of Asclepius did not practise our present system of medicine,
which may be said to educate diseases. But Herodicus, being a trainer, and himself of a sickly
constitution, by a combination of training and doctoring found out a way of torturing first and
chiefly himself, and secondly the rest of the world.
How was that? he said.
By the invention of lingering death; for he had a mortal disease which he perpetually tended,
and as recovery was out of the question, he passed his entire life as a valetudinarian; he could
do nothing but attend upon himself, and he was in constant torment whenever he departed in
anything from his usual regimen, and so dying hard, by the help of science he struggled on to old age.
A rare reward of his skill!
Yes, I said; a reward which a man might fairly expect who never understood that, if Asclepius
did not instruct his descendants in valetudinarian arts, the omission arose, not from ignorance
or inexperience of such a branch of medicine, but because he knew that in all well-ordered States
every individual has an occupation to which he must attend, and has therefore no leisure to spend
in continually being ill. This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously enough, do
not apply the same rule to people of the richer sort.
How do you mean? he said.
I mean this: When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a rough and ready cure; an emetic
or a purge or a cautery or the knife - these are his remedies. And if someone prescribes for him
a course of dietetics, and tells him that he must swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort
of thing, he replies at once that he has no time to be ill, and that he sees no good in a life
which is spent in nursing his disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and therefore
bidding good-by to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary habits, and either gets well
and lives and does his business, or, if his constitution fails, he dies and has no more trouble.
Yes, he said, and a man in his condition of life ought to use the art of medicine thus far only.
Has he not, I said, an occupation; and what profit would there be in his life if he were deprived of his occupation?
Quite true, he said.
But with the rich man this is otherwise; of him we do not say that he has any specially appointed
work which he must perform, if he would live.
He is generally supposed to have nothing to do.
Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a man has a livelihood he should practise virtue?
Nay, he said, I think that he had better begin somewhat sooner.
Let us not have a dispute with him about this, I said; but rather ask ourselves: Is the practise of
virtue obligatory on the rich man, or can he live without it? And if obligatory on him, then let us
raise a further question, whether this dieting of disorders, which is an impediment to the application
of the mind in carpentering and the mechanical arts, does not equally stand in the way of the sentiment of Phocylides?
Of that, he replied, there can be no doubt; such excessive care of the body, when carried beyond
the rules of gymnastics, is most inimical to the practice of virtue.
Yes, indeed, I replied, and equally incompatible with the management of a house, an army, or an
office of state; and, what is most Important of all, irreconcileable with any kind of study or
thought or self-reflection - there is a constant suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be
ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is
absolutely stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant
anxiety about the state of his body.
Yes, likely enough.
And therefore our politic Asclepius may be supposed to have exhibited the power of his art only
to persons who, being generally of healthy constitution and habits of life, had a definite ailment;
such as these he cured by purges and operations, and bade them live as usual, herein consulting
the interests of the State; but bodies which disease had penetrated through and through he would
not have attempted to cure by gradual processes of evacuation and infusion: he did not want to
lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak fathers begetting weaker sons; - if a man
was not able to live in the ordinary way he had no business to cure him; for such a cure would
have been of no use either to himself, or to the State.
Then, he said, you regard Asclepius as a statesman.
Clearly; and his character is further illustrated by his sons. Note that they were heroes in
the days of old and practised the medicines of which I am speaking at the siege of Troy:
You will remember how, when Pandarus wounded Menelaus, they
"Sucked the blood out of the wound, and sprinkled soothing remedies,"
but they never prescribed what the patient was afterward to eat or drink in the case of Menelaus,
any more than in the case of Eurypylus; the remedies, as they conceived, were enough to heal
any man who before he was wounded was healthy and regular in his habits; and even though he
did happen to drink a posset of Pramnian wine, he might get well all the same. But they would
have nothing to do with unhealthy and intemperate subjects, whose lives were of no use either
to themselves or others; the art of medicine was not designed for their good, and though they
were as rich as Midas, the sons of Asclepius would have declined to attend them.
They were very acute persons, those sons of Asclepius.
Naturally so, I replied. Nevertheless, the tragedians and Pindar disobeying our behests,
although they acknowledge that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, say also that he was bribed
into healing a rich man who was at the point of death, and for this reason he was struck by
lightning. But we, in accordance with the principle already affirmed by us, will not believe
them when they tell us both; if he was the son of a god, we maintain that he was not avaricious;
or, if he was avaricious, he was not the son of a god.
All that, Socrates, is excellent; but I should like to put a question to you: Ought there
not to be good physicians in a State, and are not the best those who have treated the greatest
number of constitutions, good and bad? and are not the best judges in like manner those who
are acquainted with all sorts of moral natures?
