Work101

998 Thrasymachus/Socrates/Glaucon

It’s impossible. Doesn’t it follow, then, that a bad soul rules and takes care of things

badly and that a good soul does all these things well? It does. Now, we agreed that justice is a soul’s virtue, and injustice its vice? We did. Then, it follows that a just soul and a just man will live well, and an

unjust one badly. Apparently so, according to your argument. And surely anyone who lives well is blessed and happy, and anyone

who doesn’t is the opposite.354 Of course. Therefore, a just person is happy, and an unjust one wretched. So be it. It profits no one to be wretched but to be happy. Of course. And so, Thrasymachus, injustice is never more profitable than justice. Let that be your banquet, Socrates, at the feast of Bendis. Given by you, Thrasymachus, after you became gentle and ceased to

give me rough treatment. Yet I haven’t had a fine banquet. But that’s my fault not yours. I seem to have behaved like a glutton, snatching at everyb dish that passes and tasting it before properly savoring its predecessor. Before finding the answer to our first inquiry about what justice is, I let that go and turned to investigate whether it is a kind of vice and ignorance or a kind of wisdom and virtue. Then an argument came up about injustice being more profitable than justice, and I couldn’t refrain from abandoning the previous one and following up on that. Hence the result of the discus- sion, as far as I’m concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don’tc know what justice is, I’ll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.

Book II

When I said this, I thought I had done with the discussion, but it turned357 out to have been only a prelude. Glaucon showed his characteristic courage on this occasion too and refused to accept Thrasymachus’ abandonment of the argument. Socrates, he said, do you want to seem to have persuaded us that it is better in every way to be just than unjust, or do you want truly to convince us of this?b

I want truly to convince you, I said, if I can. Well, then, you certainly aren’t doing what you want. Tell me, do you

think there is a kind of good we welcome, not because we desire what comes from it, but because we welcome it for its own sake—joy, for example, and all the harmless pleasures that have no results beyond the joy of having them?

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Certainly, I think there are such things. And is there a kind of good we like for its own sake and also for the

sake of what comes from it—knowing, for example, and seeing and being c healthy? We welcome such things, I suppose, on both counts.

Yes. And do you also see a third kind of good, such as physical training,

medical treatment when sick, medicine itself, and the other ways of making money? We’d say that these are onerous but beneficial to us, and we wouldn’t choose them for their own sakes, but for the sake of the rewards and other things that come from them. d

There is also this third kind. But what of it? Where do you put justice? I myself put it among the finest goods, as something to be valued by 358

anyone who is going to be blessed with happiness, both because of itself and because of what comes from it.

That isn’t most people’s opinion. They’d say that justice belongs to the onerous kind, and is to be practiced for the sake of the rewards and popularity that come from a reputation for justice, but is to be avoided because of itself as something burdensome.

I know that’s the general opinion. Thrasymachus faulted justice on these grounds a moment ago and praised injustice, but it seems that I’m a slow learner.

Come, then, and listen to me as well, and see whether you still have b that problem, for I think that Thrasymachus gave up before he had to, charmed by you as if he were a snake. But I’m not yet satisfied by the argument on either side. I want to know what justice and injustice are and what power each itself has when it’s by itself in the soul. I want to leave out of account their rewards and what comes from each of them. So, if you agree, I’ll renew the argument of Thrasymachus. First, I’ll state what kind of thing people consider justice to be and what its origins are. Second, c I’ll argue that all who practice it do so unwillingly, as something necessary, not as something good. Third, I’ll argue that they have good reason to act as they do, for the life of an unjust person is, they say, much better than that of a just one.

It isn’t, Socrates, that I believe any of that myself. I’m perplexed, indeed, and my ears are deafened listening to Thrasymachus and countless others. But I’ve yet to hear anyone defend justice in the way I want, proving that it is better than injustice. I want to hear it praised by itself, and I think that d I’m most likely to hear this from you. Therefore, I’m going to speak at length in praise of the unjust life, and in doing so I’ll show you the way I want to hear you praising justice and denouncing injustice. But see whether you want me to do that or not.

I want that most of all. Indeed, what subject could someone with any understanding enjoy discussing more often?

Excellent. Then let’s discuss the first subject I mentioned—what justice e is and what its origins are.

1000 Glaucon/Socrates

They say that to do injustice is naturally good and to suffer injustice bad, but that the badness of suffering it so far exceeds the goodness of doing it that those who have done and suffered injustice and tasted both, but who lack the power to do it and avoid suffering it, decide that it is profitable to come to an agreement with each other neither to do injustice359 nor to suffer it. As a result, they begin to make laws and covenants, and what the law commands they call lawful and just. This, they say, is the origin and essence of justice. It is intermediate between the best and the worst. The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not as a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity. Someone who has the power tob do this, however, and is a true man wouldn’t make an agreement with anyone not to do injustice in order not to suffer it. For him that would be madness. This is the nature of justice, according to the argument, Socrates, and these are its natural origins.

We can see most clearly that those who practice justice do it unwillingly and because they lack the power to do injustice, if in our thoughts wec grant to a just and an unjust person the freedom to do whatever they like. We can then follow both of them and see where their desires would lead. And we’ll catch the just person red-handed travelling the same road as the unjust. The reason for this is the desire to outdo others and get more and more. This is what anyone’s nature naturally pursues as good, but nature is forced by law into the perversion of treating fairness with respect.

The freedom I mentioned would be most easily realized if both people had the power they say the ancestor of Gyges of Lydia possessed. The story goes that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler of Lydia.d There was a violent thunderstorm, and an earthquake broke open the ground and created a chasm at the place where he was tending his sheep. Seeing this, he was filled with amazement and went down into it. And there, in addition to many other wonders of which we’re told, he saw a hollow bronze horse. There were windowlike openings in it, and, peeping in, he saw a corpse, which seemed to be of more than human size, wearing nothing but a gold ring on its finger. He took the ring and came out ofe the chasm. He wore the ring at the usual monthly meeting that reported to the king on the state of the flocks. And as he was sitting among the others, he happened to turn the setting of the ring towards himself to the inside of his hand. When he did this, he became invisible to those sitting near him, and they went on talking as if he had gone. He wondered at360 this, and, fingering the ring, he turned the setting outwards again and became visible. So he experimented with the ring to test whether it indeed had this power—and it did. If he turned the setting inward, he became invisible; if he turned it outward, he became visible again. When he realized this, he at once arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. And when he arrived there, he seduced the king’s wife, attacked the king with her help, killed him, and took over the kingdom.b

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Let’s suppose, then, that there were two such rings, one worn by a just and the other by an unjust person. Now, no one, it seems, would be so incorruptible that he would stay on the path of justice or stay away from other people’s property, when he could take whatever he wanted from the marketplace with impunity, go into people’s houses and have sex with anyone he wished, kill or release from prison anyone he wished, and do c all the other things that would make him like a god among humans. Rather his actions would be in no way different from those of an unjust person, and both would follow the same path. This, some would say, is a great proof that one is never just willingly but only when compelled to be. No one believes justice to be a good when it is kept private, since, wherever either person thinks he can do injustice with impunity, he does it. Indeed, every man believes that injustice is far more profitable to himself than justice. And any exponent of this argument will say he’s right, for someone d who didn’t want to do injustice, given this sort of opportunity, and who didn’t touch other people’s property would be thought wretched and stupid by everyone aware of the situation, though, of course, they’d praise him in public, deceiving each other for fear of suffering injustice. So much for my second topic.

As for the choice between the lives we’re discussing, we’ll be able to make a correct judgment about that only if we separate the most just and e the most unjust. Otherwise we won’t be able to do it. Here’s the separation I have in mind. We’ll subtract nothing from the injustice of an unjust person and nothing from the justice of a just one, but we’ll take each to be complete in his own way of life. First, therefore, we must suppose that an unjust person will act as clever craftsmen do: A first-rate captain or doctor, for example, knows the difference between what his craft can and 361 can’t do. He attempts the first but lets the second go by, and if he happens to slip, he can put things right. In the same way, an unjust person’s successful attempts at injustice must remain undetected, if he is to be fully unjust. Anyone who is caught should be thought inept, for the extreme of injustice is to be believed to be just without being just. And our com- pletely unjust person must be given complete injustice; nothing may be subtracted from it. We must allow that, while doing the greatest injustice, he has nonetheless provided himself with the greatest reputation for justice. If he happens to make a slip, he must be able to put it right. If any of his b unjust activities should be discovered, he must be able to speak persua- sively or to use force. And if force is needed, he must have the help of courage and strength and of the substantial wealth and friends with which he has provided himself.

Having hypothesized such a person, let’s now in our argument put beside him a just man, who is simple and noble and who, as Aeschylus says, doesn’t want to be believed to be good but to be so.1 We must take

1. In Seven Against Thebes, 592–94, it is said of Amphiaraus that “he did not wish to be believed to be the best but to be it.” The passage continues with the words Glaucon quotes below at 362a–b.

1002 Glaucon/Socrates/Adeimantus

away his reputation, for a reputation for justice would bring him honorc and rewards, so that it wouldn’t be clear whether he is just for the sake of justice itself or for the sake of those honors and rewards. We must strip him of everything except justice and make his situation the opposite of an unjust person’s. Though he does no injustice, he must have the greatest reputation for it, so that he can be tested as regards justice unsoftened by his bad reputation and its effects. Let him stay like that unchanged until he dies—just, but all his life believed to be unjust. In this way, both willd reach the extremes, the one of justice and the other of injustice, and we’ll be able to judge which of them is happier.

Whew! Glaucon, I said, how vigorously you’ve scoured each of the men for our competition, just as you would a pair of statues for an art compe- tition.

I do the best I can, he replied. Since the two are as I’ve described, in any case, it shouldn’t be difficult to complete the account of the kind of life that awaits each of them, but it must be done. And if what I say sounds crude, Socrates, remember that it isn’t I who speak but those who praisee injustice at the expense of justice. They’ll say that a just person in such circumstances will be whipped, stretched on a rack, chained, blinded with fire, and, at the end, when he has suffered every kind of evil, he’ll be impaled, and will realize then that one shouldn’t want to be just but to be believed to be just. Indeed, Aeschylus’ words are far more correctly362 applied to unjust people than to just ones, for the supporters of injustice will say that a really unjust person, having a way of life based on the truth about things and not living in accordance with opinion, doesn’t want simply to be believed to be unjust but actually to be so—

Harvesting a deep furrow in his mind, Where wise counsels propagate.b

He rules his city because of his reputation for justice; he marries into any family he wishes; he gives his children in marriage to anyone he wishes; he has contracts and partnerships with anyone he wants; and besides benefiting himself in all these ways, he profits because he has no scruples about doing injustice. In any contest, public or private, he’s the winner and outdoes his enemies. And by outdoing them, he becomes wealthy, benefiting his friends and harming his enemies. He makes adequate sacri- fices to the gods and sets up magnificent offerings to them. He takes betterc care of the gods, therefore, (and, indeed, of the human beings he’s fond of) than a just person does. Hence it’s likely that the gods, in turn, will take better care of him than of a just person. That’s what they say, Socrates, that gods and humans provide a better life for unjust people than for just ones.

When Glaucon had said this, I had it in mind to respond, but his brotherd Adeimantus intervened: You surely don’t think that the position has been adequately stated?

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Why not? I said. The most important thing to say hasn’t been said yet. Well, then, I replied, a man’s brother must stand by him, as the saying

goes.2 If Glaucon has omitted something, you must help him. Yet what he has said is enough to throw me to the canvas and make me unable to come to the aid of justice.

Nonsense, he said. Hear what more I have to say, for we should also fully explore the arguments that are opposed to the ones Glaucon gave, the ones that praise justice and find fault with injustice, so that what I e take to be his intention may be clearer.

When fathers speak to their sons, they say that one must be just, as do all the others who have charge of anyone. But they don’t praise justice itself, only the high reputations it leads to and the consequences of being 363 thought to be just, such as the public offices, marriages, and other things Glaucon listed. But they elaborate even further on the consequences of reputation. By bringing in the esteem of the gods, they are able to talk about the abundant good things that they themselves and the noble Hesiod and Homer say that the gods give to the pious, for Hesiod says that the gods make the oak trees b

Bear acorns at the top and bees in the middle And make fleecy sheep heavy laden with wool

for the just, and tells of many other good things akin to these. And Homer is similar:

When a good king, in his piety, Upholds justice, the black earth bears Wheat and barley for him, and his trees are heavy with fruit. c His sheep bear lambs unfailingly, and the sea yields up its fish.3

Musaeus and his son make the gods give the just more headstrong goods than these.4 In their stories, they lead the just to Hades, seat them on couches, provide them with a symposium of pious people, crown them with wreaths, and make them spend all their time drinking—as if they thought drunkenness was the finest wage of virtue. Others stretch even d further the wages that virtue receives from the gods, for they say that someone who is pious and keeps his promises leaves his children’s children and a whole race behind him. In these and other similar ways, they praise

2. See Odyssey xvi.97–98. 3. The two last quotations are from Works and Days 232 ff. and Odyssey xix.109–13,

omitting 110, respectively. 4. Musaeus was a legendary poet closely associated with the mystery religion of

Orphism.

1004 Adeimantus

justice. They bury the impious and unjust in mud in Hades; force them to carry water in a sieve; bring them into bad repute while they’re still alive, and all those penalties that Glaucon gave to the just person they give to the unjust. But they have nothing else to say. This, then, is the waye people praise justice and find fault with injustice.

Besides this, Socrates, consider another form of argument about justice and injustice employed both by private individuals and by poets. All go on repeating with one voice that justice and moderation are fine things, but hard and onerous, while licentiousness and injustice are sweet and364 easy to acquire and are shameful only in opinion and law. They add that unjust deeds are for the most part more profitable than just ones, and, whether in public or private, they willingly honor vicious people who have wealth and other types of power and declare them to be happy. But they dishonor and disregard the weak and the poor, even though they agree that they are better than the others.b

But the most wonderful of all these arguments concerns what they have to say about the gods and virtue. They say that the gods, too, assign misfortune and a bad life to many good people, and the opposite fate to their opposites. Begging priests and prophets frequent the doors of the rich and persuade them that they possess a god-given power founded on sacrifices and incantations. If the rich person or any of his ancestors hasc committed an injustice, they can fix it with pleasant rituals. Moreover, if he wishes to injure some enemy, then, at little expense, he’ll be able to harm just and unjust alike, for by means of spells and enchantments they can persuade the gods to serve them. And the poets are brought forward as witnesses to all these accounts. Some harp on the ease of vice, as follows:

Vice in abundance is easy to get; The road is smooth and begins beside you,d But the gods have put sweat between us and virtue,

and a road that is long, rough, and steep.5 Others quote Homer to bear witness that the gods can be influenced by humans, since he said:

The gods themselves can be swayed by prayer, And with sacrifices and soothing promises, Incense and libations, human beings turn them from their purposee When someone has transgressed and sinned.6

And they present a noisy throng of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring as they say of Selene and the Muses, in accordance with which

5. Works and Days 287–89, with minor alterations. 6. Iliad ix.497–501, with minor alterations.

Republic II 1005

they perform their rituals.7 And they persuade not only individuals but whole cities that the unjust deeds of the living or the dead can be absolved or purified through ritual sacrifices and pleasant games. These initiations, 365 as they call them, free people from punishment hereafter, while a terrible fate awaits those who have not performed the rituals.

When all such sayings about the attitudes of gods and humans to virtue and vice are so often repeated, Socrates, what effect do you suppose they have on the souls of young people? I mean those who are clever and are able to flit from one of these sayings to another, so to speak, and gather from them an impression of what sort of person he should be and of how best to travel the road of life. He would surely ask himself Pindar’s question, b “Should I by justice or by crooked deceit scale this high wall and live my life guarded and secure?” And he’ll answer: “The various sayings suggest that there is no advantage in my being just if I’m not also thought just, while the troubles and penalties of being just are apparent. But they tell me that an unjust person, who has secured for himself a reputation for justice, lives the life of a god. Since, then, ‘opinion forcibly overcomes truth’ and ‘controls happiness,’ as the wise men say, I must surely turn c entirely to it.8 I should create a façade of illusory virtue around me to deceive those who come near, but keep behind it the greedy and crafty fox of the wise Archilochus.”9

“But surely,” someone will object, “it isn’t easy for vice to remain always hidden.” We’ll reply that nothing great is easy. And, in any case, if we’re to be happy, we must follow the path indicated in these accounts. To d remain undiscovered we’ll form secret societies and political clubs. And there are teachers of persuasion to make us clever in dealing with assem- blies and law courts. Therefore, using persuasion in one place and force in another, we’ll outdo others without paying a penalty.

“What about the gods? Surely, we can’t hide from them or use violent force against them!” Well, if the gods don’t exist or don’t concern them- selves with human affairs, why should we worry at all about hiding from them? If they do exist and do concern themselves with us, we’ve learned e all we know about them from the laws and the poets who give their genealogies—nowhere else. But these are the very people who tell us that the gods can be persuaded and influenced by sacrifices, gentle prayers, and offerings. Hence, we should believe them on both matters or neither. If we believe them, we should be unjust and offer sacrifices from the fruits of our injustice. If we are just, our only gain is not to be punished by the 366 gods, since we lose the profits of injustice. But if we are unjust, we get the

7. It is not clear whether Orpheus was a real person or a mythical figure. His fame in Greek myth rests on the poems in which the doctrines of the Orphic religion are set forth.

8. The quotation is attributed to Simonides, whom Polemarchus cites in Book I. 9. Archilochus of Paros (c. 756–716 B.C.) was an iambic and elegiac poet who composed

a famous fable about the fox and the hedgehog.

1006 Adeimantus/Socrates

profits of our crimes and transgressions and afterwards persuade the gods by prayer and escape without punishment.

“But in Hades won’t we pay the penalty for crimes committed here, either ourselves or our children’s children?” “My friend,” the young man will say as he does his calculation, “mystery rites and the gods of absolution have great power. The greatest cities tell us this, as do those children of the gods who have become poets and prophets.”b

Why, then, should we still choose justice over the greatest injustice? Many eminent authorities agree that, if we practice such injustice with a false façade, we’ll do well at the hands of gods and humans, living and dying as we’ve a mind to. So, given all that has been said, Socrates, how is it possible for anyone of any power—whether of mind, wealth, body,c or birth—to be willing to honor justice and not laugh aloud when he hears it praised? Indeed, if anyone can show that what we’ve said is false and has adequate knowledge that justice is best, he’ll surely be full not of anger but of forgiveness for the unjust. He knows that, apart from someone of godlike character who is disgusted by injustice or one who has gained knowledge and avoids injustice for that reason, no one is just willingly.d Through cowardice or old age or some other weakness, people do indeed object to injustice. But it’s obvious that they do so only because they lack the power to do injustice, for the first of them to acquire it is the first to do as much injustice as he can.

And all of this has no other cause than the one that led Glaucon and me to say to you: “Socrates, of all of you who claim to praise justice, from the original heroes of old whose words survive, to the men of the present day, not one has ever blamed injustice or praised justice except by mention-e ing the reputations, honors, and rewards that are their consequences. No one has ever adequately described what each itself does of its own power by its presence in the soul of the person who possesses it, even if it remains hidden from gods and humans. No one, whether in poetry or in private conversations, has adequately argued that injustice is the worst thing a soul can have in it and that justice is the greatest good. If you had treated the subject in this way and persuaded us from youth, we wouldn’t now367 be guarding against one another’s injustices, but each would be his own best guardian, afraid that by doing injustice he’d be living with the worst thing possible.”

Thrasymachus or anyone else might say what we’ve said, Socrates, or maybe even more, in discussing justice and injustice—crudely inverting their powers, in my opinion. And, frankly, it’s because I want to hear the opposite from you that I speak with all the force I can muster. So don’tb merely give us a theoretical argument that justice is stronger than injustice, but tell us what each itself does, because of its own powers, to someone who possesses it, that makes injustice bad and justice good. Follow Glau- con’s advice, and don’t take reputations into account, for if you don’t deprive justice and injustice of their true reputations and attach false ones to them, we’ll say that you are not praising them but their reputations

Republic II 1007

and that you’re encouraging us to be unjust in secret. In that case, we’ll c say that you agree with Thrasymachus that justice is the good of another, the advantage of the stronger, while injustice is one’s own advantage and profit, though not the advantage of the weaker.

You agree that justice is one of the greatest goods, the ones that are worth getting for the sake of what comes from them, but much more so for their own sake, such as seeing, hearing, knowing, being healthy, and d all other goods that are fruitful by their own nature and not simply because of reputation. Therefore, praise justice as a good of that kind, explaining how—because of its very self—it benefits its possessors and how injustice harms them. Leave wages and reputations for others to praise.

Others would satisfy me if they praised justice and blamed injustice in that way, extolling the wages of one and denigrating those of the other. But you, unless you order me to be satisfied, wouldn’t, for you’ve spent your whole life investigating this and nothing else. Don’t, then, give us e only a theoretical argument that justice is stronger than injustice, but show what effect each has because of itself on the person who has it—the one for good and the other for bad—whether it remains hidden from gods and human beings or not.

While I’d always admired the natures of Glaucon and Adeimantus, I was especially pleased on this occasion, and I said: You are the sons of a 368 great man, and Glaucon’s lover began his elegy well when he wrote, celebrating your achievements at the battle of Megara,

Sons of Ariston, godlike offspring of a famous man.

That’s well said in my opinion, for you must indeed be affected by the divine if you’re not convinced that injustice is better than justice and yet can speak on its behalf as you have done. And I believe that you really are unconvinced by your own words. I infer this from the way you live, b for if I had only your words to go on, I wouldn’t trust you. The more I trust you, however, the more I’m at a loss as to what to do. I don’t see how I can be of help. Indeed, I believe I’m incapable of it. And here’s my evidence. I thought what I said to Thrasymachus showed that justice is better than injustice, but you won’t accept it from me. On the other hand, I don’t see how I can refuse my help, for I fear that it may even be impious to have breath in one’s body and the ability to speak and yet to stand idly by and not defend justice when it is being prosecuted. So the best course is to give justice any assistance I can. c

Glaucon and the others begged me not to abandon the argument but to help in every way to track down what justice and injustice are and what the truth about their benefits is. So I told them what I had in mind: The investigation we’re undertaking is not an easy one but requires keen eyesight. Therefore, since we aren’t clever people, we should adopt the d method of investigation that we’d use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed that the same

1008 Socrates/Adeimantus

letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface. We’d consider it a godsend, I think, to be allowed to read the larger ones first and then to examine the smaller ones, to see whether they really are the same.

That’s certainly true, said Adeimantus, but how is this case similar to our investigation of justice?e

I’ll tell you. We say, don’t we, that there is the justice of a single man and also the justice of a whole city?

Certainly. And a city is larger than a single man? It is larger. Perhaps, then, there is more justice in the larger thing, and it will be

easier to learn what it is. So, if you’re willing, let’s first find out what sort of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual,369 observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger.

That seems fine to me. If we could watch a city coming to be in theory, wouldn’t we also see

its justice coming to be, and its injustice as well? Probably so. And when that process is completed, we can hope to find what we are

looking for more easily? Of course.b Do you think we should try to carry it out, then? It’s no small task, in

my view. So think it over. We have already, said Adeimantus. Don’t even consider doing any-

thing else. I think a city comes to be because none of us is self-sufficient, but

we all need many things. Do you think that a city is founded on any other principle?

No. And because people need many things, and because one person calls

on a second out of one need and on a third out of a different need, manyc people gather in a single place to live together as partners and helpers. And such a settlement is called a city. Isn’t that so?

It is. And if they share things with one another, giving and taking, they do

so because each believes that this is better for himself? That’s right. Come, then, let’s create a city in theory from its beginnings. And it’s

our needs, it seems, that will create it. It is, indeed. Surely our first and greatest need is to provide food to sustain life.d Certainly. Our second is for shelter, and our third for clothes and such. That’s right.

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How, then, will a city be able to provide all this? Won’t one person have to be a farmer, another a builder, and another a weaver? And shouldn’t we add a cobbler and someone else to provide medical care?

All right. So the essential minimum for a city is four or five men? Apparently. e And what about this? Must each of them contribute his own work for the

common use of all? For example, will a farmer provide food for everyone, spending quadruple the time and labor to provide food to be shared by them all? Or will he not bother about that, producing one quarter the food in one quarter the time, and spending the other three quarters, one in 370 building a house, one in the production of clothes, and one in making shoes, not troubling to associate with the others, but minding his own business on his own?

Perhaps, Socrates, Adeimantus replied, the way you suggested first would be easier than the other.

That certainly wouldn’t be surprising, for, even as you were speaking it occurred to me that, in the first place, we aren’t all born alike, but each of us differs somewhat in nature from the others, one being suited to one task, another to another. Or don’t you think so? b

I do. Second, does one person do a better job if he practices many crafts or—

since he’s one person himself—if he practices one? If he practices one. It’s clear, at any rate, I think, that if one misses the right moment in

anything, the work is spoiled. It is. That’s because the thing to be done won’t wait on the leisure of the

doer, but the doer must of necessity pay close attention to his work rather than treating it as a secondary occupation. c

Yes, he must. The result, then, is that more plentiful and better-quality goods are more

easily produced if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, does it at the right time, and is released from having to do any of the others.

