LITMIR.BIZ

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attained any perception of rhythm; but that to us the Gods gave Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus to be our playfellows. Of the two first choruses I have already spoken, and I have now to speak of the third, or Dionysian chorus, which is composed of those who are between thirty and sixty years old. 'Let us hear.' We are agreed (are we not?) that men, women, and children should be always charming themselves with strains of virtue, and that there should be a variety in the strains, that they may not weary of them? Now the fairest and most useful of strains will be uttered by the elder men, and therefore we cannot let them off. But how can we make them sing? For a discreet elderly man is ashamed to hear the sound of his own voice in private, and still more in public. The only way is to give them drink; this will mellow the sourness of age. No one should be allowed to taste wine until they are eighteen; from eighteen to thirty they may take a little; but when they have reached forty years, they may be initiated into the mystery of drinking. Thus they will become softer and more impressible; and when a man's heart is warm within him, he will be more ready to charm himself and others with song. And what songs shall he sing? 'At Crete and Lacedaemon we only know choral songs.' Yes; that is because your way of life is military. Your young men are like wild colts feeding in a herd together; no one takes the individual colt and trains him apart, and tries to give him the qualities of a statesman as well as of a soldier. He who was thus trained would be a greater warrior than those of whom Tyrtaeus speaks, for he would be courageous, and yet he would know that courage was only fourth in the scale of virtue. 'Once more, I must say, Stranger, that you run down our lawgivers.' Not intentionally, my good friend, but whither the argument leads I follow; and I am trying to find some style of poetry suitable for those who dislike the common sort. 'Very good.' In all things which have a charm, either this charm is their good, or they have some accompanying truth or advantage. For example, in eating and drinking there is pleasure and also profit, that is to say, health; and in learning there is a pleasure and also truth. There is a pleasure or charm, too, in the imitative arts, as well as a law of proportion or equality; but the pleasure which they afford, however innocent, is not the criterion of their truth. The test of pleasure cannot be applied except to that which has no other good or evil, no truth or falsehood. But that which has truth must be judged of by the standard of truth, and therefore imitation and proportion are to be judged of by their truth alone. 'Certainly.' And as music is imitative, it is not to be judged by the criterion of pleasure, and the Muse whom we seek is the muse not of pleasure but of truth, for imitation has a truth. 'Doubtless.' And if so, the judge must know what is being imitated before he decides on the quality of the imitation, and he who does not know what is true will not know what is good. 'He will not.' Will any one be able to imitate the human body, if he does not know the number, proportion, colour, or figure of the limbs? 'How can he?' But suppose we know some picture or figure to be an exact resemblance of a man, should we not also require to know whether the picture is beautiful or not? 'Quite right.' The judge of the imitation is required to know, therefore, first the original, secondly the truth, and thirdly the merit of the execution? 'True.' Then let us not weary in the attempt to bring music to the standard of the Muses and of truth. The Muses are not like human poets; they never spoil or mix rhythms or scales, or mingle instruments and human voices, or confuse the manners and strains of men and women, or of freemen and slaves, or of rational beings and brute animals. They do not practise the baser sorts of musical arts, such as the 'matured judgments,' of whom Orpheus speaks, would ridicule. But modern poets separate metre from music, and melody and rhythm from words, and use the instrument alone without the voice. The consequence is, that the meaning of the rhythm and of the time are not understood. I am endeavouring to show how our fifty-year-old choristers are to be trained, and what they are to avoid. The opinion of the multitude about these matters is worthless; they who are only made to step in time by sheer force cannot be critics of music. 'Impossible.' Then our newly-appointed minstrels must be trained in music sufficiently to understand the nature of rhythms and systems; and they should select such as are suitable to men of their age, and will enable them to give and receive innocent pleasure. This is a knowledge which goes beyond that either of the poets or of their auditors in general. For although the poet must understand rhythm and music, he need not necessarily know whether the imitation is good or not, which was the third point required in a judge; but our chorus of elders must know all three, if they are to be the instructors of youth.