Yes, I said, I too would have good judges and good physicians. But do you know whom I think good?
Will you tell me?
I will, if I can. Let me, however, note that in the same question you join two things which are not the same.
How so? he asked.
Why, I said, you join physicians and judges. Now the most skilful physicians are those who, from
their youth upward, have combined with the knowledge of their art the greatest experience of disease;
they had better not be robust in health, and should have had all manner of diseases in their own
persons. For the body, as I conceive, is not the instrument with which they cure the body; in that
case we could not allow them ever to be or to have been sickly; but they cure the body with the
mind, and the mind which has become and is sick can cure nothing.
That is very true, he said.
But with the judge it is otherwise; since he governs mind by mind; he ought not therefore to have
been trained among vicious minds, and to have associated with them from youth upward, and to have
gone through the whole calendar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes of others
as he might their bodily diseases from his own self-consciousness; the honorable mind which is to
form a healthy judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits when young.
And this is the reason why in youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practised
upon by the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls.
Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived.
Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from
his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should
be his guide, not personal experience.
Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge.
Yes, I replied, and he will be a good man (which is my answer to your question); for he is good
who has a good soul. But the cunning and suspicious nature of which we spoke - he who has committed
many crimes, and fancies himself to be a master in wickedness - when he is among his fellows,
is wonderful in the precautions which he takes, because he judges of them by himself: but when
he gets into the company of men of virtue, who have the experience of age, he appears to be a
fool again, owing to his unseasonable suspicions; he cannot recognize an honest man, because he
has no pattern of honesty in himself; at the same time, as the bad are more numerous than the
good, and he meets with them oftener, he thinks himself, and is by others thought to be, rather wise than foolish.
Most true, he said.
Then the good and wise judge whom we are seeking is not this man, but the other; for vice cannot
know virtue too, but a virtuous nature, educated by time, will acquire a knowledge both of virtue
and vice: the virtuous, and not the vicious, man has wisdom - in my opinion.
And in mine also.
This is the sort of medicine, and this is the sort of law, which you will sanction in your State.
They will minister to better natures, giving health both of soul and of body; but those who are
diseased in their bodies they will leave to die, and the corrupt and incurable souls they will put an end to themselves.
That is clearly the best thing both for the patients and for the State.
And thus our youth, having been educated only in that simple music which, as we said, inspires
temperance, will be reluctant to go to law.
Clearly.
And the musician, who, keeping to the same track, is content to practise the simple gymnastics,
will have nothing to do with medicine unless in some extreme case.
That I quite believe.
The very exercises and toils which he undergoes are intended to stimulate the spirited element
of his nature, and not to increase his strength; he will not, like common athletes, use exercise
and regimen to develop his muscles.
Very right, he said.
Neither are the two arts of music and gymnastics really designed, as is often supposed, the
one for the training of the soul, the other for the training of the body.
What then is the real object of them?
I believe, I said, that the teachers of both have in view chiefly the improvement of the soul.
How can that be? he asked.
Did you never observe, I said, the effect on the mind itself of exclusive devotion to gymnastics,
or the opposite effect of an exclusive devotion to music?
In what way shown? he said.
The one producing a temper of hardness and ferocity, the other of softness and effeminacy, I replied.
Yes, he said, I am quite aware that the mere athlete becomes too much of a savage, and that
the mere musician is melted and softened beyond what is good for him.
Yet surely, I said, this ferocity only comes from spirit, which, if rightly educated, would
give courage, but, if too much intensified, is liable to become hard and brutal.
That I quite think.
On the other hand the philosopher will have the quality of gentleness. And this also, when
too much indulged, will turn to softness, but, if educated rightly, will be gentle and moderate.
True.
And in our opinion the guardians ought to have both these qualities?
Assuredly.
And both should be in harmony?
Beyond question.
And the harmonious soul is both temperate and courageous?
Yes.
And the inharmonious is cowardly and boorish?
Very true.
And, when a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul through the funnel of
his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs of which we were just now speaking, and his
whole life is passed in warbling and the delights of song; in the first stage of the process
the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle
and useless. But, if he carries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he
begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of his
soul; and he becomes a feeble warrior.
Very true.
If the element of spirit is naturally weak in him the change is speedily accomplished, but
if he have a good deal, then the power of music weakening the spirit renders him excitable;
on the least provocation he flames up at once, and is speedily extinguished; instead of having
spirit he grows irritable and passionate and is quite impractical.
Exactly.
And so in gymnastics, if a man takes violent exercise and is a great feeder, and the reverse
of a great student of music and philosophy, at first the high condition of his body fills him
with pride and spirit, and he becomes twice the man that he was.
Certainly.