Absolutely. Then, Adeimantus, we’re going to need more than four citizens to pro-

vide the things we’ve mentioned, for a farmer won’t make his own plough, not if it’s to be a good one, nor his hoe, nor any of his other farming tools. Neither will a builder—and he, too, needs lots of things. And the same is d true of a weaver and a cobbler, isn’t it?

It is. Hence, carpenters, metal workers, and many other craftsmen of that sort

will share our little city and make it bigger. That’s right.

1010 Socrates/Adeimantus/Glaucon

Yet it won’t be a huge settlement even if we add cowherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen in order that the farmers have cows to do their plough- ing, the builders have oxen to share with the farmers in hauling theire materials, and the weavers and cobblers have hides and fleeces to use.

It won’t be a small one either, if it has to hold all those. Moreover, it’s almost impossible to establish a city in a place where

nothing has to be imported. Indeed it is. So we’ll need yet further people to import from other cities whatever

is needed. Yes. And if an importer goes empty-handed to another city, without a cargo

of the things needed by the city from which he’s to bring back what his own city needs, he’ll come away empty-handed, won’t he?371

So it seems. Therefore our citizens must not only produce enough for themselves

at home but also goods of the right quality and quantity to satisfy the requirements of others.

They must. So we’ll need more farmers and other craftsmen in our city. Yes. And others to take care of imports and exports. And they’re called

merchants, aren’t they? Yes. So we’ll need merchants, too. Certainly. And if the trade is by sea, we’ll need a good many others who know

how to sail.b A good many, indeed. And how will those in the city itself share the things that each produces?

It was for the sake of this that we made their partnership and founded their city.

Clearly, they must do it by buying and selling. Then we’ll need a marketplace and a currency for such exchange. Certainly. If a farmer or any other craftsman brings some of his products to market,c

and he doesn’t arrive at the same time as those who want to exchange things with him, is he to sit idly in the marketplace, away from his own work?

Not at all. There’ll be people who’ll notice this and provide the requisite service—in well-organized cities they’ll usually be those whose bodies are weakest and who aren’t fit to do any other work. They’ll stay around the market exchanging money for the goods of those who have somethingd to sell and then exchanging those goods for the money of those who want them.

Then, to fill this need there will have to be retailers in our city, for aren’t those who establish themselves in the marketplace to provide this service

Republic II 1011

of buying and selling called retailers, while those who travel between cities are called merchants?

That’s right. There are other servants, I think, whose minds alone wouldn’t qualify

them for membership in our society but whose bodies are strong enough e for labor. These sell the use of their strength for a price called a wage and hence are themselves called wage-earners. Isn’t that so?

Certainly. So wage-earners complete our city? I think so. Well, Adeimantus, has our city grown to completeness, then? Perhaps it has. Then where are justice and injustice to be found in it? With which of

the things we examined did they come in? I’ve no idea, Socrates, unless it was somewhere in some need that these 372

people have of one another. You may be right, but we must look into it and not grow weary. First,

then, let’s see what sort of life our citizens will lead when they’ve been provided for in the way we have been describing. They’ll produce bread, wine, clothes, and shoes, won’t they? They’ll build houses, work naked and barefoot in the summer, and wear adequate clothing and shoes in the b winter. For food, they’ll knead and cook the flour and meal they’ve made from wheat and barley. They’ll put their honest cakes and loaves on reeds or clean leaves, and, reclining on beds strewn with yew and myrtle, they’ll feast with their children, drink their wine, and, crowned with wreaths, hymn the gods. They’ll enjoy sex with one another but bear no more children than their resources allow, lest they fall into either poverty or war. c

It seems that you make your people feast without any delicacies, Glau- con interrupted.

True enough, I said, I was forgetting that they’ll obviously need salt, olives, cheese, boiled roots, and vegetables of the sort they cook in the country. We’ll give them desserts, too, of course, consisting of figs, chick- peas, and beans, and they’ll roast myrtle and acorns before the fire, drinking moderately. And so they’ll live in peace and good health, and when they d die at a ripe old age, they’ll bequeath a similar life to their children.

If you were founding a city for pigs, Socrates, he replied, wouldn’t you fatten them on the same diet?

Then how should I feed these people, Glaucon? I asked. In the conventional way. If they aren’t to suffer hardship, they should

recline on proper couches, dine at a table, and have the delicacies and desserts that people have nowadays. e

All right, I understand. It isn’t merely the origin of a city that we’re considering, it seems, but the origin of a luxurious city. And that may not be a bad idea, for by examining it, we might very well see how justice and injustice grow up in cities. Yet the true city, in my opinion, is the one we’ve described, the healthy one, as it were. But let’s study a city with a

1012 Socrates/Glaucon

fever, if that’s what you want. There’s nothing to stop us. The things I373 mentioned earlier and the way of life I described won’t satisfy some people, it seems, but couches, tables, and other furniture will have to be added, and, of course, all sorts of delicacies, perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries. We mustn’t provide them only with the necessities we mentioned at first, such as houses, clothes, and shoes, but painting and embroidery must be begun, and gold, ivory, and the like acquired. Isn’t that so?

Yes.b Then we must enlarge our city, for the healthy one is no longer adequate.

We must increase it in size and fill it with a multitude of things that go beyond what is necessary for a city—hunters, for example, and artists or imitators, many of whom work with shapes and colors, many with music. And there’ll be poets and their assistants, actors, choral dancers, contrac- tors, and makers of all kinds of devices, including, among other things, those needed for the adornment of women. And so we’ll need more ser- vants, too. Or don’t you think that we’ll need tutors, wet nurses, nannies,c beauticians, barbers, chefs, cooks, and swineherds? We didn’t need any of these in our earlier city, but we’ll need them in this one. And we’ll also need many more cattle, won’t we, if the people are going to eat meat?

Of course. And if we live like that, we’ll have a far greater need for doctors than

we did before?d Much greater. And the land, I suppose, that used to be adequate to feed the population

we had then, will cease to be adequate and become too small. What do you think?

The same. Then we’ll have to seize some of our neighbors’ land if we’re to have

enough pasture and ploughland. And won’t our neighbors want to seize part of ours as well, if they too have surrendered themselves to the endless acquisition of money and have overstepped the limit of their necessities?

That’s completely inevitable, Socrates.e Then our next step will be war, Glaucon, won’t it? It will. We won’t say yet whether the effects of war are good or bad but only

that we’ve now found the origins of war. It comes from those same desires that are most of all responsible for the bad things that happen to cities and the individuals in them.

That’s right. Then the city must be further enlarged, and not just by a small number,

either, but by a whole army, which will do battle with the invaders in defense of the city’s substantial wealth and all the other things we men-374 tioned.

Why aren’t the citizens themselves adequate for that purpose? They won’t be, if the agreement you and the rest of us made when we

were founding the city was a good one, for surely we agreed, if you

Republic II 1013

remember, that it’s impossible for a single person to practice many crafts or professions well.

That’s true. Well, then, don’t you think that warfare is a profession? b Of course. Then should we be more concerned about cobbling than about warfare? Not at all. But we prevented a cobbler from trying to be a farmer, weaver, or builder

at the same time and said that he must remain a cobbler in order to produce fine work. And each of the others, too, was to work all his life at a single trade for which he had a natural aptitude and keep away from all the others, so as not to miss the right moment to practice his own work well. c Now, isn’t it of the greatest importance that warfare be practiced well? And is fighting a war so easy that a farmer or a cobbler or any other craftsman can be a soldier at the same time? Though no one can become so much as a good player of checkers or dice if he considers it only as a sideline and doesn’t practice it from childhood. Or can someone pick up a shield or any other weapon or tool of war and immediately perform adequately in an infantry battle or any other kind? No other tool makes d anyone who picks it up a craftsman or champion unless he has acquired the requisite knowledge and has had sufficient practice.

If tools could make anyone who picked them up an expert, they’d be valuable indeed.

Then to the degree that the work of the guardians is most important, it e requires most freedom from other things and the greatest skill and de- votion.

I should think so. And doesn’t it also require a person whose nature is suited to that way

of life? Certainly. Then our job, it seems, is to select, if we can, the kind of nature suited

to guard the city. It is. By god, it’s no trivial task that we’ve taken on. But insofar as we are

able, we mustn’t shrink from it. No, we mustn’t. 375 Do you think that, when it comes to guarding, there is any difference

between the nature of a pedigree young dog and that of a well-born youth? What do you mean? Well, each needs keen senses, speed to catch what it sees, and strength

in case it has to fight it out with what it captures. They both need all these things. And each must be courageous if indeed he’s to fight well. Of course. And will a horse, a dog, or any other animal be courageous, if he isn’t

spirited? Or haven’t you noticed just how invincible and unbeatable spirit is, so that its presence makes the whole soul fearless and unconquerable? b

1014 Glaucon/Socrates/Adeimantus

I have noticed that. The physical qualities of the guardians are clear, then. Yes. And as far as their souls are concerned, they must be spirited. That too. But if they have natures like that, Glaucon, won’t they be savage to each

other and to the rest of the citizens? By god, it will be hard for them to be anything else. Yet surely they must be gentle to their own people and harsh to the

enemy. If they aren’t, they won’t wait around for others to destroy thec city but will do it themselves first.

That’s true. What are we to do, then? Where are we to find a character that is both

gentle and high-spirited at the same time? After all, a gentle nature is the opposite of a spirited one.

Apparently. If someone lacks either gentleness or spirit, he can’t be a good guardian.

Yet it seems impossible to combine them. It follows that a good guardian cannot exist.d

It looks like it. I couldn’t see a way out, but on reexamining what had gone before, I

said: We deserve to be stuck, for we’ve lost sight of the analogy we put forward.

How do you mean? We overlooked the fact that there are natures of the sort we thought

impossible, natures in which these opposites are indeed combined. Where? You can see them in other animals, too, but especially in the one to

which we compared the guardian, for you know, of course, that a pedigree dog naturally has a character of this sort—he is gentle as can be to thosee he’s used to and knows, but the opposite to those he doesn’t know.

I do know that. So the combination we want is possible after all, and our search for the

good guardian is not contrary to nature. Apparently not. Then do you think that our future guardian, besides being spirited, must

also be by nature philosophical? How do you mean? I don’t understand.376 It’s something else you see in dogs, and it makes you wonder at the

animal. What? When a dog sees someone it doesn’t know, it gets angry before anything

bad happens to it. But when it knows someone, it welcomes him, even if it has never received anything good from him. Haven’t you ever wondered at that?

I’ve never paid any attention to it, but obviously that is the way a dog behaves.

Republic II 1015

Surely this is a refined quality in its nature and one that is truly philo- b sophical.

In what way philosophical? Because it judges anything it sees to be either a friend or an enemy, on

no other basis than that it knows the one and doesn’t know the other. And how could it be anything besides a lover of learning, if it defines what is its own and what is alien to it in terms of knowledge and ignorance?

It couldn’t. But surely the love of learning is the same thing as philosophy or the

love of wisdom? It is. Then, may we confidently assume in the case of a human being, too,

that if he is to be gentle toward his own and those he knows, he must be a lover of learning and wisdom? c

We may. Philosophy, spirit, speed, and strength must all, then, be combined in

the nature of anyone who is to be a fine and good guardian of our city. Absolutely. Then those are the traits a potential guardian would need at the outset.

But how are we to bring him up and educate him? Will inquiry into that topic bring us any closer to the goal of our inquiry, which is to discover the origins of justice and injustice in a city? We want our account to be d adequate, but we don’t want it to be any longer than necessary.

I certainly expect, Glaucon’s brother said, that such inquiry will further our goal.

Then, by god, Adeimantus, I said, we mustn’t leave it out, even if it turns out to be a somewhat lengthy affair.

No, we mustn’t. Come, then, and just as if we had the leisure to make up stories, let’s

describe in theory how to educate our men. All right. e What will their education be? Or is it hard to find anything better than

that which has developed over a long period—physical training for bodies and music and poetry for the soul?

Yes, it would be hard. Now, we start education in music and poetry before physical training,

don’t we? Of course. Do you include stories under music and poetry? I do. Aren’t there two kinds of story, one true and the other false? Yes. And mustn’t our men be educated in both, but first in false ones? 377 I don’t understand what you mean. Don’t you understand that we first tell stories to children? These are

false, on the whole, though they have some truth in them. And we tell them to small children before physical training begins.

1016 Adeimantus/Socrates

That’s true. And that’s what I meant by saying that we must deal with music and

poetry before physical training. All right. You know, don’t you, that the beginning of any process is most impor-

tant, especially for anything young and tender? It’s at that time that it is most malleable and takes on any pattern one wishes to impress on it.b

Exactly. Then shall we carelessly allow the children to hear any old stories, told

by just anyone, and to take beliefs into their souls that are for the most part opposite to the ones we think they should hold when they are grown up?

We certainly won’t. Then we must first of all, it seems, supervise the storytellers. We’ll select

their stories whenever they are fine or beautiful and reject them when they aren’t. And we’ll persuade nurses and mothers to tell their children thec ones we have selected, since they will shape their children’s souls with stories much more than they shape their bodies by handling them. Many of the stories they tell now, however, must be thrown out.

Which ones do you mean? We’ll first look at the major stories, and by seeing how to deal with

them, we’ll see how to deal with the minor ones as well, for they exhibit the same pattern and have the same effects whether they’re famous or not. Don’t you think so?d

I do, but I don’t know which ones you’re calling major. Those that Homer, Hesiod, and other poets tell us, for surely they com-

posed false stories, told them to people, and are still telling them. Which stories do you mean, and what fault do you find in them? The fault one ought to find first and foremost, especially if the falsehood

isn’t well told. For example? When a story gives a bad image of what the gods and heroes are like,

the way a painter does whose picture is not at all like the things he’s tryinge to paint.

You’re right to object to that. But what sort of thing in particular do you have in mind?

First, telling the greatest falsehood about the most important things doesn’t make a fine story—I mean Hesiod telling us about how Uranus behaved, how Cronus punished him for it, and how he was in turn pun- ished by his own son.10 But even if it were true, it should be passed over378 in silence, not told to foolish young people. And if, for some reason, it has to be told, only a very few people—pledged to secrecy and after sacrificing not just a pig but something great and scarce—should hear it, so that their number is kept as small as possible.

Yes, such stories are hard to deal with.

10. See Hesiod, Theogony 154–210, 453–506.

Republic II 1017

And they shouldn’t be told in our city, Adeimantus. Nor should a young b person hear it said that in committing the worst crimes he’s doing nothing out of the ordinary, or that if he inflicts every kind of punishment on an unjust father, he’s only doing the same as the first and greatest of the gods.

No, by god, I don’t think myself that these stories are fit to be told. Indeed, if we want the guardians of our city to think that it’s shameful

to be easily provoked into hating one another, we mustn’t allow any stories about gods warring, fighting, or plotting against one another, for they c aren’t true. The battles of gods and giants, and all the various stories of the gods hating their families or friends, should neither be told nor even woven in embroideries. If we’re to persuade our people that no citizen has ever hated another and that it’s impious to do so, then that’s what should be told to children from the beginning by old men and women; and as these children grow older, poets should be compelled to tell them the same sort of thing. We won’t admit stories into our city—whether d allegorical or not—about Hera being chained by her son, nor about He- phaestus being hurled from heaven by his father when he tried to help his mother, who was being beaten, nor about the battle of the gods in Homer. The young can’t distinguish what is allegorical from what isn’t, and the opinions they absorb at that age are hard to erase and apt to become unalterable. For these reasons, then, we should probably take the utmost care to insure that the first stories they hear about virtue are the e best ones for them to hear.

That’s reasonable. But if someone asked us what stories these are, what should we say?

You and I, Adeimantus, aren’t poets, but we are founding a city. And it’s appropriate for the founders to know the patterns on which poets must 379 base their stories and from which they mustn’t deviate. But we aren’t actually going to compose their poems for them.

All right. But what precisely are the patterns for theology or stories about the gods?

Something like this: Whether in epic, lyric, or tragedy, a god must always be represented as he is.

Indeed, he must. Now, a god is really good, isn’t he, and must be described as such? b What else? And surely nothing good is harmful, is it? I suppose not. And can what isn’t harmful do harm? Never. Or can what does no harm do anything bad? No. And can what does nothing bad be the cause of anything bad? How could it? Moreover, the good is beneficial? Yes.

1018 Socrates/Adeimantus

It is the cause of doing well? Yes. The good isn’t the cause of all things, then, but only of good ones; it

isn’t the cause of bad ones. I agree entirely.c Therefore, since a god is good, he is not—as most people claim—the

cause of everything that happens to human beings but of only a few things, for good things are fewer than bad ones in our lives. He alone is responsible for the good things, but we must find some other cause for the bad ones, not a god.

That’s very true, and I believe it. Then we won’t accept from anyone the foolish mistake Homer makes

about the gods when he says:d

There are two urns at the threshold of Zeus, One filled with good fates, the other with bad ones. . . .

and the person to whom he gives a mixture of these

Sometimes meets with a bad fate, sometimes with good,

but the one who receives his fate entirely from the second urn,

Evil famine drives him over the divine earth.

We won’t grant either that Zeus is for use

The distributor of both good and bad.

And as to the breaking of the promised truce by Pandarus, if anyone tells us that it was brought about by Athena and Zeus or that Themis and Zeus were responsible for strife and contention among the gods, we will not praise him. Nor will we allow the young to hear the words of Aeschylus:380

A god makes mortals guilty When he wants utterly to destroy a house.11

And if anyone composes a poem about the sufferings of Niobe, such as the one in which these lines occur, or about the house of Pelops, or the tale of Troy, or anything else of that kind, we must require him to say that these things are not the work of a god. Or, if they are, then poets must look for the kind of account of them that we are now seeking, and

11. The first three quotations are from Iliad xxiv.527–32. The sources for the fourth and for the quotation from Aeschylus are unknown. The story of Athena urging Pandarus to break the truce is told in Iliad iv.73–126.

Republic II 1019

say that the actions of the gods are good and just, and that those they punish are benefited thereby. We won’t allow poets to say that the punished b are made wretched and that it was a god who made them so. But we will allow them to say that bad people are wretched because they are in need of punishment and that, in paying the penalty, they are benefited by the gods. And, as for saying that a god, who is himself good, is the cause of bad things, we’ll fight that in every way, and we won’t allow anyone to say it in his own city, if it’s to be well governed, or anyone to hear it either—whether young or old, whether in verse or prose. These stories c are not pious, not advantageous to us, and not consistent with one another.

I like your law, and I’ll vote for it. This, then, is one of the laws or patterns concerning the gods to which

speakers and poets must conform, namely, that a god isn’t the cause of all things but only of good ones.

And it’s a fully satisfactory law. What about this second law? Do you think that a god is a sorcerer, able

to appear in different forms at different times, sometimes changing himself d from his own form into many shapes, sometimes deceiving us by making us think that he has done it? Or do you think he’s simple and least of all likely to step out of his own form?

I can’t say offhand. Well, what about this? If he steps out of his own form, mustn’t he either

change himself or be changed by something else? e He must. But the best things are least liable to alteration or change, aren’t they?

For example, isn’t the healthiest and strongest body least changed by food, drink, and labor, or the healthiest and strongest plant by sun, wind, and the like?

Of course. 381 And the most courageous and most rational soul is least disturbed or

altered by any outside affection? Yes. And the same account is true of all artifacts, furniture, houses, and

clothes. The ones that are good and well made are least altered by time or anything else that happens to them.

That’s right. Whatever is in good condition, then, whether by nature or craft or both, b

admits least of being changed by anything else. So it seems. Now, surely a god and what belongs to him are in every way in the

best condition. How could they fail to be? Then a god would be least likely to have many shapes. Indeed. Then does he change or alter himself? Clearly he does, if indeed he is altered at all.

1020 Socrates/Adeimantus

Would he change himself into something better and more beautiful than himself or something worse and uglier?

It would have to be into something worse, if he’s changed at all, forc surely we won’t say that a god is deficient in either beauty or virtue.

Absolutely right. And do you think, Adeimantus, that anyone, whether god or human, would deliberately make himself worse in any way?

No, that’s impossible. Is it impossible, then, for gods to want to alter themselves? Since they

are the most beautiful and best possible, it seems that each always and unconditionally retains his own shape.

That seems entirely necessary to me. Then let no poet tell us about Proteus or Thetis, or say thatd

The gods, in the likeness of strangers from foreign lands, Adopt every sort of shape and visit our cities.12

Nor must they present Hera, in their tragedies or other poems, as a priestess collecting alms for

the life-giving sons of the Argive river Inachus,13

or tell us other stories of that sort. Nor must mothers, believing bad stories about the gods wandering at night in the shapes of strangers from foreigne lands, terrify their children with them. Such stories blaspheme the gods and, at the same time, make children more cowardly.

They mustn’t be told. But though the gods are unable to change, do they nonetheless make us

believe that they appear in all sorts of ways, deceiving us through sorcery? Perhaps. What? Would a god be willing to be false, either in word or deed, by382

presenting an illusion? I don’t know. Don’t you know that a true falsehood, if one may call it that, is hated

by all gods and humans? What do you mean? I mean that no one is willing to tell falsehoods to the most important

part of himself about the most important things, but of all places he is most afraid to have falsehood there.

I still don’t understand.

12. Odyssey xvii.485–86. 13. Inachus was the father of Io, who was persecuted by Hera because Zeus was in love with her. The source for the part of the story Plato quotes is unknown.

Republic II 1021

That’s because you think I’m saying something deep. I simply mean b that to be false to one’s soul about the things that are, to be ignorant and to have and hold falsehood there, is what everyone would least of all accept, for everyone hates a falsehood in that place most of all.

That’s right. Surely, as I said just now, this would be most correctly called true

falsehood—ignorance in the soul of someone who has been told a false- hood. Falsehood in words is a kind of imitation of this affection in the soul, an image of it that comes into being after it and is not a pure falsehood. Isn’t that so? c

Certainly. And the thing that is really a falsehood is hated not only by the gods

but by human beings as well. It seems so to me. What about falsehood in words? When and to whom is it useful and

so not deserving of hatred? Isn’t it useful against one’s enemies? And when any of our so-called friends are attempting, through madness or ignorance, to do something bad, isn’t it a useful drug for preventing them? It is also useful in the case of those stories we were just talking about, the ones we tell because we don’t know the truth about those ancient events d involving the gods. By making a falsehood as much like the truth as we can, don’t we also make it useful?

We certainly do. Then in which of these ways could a falsehood be useful to a god?

Would he make false likenesses of ancient events because of his ignorance of them?

It would be ridiculous to think that. Then there is nothing of the false poet in a god? Not in my view. Would he be false, then, through fear of his enemies? Far from it. e Because of the ignorance or madness of his family or friends, then? No one who is ignorant or mad is a friend of the gods. Then there’s no reason for a god to speak falsely? None. Therefore the daemonic and the divine are in every way free from

falsehood. Completely. A god, then, is simple and true in word and deed. He doesn’t change

himself or deceive others by images, words, or signs, whether in visions or in dreams.

That’s what I thought as soon as I heard you say it. 383 You agree, then, that this is our second pattern for speaking or composing

poems about the gods: They are not sorcerers who change themselves, nor do they mislead us by falsehoods in words or deeds.

1022 Adeimantus/Socrates

I agree. So, even though we praise many things in Homer, we won’t approve

of the dream Zeus sent to Agamemnon, nor of Aeschylus when he makes Thetis say that Apollo sang in prophecy at her wedding:b

About the good fortune my children would have, Free of disease throughout their long lives, And of all the blessings that the friendship of the gods would bring me, I hoped that Phoebus’ divine mouth would be free of falsehood, Endowed as it is with the craft of prophecy. But the very god who sang, the one at the feast, The one who said all this, he himself it is Who killed my son.14

Whenever anyone says such things about a god, we’ll be angry with him, refuse him a chorus,15 and not allow his poetry to be used in the educationc of the young, so that our guardians will be as god-fearing and godlike as human beings can be.

I completely endorse these patterns, he said, and I would enact them as laws.

Book III

Such, then, I said, are the kinds of stories that I think future guardians386 should and should not hear about the gods from childhood on, if they are to honor the gods and their parents and not take their friendship with one another lightly.

I’m sure we’re right about that, at any rate. What if they are to be courageous as well? Shouldn’t they be told stories

that will make them least afraid of death? Or do you think that anyone ever becomes courageous if he’s possessed by this fear?b

No, I certainly don’t. And can someone be unafraid of death, preferring it to defeat in battle

or slavery, if he believes in a Hades full of terrors? Not at all. Then we must supervise such stories and those who tell them, and ask

them not to disparage the life in Hades in this unconditional way, but rather to praise it, since what they now say is neither true nor beneficial to future warriors.c

We must.

14. In Iliad ii.1–34, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon to promise success if he attacks Troy immediately. The promise is false. The source for the quotation from Aeschylus is unknown. 15. I.e., deny him the funding necessary to produce his play.