      And now we will resume the original argument, which may be summed up as follows: A convivial meeting is apt to grow tumultuous as the drinking proceeds; every man becomes light-headed, and fancies that he can rule the whole world. 'Doubtless.' And did we not say that the souls of the drinkers, when subdued by wine, are made softer and more malleable at the hand of the legislator? the docility of childhood returns to them. At times however they become too valiant and disorderly, drinking out of their turn, and interrupting one another. And the business of the legislator is to infuse into them that divine fear, which we call shame, in opposition to this disorderly boldness. But in order to discipline them there must be guardians of the law of drinking, and sober generals who shall take charge of the private soldiers; they are as necessary in drinking as in fighting, and he who disobeys these Dionysiac commanders will be equally disgraced. 'Very good.' If a drinking festival were well regulated, men would go away, not as they now do, greater enemies, but better friends. Of the greatest gift of Dionysus I hardly like to speak, lest I should be misunderstood. 'What is that?' According to tradition Dionysus was driven mad by his stepmother Here, and in order to revenge himself he inspired mankind with Bacchic madness. But these are stories which I would rather not repeat. However I do acknowledge that all men are born in an imperfect state, and are at first restless, irrational creatures: this, as you will remember, has been already said by us. 'I remember.' And that Apollo and the Muses and Dionysus gave us harmony and rhythm? 'Very true.' The other story implies that wine was given to punish us and make us mad; but we contend that wine is a balm and a cure; a spring of modesty in the soul, and of health and strength in the body. Again, the work of the chorus is co-extensive with the work of education; rhythm and melody answer to the voice, and the motions of the body correspond to all three, and the sound enters in and educates the soul in virtue. 'Yes.' And the movement which, when pursued as an amusement, is termed dancing, when studied with a view to the improvement of the body, becomes gymnastic. Shall we now proceed to speak of this? 'What Cretan or Lacedaemonian would approve of your omitting gymnastic?' Your question implies assent; and you will easily understand a subject which is familiar to you. Gymnastic is based on the natural tendency of every animal to rapid motion; and man adds a sense of rhythm, which is awakened by music; music and dancing together form the choral art. But before proceeding I must add a crowning word about drinking. Like other pleasures, it has a lawful use; but if a state or an individual is inclined to drink at will, I cannot allow them. I would go further than Crete or Lacedaemon and have the law of the Carthaginians, that no slave of either sex should drink wine at all, and no soldier while he is on a campaign, and no magistrate or officer while he is on duty, and that no one should drink by daylight or on a bridal night. And there are so many other occasions on which wine ought to be prohibited, that there will not be many vines grown or vineyards required in the state.

      BOOK III. If a man wants to know the origin of states and societies, he should behold them from the point of view of time. Thousands of cities have come into being and have passed away again in infinite ages, every one of them having had endless forms of government; and if we can ascertain the cause of these changes in states, that will probably explain their origin. What do you think of ancient traditions about deluges and destructions of mankind, and the preservation of a remnant? 'Every one believes in them.' Then let us suppose the world to have been destroyed by a deluge. The survivors would be hill-shepherds, small sparks of the human race, dwelling in isolation, and unacquainted with the arts and vices of civilization. We may further suppose that the cities on the plain and on the coast have been swept away, and that all inventions, and every sort of knowledge, have perished. 'Why, if all things were as they now are, nothing would have ever been invented. All our famous discoveries have been made within the last thousand years, and many of them are but of yesterday.' Yes, Cleinias, and you must not forget Epimenides, who was really of yesterday; he practised the lesson of moderation and abstinence which Hesiod only preached. 'True.' After the great destruction we may imagine that the earth was a desert, in which there were a herd or two of oxen and a few goats, hardly enough to support those who tended them; while of politics and governments the survivors would know nothing. And out of this state of things have arisen arts and laws, and

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