And what happens? if he do nothing else, and holds no converse with the muses, does not even
that intelligence which there may be in him, having no taste of any sort of learning or inquiry
or thought or culture, grow feeble and dull and blind, his mind never waking up or receiving
nourishment, and his senses not being purged of their mists?
True, he said.
And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncivilized, never using the weapon of persuasion
- he is like a wild beast, all violence and fierceness, and knows no other way of dealing; and
he lives in all ignorance and evil conditions, and has no sense of propriety and grace.
That is quite true, he said.
And as there are two principles of human nature, one the spirited and the other the philosophical,
some god, as I should say, has given mankind two arts answering to them (and only indirectly to
the soul and body), in order that these two principles (like the strings of an instrument) may
be relaxed or drawn tighter until they are duly harmonized.
That appears to be the intention.
And he who mingles music with gymnastics in the fairest proportions, and best attempers them
to the soul, may be rightly called the true musician and harmonist in a far higher sense
than the tuner of the strings.
You are quite right, Socrates.
And such a presiding genius will be always required in our State if the government is to last.
Yes, he will be absolutely necessary.
Such, then, are our principles of nurture and education: Where would be the use of going
into further details about the dances of our citizens, or about their hunting and coursing,
their gymnastic and equestrian contests? For these all follow the general principle, and
having found that, we shall have no difficulty in discovering them.
I dare say that there will be no difficulty.
7. The Myth of the Metals.
Very good, I said; then what is the next question? Must we not ask who are to be rulers and who subjects?
Certainly.
There can be no doubt that the elder must rule the younger.
Clearly.
And that the best of these must rule.
That is also clear.
Now, are not the best husbandmen those who are most devoted to husbandry?
Yes.
And as we are to have the best of guardians for our city, must they not be those who have
most the character of guardians?
Yes.
And to this end they ought to be wise and efficient, and to have a special care of the State?
True.
And a man will be most likely to care about that which he loves?
To be sure.
And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as having the same interests with
himself, and that of which the good or evil fortune is supposed by him at any time most to affect his own?
Very true, he replied.
Then there must be a selection. Let us note among the guardians those who in their whole life
show the greatest eagerness to do what is for the good of their country, and the greatest
repugnance to do what is against her interests.
Those are the right men.
And they will have to be watched at every age, in order that we may see whether they preserve
their resolution, and never, under the influence either of force or enchantment, forget or
cast off their sense of duty to the State.
How cast off? he said.
I will explain to you, he replied. A resolution may go out of a man's mind either with his
will or against his will; with his will when he gets rid of a falsehood and learns better,
against his will whenever he is deprived of a truth.
I understand, he said, the willing loss of a resolution; the meaning of the unwilling I have yet to learn.
Why, I said, do you not see that men are unwillingly deprived of good, and willingly of
evil? Is not to have lost the truth an evil, and to possess the truth a good? and you would
agree that to conceive things as they are is to possess the truth?
Yes, he replied; I agree with you in thinking that mankind are deprived of truth against their will.
And is not this involuntary deprivation caused either by theft, or force, or enchantment?
Still, he replied, I do not understand you.
I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the tragedians. I only mean that some
men are changed by persuasion and that others forget; argument steals away the hearts of
one class, and time of the other; and this I call theft. Now you understand me?
Yes.
Those again who are forced, are those whom the violence of some pain or grief compels to change their opinion.
I understand, he said, and you are quite right.
And you would also acknowledge that the enchanted are those who change their minds either
under the softer influence of pleasure, or the sterner influence of fear?
Yes, he said; everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
Therefore, as I was just now saying, we must inquire who are the best guardians of their
own conviction that what they think the interest of the State is to be the rule of their
lives. We must watch them from their youth upward, and make them perform actions in which
they are most likely to forget or to be deceived, and he who remembers and is not deceived
is to be selected, and he who fails in the trial is to be rejected. That will be the way?
Yes.
And there should also be toils and pains and conflicts prescribed for them, in which they
will be made to give further proof of the same qualities.
Very right, he replied.
And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments - that is the third sort of test
- and see what will be their behavior: like those who take colts amid noise and tumult
to see if they are of a timid nature, so must we take our youth amid terrors of some kind,
and again pass them into pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is proved in
the furnace, that we may discover whether they are armed against all enchantments, and of$
a noble bearing always, good guardians of themselves and of the music which they have learned,
and retaining under all circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as will be
most serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he who at every age, as boy and
youth and in mature life, has come out of the trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed
a ruler and guardian of the State; he shall be honored in life and death, and shall receive
sepulture and other memorials of honor, the greatest that we have to give. But him who fails,
we must reject. I am inclined to think that this is the sort of way in which our rulers and
guardians should be chosen and appointed. I speak generally, and not with any pretension to exactness.