Republic III 1023

Then we’ll expunge all that sort of disparagement, beginning with the following lines:

I would rather labor on earth in service to another, To a man who is landless, with little to live on, Than be king over all the dead.1

and also these:

He feared that his home should appear to gods and men d Dreadful, dank, and hated even by the gods.2

and

Alas, there survives in the Halls of Hades A soul, a mere phantasm, with its wits completely gone.3

and this:

And he alone could think; the others are flitting shadows.4

and

The soul, leaving his limbs, made its way to Hades, Lamenting its fate, leaving manhood and youth behind.5

and these: 387

His soul went below the earth like smoke, Screeching as it went . . .6

and

1. Odyssey xi.489–91. Odysseus is being addressed by the dead Achilles in Hades. 2. Iliad xx.64–65. The speaker is the god of the underworld—who is afraid that the

earth will split open and reveal that his home is dreadful, etc. 3. Iliad xxiii.103–4. Achilles speaks these lines as the soul of the dead Patroclus leaves

for Hades. 4. Odyssey x.495. Circe is speaking to Odysseus about the prophet Tiresias. 5. Iliad xvi.856–57. The words refer to Patroclus, who has just been mortally wounded

by Hector. 6. Iliad xxiii.100–101. The soul referred to is Patroclus’.

1024 Socrates/Adeimantus

As when bats in an awful cave Fly around screeching if one of them falls From the cluster on the ceiling, all clinging to one another, So their souls went screeching . . .7

We’ll ask Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we delete these passages and all similar ones. It isn’t that they aren’t poetic and pleasingb to the majority of hearers but that, the more poetic they are, the less they should be heard by children or by men who are supposed to be free and to fear slavery more than death.

Most certainly. And the frightening and dreadful names for the underworld must be

struck out, for example, “Cocytus” and “Styx,”8 and also the names for the dead, for example, “those below” and “the sapless ones,” and all thosec names of things in the underworld that make everyone who hears them shudder. They may be all well and good for other purposes, but we are afraid that our guardians will be made softer and more malleable by such shudders.

And our fear is justified. Then such passages are to be struck out? Yes. And poets must follow the opposite pattern in speaking and writing? Clearly. Must we also delete the lamentations and pitiful speeches of famous

men?d We must, if indeed what we said before is compelling. Consider though whether we are right to delete them or not. We surely

say that a decent man doesn’t think that death is a terrible thing for someone decent to suffer—even for someone who happens to be his friend.

We do say that. Then he won’t mourn for him as for someone who has suffered a terri-

ble fate. Certainly not. We also say that a decent person is most self-sufficient in living well

and, above all others, has the least need of anyone else.e That’s true. Then it’s less dreadful for him than for anyone else to be deprived of

his son, brother, possessions, or any other such things. Much less. Then he’ll least give way to lamentations and bear misfortune most

quietly when it strikes.

7. Odyssey xxiv.6–9. The souls are those of the suitors of Penelope, whom Odysseus has killed.

8. “Cocytus” means river of wailing or lamenting; “Styx” means river of hatred or gloom.

Republic III 1025

Certainly. We’d be right, then, to delete the lamentations of famous men, leaving

them to women (and not even to good women, either) and to cowardly men, so that those we say we are training to guard our city will disdain 388 to act like that.

That’s right. Again, then, we’ll ask Homer and the other poets not to represent Achil-

les, the son of a goddess, as

Lying now on his side, now on his back, now again On his belly; then standing up to wander distracted This way and that on the shore of the unharvested sea.

Nor to make him pick up ashes in both hands and pour them over his head, weeping and lamenting in the ways he does in Homer. Nor to b represent Priam, a close descendant of the gods, as entreating his men and

Rolling around in dung, Calling upon each man by name.9

And we’ll ask them even more earnestly not to make the gods lament and say:

Alas, unfortunate that I am, wretched mother of a great son.10 c

But, if they do make the gods do such things, at least they mustn’t dare to represent the greatest of the gods as behaving in so unlikely a fashion as to say:

Alas, with my own eyes I see a man who is most dear to me Chased around the city, and my heart laments

or

Woe is me, that Sarpedon, who is most dear to me, should be Fated to be killed by Patroclus, the son of Menoetius . . .11 d

If our young people, Adeimantus, listen to these stories without ridiculing them as not worth hearing, it’s hardly likely that they’ll consider the things

9. The last three references and quotations are to Iliad xxiv.3–12, Iliad xviii.23–24, and Iliad xxii.414–15, respectively. 10. Iliad xviii.54. Thetis, the mother of Achilles, is mourning his fate among the Nereids. 11. Iliad xxii.168–69 (Zeus is watching Hector being pursued by Achilles), and Iliad xvi.433–34.

1026 Socrates/Adeimantus

described in them to be unworthy of mere human beings like themselves or that they’ll rebuke themselves for doing or saying similar things when misfortune strikes. Instead, they’ll feel neither shame nor restraint but groan and lament at even insignificant misfortunes.

What you say is completely true.e Then, as the argument has demonstrated—and we must remain per-

suaded by it until someone shows us a better one—they mustn’t behave like that.

No, they mustn’t. Moreover, they mustn’t be lovers of laughter either, for whenever anyone

indulges in violent laughter, a violent change of mood is likely to follow. So I believe. Then, if someone represents worthwhile people as overcome by laughter,

we won’t approve, and we’ll approve even less if they represent gods that way.389

Much less. Then we won’t approve of Homer saying things like this about the gods:

And unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods As they saw Hephaestus limping through the hall.12

According to your argument, such things must be rejected. If you want to call it mine, but they must be rejected in any case.b Moreover, we have to be concerned about truth as well, for if what we

said just now is correct, and falsehood, though of no use to the gods, is useful to people as a form of drug, clearly we must allow only doctors to use it, not private citizens.

Clearly. Then if it is appropriate for anyone to use falsehoods for the good of

the city, because of the actions of either enemies or citizens, it is the rulers. But everyone else must keep away from them, because for a private citizen to lie to a ruler is just as bad a mistake as for a sick person or athlete notc to tell the truth to his doctor or trainer about his physical condition or for a sailor not to tell the captain the facts about his own condition or that of the ship and the rest of its crew—indeed it is a worse mistake than either of these.

That’s completely true. And if the ruler catches someone else telling falsehoods in the city—d

Any one of the craftsmen, Whether a prophet, a doctor who heals the sick, or a maker of spears13

12. Iliad i.599–600. 13. Odyssey xvii.383–84.

Republic III 1027

—he’ll punish him for introducing something as subversive and destructive to a city as it would be to a ship.

He will, if practice is to follow theory. What about moderation? Won’t our young people also need that? Of course. And aren’t these the most important aspects of moderation for the major-

ity of people, namely, to obey the rulers and to rule the pleasures of drink, sex, and food for themselves? e

That’s my opinion at any rate. Then we’ll say that the words of Homer’s Diomedes are well put:

Sit down in silence, my friend, and be persuaded by me.

and so is what follows:

The Achaeans, breathing eagerness for battle, Marched in silence, fearing their commanders.

and all other such things. Those are well put. But what about this?

Wine-bibber, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer14

and the rest, is it—or any other headstrong words spoken in prose or poetry by private citizens against their rulers—well put? 390

No, they aren’t. I don’t think they are suitable for young people to hear—not, in any

case, with a view to making them moderate. Though it isn’t surprising that they are pleasing enough in other ways. What do you think?

The same as you. What about making the cleverest man say that the finest thing of all

is when

The tables are well laden With bread and meat, and the winebearer b Draws wine from the mixing bowl and pours it in the cups.

or

14. The last three citations are, respectively, Iliad iv.412, where Diomedes rebukes his squire and quiets him; Iliad iii.8 and iv.431, not in fact (in our Homer text) adjacent to one another or the preceding; and Iliad i.225 (Achilles is insulting his commander, Aga- memnon).

1028 Socrates/Adeimantus

Death by starvation is the most pitiful fate.15

Do you think that such things make for self-control in young people? Or what about having Zeus, when all the other gods are asleep and he alone is awake, easily forget all his plans because of sexual desire and be soc overcome by the sight of Hera that he doesn’t even want to go inside but wants to possess her there on the ground, saying that his desire for her is even greater than it was when—without their parents’ knowledge— they were first lovers? Or what about the chaining together of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus16—also the result of sexual passion?

No, by god, none of that seems suitable to me. But if, on the other hand, there are words or deeds of famous men, who

are exhibiting endurance in the face of everything, surely they must bed seen or heard. For example,

He struck his chest and spoke to his heart: “Endure, my heart, you’ve suffered more shameful things than this.”17

They certainly must. Now, we mustn’t allow our men to be money-lovers or to be bribable

with gifts. Certainly not.e Then the poets mustn’t sing to them:

Gifts persuade gods, and gifts persuade revered kings.18

Nor must Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, be praised as speaking with moderation when he advises him to take the gifts and defend the Achaeans, but not to give up his anger without gifts.19 Nor should we think such things to be worthy of Achilles himself. Nor should we agree that he was such a money-lover that he would accept the gifts of Agamemnon or release the corpse of Hector for a ransom but not otherwise.391

It certainly isn’t right to praise such things. It is only out of respect for Homer, indeed, that I hesitate to say that it

is positively impious to accuse Achilles of such things or to believe others who say them. Or to make him address Apollo in these words:

15. Odysseus in Odyssey ix.8–10; Odyssey xii.342 (Eurylochus urges the men to slay the cattle of Helios in Odysseus’ absence). 16. Odyssey viii.266 ff. 17. Odyssey xx.17–18. The speaker is Odysseus. 18. The source of the passage is unknown. Cf. Euripides, Medea 964. 19. Iliad ix.602–5.

Republic III 1029

You’ve injured me, Farshooter, most deadly of the gods; And I’d punish you, if I had the power.20

Or to say that he disobeyed the river—a god—and was ready to fight it, or that he consecrated hair to the dead Patroclus, which was already b consecrated to a different river, Spercheius. It isn’t to be believed that he did any of these. Nor is it true that he dragged the dead Hector around the tomb of Patroclus or massacred the captives on his pyre.21 So we’ll deny that. Nor will we allow our people to believe that Achilles, who was c the son of a goddess and of Peleus (the most moderate of men and the grandson of Zeus) and who was brought up by the most wise Chiron, was so full of inner turmoil as to have two diseases in his soul—slavishness accompanied by the love of money, on the one hand, and arrogance towards gods and humans, on the other.

That’s right. We certainly won’t believe such things, nor will we allow it to be said

that Theseus, the son of Posidon, and Pirithous, the son of Zeus, engaged in terrible kidnappings,22 or that any other hero and son of a god dared d to do any of the terrible and impious deeds that they are now falsely said to have done. We’ll compel the poets either to deny that the heroes did such things or else to deny that they were children of the gods. They mustn’t say both or attempt to persuade our young people that the gods bring about evil or that heroes are no better than humans. As we said earlier, these things are both impious and untrue, for we demonstrated e that it is impossible for the gods to produce bad things.23

Of course. Moreover, these stories are harmful to people who hear them, for every-

one will be ready to excuse himself when he’s bad, if he is persuaded that similar things both are being done now and have been done in the past by

Close descendants of the gods, Those near to Zeus, to whom belongs The ancestral altar high up on Mount Ida, In whom the blood of daemons has not weakened.24

For that reason, we must put a stop to such stories, lest they produce in the youth a strong inclination to do bad things. 392

20. Iliad xxii.15, 20. 21. The last four references are to Iliad xxi.232 ff., Iliad xxiii.141–52, Iliad xxiv.14–18, and Iliad xxiii.175, respectively. 22. According to some legends, Theseus and Pirithous abducted Helen and tried to abduct Persephone from Hades. 23. See 380d ff. 24. Thought to be from Aeschylus’ lost play Niobe.

1030 Adeimantus/Socrates

Absolutely. Now, isn’t there a kind of story whose content we haven’t yet discussed?

So far we’ve said how one should speak about gods, heroes, daemons, and things in Hades.

We have. Then what’s left is how to deal with stories about human beings, isn’t it? Obviously. But we can’t settle that matter at present. Why not? Because I think we’ll say that what poets and prose-writers tell us about

the most important matters concerning human beings is bad. They say that many unjust people are happy and many just ones wretched, thatb injustice is profitable if it escapes detection, and that justice is another’s good but one’s own loss. I think we’ll prohibit these stories and order the poets to compose the opposite kind of poetry and tell the opposite kind of tales. Don’t you think so?

I know so. But if you agree that what I said is correct, couldn’t I reply that you’ve

agreed to the very point that is in question in our whole discussion? And you’d be right to make that reply. Then we’ll agree about what stories should be told about human

beings only when we’ve discovered what sort of thing justice is andc how by nature it profits the one who has it, whether he is believed to be just or not.

That’s very true. This concludes our discussion of the content of stories. We should now,

I think, investigate their style, for we’ll then have fully investigated both what should be said and how it should be said.

I don’t understand what you mean, Adeimantus responded. But you must, I said. Maybe you’ll understand it better if I put it this

way. Isn’t everything said by poets and storytellers a narrative about past,d present, or future events?

What else could it be? And aren’t these narratives either narrative alone, or narrative through

imitation, or both? I need a clearer understanding of that as well. I seem to be a ridiculously unclear teacher. So, like those who are incom-

petent at speaking, I won’t try to deal with the matter as a whole, but I’ll take up a part and use it as an example to make plain what I want to say. Tell me, do you know the beginning of the Iliad, where the poet tells use that Chryses begs Agamemnon to release his daughter, that Agamemnon harshly rejects him, and that, having failed, Chryses prays to the god against the Achaeans?393

I do. You know, then, that up to the lines:

Republic III 1031

And he begged all the Achaeans But especially the two sons of Atreus, the commanders of the army,25

the poet himself is speaking and doesn’t attempt to get us to think that the speaker is someone other than himself. After this, however, he speaks as if he were Chryses and tries as far as possible to make us think that the speaker isn’t Homer but the priest himself—an old man. And he b composes pretty well all the rest of his narrative about events in Troy, Ithaca, and the whole Odyssey in this way.

That’s right. Now, the speeches he makes and the parts between them are both nar-

rative? Of course. But when he makes a speech as if he were someone else, won’t we say

that he makes his own style as much like that of the indicated speaker c as possible?

We certainly will. Now, to make oneself like someone else in voice or appearance is to

imitate the person one makes oneself like. Certainly. In these passages, then, it seems that he and the other poets effect their

narrative through imitation. That’s right. If the poet never hid himself, the whole of his poem would be narrative d

without imitation. In order to prevent you from saying again that you don’t understand, I’ll show you what this would be like. If Homer said that Chryses came with a ransom for his daughter to supplicate the Achaeans, especially the kings, and after that didn’t speak as if he had become Chryses, but still as Homer, there would be no imitation but rather simple narrative. It would have gone something like this—I’ll speak without meter since I’m no poet: “And the priest came and prayed that the gods would allow them to capture Troy and be safe afterwards, that they’d accept the e ransom and free his daughter, and thus show reverence for the god. When he’d said this, the others showed their respect for the priest and consented. But Agamemnon was angry and ordered him to leave and never to return, lest his priestly wand and the wreaths of the god should fail to protect him. He said that, before freeing the daughter, he’d grow old in Argos by her side. He told Chryses to go away and not to make him angry, if he wanted to get home safely. When the old man heard this, he was frightened 394 and went off in silence. But when he’d left the camp he prayed at length to Apollo, calling him by his various titles and reminding him of his own services to him. If any of those services had been found pleasing, whether

25. Iliad i.15–16.

1032 Socrates/Adeimantus

it was the building of temples or the sacrifice of victims, he asked in return that the arrows of the god should make the Achaeans pay for his tears.” That is the way we get simple narrative without imitation.b

I understand. Then also understand that the opposite occurs when one omits the words

between the speeches and leaves the speeches by themselves. I understand that too. Tragedies are like that. That’s absolutely right. And now I think that I can make clear to youc

what I couldn’t before. One kind of poetry and story-telling employs only imitation—tragedy and comedy, as you say. Another kind employs only narration by the poet himself—you find this most of all in dithyrambs. A third kind uses both—as in epic poetry and many other places, if you follow me.

Now I understand what you were trying to say. Remember, too, that before all that we said that we had dealt with what

must be said in stories, but that we had yet to investigate how it must be said. Yes, I remember. Well, this, more precisely, is what I meant: We need to come to and

agreement about whether we’ll allow poets to narrate through imitation, and, if so, whether they are to imitate some things but not others—and what things these are, or whether they are not to imitate at all.

I divine that you’re looking into the question of whether or not we’ll allow tragedy and comedy into our city.

Perhaps, and perhaps even more than that, for I myself really don’t know yet, but whatever direction the argument blows us, that’s where we must go.

Fine. Then, consider, Adeimantus, whether our guardians should be imitators

or not. Or does this also follow from our earlier statement that each individ-e ual would do a fine job of one occupation, not of many, and that if he tried the latter and dabbled in many things, he’d surely fail to achieve distinction in any of them?

He would indeed. Then, doesn’t the same argument also hold for imitation—a single indi-

vidual can’t imitate many things as well as he can imitate one? No, he can’t. Then, he’ll hardly be able to pursue any worthwhile way of life while

at the same time imitating many things and being an imitator. Even in the395 case of two kinds of imitation that are thought to be closely akin, such as tragedy and comedy, the same people aren’t able to do both of them well. Did you not just say that these were both imitations?

I did, and you’re quite right that the same people can’t do both. Nor can they be both rhapsodes and actors. True. Indeed, not even the same actors are used for tragedy and comedy. Yet

all these are imitations, aren’t they?b

Republic III 1033

They are. And human nature, Adeimantus, seems to me to be minted in even

smaller coins than these, so that it can neither imitate many things well nor do the actions themselves, of which those imitations are likenesses.

That’s absolutely true. Then, if we’re to preserve our first argument, that our guardians must

be kept away from all other crafts so as to be the craftsmen of the city’s freedom, and be exclusively that, and do nothing at all except what contri- c butes to it, they must neither do nor imitate anything else. If they do imitate, they must imitate from childhood what is appropriate for them, namely, people who are courageous, self-controlled, pious, and free, and their actions. They mustn’t be clever at doing or imitating slavish or shame- ful actions, lest from enjoying the imitation, they come to enjoy the reality. Or haven’t you noticed that imitations practiced from youth become part d of nature and settle into habits of gesture, voice, and thought?

I have indeed. Then we won’t allow those for whom we profess to care, and who must

grow into good men, to imitate either a young woman or an older one, or one abusing her husband, quarreling with the gods, or bragging because she thinks herself happy, or one suffering misfortune and possessed by sorrows and lamentations, and even less one who is ill, in love, or in labor. e

That’s absolutely right. Nor must they imitate either male or female slaves doing slavish things. No, they mustn’t. Nor bad men, it seems, who are cowards and are doing the opposite of

what we described earlier, namely, libelling and ridiculing each other, using shameful language while drunk or sober, or wronging themselves and others, whether in word or deed, in the various other ways that are typical of such people. They mustn’t become accustomed to making 396 themselves like madmen in either word or deed, for, though they must know about mad and vicious men and women, they must neither do nor imitate anything they do.

That’s absolutely true. Should they imitate metal workers or other craftsmen, or those who row

in triremes, or their time-keepers, or anything else connected with ships? b How could they, since they aren’t to concern themselves with any of

those occupations? And what about this? Will they imitate neighing horses, bellowing bulls,

roaring rivers, the crashing sea, thunder, or anything of that sort? They are forbidden to be mad or to imitate mad people. If I understand what you mean, there is one kind of style and narrative

that someone who is really a gentleman would use whenever he wanted to narrate something, and another kind, unlike this one, which his op- posite by nature and education would favor, and in which he would c narrate.

Which styles are those?

1034 Socrates/Adeimantus/Glaucon

Well, I think that when a moderate man comes upon the words or actions of a good man in his narrative, he’ll be willing to report them as if he were that man himself, and he won’t be ashamed of that kind of imitation. He’ll imitate this good man most when he’s acting in a faultless and intelligent manner, but he’ll do so less, and with more reluctance, whend the good man is upset by disease, sexual passion, drunkenness, or some other misfortune. When he comes upon a character unworthy of himself, however, he’ll be unwilling to make himself seriously resemble that inferior character—except perhaps for a brief period in which he’s doing something good. Rather he’ll be ashamed to do something like that, both because he’s unpracticed in the imitation of such people and because he can’t stand to shape and mold himself according to a worse pattern. He despises this in his mind, unless it’s just done in play.e

That seems likely. He’ll therefore use the kind of narrative we described in dealing with

the Homeric epics a moment ago. His style will participate both in imitation and in the other kind of narrative, but there’ll be only a little bit of imitation in a long story? Or is there nothing in what I say?

That’s precisely how the pattern for such a speaker must be. As for someone who is not of this sort, the more inferior he is, the more397

willing he’ll be to narrate anything and to consider nothing unworthy of himself. As a result, he’ll undertake to imitate seriously and before a large audience all the things we just mentioned—thunder, the sounds of wind, hail, axles, pulleys, trumpets, flutes, pipes, and all the other instruments, even the cries of dogs, sheep, and birds. And this man’s style will consist entirely of imitation in voice and gesture, or else include only a small bitb of plain narrative.

That too is certain. These, then, are the two kinds of style I was talking about. There are these two. The first of these styles involves little variation, so that if someone

provides a musical mode and rhythm appropriate to it, won’t the one who speaks correctly remain—with a few minor changes—pretty well within that mode and rhythm throughout?c

That’s precisely what he’ll do. What about the other kind of style? Doesn’t it require the opposite if it

is to speak appropriately, namely, all kinds of musical modes and all kinds of rhythms, because it contains every type of variation?

That’s exactly right. Do all poets and speakers adopt one or other of these patterns of style

or a mixture of both? Necessarily. What are we to do, then? Shall we admit all these into our city, onlyd

one of the pure kinds, or the mixed one? If my opinion is to prevail, we’ll admit only the pure imitator of a

decent person.

Republic III 1035

And yet, Adeimantus, the mixed style is pleasant. Indeed, it is by far the most pleasing to children, their tutors, and the vast majority of people.

Yes, it is the most pleasing. But perhaps you don’t think that it harmonizes with our constitution,

because no one in our city is two or more people simultaneously, since each does only one job. e

Indeed, it doesn’t harmonize. And isn’t it because of this that it’s only in our city that we’ll find a

cobbler who is a cobbler and not also a captain along with his cobbling, and a farmer who is a farmer and not also a juror along with his farming, and a soldier who is a soldier and not a money-maker in addition to his soldiering, and so with them all?

That’s true. It seems, then, that if a man, who through clever training can become

anything and imitate anything, should arrive in our city, wanting to give a 398 performance of his poems, we should bow down before him as someone holy, wonderful, and pleasing, but we should tell him that there is no one like him in our city and that it isn’t lawful for there to be. We should pour myrrh on his head, crown him with wreaths, and send him away to another city. But, for our own good, we ourselves should employ a more austere and less pleasure-giving poet and storyteller, one who would imitate the speech b of a decent person and who would tell his stories in accordance with the patterns we laid down when we first undertook the education of our soldiers.

That is certainly what we’d do if it were up to us. It’s likely, then, that we have now completed our discussion of the part

of music and poetry that concerns speech and stories, for we’ve spoken both of what is to be said and of how it is to be said.

I agree. Doesn’t it remain, then, to discuss lyric odes and songs? c Clearly. And couldn’t anyone discover what we would say about them, given

that it has to be in tune with what we’ve already said? Glaucon laughed and said: I’m afraid, Socrates, that I’m not to be in-

cluded under “anyone,” for I don’t have a good enough idea at the moment of what we’re to say. Of course, I have my suspicions.

Nonetheless, I said, you know that, in the first place, a song consists of three elements—words, harmonic mode, and rhythm. d

Yes, I do know that. As far as words are concerned, they are no different in songs than they

are when not set to music, so mustn’t they conform in the same way to the patterns we established just now?

They must. Further, the mode and rhythm must fit the words. Of course. And we said that we no longer needed dirges and lamentations among

our words.

1036 Glaucon/Socrates

We did, indeed. What are the lamenting modes, then? You tell me, since you’re musical.e The mixo-Lydian, the syntono-Lydian, and some others of that sort. Aren’t they to be excluded, then? They’re useless even to decent women,

let alone to men. Certainly. Drunkenness, softness, and idleness are also most inappropriate for

our guardians. How could they not be? What, then, are the soft modes suitable for drinking-parties? The Ionian and those Lydian modes that are said to be relaxed. Could you ever use these to make people warriors?399 Never. And now all you have left is the Dorian and Phrygian modes. I don’t know all the musical modes. Just leave me the mode that

would suitably imitate the tone and rhythm of a courageous person who is active in battle or doing other violent deeds, or who is failing and facing wounds, death, or some other misfortune, and who, in allb these circumstances, is fighting off his fate steadily and with self-control. Leave me also another mode, that of someone engaged in a peaceful, unforced, voluntary action, persuading someone or asking a favor of a god in prayer or of a human being through teaching and exhortation, or, on the other hand, of someone submitting to the supplications of another who is teaching him and trying to get him to change his mind, and who, in all these circumstances, is acting with moderation and self- control, not with arrogance but with understanding, and is content with the outcome. Leave me, then, these two modes, which will best imitatec the violent or voluntary tones of voice of those who are moderate and courageous, whether in good fortune or in bad.

The modes you’re asking for are the very ones I mentioned. Well, then, we’ll have no need for polyharmonic or multistringed instru-

ments to accompany our odes and songs. It doesn’t seem so to me at least. Then we won’t need the craftsmen who make triangular lutes, harps,

and all other such multistringed and polyharmonic instruments.d Apparently not. What about flute-makers and flute-players? Will you allow them into

the city? Or isn’t the flute the most “many-stringed” of all? And aren’t the panharmonic instruments all imitations of it?26

Clearly. The lyre and the cithara are left, then, as useful in the city, while in the

country, there’d be some sort of pipe for the shepherds to play. That is what our argument shows, at least.

26. The instrument here is the aulos, which was not really a flute but a reed instrument. It was especially good at conveying emotion.

Republic III 1037

Well, we certainly aren’t doing anything new in preferring Apollo and e his instruments to Marsyas and his.27

By god, it doesn’t seem as though we are. And, by the dog, without being aware of it, we’ve been purifying the

city we recently said was luxurious. That’s because we’re being moderate. Then let’s purify the rest. The next topic after musical modes is the

regulation of meter. We shouldn’t strive to have either subtlety or great variety in meter. Rather, we should try to discover what are the rhythms of someone who leads an ordered and courageous life and then adapt the meter and the tune to his words, not his words to them. What these 400 rhythms actually are is for you to say, just as in the case of the modes.

I really don’t know what to say. I can tell you from observation that there are three basic kinds of metrical feet out of which the others are constructed, just as there are four in the case of modes. But I can’t tell you which sort imitates which sort of life.

Then we’ll consult with Damon as to which metrical feet are suited to b slavishness, insolence, madness, and the other vices and which are suited to their opposites. I think I’ve heard him talking about an enoplion, which is a composite metrical phrase (although I’m not clear on this), and also about dactylic or heroic meter, which he arranged, I don’t know how, to be equal up and down in the interchange of long and short. I think he called one foot an iambus, another a trochee, assigning a long and a short c to both of them. In the case of some of these, I think he approved or disapproved of the tempo of the foot as much as of the rhythm itself, or of some combination of the two—I can’t tell you which. But, as I said, we’ll leave these things to Damon, since to mark off the different kinds would require a long argument. Or do you think we should try it?

No, I certainly don’t. But you can discern, can’t you, that grace and gracelessness follow good

and bad rhythm respectively? Of course. Further, if, as we said just now, rhythm and mode must conform to the d

words and not vice versa, then good rhythm follows fine words and is similar to them, while bad rhythm follows the opposite kind of words, and the same for harmony and disharmony.

To be sure, these things must conform to the words. What about the style and content of the words themselves? Don’t they

conform to the character of the speaker’s soul? Of course. And the rest conform to the words?

27. After Athena had invented the aulos, she discarded it because it distorted her features to play it. It was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was foolish enough to challenge Apollo (inventor of the lyre) to a musical contest. He was defeated, and Apollo flayed him alive. Satyrs were bestial in their behavior and desires—especially their sexual desires.

1038 Glaucon/Socrates

Yes. Then fine words, harmony, grace, and rhythm follow simplicity of char-

acter—and I do not mean this in the sense in which we use “simplicity”e as a euphemism for “simple-mindedness”—but I mean the sort of fine and good character that has developed in accordance with an intelligent plan.

That’s absolutely certain. And must not our young people everywhere aim at these, if they are

to do their own work? They must, indeed. Now, surely painting is full of these qualities, as are all the crafts similar

to it; weaving is full of them, and so are embroidery, architecture, and the401 crafts that produce all the other furnishings. Our bodily nature is full of them, as are the natures of all growing things, for in all of these there is grace and gracelessness. And gracelessness, bad rhythm, and disharmony are akin to bad words and bad character, while their opposites are akin to and are imitations of the opposite, a moderate and good character.

Absolutely. Is it, then, only poets we have to supervise, compelling them to makeb

an image of a good character in their poems or else not to compose them among us? Or are we also to give orders to other craftsmen, forbidding them to represent—whether in pictures, buildings, or any other works— a character that is vicious, unrestrained, slavish, and graceless? Are we to allow someone who cannot follow these instructions to work among us, so that our guardians will be brought up on images of evil, as if in ac meadow of bad grass, where they crop and graze in many different places every day until, little by little, they unwittingly accumulate a large evil in their souls? Or must we rather seek out craftsmen who are by nature able to pursue what is fine and graceful in their work, so that our young people will live in a healthy place and be benefited on all sides, and so that something of those fine works will strike their eyes and ears like a breeze that brings health from a good place, leading them unwittingly, from childhood on, to resemblance, friendship, and harmony with the beautyd of reason?

The latter would be by far the best education for them. Aren’t these the reasons, Glaucon, that education in music and poetry

is most important? First, because rhythm and harmony permeate the inner part of the soul more than anything else, affecting it most strongly and bringing it grace, so that if someone is properly educated in music and poetry, it makes him graceful, but if not, then the opposite. Second, becausee anyone who has been properly educated in music and poetry will sense it acutely when something has been omitted from a thing and when it hasn’t been finely crafted or finely made by nature. And since he has the right distastes, he’ll praise fine things, be pleased by them, receive them into his soul, and, being nurtured by them, become fine and good. He’ll rightly object to what is shameful, hating it while he’s still young and402 unable to grasp the reason, but, having been educated in this way, he will

Republic III 1039

welcome the reason when it comes and recognize it easily because of its kinship with himself.

Yes, I agree that those are the reasons to provide education in music and poetry.

It’s just the way it was with learning how to read. Our ability wasn’t adequate until we realized that there are only a few letters that occur in all sorts of different combinations, and that—whether written large or b small28—they were worthy of our attention, so that we picked them out eagerly wherever they occurred, knowing that we wouldn’t be competent readers until we knew our letters.

True. And isn’t it also true that if there are images of letters reflected in mirrors

or water, we won’t know them until we know the letters themselves, for both abilities are parts of the same craft and discipline?

Absolutely. Then, by the gods, am I not right in saying that neither we, nor the c

guardians we are raising, will be educated in music and poetry until we know the different forms of moderation, courage, frankness, high- mindedness, and all their kindred, and their opposites too, which are moving around everywhere, and see them in the things in which they are, both themselves and their images, and do not disregard them, whether they are written on small things or large, but accept that the knowledge of both large and small letters is part of the same craft and discipline?

That’s absolutely essential. Therefore, if someone’s soul has a fine and beautiful character and his

body matches it in beauty and is thus in harmony with it, so that both d share in the same pattern, wouldn’t that be the most beautiful sight for anyone who has eyes to see?

It certainly would. And isn’t what is most beautiful also most loveable? Of course. And a musical person would love such people most of all, but he

wouldn’t love anyone who lacked harmony? No, he wouldn’t, at least not if the defect was in the soul, but if it was

only in the body, he’d put up with it and be willing to embrace the boy who had it. e

I gather that you love or have loved such a boy yourself, and I agree with you. Tell me this, however: Is excessive pleasure compatible with mod- eration?

How can it be, since it drives one mad just as much as pain does? What about with the rest of virtue? No. 403 Well, then, is it compatible with violence and licentiousness? Very much so.

28. See 368c–d.

1040 Socrates/Glaucon

Can you think of a greater or keener pleasure than sexual pleasure? I can’t—or a madder one either. But the right kind of love is by nature the love of order and beauty that

has been moderated by education in music and poetry? That’s right. Therefore, the right kind of love has nothing mad or licentious about it? No, it hasn’t. Then sexual pleasure mustn’t come into it, and the lover and the boy

he loves must have no share in it, if they are to love and be loved in theb right way?

By god, no, Socrates, it mustn’t come into it. It seems, then, that you’ll lay it down as a law in the city we’re establish-

ing that if a lover can persuade a boy to let him, then he may kiss him, be with him, and touch him, as a father would a son, for the sake of what is fine and beautiful, but—turning to the other things—his association with the one he cares about must never seem to go any further than this,c otherwise he will be reproached as untrained in music and poetry and lacking in appreciation for what is fine and beautiful.

That’s right. Does it seem to you that we’ve now completed our account of education

in music and poetry? Anyway, it has ended where it ought to end, for it ought to end in the love of the fine and beautiful.

I agree. After music and poetry, our young people must be given physical

training. Of course. In this, too, they must have careful education from childhood throughout

life. The matter stands, I believe, something like this—but you, too, shouldd look into it. It seems to me that a fit body doesn’t by its own virtue make the soul good, but instead that the opposite is true—a good soul by its own virtue makes the body as good as possible. How does it seem to you?

The same. Then, if we have devoted sufficient care to the mind, wouldn’t we be

right, in order to avoid having to do too much talking, to entrust it with the detailed supervision of the body, while we indicate only the general patterns to be followed?e

Certainly. We said that our prospective guardians must avoid drunkenness, for it

is less appropriate for a guardian to be drunk and not to know where on earth he is than it is for anyone else.

It would be absurd for a guardian to need a guardian. What about food? Aren’t these men athletes in the greatest contest? They are. Then would the regimen currently prescribed for athletes in training be404

suitable for them?

Republic III 1041

Perhaps it would. Yet it seems to result in sluggishness and to be of doubtful value for

health. Or haven’t you noticed that these athletes sleep their lives away and that, if they deviate even a little from their orderly regimen, they become seriously and violently ill?

I have noticed that. Then our warrior athletes need a more sophisticated kind of training.

They must be like sleepless hounds, able to see and hear as keenly as possible and to endure frequent changes of water and food, as well as summer and winter weather on their campaigns, without faltering in b health.

That’s how it seems to me, too. Now, isn’t the best physical training akin to the simple music and poetry

we were describing a moment ago? How do you mean? I mean a simple and decent physical training, particularly the kind

involved in training for war. What would it be like? You might learn about such things from Homer. You know that, when

his heroes are campaigning, he doesn’t give them fish to banquet on, even though they are by the sea in the Hellespont, nor boiled meat either. Instead, he gives them only roasted meat, which is the kind most easily c available to soldiers, for it’s easier nearly everywhere to use fire alone than to carry pots and pans.

That’s right. Nor, I believe, does Homer mention sweet desserts anywhere. Indeed,

aren’t even the other athletes aware that, if one’s body is to be sound, one must keep away from all such things?

They’re right to be aware of it, at any rate, and to avoid such things. If you think that, then it seems that you don’t approve of Syracusan d

cuisine or of Sicilian-style dishes. I do not. Then you also object to Corinthian girlfriends for men who are to be in

good physical condition. Absolutely. What about the reputed delights of Attic pastries? I certainly object to them, too. I believe that we’d be right to compare this diet and this entire life-style

to the kinds of lyric odes and songs that are composed in all sorts of modes and rhythms. e

Certainly. Just as embellishment in the one gives rise to licentiousness, doesn’t it

give rise to illness in the other? But simplicity in music and poetry makes for moderation in the soul, and in physical training it makes for bodily health?

That’s absolutely true.

1042 Socrates/Glaucon

And as licentiousness and disease breed in the city, aren’t many law courts and hospitals opened? And don’t medicine and law give themselves405 solemn airs when even large numbers of free men take them very seriously?

How could it be otherwise? Yet could you find a greater sign of bad and shameful education in a

city than that the need for skilled doctors and lawyers is felt not only by inferior people and craftsmen but by those who claim to have been brought up in the manner of free men? Don’t you think it’s shameful and a great sign of vulgarity to be forced to make use of a justice imposed by others,b as masters and judges, because you are unable to deal with the situa- tion yourself?

I think that’s the most shameful thing of all. Yet isn’t it even more shameful when someone not only spends a good

part of his life in court defending himself or prosecuting someone else but, through inexperience of what is fine, is persuaded to take pride in being clever at doing injustice and then exploiting every loophole andc trick to escape conviction—and all for the sake of little worthless things and because he’s ignorant of how much better and finer it is to arrange one’s own life so as to have no need of finding a sleepy or inattentive judge?

This case is even more shameful than the other. And doesn’t it seem shameful to you to need medical help, not for

wounds or because of some seasonal illness, but because, through idleness and the life-style we’ve described, one is full of gas and phlegm like ad stagnant swamp, so that sophisticated Asclepiad doctors are forced to come up with names like “flatulence” and “catarrh” to describe one’s diseases?

It does. And those certainly are strange new names for diseases. Indeed, I don’t suppose that they even existed in the time of Asclepius

himself. I take it as a proof of this that his sons at Troy didn’t criticize either the woman who treated Eurypylus when he was wounded, ore Patroclus who prescribed the treatment, which consisted of Pramnian wine with barley meal and grated cheese sprinkled on it, though such treatment is now thought to cause inflammation.29406

Yet it’s a strange drink to give someone in that condition. Not if you recall that they say that the kind of modern medicine that

plays nursemaid to the disease wasn’t used by the Asclepiads before Hero- dicus. He was a physical trainer who became ill, so he mixed physical training with medicine and wore out first himself and then many others as well.b

How did he do that? By making his dying a lengthy process. Always tending his mortal

illness, he was nonetheless, it seems, unable to cure it, so he lived out his life under medical treatment, with no leisure for anything else whatever. If he departed even a little from his accustomed regimen, he became

29. See Iliad xi.580 ff., 828–36, and 624–50.

Republic III 1043

completely worn out, but because his skill made dying difficult, he lived into old age.

That’s a fine prize for his skill. One that’s appropriate for someone who didn’t know that it wasn’t c

because he was ignorant or inexperienced that Asclepius failed to teach this type of medicine to his sons, but because he knew that everyone in a well-regulated city has his own work to do and that no one has the leisure to be ill and under treatment all his life. It’s absurd that we recognize this to be true of craftsmen while failing to recognize that it’s equally true of those who are wealthy and supposedly happy.

How is that? When a carpenter is ill, he expects to receive an emetic or a purge from d

his doctor or to get rid of his disease through surgery or cautery. If anyone prescribed a lengthy regimen to him, telling him that he should rest with his head bandaged and so on, he’d soon reply that he had no leisure to be ill and that life is no use to him if he has to neglect his work and always be concerned with his illness. After that he’d bid good-bye to his doctor, e resume his usual way of life, and either recover his health or, if his body couldn’t withstand the illness, he’d die and escape his troubles.

It is believed to be appropriate for someone like that to use medicine in this way.

Is that because his life is of no profit to him if he doesn’t do his work? 407 Obviously. But the rich person, we say, has no work that would make his life

unlivable if he couldn’t do it. That’s what people say, at least. That’s because you haven’t heard the saying of Phocylides that, once

you have the means of life, you must practice virtue.30

I think he must also practice virtue before that. We won’t quarrel with Phocylides about this. But let’s try to find out

whether the rich person must indeed practice virtue and whether his life is not worth living if he doesn’t or whether tending an illness, while it is an obstacle to applying oneself to carpentry and the other crafts, is no b obstacle whatever to taking Phocylides’ advice.

But excessive care of the body, over and above physical training, is pretty well the biggest obstacle of all. It’s troublesome in managing a household, in military service, and even in a sedentary public office.

Yet the most important of all, surely, is that it makes any kind of learning, c thought, or private meditation difficult, for it’s always imagining some headaches or dizziness and accusing philosophy of causing them. Hence, wherever this kind of virtue is practiced and examined, excessive care of the body hinders it, for it makes a person think he’s ill and be all the time concerned about his body.

30. Phocylides of Miletus was a mid-sixth-century elegiac and hexameter poet best known for his epigrams.

1044 Glaucon/Socrates

It probably does. Therefore, won’t we say that Asclepius knew this, and that he taught

medicine for those whose bodies are healthy in their natures and habits but have some specific disease? His medicine is for these people with thesed habits. He cured them of their disease with drugs or surgery and then ordered them to live their usual life so as not to harm their city’s affairs. But for those whose bodies were riddled with disease, he didn’t attempt to prescribe a regimen, drawing off a little here and pouring in a little there, in order to make their life a prolonged misery and enable them to produce offspring in all probability like themselves. He didn’t think that he should treat someone who couldn’t live a normal life, since such ae person would be of no profit either to himself or to the city.

The Asclepius you’re talking about was quite a statesman. Clearly. And don’t you see that because he was a statesman his sons

turned out to be good men at Troy, practicing medicine as I say they did? Don’t you remember that they “sucked out the blood and applied gentle408 potions” to the wound Pandarus inflicted on Menelaus, but without pre- scribing what he should eat or drink after that, any more than they did for Eurypylus?31 They considered their drugs to be sufficient to cure men who were healthy and living an orderly life before being wounded, even if they happened to drink wine mixed with barley and cheese right afterb receiving their wounds. But they didn’t consider the lives of those who were by nature sick and licentious to be profitable either to themselves or to anyone else. Medicine isn’t intended for such people and they shouldn’t be treated, not even if they’re richer than Midas.

The sons of Asclepius you’re talking about were indeed very sophisti- cated.

Appropriately so. But Pindar and the tragedians don’t agree with us.32

They say that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, that he was bribed with gold to heal a rich man, who was already dying, and that he was killed by lightning for doing so. But, in view of what we said before, we won’t believe this. We’ll say that if Asclepius was the son of a god, he was notc a money-grubber, and that if he was a money-grubber, he was not the son of a god.

That’s right. But what do you say about the following, Socrates? Don’t we need to have good doctors in our city? And the best will surely be those who have handled the greatest number of sick and of healthy people. In the same way, the best judges will be those who have associated withd people whose natures are of every kind.

I agree that the doctors and judges must be good. But do you know the kind I consider to be so?

If you’ll tell me.

31. Iliad iv.218–19. 32. Cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 1022 ff., Euripides Alcestis 3, Pindar Pythians 3.55–58.

Republic III 1045

I’ll try. But you ask about things that aren’t alike in the same question. In what way? The cleverest doctors are those who, in addition to learning their craft,

have had contact with the greatest number of very sick bodies from child- hood on, have themselves experienced every illness, and aren’t very healthy by nature, for they don’t treat bodies with their bodies, I suppose—if they e did, we wouldn’t allow their bodies to be or become bad. Rather they treat the body with their souls, and it isn’t possible for the soul to treat anything well, if it is or has been bad itself.

That’s right. As for the judge, he does rule other souls with his own soul. And it isn’t 409

possible for a soul to be nurtured among vicious souls from childhood, to associate with them, to indulge in every kind of injustice, and come through it able to judge other people’s injustices from its own case, as it can diseases of the body. Rather, if it’s to be fine and good, and a sound judge of just things, it must itself remain pure and have no experience of bad character while it’s young. That’s the reason, indeed, that decent people appear simple and easily deceived by unjust ones when they are young. It’s because they have no models in themselves of the evil experiences of b the vicious to guide their judgments.

That’s certainly so. Therefore, a good judge must not be a young person but an old one,

who has learned late in life what injustice is like and who has become aware of it not as something at home in his own soul, but as something alien and present in others, someone who, after a long time, has recognized that injustice is bad by nature, not from his own experience of it, but through knowledge. c

Such a judge would be the most noble one of all. And he’d be good, too, which was what you asked, for someone who

has a good soul is good. The clever and suspicious person, on the other hand, who has committed many injustices himself and thinks himself a wise villain, appears clever in the company of those like himself, because he’s on his guard and is guided by the models within himself. But when he meets with good older people, he’s seen to be stupid, distrustful at the wrong time, and ignorant of what a sound character is, since he has no model of this within himself. But since he meets vicious people more often d than good ones, he seems to be clever rather than unlearned, both to himself and to others.

That’s completely true. Then we mustn’t look for the good judge among people like that but

among the sort we described earlier. A vicious person would never know either himself or a virtuous one, whereas a naturally virtuous person, when educated, will in time acquire knowledge of both virtue and vice. And it is someone like that who becomes wise, in my view, and not the bad person. e

I agree with you.

1046 Socrates/Glaucon

Then won’t you legislate in our city for the kind of medicine we men- tioned and for this kind of judging, so that together they’ll look after those who are naturally well endowed in body and soul? But as for the ones410 whose bodies are naturally unhealthy or whose souls are incurably evil, won’t they let the former die of their own accord and put the latter to death?

That seems to be best both for the ones who suffer such treatment and for the city.

However, our young people, since they practice that simple sort of music and poetry that we said produces moderation, will plainly be wary of coming to need a judge.

That’s right. And won’t a person who’s educated in music and poetry pursue physical

training in the same way, and choose to make no use of medicine exceptb when unavoidable?

I believe so. He’ll work at physical exercises in order to arouse the spirited part of

his nature, rather than to acquire the physical strength for which other athletes diet and labor.

That’s absolutely right. Then, Glaucon, did those who established education in music and poetry

and in physical training do so with the aim that people attribute to them,c which is to take care of the body with the latter and the soul with the former, or with some other aim?

What other aim do you mean? It looks as though they established both chiefly for the sake of the soul. How so? Haven’t you noticed the effect that lifelong physical training, unaccom-

panied by any training in music and poetry, has on the mind, or the effect of the opposite, music and poetry without physical training?

What effects are you talking about? Savagery and toughness in the one case and softness and overcultivationd

in the other. I get the point. You mean that those who devote themselves exclusively

to physical training turn out to be more savage than they should, while those who devote themselves to music and poetry turn out to be softer than is good for them?

Moreover, the source of the savageness is the spirited part of one’s nature. Rightly nurtured, it becomes courageous, but if it’s overstrained, it’s likely to become hard and harsh.

So it seems. And isn’t it the philosophic part of one’s nature that provides the cultiva-

tion? If it is relaxed too far, it becomes softer than it should, but if properlye nurtured, it is cultivated and orderly.

So it is. Now, we say that our guardians must have both these natures. They must indeed.

Republic III 1047

And mustn’t the two be harmonized with each other? Of course. And if this harmony is achieved, the soul is both moderate and coura-

geous? 411 Certainly. But if it is inharmonious, it is cowardly and savage? Yes, indeed. Therefore, when someone gives music an opportunity to charm his

soul with the flute and to pour those sweet, soft, and plaintive tunes we mentioned through his ear, as through a funnel, when he spends his whole life humming them and delighting in them, then, at first, whatever spirit he has is softened, just as iron is tempered, and from being hard and useless, it is made useful. But if he keeps at it unrelentingly and is beguiled by the music, after a time his spirit is melted and dissolved until it vanishes, b and the very sinews of his soul are cut out and he becomes “a feeble warrior.”33

That’s right. And if he had a spiritless nature from the first, this process is soon

completed. But if he had a spirited nature, his spirit becomes weak and unstable, flaring up at trifles and extinguished as easily. The result is that such people become quick-tempered, prone to anger, and filled with discontent, rather than spirited. c

That’s certainly true. What about someone who works hard at physical training and eats well

but never touches music or philosophy? Isn’t he in good physical condition at first, full of resolution and spirit? And doesn’t he become more coura- geous than he was before?

Certainly. But what happens if he does nothing else and never associates with the d

Muse? Doesn’t whatever love of learning he might have had in his soul soon become enfeebled, deaf, and blind, because he never tastes any learning or investigation or partakes of any discussion or any of the rest of music and poetry, to nurture or arouse it?

It does seem to be that way. I believe that someone like that becomes a hater of reason and of music.

He no longer makes any use of persuasion but bulls his way through every situation by force and savagery like a wild animal, living in ignorance and stupidity without either rhythm or grace. e

That’s most certainly how he’ll live. It seems, then, that a god has given music and physical training to

human beings not, except incidentally, for the body and the soul but for the spirited and wisdom-loving parts of the soul itself, in order that these might be in harmony with one another, each being stretched and relaxed to the appropriate degree. 412

33. Iliad xvii.588.

1048 Glaucon/Socrates

It seems so. Then the person who achieves the finest blend of music and physical

training and impresses it on his soul in the most measured way is the one we’d most correctly call completely harmonious and trained in music, much more so than the one who merely harmonizes the strings of his in- strument.

That’s certainly so, Socrates. Then, won’t we always need this sort of person as an overseer in our

city, Glaucon, if indeed its constitution is to be preserved? It seems that we’ll need someone like that most of all.b These, then, are the patterns for education and upbringing. Should we

enumerate the dances of these people, or their hunts, chases with hounds, athletic contests, and horse races? Surely, they’re no longer hard to discover, since it’s pretty clear that they must follow the patterns we’ve already estab- lished.

Perhaps so. All right, then what’s the next thing we have to determine? Isn’t it which

of these same people will rule and which be ruled? Of course.c Now, isn’t it obvious that the rulers must be older and the ruled younger? Yes, it is. And mustn’t the rulers also be the best of them? That, too. And aren’t the best farmers the ones who are best at farming? Yes. Then, as the rulers must be the best of the guardians, mustn’t they be

the ones who are best at guarding the city? Yes. Then, in the first place, mustn’t they be knowledgeable and capable,

and mustn’t they care for the city? That’s right.d Now, one cares most for what one loves. Necessarily. And someone loves something most of all when he believes that the

same things are advantageous to it as to himself and supposes that if it does well, he’ll do well, and that if it does badly, then he’ll do badly too.