And, speaking generally, I agree with you, he said.
And perhaps the word "guardian" in the fullest sense ought to be applied to this higher
class only who preserve us against foreign enemies and maintain peace among our citizens at
home, that the one may not have the will, or the others the power, to harm us. The young men
whom we before called guardians may be more properly designated auxiliaries and supporters
of the principles of the rulers.
I agree with you, he said.
How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke - just one
royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?
What sort of lie? he said.
Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician tale of what has often occurred before now
in other places (as the poets say, and have made the world believe), though not in our time,
and I do not know whether such an event could ever happen again, or could now even be made probable, if it did.
How your words seem to hesitate on your lips!
You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you have heard.
Speak, he said, and fear not. Well, then, I will speak, although I really know not how to
look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to
communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people.
They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they
received from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were being formed
and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were
manufactured; when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their
country being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and
to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth
and their own brothers.
You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were going to tell.
True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have only told you half. Citizens, we shall say
to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the
power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have
the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to
be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally
be preserved in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden parent will
sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims as a first
principle to the rulers, and above all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously
guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity of the race. They should
observe what elements mingle in their offspring; for if the son of a golden or silver parent
has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of
the ruler must not be pitiful toward the child because he has to descend in the scale and
become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be sons of artisans who having an admixture of
gold or silver in them are raised to honor, and become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle
says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale;
is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?
Not in the present generation, he replied; there is no way of accomplishing this; but their
sons may be made to believe in the tale, and their sons' sons, and posterity after them.
I see the difficulty, I replied; yet the fostering of such a belief will make them care more
for the city and for one another. Enough, however, of the fiction, which may now fly abroad
upon the wings of rumor, while we arm our earth-born heroes, and lead them forth under the
command of their rulers. Let them look round and select a spot whence they can best suppress
insurrection, if any prove refractory within, and also defend themselves against enemies,
who, like wolves, may come down on the fold from without; there let them encamp, and when
they have encamped, let them sacrifice to the proper gods and prepare their dwellings.
Just so, he said.
And their dwellings must be such as will shield them against the cold of winter and the heat of summer.
I suppose that you mean houses, he replied.
Yes, I said; but they must be the houses of soldiers, and not of shopkeepers.
What is the difference? he said.
That I will endeavor to explain, I replied. To keep watchdogs, who, from want of discipline
or hunger, or some evil habit or other, would turn upon the sheep and worry them, and behave not
like dogs, but wolves, would be a foul and monstrous thing in a shepherd?
Truly monstrous, he said.
And therefore every care must be taken that our auxiliaries, being stronger than our citizens,
may not grow to be too much for them and become savage tyrants instead of friends and allies?
Yes, great care should be taken.
And would not a really good education furnish the best safeguard?
But they are well-educated already, he replied.
I cannot be so confident, my dear Glaucon,
I said; I am much more certain that they ought to be, and that true education, whatever that may be, will have
the greatest tendency to civilize and humanize them in their relations to one another, and to those who are under their protection.
Very true, he replied.
And not only their education, but their habitations, and all that belongs to them, should be such as will
neither impair their virtue as guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon the other citizens. Any man of sense must acknowledge that.
He must.
Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize our idea of them.
In the first place, none of them should have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely
necessary; neither should they have a private house or store closed against anyone who has a mind
to enter; their provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are men
of temperance and courage; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay,
enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go to mess and live together
like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner
metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men,
and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner metal has
been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the
citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with them, or wear
them, or drink from them. And this will be their salvation, and they will be the saviours of
the State. But should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become
good housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies
of the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will
pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the
hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand. For all
which reasons may we not say that thus shall our State be ordered, and that these shall
be the regulations appointed by us for our guardians concerning their houses and all other matters?
Yes, said Glaucon.
Here Ends Book III of Plato's Republic, the dialogue continues in
Book IIII.
NOTES
/1/
Regarding the ancient Greek musical modes (herein translated "harmonies") little can be said without
recourse to complex music history texts beyond the scope of our notes or needs.
The names of the Greek poetic meters mentiond by Socrates should be familiar to the read as they are
the same in English:
- Cretic (or amphimacer feet) contain three syllables, metrically long, short, long.
- Dactylic meter employs the dactyl, a foot consisting of a long syllable followed by two short syllables.
- Iambic meter, the most common English meter, emlys the iamb, a foot consisting of a
short syllable followed a long syllable.
- Trochaic meter employs the trochee, a foot consisting of a long syllable followed by a short syllable.
However, whereas in English the qualities of long and short refer to the stress on the
syllable, Greek meter depended on the length of the vowel or diphthong in the syllable.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
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