That’s right. Then we must choose from among our guardians those men who, upon

examination, seem most of all to believe throughout their lives that they must eagerly pursue what is advantageous to the city and be whollye unwilling to do the opposite.

Such people would be suitable for the job at any rate. I think we must observe them at all ages to see whether they are guard-

ians of this conviction and make sure that neither compulsion nor magic spells will get them to discard or forget their belief that they must do what is best for the city.

Republic III 1049

What do you mean by discarding? I’ll tell you. I think the discarding of a belief is either voluntary or

involuntary—voluntary when one learns that the belief is false, involuntary in the case of all true beliefs. 413

I understand voluntary discarding but not involuntary. What’s that? Don’t you know that people are voluntarily deprived of

bad things, but involuntarily deprived of good ones? And isn’t being deceived about the truth a bad thing, while possessing the truth is good? Or don’t you think that to believe the things that are is to possess the truth?

That’s right, and I do think that people are involuntarily deprived of true opinions.

But can’t they also be so deprived by theft, magic spells, and compulsion? b Now, I don’t understand again. I’m afraid I must be talking like a tragic poet! By “the victims of theft”

I mean those who are persuaded to change their minds or those who forget, because time, in the latter case, and argument, in the former, takes away their opinions without their realizing it. Do you understand now?

Yes. By “the compelled” I mean those whom pain or suffering causes to

change their mind. I understand that, and you’re right. The “victims of magic,” I think you’d agree, are those who change their

mind because they are under the spell of pleasure or fear. c It seems to me that everything that deceives does so by casting a spell. Then, as I said just now, we must find out who are the best guardians

of their conviction that they must always do what they believe to be best for the city. We must keep them under observation from childhood and set them tasks that are most likely to make them forget such a conviction or be deceived out of it, and we must select whoever keeps on remembering d it and isn’t easily deceived, and reject the others. Do you agree?

Yes. And we must subject them to labors, pains, and contests in which we

can watch for these traits. That’s right. Then we must also set up a competition for the third way in which

people are deprived of their convictions, namely, magic. Like those who lead colts into noise and tumult to see if they’re afraid, we must expose our young people to fears and pleasures, testing them more thoroughly than gold is tested by fire. If someone is hard to put under a spell, is e apparently gracious in everything, is a good guardian of himself and the music and poetry he has learned, and if he always shows himself to be rhythmical and harmonious, then he is the best person both for himself and for the city. Anyone who is tested in this way as a child, youth, and adult, and always comes out of it untainted, is to be made a ruler as well 414 as a guardian; he is to be honored in life and to receive after his death the most prized tombs and memorials. But anyone who fails to prove himself

1050 Socrates/Glaucon

in this way is to be rejected. It seems to me, Glaucon, that rulers and guardians must be selected and appointed in some such way as this, though we’ve provided only a general pattern and not the exact details.

It also seems to me that they must be selected in this sort of way. Then, isn’t it truly most correct to call these people complete guardians,b

since they will guard against external enemies and internal friends, so that the one will lack the power and the other the desire to harm the city? The young people we’ve hitherto called guardians we’ll now call auxiliaries and supporters of the guardians’ convictions.

I agree. How, then, could we devise one of those useful falsehoods we were

talking about a while ago,34 one noble falsehood that would, in the best case, persuade even the rulers, but if that’s not possible, then the othersc in the city?

What sort of falsehood? Nothing new, but a Phoenician story which describes something that

has happened in many places. At least, that’s what the poets say, and they’ve persuaded many people to believe it too. It hasn’t happened among us, and I don’t even know if it could. It would certainly take a lot of persuasion to get people to believe it.

You seem hesitant to tell the story. When you hear it, you’ll realize that I have every reason to hesitate. Speak, and don’t be afraid. I’ll tell it, then, though I don’t know where I’ll get the audacity or evend

what words I’ll use. I’ll first try to persuade the rulers and the soldiers and then the rest of the city that the upbringing and the education we gave them, and the experiences that went with them, were a sort of dream, that in fact they themselves, their weapons, and the other craftsmen’s tools were at that time really being fashioned and nurtured inside the earth,e and that when the work was completed, the earth, who is their mother, delivered all of them up into the world. Therefore, if anyone attacks the land in which they live, they must plan on its behalf and defend it as their mother and nurse and think of the other citizens as their earthborn brothers.

It isn’t for nothing that you were so shy about telling your falsehood. Appropriately so. Nevertheless, listen to the rest of the story. “All of415

you in the city are brothers,” we’ll say to them in telling our story, “but the god who made you mixed some gold into those who are adequately equipped to rule, because they are most valuable. He put silver in those who are auxiliaries and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen. For the most part you will produce children like yourselves, but, because you are all related, a silver child will occasionally be born from a goldenb parent, and vice versa, and all the others from each other. So the first and most important command from the god to the rulers is that there is nothing that they must guard better or watch more carefully than the mixture of

34. See 382a ff.

Republic III 1051

metals in the souls of the next generation. If an offspring of theirs should be found to have a mixture of iron or bronze, they must not pity him in any way, but give him the rank appropriate to his nature and drive him c out to join the craftsmen and farmers. But if an offspring of these people is found to have a mixture of gold or silver, they will honor him and take him up to join the guardians or the auxiliaries, for there is an oracle which says that the city will be ruined if it ever has an iron or a bronze guardian.” So, do you have any device that will make our citizens believe this story?

I can’t see any way to make them believe it themselves, but perhaps d there is one in the case of their sons and later generations and all the other people who come after them.

I understand pretty much what you mean, but even that would help to make them care more for the city and each other. However, let’s leave this matter wherever tradition takes it. And let’s now arm our earthborn and lead them forth with their rulers in charge. And as they march, let them look for the best place in the city to have their camp, a site from which they can most easily control those within, if anyone is unwilling to obey e the laws, or repel any outside enemy who comes like a wolf upon the flock. And when they have established their camp and made the requisite sacrifices, they must see to their sleeping quarters. What do you say?

I agree. And won’t these quarters protect them adequately both in winter and

summer? Of course, for it seems to me that you mean their housing. Yes, but housing for soldiers, not for money-makers. How do you mean to distinguish these from one another? 416 I’ll try to tell you. The most terrible and most shameful thing of all is

for a shepherd to rear dogs as auxiliaries to help him with his flocks in such a way that, through licentiousness, hunger, or some other bad trait of character, they do evil to the sheep and become like wolves instead of dogs.

That’s certainly a terrible thing. Isn’t it necessary, therefore, to guard in every way against our auxiliaries b

doing anything like that to the citizens because they are stronger, thereby becoming savage masters instead of kindly allies?

It is necessary. And wouldn’t a really good education endow them with the greatest

caution in this regard? But surely they have had an education like that. Perhaps we shouldn’t assert this dogmatically, Glaucon. What we can

assert is what we were saying just now, that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if they are to have what will most make them gentle to each other and to those they are guarding. c

That’s right. Now, someone with some understanding might say that, besides this

education, they must also have the kind of housing and other property

1052 Socrates/Glaucon/Adeimantus

that will neither prevent them from being the best guardians nor encourage them to do evil to the other citizens.d

That’s true. Consider, then, whether or not they should live in some such way as

this, if they’re to be the kind of men we described. First, none of them should possess any private property beyond what is wholly necessary. Second, none of them should have a house or storeroom that isn’t open for all to enter at will. Third, whatever sustenance moderate and courageous warrior-athletes require in order to have neither shortfall nor surplus ine a given year they’ll receive by taxation on the other citizens as a salary for their guardianship. Fourth, they’ll have common messes and live to- gether like soldiers in a camp. We’ll tell them that they always have gold and silver of a divine sort in their souls as a gift from the gods and so have no further need of human gold. Indeed, we’ll tell them that it’s impious for them to defile this divine possession by any admixture of such gold, because many impious deeds have been done that involve the currency used by ordinary people, while their own is pure. Hence, for417 them alone among the city’s population, it is unlawful to touch or handle gold or silver. They mustn’t be under the same roof as it, wear it as jewelry, or drink from gold or silver goblets. In this way they’d save both themselves and the city. But if they acquire private land, houses, and currency them- selves, they’ll be household managers and farmers instead of guardians— hostile masters of the other citizens instead of their allies. They’ll spendb their whole lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, more afraid of internal than of external enemies, and they’ll hasten both themselves and the whole city to almost immediate ruin. For all these reasons, let’s say that the guardians must be provided with housing and the rest in this way, and establish this as a law. Or don’t you agree?

I certainly do, Glaucon said.

Book IV

And Adeimantus interrupted: How would you defend yourself, Socrates,419 he said, if someone told you that you aren’t making these men very happy and that it’s their own fault? The city really belongs to them, yet they derive no good from it. Others own land, build fine big houses, acquire furnishings to go along with them, make their own private sacrifices to the gods, entertain guests, and also, of course, possess what you were talking about just now, gold and silver and all the things that are thought to belong to people who are blessedly happy. But one might well say that your guardians are simply settled in the city like mercenaries and that all they do is watch over it.420

Yes, I said, and what’s more, they work simply for their keep and get no extra wages as the others do. Hence, if they want to take a private trip away from the city, they won’t be able to; they’ll have nothing to give to

Republic IV 1053

their mistresses, nothing to spend in whatever other ways they wish, as people do who are considered happy. You’ve omitted these and a host of other, similar facts from your charge.

Well, let them be added to the charge as well. Then, are you asking how we should defend ourselves? b Yes. I think we’ll discover what to say if we follow the same path as before.

We’ll say that it wouldn’t be surprising if these people were happiest just as they are, but that, in establishing our city, we aren’t aiming to make any one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible. We thought that we’d find justice most easily in such a city and injustice, by contrast, in the one that is governed worst and that, by observing both cities, we’d be able to judge the question we’ve been inquir- ing into for so long. We take ourselves, then, to be fashioning the happy c city, not picking out a few happy people and putting them in it, but making the whole city happy. (We’ll look at the opposite city soon.1)

Suppose, then, that someone came up to us while we were painting a statue and objected that, because we had painted the eyes (which are the most beautiful part) black rather than purple, we had not applied the most beautiful colors to the most beautiful parts of the statue. We’d think it reasonable to offer the following defense: “You mustn’t expect us to paint the eyes so beautifully that they no longer appear to be eyes at all, and d the same with the other parts. Rather you must look to see whether by dealing with each part appropriately, we are making the whole statue beautiful.” Similarly, you mustn’t force us to give our guardians the kind of happiness that would make them something other than guardians. We know how to clothe the farmers in purple robes, festoon them with gold e jewelry, and tell them to work the land whenever they please. We know how to settle our potters on couches by the fire, feasting and passing the wine around, with their wheel beside them for whenever they want to make pots. And we can make all the others happy in the same way, so that the whole city is happy. Don’t urge us to do this, however, for if we do, a farmer wouldn’t be a farmer, nor a potter a potter, and none of the 421 others would keep to the patterns of work that give rise to a city. Now, if cobblers become inferior and corrupt and claim to be what they are not, that won’t do much harm to the city. Hence, as far as they and the others like them are concerned, our argument carries less weight. But if the guardians of our laws and city are merely believed to be guardians but are not, you surely see that they’ll destroy the city utterly, just as they alone have the opportunity to govern it well and make it happy.

If we are making true guardians, then, who are least likely to do evil to the city, and if the one who brought the charge is talking about farmers and banqueters who are happy as they would be at a festival rather than b in a city, then he isn’t talking about a city at all, but about something else.

1. This discussion is announced at 445c, but doesn’t begin until Book VIII.

1054 Socrates/Adeimantus

With this in mind, we should consider whether in setting up our guardians we are aiming to give them the greatest happiness, or whether—since our aim is to see that the city as a whole has the greatest happiness—we must compel and persuade the auxiliaries and guardians to follow our other policy and be the best possible craftsmen at their own work, and the samec with all the others. In this way, with the whole city developing and being governed well, we must leave it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness.

I think you put that very well, he said. Will you also think that I’m putting things well when I make the next

point, which is closely akin to this one? Which one exactly? Consider whether or not the following things corrupt the other workers,

so that they become bad.d What things? Wealth and poverty. How do they corrupt the other workers? Like this. Do you think that a potter who has become wealthy will still

be willing to pay attention to his craft? Not at all. Won’t he become more idle and careless than he was? Much more. Then won’t he become a worse potter? Far worse. And surely if poverty prevents him from having tools or any of the

other things he needs for his craft, he’ll produce poorer work and will teach his sons, or anyone else he teaches, to be worse craftsmen.e

Of course. So poverty and wealth make a craftsman and his products worse. Apparently. It seems, then, that we’ve found other things that our guardians must

guard against in every way, to prevent them from slipping into the city un- noticed.

What are they? Both wealth and poverty. The former makes for luxury, idleness, and422

revolution; the latter for slavishness, bad work, and revolution as well. That’s certainly true. But consider this, Socrates: If our city hasn’t got

any money, how will it be able to fight a war, especially if it has to fight against a great and wealthy city?

Obviously, it will be harder to fight one such city and easier to fight two.b How do you mean? First of all, if our city has to fight a city of the sort you mention, won’t

it be a case of warrior-athletes fighting against rich men? Yes, as far as that goes. Well, then, Adeimantus, don’t you think that one boxer who has had

the best possible training could easily fight two rich and fat non- boxers?

Republic IV 1055

Maybe not at the same time. Not even by escaping from them and then turning and hitting the one

who caught up with him first, and doing this repeatedly in stifling heat and sun? Wouldn’t he, in his condition, be able to handle even more than c two such people?

That certainly wouldn’t be surprising. And don’t you think that the rich have more knowledge and experience

of boxing than of how to fight a war? I do. Then in all likelihood our athletes will easily be able to fight twice or

three times their own numbers in a war. I agree, for I think what you say is right. What if they sent envoys to another city and told them the following

truth: “We have no use for gold or silver, and it isn’t lawful for us to d possess them, so join us in this war, and you can take the property of those who oppose us for yourselves.” Do you think that anyone hearing this would choose to fight hard, lean dogs, rather than to join them in fighting fat and tender sheep?

No, I don’t. But if the wealth of all the cities came to be gathered in a single one, watch out that it doesn’t endanger your nonwealthy city. e

You’re happily innocent if you think that anything other than the kind of city we are founding deserves to be called a city.

What do you mean? We’ll have to find a greater title for the others because each of them is

a great many cities, not a city, as they say in the game. At any rate, each of them consists of two cities at war with one another, that of the poor and that of the rich, and each of these contains a great many. If you 423 approach them as one city, you’ll be making a big mistake. But if you approach them as many and offer to give to the one city the money, power, and indeed the very inhabitants of the other, you’ll always find many allies and few enemies. And as long as your own city is moderately governed in the way that we’ve just arranged, it will, even if it has only a thousand men to fight for it, be the greatest. Not in reputation; I don’t mean that, but the greatest in fact. Indeed, you won’t find a city as great as this one among either Greeks or barbarians, although many that are many times its size may seem to be as great. Do you disagree? b

No, I certainly don’t. Then this would also be the best limit for our guardians to put on the

size of the city. And they should mark off enough land for a city that size and let the rest go.

What limit is that? I suppose the following one. As long as it is willing to remain one city,

it may continue to grow, but it cannot grow beyond that point. That is a good limit. c Then, we’ll give our guardians this further order, namely, to guard in

every way against the city’s being either small or great in reputation instead of being sufficient in size and one in number.

1056 Adeimantus/Socrates

At any rate, that order will be fairly easy for them to follow. And the one we mentioned earlier is even easier, when we said that, if

an offspring of the guardians is inferior, he must be sent off to join the other citizens and that, if the others have an able offspring, he must join the guardians. This was meant to make clear that each of the other citizensd is to be directed to what he is naturally suited for, so that, doing the one work that is his own, he will become not many but one, and the whole city will itself be naturally one not many.

That is easier than the other. These orders we give them, Adeimantus, are neither as numerous nor

as important as one might think. Indeed, they are all insignificant, provided, as the saying goes, that they guard the one great thing, though I’d rather call it sufficient than great.e

What’s that? Their education and upbringing, for if by being well educated they

become reasonable men, they will easily see these things for themselves, as well as all the other things we are omitting, for example, that marriage, the having of wives, and the procreation of children must be governed as far as possible by the old proverb: Friends possess everything in common.424

That would be best. And surely, once our city gets a good start, it will go on growing in a

cycle. Good education and upbringing, when they are preserved, produce good natures, and useful natures, who are in turn well educated, grow up even better than their predecessors, both in their offspring and in other respects, just like other animals.b

That’s likely. To put it briefly, those in charge must cling to education and see that

it isn’t corrupted without their noticing it, guarding it against everything. Above all, they must guard as carefully as they can against any innovation in music and poetry or in physical training that is counter to the established order. And they should dread to hear anyone say:

People care most for the song That is newest from the singer’s lips.2

Someone might praise such a saying, thinking that the poet meant not new songs but new ways of singing. Such a thing shouldn’t be praised,c and the poet shouldn’t be taken to have meant it, for the guardians must beware of changing to a new form of music, since it threatens the whole system. As Damon says, and I am convinced, the musical modes are never changed without change in the most important of a city’s laws.

You can count me among the convinced as well, Adeimantus said.

2. Odyssey i.351–52, slightly altered.

Republic IV 1057

Then it seems, I said, that it is in music and poetry that our guardians must build their bulwark. d

At any rate, lawlessness easily creeps in there unnoticed. Yes, as if music and poetry were only play and did no harm at all. It is harmless—except, of course, that when lawlessness has established

itself there, it flows over little by little into characters and ways of life. Then, greatly increased, it steps out into private contracts, and from private contracts, Socrates, it makes its insolent way into the laws and government, until in the end it overthrows everything, public and private. e

Well, is that the way it goes? I think so. Then, as we said at first, our children’s games must from the very

beginning be more law-abiding, for if their games become lawless, and the children follow suit, isn’t it impossible for them to grow up into good and law-abiding men? 425

It certainly is. But when children play the right games from the beginning and absorb

lawfulness from music and poetry, it follows them in everything and fosters their growth, correcting anything in the city that may have gone wrong before—in other words, the very opposite of what happens where the games are lawless.

That’s true. These people will also discover the seemingly insignificant conventions

their predecessors have destroyed. Which ones? Things like this: When it is proper for the young to be silent in front of

their elders, when they should make way for them or stand up in their b presence, the care of parents, hair styles, the clothes and shoes to wear, deportment, and everything else of that sort. Don’t you agree?

I do. I think it’s foolish to legislate about such things. Verbal or written decrees

will never make them come about or last. How could they? At any rate, Adeimantus, it looks as though the start of someone’s

education determines what follows. Doesn’t like always encourage like? c It does. And the final outcome of education, I suppose we’d say, is a single

newly finished person, who is either good or the opposite. Of course. That’s why I wouldn’t go on to try to legislate about such things. And with good reason. Then, by the gods, what about market business, such as the private

contracts people make with one another in the marketplace, for example, or contracts with manual laborers, cases of insult or injury, the bringing d of lawsuits, the establishing of juries, the payment and assessment of whatever dues are necessary in markets and harbors, the regulation of

1058 Socrates/Adeimantus/Glaucon

market, city, harbor, and the rest—should we bring ourselves to legislate about any of these?

It isn’t appropriate to dictate to men who are fine and good. They’ll easily find out for themselves whatever needs to be legislated about such things.e

Yes, provided that a god grants that the laws we have already described are preserved.

If not, they’ll spend their lives enacting a lot of other laws and then amending them, believing that in this way they’ll attain the best.

You mean they’ll live like those sick people who, through licentiousness, aren’t willing to abandon their harmful way of life?

That’s right. And such people carry on in an altogether amusing fashion, don’t they?426

Their medical treatment achieves nothing, except that their illness becomes worse and more complicated, and they’re always hoping that someone will recommend some new medicine to cure them.

That’s exactly what happens to people like that. And isn’t it also amusing that they consider their worst enemy to be

the person who tells them the truth, namely, that until they give up drunk- enness, overeating, lechery, and idleness, no medicine, cautery, or surgery, no charms, amulets, or anything else of that kind will do them any good?b

It isn’t amusing at all, for it isn’t amusing to treat someone harshly when he’s telling the truth.

You don’t seem to approve of such men. I certainly don’t, by god. Then, you won’t approve either if a whole city behaves in that way, as

we said. Don’t you think that cities that are badly governed behave exactly like this when they warn their citizens not to disturb the city’s whole political establishment on pain of death? The person who is honored andc considered clever and wise in important matters by such badly governed cities is the one who serves them most pleasantly, indulges them, flatters them, anticipates their wishes, and is clever at fulfillling them.

Cities certainly do seem to behave in that way, and I don’t approve of it at all.

What about those who are willing and eager to serve such cities? Don’t you admire their courage and readiness?d

I do, except for those who are deceived by majority approval into believ- ing that they are true statesmen.

What do you mean? Have you no sympathy for such men? Or do you think it’s possible for someone who is ignorant of measurement not to believe it himself when many others who are similarly ignorant tell him that he is six feet tall?e

No, I don’t think that. Then don’t be too hard on them, for such people are surely the most

amusing of all. They pass laws on the subjects we’ve just been enumerating and then amend them, and they always think they’ll find a way to put a

Republic IV 1059

stop to cheating on contracts and the other things I mentioned, not realizing that they’re really just cutting off a Hydra’s head.3

Yet that’s all they’re doing. 427 I’d have thought, then, that the true lawgiver oughtn’t to bother with

that form of law or constitution, either in a badly governed city or in a well-governed one—in the former, because it’s useless and accomplishes nothing; in the latter, because anyone could discover some of these things, while the others follow automatically from the ways of life we established.

What is now left for us to deal with under the heading of legislation? b For us nothing, but for the Delphic Apollo it remains to enact the greatest,

finest, and first of laws. What laws are those? Those having to do with the establishing of temples, sacrifices, and other

forms of service to gods, daemons, and heroes, the burial of the dead, and the services that ensure their favor. We have no knowledge of these things, and in establishing our city, if we have any understanding, we won’t be persuaded to trust them to anyone other than the ancestral guide. And c this god, sitting upon the rock at the center of the earth,4 is without a doubt the ancestral guide on these matters for all people.

Nicely put. And that’s what we must do. Well, son of Ariston, your city might now be said to be established. The d

next step is to get an adequate light somewhere and to call upon your brother as well as Polemarchus and the others, so as to look inside it and see where the justice and the injustice might be in it, what the difference between them is, and which of the two the person who is to be happy should possess, whether its possession is unnoticed by all the gods and human beings or not.

You’re talking nonsense, Glaucon said. You promised to look for them yourself because you said it was impious for you not to come to the rescue of justice in every way you could. e

That’s true, and I must do what I promised, but you’ll have to help. We will. I hope to find it in this way. I think our city, if indeed it has been

correctly founded, is completely good. Necessarily so. Clearly, then, it is wise, courageous, moderate, and just. Clearly. Then, if we find any of these in it, what’s left over will be the ones we

haven’t found? Of course. 428

3. The Hydra was a mythical monster. When one of its heads was cut off, two or three new heads grew in its place. Heracles had to slay the Hydra as one of his labors.

4. I.e., on the rock in the sanctuary at Delphi, which was believed to be the navel or center of the earth.

1060 Socrates/Glaucon

Therefore, as with any other four things, if we were looking for any one of them in something and recognized it first, that would be enough for us, but if we recognized the other three first, this itself would be sufficient to enable us to recognize what we are looking for. Clearly it couldn’t be anything other than what’s left over.

That’s right. Therefore, since there are four virtues, mustn’t we look for them in the

same way? Clearly. Now, the first thing I think I can see clearly in the city is wisdom, and

there seems to be something odd about it.b What’s that? I think that the city we described is really wise. And that’s because it

has good judgment, isn’t it? Yes. Now, this very thing, good judgment, is clearly some kind of knowledge,

for it’s through knowledge, not ignorance, that people judge well. Clearly. But there are many kinds of knowledge in the city. Of course. Is it because of the knowledge possessed by its carpenters, then, that

the city is to be called wise and sound in judgment? Not at all. It’s called skilled in carpentry because of that.c Then it isn’t to be called wise because of the knowledge by which it

arranges to have the best wooden implements. No, indeed. What about the knowledge of bronze items or the like? It isn’t because of any knowledge of that sort. Nor because of the knowledge of how to raise a harvest from the earth,

for it’s called skilled in farming because of that. I should think so. Then, is there some knowledge possessed by some of the citizens in the

city we just founded that doesn’t judge about any particular matter but about the city as a whole and the maintenance of good relations, both internally and with other cities?d

There is indeed. What is this knowledge, and who has it? It is guardianship, and it is possessed by those rulers we just now called

complete guardians. Then, what does this knowledge entitle you to say about the city? That it has good judgment and is really wise. Who do you think that there will be more of in our city, metal-workers

or these true guardians?e There will be far more metal-workers. Indeed, of all those who are called by a certain name because they have

some kind of knowledge, aren’t the guardians the least numerous?

Republic IV 1061

By far. Then, a whole city established according to nature would be wise because

of the smallest class and part in it, namely, the governing or ruling one. And to this class, which seems to be by nature the smallest, belongs a share of the knowledge that alone among all the other kinds of knowledge 429 is to be called wisdom.

That’s completely true. Then we’ve found one of the four virtues, as well as its place in the city,

though I don’t know how we found it. Our way of finding it seems good enough to me. And surely courage and the part of the city it’s in, the part on account

of which the city is called courageous, aren’t difficult to see. How is that? Who, in calling the city cowardly or courageous, would look anywhere b

other than to the part of it that fights and does battle on its behalf? No one would look anywhere else. At any rate, I don’t think that the courage or cowardice of its other citizens

would cause the city itself to be called either courageous or cowardly. No, it wouldn’t. The city is courageous, then, because of a part of itself that has the power

to preserve through everything its belief about what things are to be feared, namely, that they are the things and kinds of things that the lawgiver c declared to be such in the course of educating it. Or don’t you call that courage?

I don’t completely understand what you mean. Please, say it again. I mean that courage is a kind of preservation. What sort of preservation? That preservation of the belief that has been inculcated by the law

through education about what things and sorts of things are to be feared. And by preserving this belief “through everything,” I mean preserving it and not abandoning it because of pains, pleasures, desires, or fears. If you d like, I’ll compare it to something I think it resembles.

I’d like that. You know that dyers, who want to dye wool purple, first pick out from

the many colors of wool the one that is naturally white, then they carefully prepare this in various ways, so that it will absorb the color as well as possible, and only at that point do they apply the purple dye. When something is dyed in this way, the color is fast—no amount of washing, e whether with soap or without it, can remove it. But you also know what happens to material if it hasn’t been dyed in this way, but instead is dyed purple or some other color without careful preparation.

I know that it looks washed out and ridiculous. Then, you should understand that, as far as we could, we were doing

something similar when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music and physical training. What we were contriving was nothing other 430 than this: That because they had the proper nature and upbringing, they

1062 Socrates/Glaucon

would absorb the laws in the finest possible way, just like a dye, so that their belief about what they should fear and all the rest would become so fast that even such extremely effective detergents as pleasure, pain, fear, and desire wouldn’t wash it out—and pleasure is much more potent than any powder, washing soda, or soap. This power to preserve through every-b thing the correct and law-inculcated belief about what is to be feared and what isn’t is what I call courage, unless, of course, you say otherwise.

I have nothing different to say, for I assume that you don’t consider the correct belief about these same things, which you find in animals and slaves, and which is not the result of education, to be inculcated by law, and that you don’t call it courage but something else.

That’s absolutely true.c Then I accept your account of courage. Accept it instead as my account of civic courage, and you will be right.

We’ll discuss courage more fully some other time, if you like. At present, our inquiry concerns not it but justice. And what we’ve said is sufficient for that purpose.

You’re quite right. There are now two things left for us to find in the city, namely, modera-

tion5 and—the goal of our entire inquiry—justice.d That’s right. Is there a way we could find justice so as not to have to bother with

moderation any further? I don’t know any, and I wouldn’t want justice to appear first if that

means that we won’t investigate moderation. So if you want to please me, look for the latter first.

I’m certainly willing. It would be wrong not to be.e Look, then. We will. Seen from here, it is more like a kind of consonance and harmony

than the previous ones. In what way? Moderation is surely a kind of order, the mastery of certain kinds of

pleasures and desires. People indicate as much when they use the phrase “self-control” and other similar phrases. I don’t know just what they mean by them, but they are, so to speak, like tracks or clues that moderation has left behind in language. Isn’t that so?

Absolutely. Yet isn’t the expression “self-control” ridiculous? The stronger self that

does the controlling is the same as the weaker self that gets controlled, so that only one person is referred to in all such expressions.431

Of course.

5. The Greek term is sōphrosunē. It has a very wide meaning: self-control, good sense, reasonableness, temperance, and (in some contexts) chastity. Someone who keeps his head under pressure or temptation possesses sōphrosunē.

Republic IV 1063

Nonetheless, the expression is apparently trying to indicate that, in the soul of that very person, there is a better part and a worse one and that, whenever the naturally better part is in control of the worse, this is ex- pressed by saying that the person is self-controlled or master of himself. At any rate, one praises someone by calling him self-controlled. But when, on the other hand, the smaller and better part is overpowered by the larger, because of bad upbringing or bad company, this is called being self- defeated or licentious and is a reproach. b

Appropriately so. Take a look at our new city, and you’ll find one of these in it. You’ll

say that it is rightly called self-controlled, if indeed something in which the better rules the worse is properly called moderate and self-controlled.

I am looking, and what you say is true. Now, one finds all kinds of diverse desires, pleasures, and pains, mostly

in children, women, household slaves, and in those of the inferior majority c who are called free.

That’s right. But you meet with the desires that are simple, measured, and directed

by calculation in accordance with understanding and correct belief only in the few people who are born with the best natures and receive the best education.

That’s true. Then, don’t you see that in your city, too, the desires of the inferior

many are controlled by the wisdom and desires of the superior few? d I do. Therefore, if any city is said to be in control of itself and of its pleasures

and desires, it is this one. Absolutely. And isn’t it, therefore, also moderate because of all this? It is. And, further, if indeed the ruler and the ruled in any city share the same e

belief about who should rule, it is in this one. Or don’t you agree? I agree entirely. And when the citizens agree in this way, in which of them do you say

moderation is located? In the ruler or the ruled? I suppose in both. Then, you see how right we were to divine that moderation resembles

a kind of harmony? How so? Because, unlike courage and wisdom, each of which resides in one

part, making the city brave and wise respectively, moderation spreads throughout the whole. It makes the weakest, the strongest, and those in 432 between—whether in regard to reason, physical strength, numbers, wealth, or anything else—all sing the same song together. And this unanimity, this agreement between the naturally worse and the naturally better as to

1064 Socrates/Glaucon

which of the two is to rule both in the city and in each one, is rightly called moderation.

I agree completely.b All right. We’ve now found, at least from the point of view of our present

beliefs, three out of the four virtues in our city. So what kind of virtue is left, then, that makes the city share even further in virtue? Surely, it’s clear that it is justice.

That is clear. Then, Glaucon, we must station ourselves like hunters surrounding a

wood and focus our understanding, so that justice doesn’t escape us and vanish into obscurity, for obviously it’s around here somewhere. So look and try eagerly to catch sight of it, and if you happen to see it before Ic do, you can tell me about it.

I wish I could, but you’ll make better use of me if you take me to be a follower who can see things when you point them out to him.

Follow, then, and join me in a prayer. I’ll do that, just so long as you lead. I certainly will, though the place seems to be impenetrable and full of

shadows. It is certainly dark and hard to search through. But all the same, we must go on.

Indeed we must.d And then I caught sight of something. Ah ha! Glaucon, it looks as though

there’s a track here, so it seems that our quarry won’t altogether escape us. That’s good news. Either that, or we’ve just been stupid. In what way? Because what we are looking for seems to have been rolling around at

our feet from the very beginning, and we didn’t see it, which was ridiculous of us. Just as people sometimes search for the very thing they are holding in their hands, so we didn’t look in the right direction but gazed off intoe the distance, and that’s probably why we didn’t notice it.

What do you mean? I mean that, though we’ve been talking and hearing about it for a long

time, I think we didn’t understand what we were saying or that, in a way, we were talking about justice.

That’s a long prelude for someone who wants to hear the answer. Then listen and see whether there’s anything in what I say. Justice, I433

think, is exactly what we said must be established throughout the city when we were founding it—either that or some form of it. We stated, and often repeated, if you remember, that everyone must practice one of the occupations in the city for which he is naturally best suited.

Yes, we did keep saying that. Moreover, we’ve heard many people say and have often said ourselves

that justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own.b

Yes, we have.

Republic IV 1065

Then, it turns out that this doing one’s own work—provided that it comes to be in a certain way—is justice. And do you know what I take as evidence of this?

No, tell me. I think that this is what was left over in the city when moderation,

courage, and wisdom have been found. It is the power that makes it possible for them to grow in the city and that preserves them when they’ve grown for as long as it remains there itself. And of course we said that c justice would be what was left over when we had found the other three.

Yes, that must be so. And surely, if we had to decide which of the four will make the city

good by its presence, it would be a hard decision. Is it the agreement in belief between the rulers and the ruled? Or the preservation among the soldiers of the law-inspired belief about what is to be feared and what isn’t? Or the wisdom and guardianship of the rulers? Or is it, above all, d the fact that every child, woman, slave, freeman, craftsman, ruler, and ruled each does his own work and doesn’t meddle with what is other people’s?

How could this fail to be a hard decision? It seems, then, that the power that consists in everyone’s doing his own

work rivals wisdom, moderation, and courage in its contribution to the virtue of the city. e

It certainly does. And wouldn’t you call this rival to the others in its contribution to the

city’s virtue justice? Absolutely. Look at it this way if you want to be convinced. Won’t you order your

rulers to act as judges in the city’s courts? Of course. And won’t their sole aim in delivering judgments be that no citizen

should have what belongs to another or be deprived of what is his own? They’ll have no aim but that. Because that is just? Yes. Therefore, from this point of view also, the having and doing of one’s

own would be accepted as justice. 434 That’s right. Consider, then, and see whether you agree with me about this. If a

carpenter attempts to do the work of a cobbler, or a cobbler that of a carpenter, or they exchange their tools or honors with one another, or if the same person tries to do both jobs, and all other such exchanges are made, do you think that does any great harm to the city?

Not much. But I suppose that when someone, who is by nature a craftsman or some

other kind of money-maker, is puffed up by wealth, or by having a majority of votes, or by his own strength, or by some other such thing, and attempts b to enter the class of soldiers, or one of the unworthy soldiers tries to enter

1066 Socrates/Glaucon

that of the judges and guardians, and these exchange their tools and honors, or when the same person tries to do all these things at once, then I think you’ll agree that these exchanges and this sort of meddling bring the city to ruin.

Absolutely. Meddling and exchange between these three classes, then, is the greatest

harm that can happen to the city and would rightly be called the worst thing someone could do to it.c

Exactly. And wouldn’t you say that the worst thing that someone could do to

his city is injustice? Of course. Then, that exchange and meddling is injustice. Or to put it the other

way around: For the money-making, auxiliary, and guardian classes each to do its own work in the city, is the opposite. That’s justice, isn’t it, and makes the city just?

I agree. Justice is that and nothing else.d Let’s not take that as secure just yet, but if we find that the same form,

when it comes to be in each individual person, is accepted as justice there as well, we can assent to it. What else can we say? But if that isn’t what we find, we must look for something else to be justice. For the moment, however, let’s complete the present inquiry. We thought that, if we first tried to observe justice in some larger thing that possessed it, this would make it easier to observe in a single individual.6 We agreed that this larger thing is a city, and so we established the best city we could, knowing well that justice would be in one that was good. So, let’s apply what has comee to light in the city to an individual, and if it is accepted there, all will be well. But if something different is found in the individual, then we must go back and test that on the city. And if we do this, and compare them side by side, we might well make justice light up as if we were rubbing435 fire-sticks together. And, when it has come to light, we can get a secure grip on it for ourselves.

You’re following the road we set, and we must do as you say. Well, then, are things called by the same name, whether they are bigger

or smaller than one another, like or unlike with respect to that to which that name applies?

Alike. Then a just man won’t differ at all from a just city in respect to the form

of justice; rather he’ll be like the city.b He will. But a city was thought to be just when each of the three natural classes

within it did its own work, and it was thought to be moderate, courageous, and wise because of certain other conditions and states of theirs.

6. See 368c ff.

Republic IV 1067

That’s true. Then, if an individual has these same three parts in his soul, we will

expect him to be correctly called by the same names as the city if he has the same conditions in them. c

Necessarily so. Then once again we’ve come upon an easy question, namely, does the

soul have these three parts in it or not? It doesn’t look easy to me. Perhaps, Socrates, there’s some truth in the

old saying that everything fine is difficult. Apparently so. But you should know, Glaucon, that, in my opinion, we

will never get a precise answer using our present methods of argument— although there is another longer and fuller road that does lead to such an d answer. But perhaps we can get an answer that’s up to the standard of our previous statements and inquiries.

Isn’t that satisfactory? It would be enough for me at present. In that case, it will be fully enough for me too. Then don’t weary, but go on with the inquiry. Well, then, we are surely compelled to agree that each of us has within

himself the same parts and characteristics as the city? Where else would e they come from? It would be ridiculous for anyone to think that spiritedness didn’t come to be in cities from such individuals as the Thracians, Scythians, and others who live to the north of us who are held to possess spirit, or that the same isn’t true of the love of learning, which is mostly associated with our part of the world, or of the love of money, which one might say 436 is conspicuously displayed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians.

It would. That’s the way it is, anyway, and it isn’t hard to understand. Certainly not. But this is hard. Do we do these things with the same part of ourselves,

or do we do them with three different parts? Do we learn with one part, get angry with another, and with some third part desire the pleasures of food, drink, sex, and the others that are closely akin to them? Or, when we set out after something, do we act with the whole of our soul, in each case? This is what’s hard to determine in a way that’s up to the standards b of our argument.

I think so too. Well, then, let’s try to determine in that way whether these parts are

the same or different. How? It is obvious that the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo

opposites in the same part of itself, in relation to the same thing, at the same time. So, if we ever find this happening in the soul, we’ll know that we aren’t dealing with one thing but many. c

All right. Then consider what I’m about to say.

1068 Glaucon/Socrates

Say on. Is it possible for the same thing to stand still and move at the same time

in the same part of itself? Not at all. Let’s make our agreement more precise in order to avoid disputes later

on. If someone said that a person who is standing still but moving his hands and head is moving and standing still at the same time, we wouldn’t consider, I think, that he ought to put it like that. What he ought to say is that one part of the person is standing still and another part is moving. Isn’t that so?d

It is. And if our interlocutor became even more amusing and was sophisti-

cated enough to say that whole spinning tops stand still and move at the same time when the peg is fixed in the same place and they revolve, and that the same is true of anything else moving in a circular motion on the same spot, we wouldn’t agree, because it isn’t with respect to the same parts of themselves that such things both stand still and move. We’d say that they have an axis and a circumference and that with respect to thee axis they stand still, since they don’t wobble to either side, while with respect to the circumference they move in a circle. But if they do wobble to the left or right, front or back, while they are spinning, we’d say that they aren’t standing still in any way.

And we’d be right. No such statement will disturb us, then, or make us believe that the

same thing can be, do, or undergo opposites, at the same time, in the same respect, and in relation to the same thing.437

They won’t make me believe it, at least. Nevertheless, in order to avoid going through all these objections one

by one and taking a long time to prove them all untrue, let’s hypothesize that this is corrrect and carry on. But we agree that if it should ever be shown to be incorrect, all the consequences we’ve drawn from it will also be lost.

We should agree to that. Then wouldn’t you consider all the following, whether they are doingsb

or undergoings, as pairs of opposites: Assent and dissent, wanting to have something and rejecting it, taking something and pushing it away?

Yes, they are opposites. What about these? Wouldn’t you include thirst, hunger, the appetites

as a whole, and wishing and willing somewhere in the class we mentioned?c Wouldn’t you say that the soul of someone who has an appetite for a thing wants what he has an appetite for and takes to himself what it is his will to have, and that insofar as he wishes something to be given to him, his soul, since it desires this to come about, nods assent to it as if in answer to a question?

I would.

Republic IV 1069

What about not willing, not wishing, and not having an appetite? Aren’t these among the very opposites—cases in which the soul pushes and drives things away?

Of course. d Then won’t we say that there is a class of things called appetites and

that the clearest examples are hunger and thirst? We will. One of these is for food and the other for drink? Yes. Now, insofar as it is thirst, is it an appetite in the soul for more than

that for which we say that it is the appetite? For example, is thirst thirst for hot drink or cold, or much drink or little, or, in a word, for drink of a certain sort? Or isn’t it rather that, where heat is present as well as thirst, it causes the appetite to be for something cold as well, and where cold for e something hot, and where there is much thirst because of the presence of muchness, it will cause the desire to be for much, and where little for little? But thirst itself will never be for anything other than what it is in its nature to be for, namely, drink itself, and hunger for food.

That’s the way it is, each appetite itself is only for its natural object, while the appetite for something of a certain sort depends on additions.

Therefore, let no one catch us unprepared or disturb us by claiming that 438 no one has an appetite for drink but rather good drink, nor food but good food, on the grounds that everyone after all has appetite for good things, so that if thirst is an appetite, it will be an appetite for good drink or whatever, and similarly with the others.

All the same, the person who says that has a point. But it seems to me that, in the case of all things that are related to

something, those that are of a particular sort are related to a particular sort of thing, while those that are merely themselves are related to a thing b that is merely itself.

I don’t understand. Don’t you understand that the greater is such as to be greater than some-

thing? Of course. Than the less? Yes. And the much greater than the much less, isn’t that so? Yes. And the once greater to the once less? And the going-to-be greater than

the going-to-be less? Certainly. And isn’t the same true of the more and the fewer, the double and the

half, heavier and lighter, faster and slower, the hot and the cold, and all c other such things?

Of course.

1070 Socrates/Glaucon

And what about the various kinds of knowledge? Doesn’t the same apply? Knowledge itself is knowledge of what can be learned itself (or whatever it is that knowledge is of), while a particular sort of knowledge is of a particular sort of thing. For example, when knowledge of building houses came to be, didn’t it differ from the other kinds of knowledge, andd so was called knowledge of building?

Of course. And wasn’t that because it was a different sort of knowledge from all

the others? Yes. And wasn’t it because it was of a particular sort of thing that it itself

became a particular sort of knowledge? And isn’t this true of all crafts and kinds of knowledge?

It is. Well, then, this is what I was trying to say—if you understand it now—

when I said that of all things that are related to something, those that are merely themselves are related to things that are merely themselves, while those that are of a particular sort are related to things of a particular sort. However, I don’t mean that the sorts in question have to be the same fore them both. For example, knowledge of health or disease isn’t healthy or diseased, and knowledge of good and bad doesn’t itself become good or bad. I mean that, when knowledge became, not knowledge of the thing itself that knowledge is of, but knowledge of something of a particular sort, the result was that it itself became a particular sort of knowledge, and this caused it to be no longer called knowledge without qualification, but—with the addition of the relevant sort—medical knowledge or whatever.

I understand, and I think that that’s the way it is. Then as for thirst, wouldn’t you include it among things that are related

to something? Surely thirst is related to . . .439 I know it’s related to drink. Therefore a particular sort of thirst is for a particular sort of drink. But

thirst itself isn’t for much or little, good or bad, or, in a word, for drink of a particular sort. Rather, thirst itself is in its nature only for drink itself.

Absolutely. Hence the soul of the thirsty person, insofar as he’s thirsty, doesn’t wish

anything else but to drink, and it wants this and is impelled towards it.b Clearly. Therefore, if something draws it back when it is thirsting, wouldn’t that

be something different in it from whatever thirsts and drives it like a beast to drink? It can’t be, we say, that the same thing, with the same part of itself, in relation to the same, at the same time, does opposite things.

No, it can’t. In the same way, I suppose, it’s not well put to say of the archer that

his hands at the same time push the bow away and draw it towards him.

Republic IV 1071

We ought to say that one hand pushes it away and the other draws it towards him.

Absolutely. c Now, would we assert that sometimes there are thirsty people who don’t

wish to drink? Certainly, it happens often to many different people. What, then, should one say about them? Isn’t it that there is something

in their soul, bidding them to drink, and something different, forbidding them to do so, that overrules the thing that bids?

I think so. Doesn’t that which forbids in such cases come into play—if it comes

into play at all—as a result of rational calculation, while what drives and drags them to drink is a result of feelings and diseases? d

Apparently. Hence it isn’t unreasonable for us to claim that they are two, and different

from one another. We’ll call the part of the soul with which it calculates the rational part and the part with which it lusts, hungers, thirsts, and gets excited by other appetites the irrational appetitive part, companion of certain indulgences and pleasures.

Yes. Indeed, that’s a reasonable thing to think. e Then, let these two parts be distinguished in the soul. Now, is the spirited

part by which we get angry a third part or is it of the same nature as either of the other two?

Perhaps it’s like the appetitive part. But I’ve heard something relevant to this, and I believe it. Leontius, the

son of Aglaion, was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the North Wall when he saw some corpses lying at the executioner’s feet. He had an appetite to look at them but at the same time he was disgusted and turned away. For a time he struggled with himself and covered his face, but, finally, overpowered by the appetite, he pushed his eyes wide 440 open and rushed towards the corpses, saying, “Look for yourselves, you evil wretches, take your fill of the beautiful sight!”

I’ve heard that story myself. It certainly proves that anger sometimes makes war against the appetites,

as one thing against another. Besides, don’t we often notice in other cases that when appetite forces

someone contrary to rational calculation, he reproaches himself and gets angry with that in him that’s doing the forcing, so that of the two factions b that are fighting a civil war, so to speak, spirit allies itself with reason? But I don’t think you can say that you’ve ever seen spirit, either in yourself or anyone else, ally itself with an appetite to do what reason has decided must not be done.

No, by god, I haven’t. What happens when a person thinks that he has done something unjust?

Isn’t it true that the nobler he is, the less he resents it if he suffers hunger, c

1072 Socrates/Glaucon

cold, or the like at the hands of someone whom he believes to be inflicting this on him justly, and won’t his spirit, as I say, refuse to be aroused?

That’s true. But what happens if, instead, he believes that someone has been unjust

to him? Isn’t the spirit within him boiling and angry, fighting for what he believes to be just? Won’t it endure hunger, cold, and the like and keep on till it is victorious, not ceasing from noble actions until it either wins,d dies, or calms down, called to heel by the reason within him, like a dog by a shepherd?

Spirit is certainly like that. And, of course, we made the auxiliaries in our city like dogs obedient to the rulers, who are themselves like shepherds of a city.

You well understand what I’m trying to say. But also reflect on this further point.

What?e The position of the spirited part seems to be the opposite of what we

thought before. Then we thought of it as something appetitive, but now we say that it is far from being that, for in the civil war in the soul it aligns itself far more with the rational part.

Absolutely. Then is it also different from the rational part, or is it some form of it,

so that there are two parts in the soul—the rational and the appetitive— instead of three? Or rather, just as there were three classes in the city that held it together, the money-making, the auxiliary, and the deliberative, is441 the spirited part a third thing in the soul that is by nature the helper of the rational part, provided that it hasn’t been corrupted by a bad upbringing?

It must be a third. Yes, provided that we can show it is different from the rational part, as

we saw earlier it was from the appetitive one. It isn’t difficult to show that it is different. Even in small children, one

can see that they are full of spirit right from birth, while as far as rational calculation is concerned, some never seem to get a share of it, while the majority do so quite late.b

That’s really well put. And in animals too one can see that what you say is true. Besides, our earlier quotation from Homer bears it out, where he says,

He struck his chest and spoke to his heart.7

For here Homer clearly represents the part that has calculated about better and worse as different from the part that is angry without calculation.c

That’s exactly right.

7. See 390d, and note.

Republic IV 1073

Well, then, we’ve now made our difficult way through a sea of argument. We are pretty much agreed that the same number and the same kinds of classes as are in the city are also in the soul of each individual.

That’s true. Therefore, it necessarily follows that the individual is wise in the same

way and in the same part of himself as the city. That’s right. And isn’t the individual courageous in the same way and in the same

part of himself as the city? And isn’t everything else that has to do with d virtue the same in both?

Necessarily. Moreover, Glaucon, I suppose we’ll say that a man is just in the same

way as a city. That too is entirely necessary. And we surely haven’t forgotten that the city was just because each of

the three classes in it was doing its own work. I don’t think we could forget that. Then we must also remember that each one of us in whom each part is

doing its own work will himself be just and do his own. e Of course, we must. Therefore, isn’t it appropriate for the rational part to rule, since it is

really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul, and for the spirited part to obey it and be its ally?

It certainly is. And isn’t it, as we were saying, a mixture of music and poetry, on the

one hand, and physical training, on the other, that makes the two parts harmonious, stretching and nurturing the rational part with fine words and learning, relaxing the other part through soothing stories, and making it gentle by means of harmony and rhythm? 442

That’s precisely it. And these two, having been nurtured in this way, and having truly learned

their own roles and been educated in them, will govern the appetitive part, which is the largest part in each person’s soul and is by nature most insatiable for money. They’ll watch over it to see that it isn’t filled with the so-called pleasures of the body and that it doesn’t become so big and strong that it no longer does its own work but attempts to enslave and rule over the classes it isn’t fitted to rule, thereby overturning everyone’s whole life. b

That’s right. Then, wouldn’t these two parts also do the finest job of guarding the

whole soul and body against external enemies—reason by planning, spirit by fighting, following its leader, and carrying out the leader’s decisions through its courage?

Yes, that’s true. And it is because of the spirited part, I suppose, that we call a single

individual courageous, namely, when it preserves through pains and plea- c sures the declarations of reason about what is to be feared and what isn’t.

1074 Glaucon/Socrates

That’s right. And we’ll call him wise because of that small part of himself that rules

in him and makes those declarations and has within it the knowledge of what is advantageous for each part and for the whole soul, which is the community of all three parts.

Absolutely. And isn’t he moderate because of the friendly and harmonious relations

between these same parts, namely, when the ruler and the ruled believe in common that the rational part should rule and don’t engage in civil war against it?d

Moderation is surely nothing other than that, both in the city and in the individual.

And, of course, a person will be just because of what we’ve so often mentioned, and in that way.

Necessarily. Well, then, is the justice in us at all indistinct? Does it seem to be

something different from what we found in the city? It doesn’t seem so to me. If there are still any doubts in our soul about this, we could dispel them

altogether by appealing to ordinary cases.e Which ones? For example, if we had to come to an agreement about whether someone

similar in nature and training to our city had embezzled a deposit of gold or silver that he had accepted, who do you think would consider him to have done it rather than someone who isn’t like him?443

No one. And would he have anything to do with temple robberies, thefts, betray-

als of friends in private life or of cities in public life? No, nothing. And he’d be in no way untrustworthy in keeping an oath or other

agreement. How could he be? And adultery, disrespect for parents, and neglect of the gods would be

more in keeping with every other kind of character than his. With every one. And isn’t the cause of all this that every part within him does its own

work, whether it’s ruling or being ruled?b Yes, that and nothing else. Then, are you still looking for justice to be something other than this

power, the one that produces men and cities of the sort we’ve described? No, I certainly am not. Then the dream we had has been completely fulfillled—our suspicion

that, with the help of some god, we had hit upon the origin and pattern of justice right at the beginning in founding our city.8c

8. See 432c–433b.

Republic IV 1075

Absolutely. Indeed, Glaucon, the principle that it is right for someone who is by

nature a cobbler to practice cobblery and nothing else, for the carpenter to practice carpentry, and the same for the others is a sort of image of justice—that’s why it’s beneficial.

Apparently. And in truth justice is, it seems, something of this sort. However, it isn’t

concerned with someone’s doing his own externally, but with what is inside him, with what is truly himself and his own. One who is just does d not allow any part of himself to do the work of another part or allow the various classes within him to meddle with each other. He regulates well what is really his own and rules himself. He puts himself in order, is his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts of himself like three limiting notes in a musical scale—high, low, and middle. He binds together those parts and any others there may be in between, and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, moderate and harmonious. Only e then does he act. And when he does anything, whether acquiring wealth, taking care of his body, engaging in politics, or in private contracts—in all of these, he believes that the action is just and fine that preserves this inner harmony and helps achieve it, and calls it so, and regards as wisdom the knowledge that oversees such actions. And he believes that the action that destroys this harmony is unjust, and calls it so, and regards the belief that oversees it as ignorance. 444

That’s absolutely true, Socrates. Well, then, if we claim to have found the just man, the just city, and

what the justice is that is in them, I don’t suppose that we’ll seem to be telling a complete falsehood.

No, we certainly won’t. Shall we claim it, then? We shall. So be it. Now, I suppose we must look for injustice. Clearly. Surely, it must be a kind of civil war between the three parts, a meddling b

and doing of another’s work, a rebellion by some part against the whole soul in order to rule it inappropriately. The rebellious part is by nature suited to be a slave, while the other part is not a slave but belongs to the ruling class. We’ll say something like that, I suppose, and that the turmoil and straying of these parts are injustice, licentiousness, cowardice, igno- rance, and, in a word, the whole of vice.

That’s what they are. So, if justice and injustice are really clear enough to us, then acting justly,

acting unjustly, and doing injustice are also clear. c How so? Because just and unjust actions are no different for the soul than healthy

and unhealthy things are for the body. In what way?

1076 Socrates/Glaucon/Polemarchus/Adeimantus

Healthy things produce health, unhealthy ones disease. Yes. And don’t just actions produce justice in the soul and unjust ones in-

justice?d Necessarily. To produce health is to establish the components of the body in a natural

relation of control and being controlled, one by another, while to produce disease is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled contrary to nature.

That’s right. Then, isn’t to produce justice to establish the parts of the soul in a natural

relation of control, one by another, while to produce injustice is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled contrary to nature?

Precisely. Virtue seems, then, to be a kind of health, fine condition, and well-being

of the soul, while vice is disease, shameful condition, and weakness.e That’s true. And don’t fine ways of living lead one to the possession of virtue,

shameful ones to vice? Necessarily. So it now remains, it seems, to inquire whether it is more profitable to

act justly, live in a fine way, and be just, whether one is known to be so445 or not, or to act unjustly and be unjust, provided that one doesn’t pay the penalty and become better as a result of punishment.

But, Socrates, this inquiry looks ridiculous to me now that justice and injustice have been shown to be as we have described. Even if one has every kind of food and drink, lots of money, and every sort of power to rule, life is thought to be not worth living when the body’s nature is ruined. So even if someone can do whatever he wishes, except what will free himb from vice and injustice and make him acquire justice and virtue, how can it be worth living when his soul—the very thing by which he lives—is ruined and in turmoil?

Yes, it is ridiculous. Nevertheless, now that we’ve come far enough to be able to see most clearly that this is so, we mustn’t give up.

That’s absolutely the last thing we must do. Then come here, so that you can see how many forms of vice there are,c

anyhow that I consider worthy of examination. I’m following you, just tell me. Well, from the vantage point we’ve reached in our argument, it seems

to me that there is one form of virtue and an unlimited number of forms of vice, four of which are worth mentioning.

How do you mean? It seems likely that there are as many types of soul as there are specific

types of political constitution. How many is that? Five forms of constitution and five of souls.d What are they?

Republic IV 1077

One is the constitution we’ve been describing. And it has two names. If one outstanding man emerges among the rulers, it’s called a kingship; if more than one, it’s called an aristocracy.

That’s true. Therefore, I say that this is one form of constitution. Whether one man

emerges or many, none of the significant laws of the city would be changed, if they followed the upbringing and education we described. e

Probably not.

Book V

This is the kind of city and constitution, then, that I call good and correct, 449 and so too is this kind of man. And if indeed this is the correct kind, all the others—whether as city governments or as organizations of the individual soul—are bad and mistaken. Their badness is of four kinds.

What are they? he said. I was going to enumerate them and explain how I thought they devel-

oped out of one another,1 but Polemarchus, who was sitting a little further away than Adeimantus, extended his hand and took hold of the latter’s b cloak by the shoulder from above. He drew Adeimantus towards him, while he himself leaned forward and said something to him. We overheard nothing of what he said except the words “Shall we let it go, or what?”

We certainly won’t let it go, Adeimantus said, now speaking aloud. And I asked: What is it that you won’t let go? You, he said. For what reason in particular? c We think that you’re slacking off and that you’ve cheated us out of a

whole important section of the discussion in order to avoid having to deal with it. You thought we wouldn’t notice when you said—as though it were something trivial—that, as regards wives and children, anyone could see that the possessions of friends should be held in common.2

But isn’t that right, Adeimantus? Yes it is. But this “right,” like the other things we’ve discussed, requires

an explanation—in this case, an explanation of the manner in which they are to be held in common, for there may be many ways of doing this. So don’t omit telling us about the particular one you mean. We’ve been d waiting for some time, indeed, for you to tell us about the production of children—how they’ll be produced and, once born, how they’ll be brought up—and about the whole subject of having wives and children in common. We think that this makes a considerable difference—indeed all the differ- ence—to whether a constitution is correct or not. So now, since you are beginning to describe another constitution before having adequately

1. This task is taken up in Book VIII. 2. See 423e–424a.

1078 Adeimantus/Glaucon/Thrasymachus/Socrates

discussed these things, we are resolved, as you overheard, not to let you off until you explain all this as fully as the rest.450

Include me, Glaucon said, as a partner in this resolution. In fact, Socrates, Thrasymachus added, you can take this as the resolution

of all of us. What a thing you’ve done, I said, in stopping me! What an argument

you’ve started up again from the very beginning, as it were, about the constitution! I was delighted to think that it had already been described and was content to have these things accepted as they were stated before. You don’t realize what a swarm of arguments you’ve stirred up by calling me to account now. I saw the swarm and passed the topic by in order tob save us a lot of trouble.

Well, said Thrasymachus, are we here to search for gold3 or to listen to an argument?

The latter, I said, but within reason. It’s within reason, Socrates, Glaucon said, for people with any under-

standing to listen to an argument of this kind their whole life long. So don’t mind about us, and don’t get tired yourself. Rather, tell us at length what your thoughts are on the topic we inquired about, namely, what the common possession of wives and children will amount to for the guardiansc and how the children will be brought up while they’re still small, for the time between birth and the beginning of education seems to be the most difficult period of all. So try to tell us what the manner of this upbringing must be.

It isn’t an easy subject to explain, for it raises even more incredulity than the topics we’ve discussed so far. People may not believe that what we say is possible or that, even if it could be brought about, it would be for the best. It’s for this reason that I hesitated to bring it up, namely, that our argument might seem to be no more than wishful thinking.d

Then don’t hesitate, for your audience isn’t inconsiderate, incredulous, or hostile.

Are you trying to encourage me by saying that? I am. Well, you’re doing the opposite. Your encouragement would be fine, if

I could be sure I was speaking with knowledge, for one can feel both secure and confident when one knows the truth about the dearest and most important things and speaks about them among those who are them- selves wise and dear friends. But to speak, as I’m doing, at a time whene one is unsure of oneself and searching for the truth, is a frightening and insecure thing to do. I’m not afraid of being laughed at—that would be451 childish indeed. But I am afraid that, if I slip from the truth, just where it’s most important not to, I’ll not only fall myself but drag my friends

3. A proverbial expression applied to those who neglect the task at hand for some more fascinating but less profitable pursuit.

Republic V 1079

down as well. So I bow to Adrastea4 for what I’m going to say, for I suspect that it’s a lesser crime to kill someone involuntarily than to mislead people about fine, good, and just institutions. Since it’s better to run this risk among enemies than among friends, you’ve well and truly encouraged me! b

Glaucon laughed and said: Well, Socrates, if we suffer from any false note you strike in the argument, we’ll release you and absolve you of any guilt as in a homicide case: your hands are clean, and you have not deceived us. So take courage and speak.

I will, for the law says that someone who kills involuntarily is free of guilt when he’s absolved by the injured party. So it’s surely reasonable to think the same is true in my case as well.

With that as your defense, speak. Then I’ll have to go back to what should perhaps have been said in c

sequence, although it may be that this way of doing things is in fact right and that after the completion of the male drama, so to speak, we should then go through the female one—especially as you insist on it so urgently.

For men born and educated as we’ve described there is, in my opinion, no right way to acquire and use women and children other than by follow- ing the road on which we started them. We attempted, in the argument, to set up the men as guardians of the herd.

Yes. Then let’s give them a birth and rearing consistent with that and see d

whether it suits us or not. How? As follows: Do we think that the wives of our guardian watchdogs

should guard what the males guard, hunt with them, and do everything else in common with them? Or should we keep the women at home, as incapable of doing this, since they must bear and rear the puppies, while the males work and have the entire care of the flock?

Everything should be in common, except that the females are weaker e and the males stronger.

And is it possible to use any animals for the same things if you don’t give them the same upbringing and education?

No, it isn’t. Therefore, if we use the women for the same things as the men, they

must also be taught the same things. Yes. 452 Now, we gave the men music and poetry and physical training. Yes. Then we must give these two crafts, as well as those having to do with

warfare, to the women also to use in the same way as the men use them. That seems to follow from what you say.

4. Adrastea was a kind of Nemesis, a punisher of pride. The “bow to Adrastea” is a kind of apology for the sort of behavior that might otherwise spur her to take action.

1080 Socrates/Glaucon

But perhaps much of what we are saying, since it is contrary to custom, would incite ridicule if it were carried out in practice as we’ve described.

It certainly would. What is the most ridiculous thing that you see in it? Isn’t it obviously

the women exercising naked in the palestras with the men? And not just the young women, but the older ones too—like old men in gymnasiums who, even though their bodies are wrinkled and not pleasant to look at,b still love to do physical training.

Yes, that would look really ridiculous as things stand at present. But surely, now that we’ve started to speak about this, we mustn’t fear

the various jokes that wits will make about this kind of change in music and poetry, physical training, and—last but not least—in bearing arms and riding horses.c

You’re right. And now that we’ve begun to speak about this, we must move on to

the tougher part of the law, begging these people not to be silly (though that is their own work!) but to take the matter seriously. They should remember that it wasn’t very long ago that the Greeks themselves thought it shameful and ridiculous (as the majority of the barbarians still do) for even men to be seen naked and that when the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians began the gymnasiums, the wits of those times could also have ridiculed it all. Or don’t you think so?d

I do. But I think that, after it was found in practice to be better to strip than

to cover up all those parts, then what was ridiculous to the eyes faded away in the face of what argument showed to be the best. This makes it clear that it’s foolish to think that anything besides the bad is ridiculous or to try to raise a laugh at the sight of anything besides what’s stupid or bad or (putting it the other way around) it’s foolish to take seriously anye standard of what is fine and beautiful other than the good.

That’s absolutely certain. However, mustn’t we first agree about whether our proposals are possi-

ble or not? And mustn’t we give to anyone who wishes the opportunity to question us—whether in jest or in earnest—about whether female human nature can share all the tasks of that of the male, or none of them, or some453 but not others, and to ask in which class the waging of war belongs? Wouldn’t this, as the best beginning, also be likely to result in the best con- clusion?

Of course. Shall we give the argument against ourselves, then, on behalf of those

who share these reservations, so that their side of the question doesn’t fall by default?

There’s no reason not to.b Then let’s say this on their behalf: “Socrates and Glaucon, there’s no

need for others to argue with you, for you yourselves, when you began

Republic V 1081

to found your city, agreed that each must do his own work in accordance with his nature.”

And I think we certainly did agree to that. “Can you deny that a woman is by nature very different from a man?” Of course not. “And isn’t it appropriate to assign different work to each in accordance

with its nature?” Certainly. c “How is it, then, that you aren’t mistaken and contradicting yourselves

when you say that men and women must do the same things, when their natures are so completely separate and distinct?”

Do you have any defense against that attack? It isn’t easy to think of one on the spur of the moment, so I’ll ask you

to explain the argument on our side as well, whatever it is. This and many other such things, Glaucon, which I foresaw earlier, were

what I was afraid of, so that I hesitated to tackle the law concerning the possession and upbringing of women and children. d

By god, it doesn’t seem to be an easy topic. It isn’t. But the fact is that whether someone falls into a small diving

pool or into the middle of the biggest ocean, he must swim all the same. He certainly must. Then we must swim too, and try to save ourselves from the sea of

argument, hoping that a dolphin will pick us up or that we’ll be rescued by some other desperate means.5

It seems so. e Come, then. Let’s see if we can find a way out. We’ve agreed that

different natures must follow different ways of life and that the natures of men and women are different. But now we say that those different natures must follow the same way of life. Isn’t that the accusation brought against us?

That’s it exactly. Ah! Glaucon, great is the power of the craft of disputation. 454 Why is that? Because many fall into it against their wills. They think they are having

not a quarrel but a conversation, because they are unable to examine what has been said by dividing it up according to forms. Hence, they pursue mere verbal contradictions of what has been said and have a quarrel rather than a conversation.

That does happen to lots of people, but it isn’t happening to us at the moment, is it?

It most certainly is, for it looks to me, at any rate, as though we are b falling into disputation against our will.

How?

5. See Herodotus, Histories 1.23–24 for the story of Arion’s rescue by the dolphin.

1082 Socrates/Glaucon

We’re bravely, but in a quarrelsome and merely verbal fashion, pursuing the principle that natures that aren’t the same must follow different ways of life. But when we assigned different ways of life to different natures and the same ones to the same, we didn’t at all examine the form of natural difference and sameness we had in mind or in what regard we were distinguishing them.

No, we didn’t look into that. Therefore, we might just as well, it seems, ask ourselves whether thec

natures of bald and long-haired men are the same or opposite. And, when we agree that they are opposite, then, if the bald ones are cobblers, we ought to forbid the long-haired ones to be cobblers, and if the long-haired ones are cobblers, we ought to forbid this to the bald ones.

That would indeed be ridiculous. And aren’t we in this ridiculous position because at that time we did

not introduce every form of difference and sameness in nature, but focused on the one form of sameness and difference that was relevant to the particular ways of life themselves? We meant, for example, that a male and female doctor have souls of the same nature. Or don’t you think so?d

I do. But a doctor and a carpenter have different ones? Completely different, surely. Therefore, if the male sex is seen to be different from the female with

regard to a particular craft or way of life, we’ll say that the relevant one must be assigned to it. But if it’s apparent that they differ only in this respect, that the females bear children while the males beget them, we’ll say that there has been no kind of proof that women are different from men with respect to what we’re talking about, and we’ll continue to believee that our guardians and their wives must have the same way of life.

And rightly so. Next, we’ll tell anyone who holds the opposite view to instruct us in

this: With regard to what craft or way of life involved in the constitution of the city are the natures of men and women not the same but different?455

That’s a fair question, at any rate. And perhaps he’d say, just as you did a moment ago, that it isn’t easy

to give an immediate answer, but with enough consideration it should not be difficult.

Yes, he might say that. Shall we ask the one who raises this objection to follow us and see

whether we can show him that no way of life concerned with the manage- ment of the city is peculiar to women?b

Of course. “Come, now,” we’ll say to him, “give us an answer: Is this what you

meant by one person being naturally well suited for something and another being naturally unsuited? That the one learned it easily, the other with difficulty; that the one, after only a brief period of instruction, was able

Republic V 1083

to find out things for himself, while the other, after much instruction, couldn’t even remember what he’d learned; that the body of the one adequately served his thought, while the body of the other opposed his. Are there any other things besides these by which you distinguished those c who are naturally well suited for anything from those who are not?”

No one will claim that there are any others. Do you know of anything practiced by human beings in which the male

sex isn’t superior to the female in all these ways? Or must we make a long story of it by mentioning weaving, baking cakes, and cooking vegetables, in which the female sex is believed to excel and in which it is most ridiculous of all for it to be inferior? d

It’s true that one sex is much superior to the other in pretty well every- thing, although many women are better than many men in many things. But on the whole it is as you say.

Then there is no way of life concerned with the management of the city that belongs to a woman because she’s a woman or to a man because he’s a man, but the various natures are distributed in the same way in both creatures. Women share by nature in every way of life just as men do, but in all of them women are weaker than men. e

Certainly. Then shall we assign all of them to men and none to women? How can we? We’ll say, I suppose, that one woman is a doctor, another not, and that

one is musical by nature, another not. Of course. And, therefore, won’t one be athletic or warlike, while another is unwar-

like and no lover of physical training? 456 I suppose so. Further, isn’t one woman philosophical or a lover of wisdom, while

another hates wisdom? And isn’t one spirited and another spiritless? That too. So one woman may have a guardian nature and another not, for wasn’t

it qualities of this sort that we looked for in the natures of the men we selected as guardians?

Certainly. Therefore, men and women are by nature the same with respect to

guarding the city, except to the extent that one is weaker and the other stronger.

Apparently. Then women of this sort must be chosen along with men of the same

sort to live with them and share their guardianship, seeing that they are b adequate for the task and akin to the men in nature.

Certainly. And mustn’t we assign the same way of life to the same natures? We must.

1084 Socrates/Glaucon

We’ve come round, then, to what we said before and have agreed that it isn’t against nature to assign an education in music, poetry, and physical training to the wives of the guardians.

Absolutely. Then we’re not legislating impossibilities or indulging in mere wishfulc

thinking, since the law we established is in accord with nature. It’s rather the way things are at present that seems to be against nature.

So it seems. Now, weren’t we trying to determine whether our proposals were both

possible and optimal? Yes, we were. And haven’t we now agreed that they’re possible? Yes. Then mustn’t we next reach agreement about whether or not they’re op-

timal? Clearly. Should we have one kind of education to produce women guardians,

then, and another to produce men, especially as they have the same natures to begin with?d

No. Then, what do you think about this? What? About one man being better and another worse. Or do you think they’re

all alike? Certainly not. In the city we’re establishing, who do you think will prove to be better

men, the guardians, who receive the education we’ve described, or the cobblers, who are educated in cobblery?

Your question is ridiculous. I understand. Indeed, aren’t the guardians the best of the citizens?e By far. And what about the female guardians? Aren’t they the best of the

women? They’re by far the best. Is there anything better for a city than having the best possible men and

women as its citizens? There isn’t. And isn’t it music and poetry and physical training, lending their support

in the way we described, that bring this about?457 Of course. Then the law we’ve established isn’t only possible; it is also optimal for

a city? Yes. Then the guardian women must strip for physical training, since they’ll

wear virtue or excellence instead of clothes. They must share in war and the other guardians’ duties in the city and do nothing else. But the lighter

Republic V 1085

parts must be assigned to them because of the weakness of their sex. And the man who laughs at naked women doing physical training for the sake of what is best is “plucking the unripe fruit”6 of laughter and doesn’t b know, it seems, what he’s laughing at or what he’s doing, for it is and always will be the finest saying that the beneficial is beautiful, while the harmful is ugly.

Absolutely. Can we say, then, that we’ve escaped one wave of criticism in our

discussion of the law about women, that we haven’t been altogether swept away by laying it down that male and female guardians must share their entire way of life, and that our argument is consistent when it states that c this is both possible and beneficial?

And it’s certainly no small wave that you’ve escaped. You won’t think that it’s so big when you get a look at the next one. Tell me about it, and I’ll decide. I suppose that the following law goes along with the last one and the

others that preceded it. Which one? That all these women are to belong in common to all the men, that none

are to live privately with any man, and that the children, too, are to be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or d any child his parent.

This wave is far bigger than the other, for there’s doubt both about its possibility and about whether or not it’s beneficial.

I don’t think that its being beneficial would be disputed or that it would be denied that the common possession of women and children would be the greatest good, if indeed it is possible. But I think that there would be a lot of disagreement about whether or not it is possible.

There could very well be dispute about both. e You mean that I’ll have to face a coalition of arguments. I thought I’d

escape one of them, if you believed that the proposal was beneficial, and that I’d have only the one about whether or not it’s possible left to deal with.

But you didn’t escape unobserved, so you have to give an argument for both.

Well, then, I’ll have to accept my punishment. But do me this favor. Let me, as if on a holiday, do what lazy people do who feast on their own thoughts when out for a solitary walk. Instead of finding out how some- 458 thing they desire might actually come about, these people pass that over, so as to avoid tiring deliberations about what’s possible and what isn’t. They assume that what they desire is available and proceed to arrange the rest, taking pleasure in thinking through everything they’ll do when they have what they want, thereby making their lazy souls even lazier. I’m getting soft myself at the moment, so I want to delay consideration b

6. Plato is here adapting a phrase of Pindar, “plucking the unripe fruit of wisdom,” frg. 209 (Snell).

1086 Socrates/Glaucon

of the feasibility of our proposal until later. With your permission, I’ll assume that it’s feasible and examine how the rulers will arrange these matters when they come to pass. And I’ll try to show that nothing could be more beneficial to the city and its guardians than those arrangements. These are the things I’ll examine with you first, and I’ll deal with the other question later, but only if you’ll permit me to do it this way.

You have my permission, so carry on with your examination. I suppose that our rulers and auxiliaries—if indeed they’re worthy of

the names—will be willing to command and to obey respectively. In somec cases, the rulers will themselves be obeying our laws, and in others, namely, the ones we leave to their discretion, they’ll give directions that are in the spirit of our laws.

Probably so. Then you, as their lawgiver, will select women just as you did men,

with natures as similar to theirs as possible, and hand them over to the men. And since they have common dwellings and meals, rather than private ones, and live together and mix together both in physical trainingd and in the rest of their upbringing, they will, I suppose, be driven by innate necessity to have sex with one another. Or don’t you think we’re talking about necessities here?

The necessities aren’t geometrical but erotic, and they’re probably better than the others at persuading and compelling the majority of people.

That’s right. But the next point, Glaucon, is that promiscuity is impious in a city of happy people, and the rulers won’t allow it.e

No, for it isn’t right. Then it’s clear that our next task must be to make marriage as sacred

as possible. And the sacred marriages will be those that are most beneficial. Absolutely. How, then, will they be most beneficial? Tell me this, Glaucon: I see

that you have hunting dogs and quite a flock of noble fighting birds at459 home. Have you noticed anything about their mating and breeding?

Like what? In the first place, although they’re all noble, aren’t there some that are

the best and prove themselves to be so? There are. Do you breed them all alike, or do you try to breed from the best as

much as possible? I try to breed from the best. And do you breed from the youngest or the oldest or from those in

their prime?b From those in their prime. And do you think that if they weren’t bred in this way, your stock of

birds and dogs would get much worse? I do. What about horses and other animals? Are things any different with

them?

Republic V 1087

It would be strange if they were. Dear me! If this also holds true of human beings, our need for excellent

rulers is indeed extreme. It does hold of them. But what of it? c Because our rulers will then have to use a lot of drugs. And while an

inferior doctor is adequate for people who are willing to follow a regimen and don’t need drugs, when drugs are needed, we know that a bolder doctor is required.

That’s true. But what exactly do you have in mind? I mean that it looks as though our rulers will have to make considerable

use of falsehood and deception for the benefit of those they rule. And we said that all such falsehoods are useful as a form of drug.7 d

And we were right. Well, it seems we were right, especially where marriages and the produc-

ing of children are concerned. How so? It follows from our previous agreements, first, that the best men must

have sex with the best women as frequently as possible, while the opposite is true of the most inferior men and women, and, second, that if our herd is to be of the highest possible quality, the former’s offspring must be reared but not the latter’s. And this must all be brought about without e being noticed by anyone except the rulers, so that our herd of guardians remains as free from dissension as possible.

That’s absolutely right. Therefore certain festivals and sacrifices will be established by law at

which we’ll bring the brides and grooms together, and we’ll direct our poets to compose appropriate hymns for the marriages that take place. We’ll leave the number of marriages for the rulers to decide, but their aim 460 will be to keep the number of males as stable as they can, taking into account war, disease, and similar factors, so that the city will, as far as possible, become neither too big nor too small.

That’s right. Then there’ll have to be some sophisticated lotteries introduced, so that

at each marriage the inferior people we mentioned will blame luck rather than the rulers when they aren’t chosen.

There will. And among other prizes and rewards the young men who are good in

war or other things must be given permission to have sex with the women b more often, since this will also be a good pretext for having them father as many of the children as possible.

That’s right. And then, as the children are born, they’ll be taken over by the officials

appointed for the purpose, who may be either men or women or both, since our offices are open to both sexes.

7. See 382c ff. and 414b ff.

1088 Glaucon/Socrates

Yes. I think they’ll take the children of good parents to the nurses in charge

of the rearing pen situated in a separate part of the city, but the childrenc of inferior parents, or any child of the others that is born defective, they’ll hide in a secret and unknown place, as is appropriate.

It is, if indeed the guardian breed is to remain pure. And won’t the nurses also see to it that the mothers are brought to the

rearing pen when their breasts have milk, taking every precaution to insure that no mother knows her own child and providing wet nurses if the mother’s milk is insufficient? And won’t they take care that the mothersd suckle the children for only a reasonable amount of time and that the care of sleepless children and all other such troublesome duties are taken over by the wet nurses and other attendants?

You’re making it very easy for the wives of the guardians to have children.

And that’s only proper. So let’s take up the next thing we proposed. We said that the children’s parents should be in their prime.

True. Do you share the view that a woman’s prime lasts about twenty years

and a man’s about thirty?e Which years are those? A woman is to bear children for the city from the age of twenty to the

age of forty, a man from the time that he passes his peak as a runner until he reaches fifty-five.

At any rate, that’s the physical and mental prime for both.461 Then, if a man who is younger or older than that engages in reproduction

for the community, we’ll say that his offense is neither pious nor just, for the child he begets for the city, if it remains hidden, will be born in darkness, through a dangerous weakness of will, and without the benefit of the sacrifices and prayers offered at every marriage festival, in which the priests and priestesses, together with the entire city, ask that the children of good and beneficial parents may always prove themselves still better and more beneficial.b

That’s right. The same law will apply if a man still of begetting years has a child

with a woman of child-bearing age without the sanction of the rulers. We’ll say that he brings to the city an illegitimate, unauthorized, and unhallowed child.

That’s absolutely right. However, I think that when women and men have passed the age of

having children, we’ll leave them free to have sex with whomever they wish, with these exceptions: For a man—his daughter, his mother, his daughter’s children, and his mother’s ancestors; for a woman—her sonc and his descendants, her father and his ancestors. Having received these instructions, they should be very careful not to let a single fetus see the light of day, but if one is conceived and forces its way to the light, they must deal with it in the knowledge that no nurture is available for it.

Republic V 1089

That’s certainly sensible. But how will they recognize their fathers and daughters and the others you mentioned? d

They have no way of knowing. But a man will call all the children born in the tenth or seventh month after he became a bridegroom his sons, if they’re male, and his daughters, if they’re female, and they’ll call him father. He’ll call their children his grandchildren, and they’ll call the group to which he belongs grandfathers and grandmothers. And those who were born at the same time as their mothers and fathers were having children they’ll call their brothers and sisters. Thus, as we were saying, the relevant e groups will avoid sexual relations with each other. But the law will allow brothers and sisters to have sex with one another if the lottery works out that way and the Pythia8 approves.

That’s absolutely right. This, then, Glaucon, is how the guardians of your city have their wives

and children in common. We must now confirm that this arrangement is both consistent with the rest of the constitution and by far the best. Or how else are we to proceed?

In just that way. 462 Then isn’t the first step towards agreement to ask ourselves what we

say is the greatest good in designing the city—the good at which the legislator aims in making the laws—and what is the greatest evil? And isn’t the next step to examine whether the system we’ve just described fits into the tracks of the good and not into those of the bad?

Absolutely. Is there any greater evil we can mention for a city than that which tears

it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one? b

There isn’t. And when, as far as possible, all the citizens rejoice and are pained by

the same successes and failures, doesn’t this sharing of pleasures and pains bind the city together?

It most certainly does. But when some suffer greatly, while others rejoice greatly, at the same

things happening to the city or its people, doesn’t this privatization of pleasures and pains dissolve the city? c

Of course. And isn’t that what happens whenever such words as “mine” and “not

mine” aren’t used in unison? And similarly with “someone else’s”? Precisely. Then, is the best-governed city the one in which most people say “mine”

and “not mine” about the same things in the same way? It is indeed. What about the city that is most like a single person? For example, when

one of us hurts his finger, the entire organism that binds body and soul together into a single system under the ruling part within it is aware of

8. The priestess of Apollo at Delphi.

1090 Socrates/Glaucon

this, and the whole feels the pain together with the part that suffers. That’s why we say that the man has a pain in his finger. And the same can bed said about any part of a man, with regard either to the pain it suffers or to the pleasure it experiences when it finds relief.

Certainly. And, as for your question, the city with the best government is most like such a person.

Then, whenever anything good or bad happens to a single one of its citizens, such a city above all others will say that the affected part is its own and will share in the pleasure or pain as a whole.e

If it has good laws, that must be so. It’s time now to return to our own city, to look there for the features

we’ve agreed on, and to determine whether it or some other city possesses them to the greatest degree.

Then that’s what we must do. What about those other cities? Aren’t there rulers and people in them,

as well as in ours?463 There are. Besides fellow citizens, what do the people call the rulers in those

other cities? In many they call them despots, but in democracies they are called just

this—rulers. What about the people in our city? Besides fellow citizens, what do they

call their rulers? Preservers and auxiliaries.b And what do they in turn call the people? Providers of upkeep and wages. What do the rulers call the people in other cities? Slaves. And what do the rulers call each other? Co-rulers. And ours? Co-guardians. Can you tell me whether a ruler in those other cities could address some

of his co-rulers as his kinsmen and others as outsiders? Yes, many could. And doesn’t he consider his kinsman to be his own, and doesn’t he

address him as such, while he considers the outsider not to be his own?c He does. What about your guardians? Could any of them consider a co-guardian

as an outsider or address him as such? There’s no way he could, for when he meets any one of them, he’ll hold

that he’s meeting a brother or sister, a father or mother, a son or daughter, or some ancestor or descendant of theirs.

You put that very well. But tell me this: Will your laws require them simply to use these kinship names or also to do all the things that go along with the names? Must they show to their “fathers” the respect, solicitude,d

Republic V 1091

and obedience we show to our parents by law? Won’t they fare worse at the hands of gods and humans, as people whose actions are neither pious nor just, if they do otherwise? Will these be the oracular sayings they hear from all the citizens from their childhood on, or will they hear something else about their fathers—or the ones they’re told are their fathers—and other relatives?

The former. It would be absurd if they only mouthed kinship names without doing the things that go along with them. e

Therefore, in our city more than in any other, they’ll speak in unison the words we mentioned a moment ago. When any one of them is doing well or badly, they’ll say that “mine” is doing well or that “mine” is doing badly.

That’s absolutely true. Now, didn’t we say that the having and expressing of this conviction

is closely followed by the having of pleasures and pains in common? 464 Yes, and we were right. Then won’t our citizens, more than any others, have the same thing in

common, the one they call “mine”? And, having that in common, won’t they, more than any others, have common pleasures and pains?

Of course. And, in addition to the other institutions, the cause of this is the having

of wives and children in common by the guardians? That more than anything else is the cause. But we agreed that the having of pains and pleasures in common is the

greatest good for a city, and we characterized a well-governed city in terms of the body’s reaction to pain or pleasure in any one of its parts. b

And we were right to agree. Then, the cause of the greatest good for our city has been shown to be

the having of wives and children in common by the auxiliaries. It has. And, of course, this is consistent with what we said before, for we said

somewhere that, if they’re going to be guardians, they mustn’t have private houses, property, or possessions, but must receive their upkeep from the other citizens as a wage for their guardianship and enjoy it in common.9 c

That’s right. Then isn’t it true, just as I claimed, that what we are saying now, taken

together with what we said before, makes even better guardians out of them and prevents them from tearing the city apart by not calling the same thing “mine”? If different people apply the term to different things, one would drag into his own house whatever he could separate from the others, and another would drag things into a different house to a different wife and children, and this would make for private pleasures and pains d at private things. But our people, on the other hand, will think of the same

9. See 416d ff.

1092 Socrates/Glaucon

things as their own, aim at the same goal, and, as far as possible, feel pleasure and pain in unison.

Precisely. And what about lawsuits and mutual accusations? Won’t they pretty

well disappear from among them, because they have everything in common except their own bodies? Hence they’ll be spared all the dissension that arises between people because of the possession of money, children, and families.e

They’ll necessarily be spared it. Nor could any lawsuits for insult or injury justly occur among them,

for we’ll declare that it’s a fine and just thing for people to defend them- selves against others of the same age, since this will compel them to stay in good physical shape.

That’s right. This law is also correct for another reason: If a spirited person vents his465

anger in this way, it will be less likely to lead him into more serious disputes. Certainly. But an older person will be authorized to rule and punish all the

younger ones. Clearly. And surely it’s also obvious that a younger person won’t strike or do

any sort of violence to an older one or fail to show him respect in other ways, unless the rulers command it, for there are two guardians sufficient to prevent him from doing such things—shame and fear. Shame will prevent him from laying a hand on his parents, and so will the fear that the others would come to the aid of the victim, some as his sons, some asb his brothers, and some as his fathers.

That’s the effect they’ll have. Then, in all cases, won’t the laws induce men to live at peace with

one another? Very much so. And if there’s no discord among the guardians, there’s no danger that

the rest of the city will break into civil war, either with them or among them- selves.

Certainly not. I hesitate to mention, since they’re so unseemly, the pettiest of the evils

the guardians would therefore escape: The poor man’s flattery of the rich, the perplexities and sufferings involved in bringing up children and inc making the money necessary to feed the household, getting into debt, paying it off, and in some way or other providing enough money to hand over to their wives and household slaves to manage. All of the various troubles men endure in these matters are obvious, ignoble, and not worth discussing.

They’re obvious even to the blind.d They’ll be free of all these, and they’ll live a life more blessedly happy

than that of the victors in the Olympian games.

Republic V 1093

How? The Olympian victors are considered happy on account of only a small

part of what is available to our guardians, for the guardians’ victory is even greater, and their upkeep from public funds more complete. The victory they gain is the preservation of the whole city, and the crown of victory that they and their children receive is their upkeep and all the necessities of life. They receive rewards from their own city while they live, and at their death they’re given a worthy burial. e

Those are very good things. Do you remember that, earlier in our discussion, someone—I forget

who—shocked us by saying that we hadn’t made our guardians happy, that it was possible for them to have everything that belongs to the citizens, yet they had nothing? We said, I think, that if this happened to come up 466 at some point, we’d look into it then, but that our concern at the time was to make our guardians true guardians and the city the happiest we could, rather than looking to any one group within it and molding it for hap- piness.10

I remember. Well, then, if the life of our auxiliaries is apparently much finer and

better than that of Olympian victors, is there any need to compare it to the lives of cobblers, farmers, or other craftsmen? b

Not in my opinion. Then it’s surely right to repeat here what I said then: If a guardian seeks

happiness in such a way that he’s no longer a guardian and isn’t satisfied with a life that’s moderate, stable, and—as we say—best, but a silly, adoles- cent idea of happiness seizes him and incites him to use his power to take everything in the city for himself, he’ll come to know the true wisdom of c Hesiod’s saying that somehow “the half is worth more than the whole.”11

If he takes my advice, he’ll keep to his own life-style. You agree, then, that the women and men should associate with one

another in education, in things having to do with children, and in guarding the other citizens in the way we’ve described; that both when they remain in the city and when they go to war, they must guard together and hunt together like dogs and share in everything as far as possible; and that by d doing so they’ll be doing what’s best and not something contrary either to woman’s nature as compared with man’s or to the natural association of men and women with one another.

I agree. Then doesn’t it remain for us to determine whether it’s possible to bring

about this association among human beings, as it is among animals, and to say just how it might be done?

You took the words right out of my mouth.

10. See 419a ff. 11. Works and Days 40.

1094 Socrates/Glaucon

As far as war is concerned, I think it’s clear how they will wage it.e How so? Men and women will campaign together. They’ll take the sturdy children

with them, so that, like the children of other craftsmen, they can see what they’ll have to do when they grow up. But in addition to observing, they can serve and assist in everything to do with the war and help their mothers and fathers. Haven’t you noticed in the other crafts how the children of467 potters, for example, assist and observe for a long time before actually making any pots?

I have indeed. And should these craftsmen take more care in training their children

by appropriate experience and observation than the guardians? Of course not; that would be completely ridiculous. Besides, every animal fights better in the presence of its young.b That’s so. But, Socrates, there’s a considerable danger that in a defeat—

and such things are likely to happen in a war—they’ll lose their children’s lives as well as their own, making it impossible for the rest of the city to recover.

What you say is true. But do you think that the first thing we should provide for is the avoidance of all danger?

Not at all. Well, then, if people will probably have to face some danger, shouldn’t

it be the sort that will make them better if they come through it successfully? Obviously. And do you think that whether or not men who are going to be warriors

observe warfare when they’re still boys makes such a small difference that it isn’t worth the danger of having them do it?c

No, it does make a difference to what you’re talking about. On the assumption, then, that the children are to be observers of war,

if we can contrive some way to keep them secure, everything will be fine, won’t it?

Yes. Well, then, in the first place, their fathers won’t be ignorant, will they,

about which campaigns are dangerous and which are not, but rather as knowledgeable about this as any human beings can be?d

Probably so. Then they’ll take the children to some campaigns and not to others? Correct. And they’ll put officers in charge of them whose age and experience

qualifies them to be leaders and tutors? Appropriately so. But, as we say, the unexpected often occurs. Indeed. With this in mind, we must provide the children with wings when

they’re small, so that they can fly away and escape.

Republic V 1095

What do you mean? e We must mount them on horses as early as possible—not on spirited

or aggressive horses, but on very fast and manageable ones—and when they’ve learned to ride, they must be taken to observe a war. In this way, they’ll get the best look at their own work and, if the need arises, make the securest possible escape to safety, following their older guides.

I think you’re right. What about warfare itself? What attitude should your soldiers have to 468

each other and to the enemy? Are my views about this right or not? First, tell me what they are. If one of them leaves his post or throws away his shield or does anything

else of that sort through cowardice, shouldn’t he be reduced to being a craftsman or farmer?

Certainly. And shouldn’t anyone who is captured alive be left to his captors as a

gift to do with as they wish? Absolutely. b But don’t you think that anyone who distinguishes himself and earns

high esteem should, while still on the campaign, first be crowned with wreaths by each of the adolescents and children who accompany the expe- dition?

I do. And what about shaken by the right hand? That too. But I suppose that you wouldn’t go this far? Namely? That he should kiss and be kissed by each of them. That most of all. And I’d add this to the law: As long as the campaign

lasts, no one he wants to kiss shall be allowed to refuse, for then, if one of them happens to be in love with another, whether male or female, he’ll c be all the more eager to win the rewards of valor.

Excellent. And we’ve already stated that, since he’s a good person, more marriages will be available to him, and he’ll be selected for such things more frequently than the others, so that he’ll beget as many children as possible.

Yes, we did say that. Indeed, according to Homer too, it is just to honor in such ways those

young people who are good, for he says that Ajax, when he distinguished himself in battle, “was rewarded with the long cut off the backbone.” And d that’s an appropriate honor for a courageous young man, since it will both honor him and increase his strength.

That’s absolutely right. Then we’ll follow Homer in these matters at least. And insofar as good

people have shown themselves to be good, we’ll honor them at sacrifices and all such occasions with hymns, “seats of honor, meats, and well-filled

1096 Socrates/Glaucon

cups of wine,”12 and in all the other ways we mentioned, so that, in addition to honoring good men and women, we’ll continue to train them.e

That’s excellent. All right. And as for those who died on the campaign, won’t we say,

first of all, that, if their deaths were distinguished, they belong to the golden race?

That above all. And won’t we believe with Hesiod that, whenever any of that race die,

they become

Sacred daemons living upon the earth,469 Noble spirits, protectors against evil, guardians of articulate mortals?13

We’ll certainly believe that. Then we’ll inquire from the god14 what kind of distinguished funeral

we should give to daemonic and godlike people, and we’ll follow his in- structions.

Of course. And for the remainder of time, we’ll care for their graves and worship

at them as we would at those of daemons. And we’ll follow the same rites for anyone whom we judge to have lived an outstandingly good life,b whether he died of old age or in some other way.

That is only just. Now, what about enemies? How will our soldiers deal with them? In what respect? First, enslavement. Do you think it is just for Greeks to enslave Greek

cities, or, as far as they can, should they not even allow other cities to do so, and make a habit of sparing the Greek race, as a precaution against being enslaved by the barbarians?c

It’s altogether and in every way best to spare the Greek race. Then isn’t it also best for the guardians not to acquire a Greek slave and

to advise the other Greeks not to do so either? Absolutely. In that way they’d be more likely to turn against the barbar-

ians and keep their hands off one another. What about despoiling the dead? Is it a good thing to strip the dead of

anything besides their armor after a victory? Or don’t cowards make this an excuse for not facing the enemy—as if they were doing something ofd vital importance in bending over a corpse? And haven’t many armies been lost because of such plundering?

12. The last two quotations are from Iliad vii.321 and viii.162, respectively. 13. Works and Days 122. 14. Apollo. See 427b.

Republic V 1097

Indeed, they have. Don’t you think it’s slavish and money-loving to strip a corpse? Isn’t it

small-minded and womanish to regard the body as your enemy, when the enemy himself has flitted away, leaving behind only the instrument with which he fought? Or do you think such behavior any different from that of dogs who get angry with the stone that hits them and leave the e thrower alone?

It’s no different at all. Then may our soldiers strip corpses or refuse the enemy permission to

pick up their dead? No, by god, they certainly may not. Moreover, we won’t take enemy arms to the temples as offerings, and

if we care about the goodwill of other Greeks, we especially won’t do this with their arms. Rather we’d be afraid of polluting the temples if we 470 brought them such things from our own people, unless, of course, the god tells us otherwise.

That’s absolutely right. What about ravaging the land of the Greeks and burning their houses?

Will your soldiers do things of this sort to their enemies? I’d like to hear your opinion about that. Well, I think they should do neither of these things but destroy the

year’s harvest only. Do you want me to tell you why? b Of course. It seems to me that as we have two names, “war” and “civil war,” so

there are two things and the names apply to two kinds of disagreements arising in them. The two things I’m referring to are what is one’s own and akin, on the one hand, and what’s foreign and strange, on the other. The name “civil war” applies to hostilities with one’s own, while “war” applies to hostilities with strangers.

That’s certainly to the point. Then see whether this is also to the point: I say that the Greek race is

its own and akin, but is strange and foreign to barbarians. c That’s right. Then when Greeks do battle with barbarians or barbarians with Greeks,

we’ll say that they’re natural enemies and that such hostilities are to be called war. But when Greeks fight with Greeks, we’ll say that they are natural friends and that in such circumstances Greece is sick and divided into factions and that such hostilities are to be called civil war. d

I, at any rate, agree to think of it that way. Now, notice that, wherever something of the sort that’s currently called

civil war occurs and a city is divided, if either party ravages the land of the others and burns their houses, it’s thought that this is abominable and that neither party loves their city, since otherwise they’d never have rav- aged their very nurse and mother. However, it is thought appropriate for the victors to carry off the harvest of the vanquished. Nonetheless, their

1098 Socrates/Glaucon

attitude of mind should be that of people who’ll one day be reconciled and who won’t always be at war.e

This way of thinking is far more civilized than the other. What about the city you’re founding? It is Greek, isn’t it? It has to be. Then, won’t your citizens be good and civilized? Indeed they will. Then, won’t they love Greece? Won’t they consider Greece as their own

and share the religion of the other Greeks? Yes, indeed. Then won’t they consider their differences with Greeks—people who

are their own—not as war but as civil war?471 Of course. And won’t they quarrel like people who know that one day they’ll

be reconciled? Certainly. Then they’ll moderate their foes in a friendly spirit, not punish them

with enslavement and destruction, for they’re moderators, not enemies. That’s right. And being Greeks, they won’t ravage Greece or burn her houses, nor

will they agree that in any of her cities all the inhabitants—men, women, and children—are their enemies, but that whatever differences arise are caused by the few enemies that any city inevitably contains. Because of this, because the majority are friendly, they won’t ravage the country or destroy the houses, and they’ll continue their quarrel only to the point atb which those who caused it are forced to pay the penalty by those who were its innocent victims.

I agree that this is the way our citizens must treat their enemies, and they must treat barbarians the way Greeks currently treat each other.

Then shall we also impose this law on the guardians: Neither ravage the country nor burn the houses?c

Consider it imposed. And let’s also assume that this law and its predeces- sors are all fine. But I think, Socrates, that if we let you go on speaking about this subject, you’ll never remember the one you set aside in order to say all this, namely, whether it’s possible for this constitution to come into being and in what way it could be brought about. I agree that, if it existed, all the things we’ve mentioned would be good for the city in which they occurred. And I’ll add some that you’ve left out. The guardians would be excellent fighters against an enemy because they’d be least likely to desert each other, since they know each other as brothers, fathers, and sons, and call each other by those names. Moreover, if their women joinedd their campaigns, either in the same ranks or positioned in the rear to frighten the enemy and in case their help should ever be needed, I know that this would make them quite unbeatable. And I also see all the good things that they’d have at home that you’ve omitted. Take it that I agree that all these things would happen, as well as innumerable others, if thise

Republic V 1099

kind of constitution came into being, and say no more on that subject. But rather let’s now try to convince ourselves that it is possible and how it is possible, and let the rest go.

This is a sudden attack that you’ve made on my argument, and you 472 show no sympathy for my delay. Perhaps you don’t realize that, just as I’ve barely escaped from the first two waves of objections, you’re bringing the third—the biggest and most difficult one—down upon me. When you see and hear it, you’ll surely be completely sympathetic, and recognize that it was, after all, appropriate for me to hesitate and be afraid to state and look into so paradoxical a view.

The more you speak like that, the less we’ll let you off from telling us how it’s possible for this constitution to come into being. So speak instead of wasting time. b

Well, then, we must first remember that we got to this point while trying to discover what justice and injustice are like.

We must. But what of it? Nothing. But if we discover what justice is like, will we also maintain

that the just man is in no way different from the just itself, so that he is like justice in every respect? Or will we be satisfied if he comes as close to it as possible and participates in it far more than anyone else? c

We’ll be satisfied with that. Then it was in order to have a model that we were trying to discover

what justice itself is like and what the completely just man would be like, if he came into being, and what kind of man he’d be if he did, and likewise with regard to injustice and the most unjust man. We thought that, by looking at how their relationship to happiness and its opposite seemed to us, we’d also be compelled to agree about ourselves as well, that the one who was most like them would have a portion of happiness most like theirs. But we weren’t trying to discover these things in order to prove d that it’s possible for them to come into being.

That’s true. Do you think that someone is a worse painter if, having painted a model

of what the finest and most beautiful human being would be like and having rendered every detail of his picture adequately, he could not prove that such a man could come into being?

No, by god, I don’t. Then what about our own case? Didn’t we say that we were making a

theoretical model of a good city?15 e Certainly. So do you think that our discussion will be any less reasonable if we

can’t prove that it’s possible to found a city that’s the same as the one in our theory?

Not at all.

15. See 369a–c.

1100 Socrates/Glaucon

Then that’s the truth of the matter. But if, in order to please you, I must also be willing to show how and under what conditions it would most be possible to found such a city, then you should agree to make the same concessions to me, in turn, for the purposes of this demonstration.

Which ones? Is it possible to do anything in practice the same as in theory? Or is it

in the nature of practice to grasp truth less well than theory does, even if some people don’t think so? Will you first agree to this or not?473

I agree. Then don’t compel me to show that what we’ve described in theory can

come into being exactly as we’ve described it. Rather, if we’re able to discover how a city could come to be governed in a way that most closely approximates our description, let’s say that we’ve shown what you ordered us to show, namely, that it’s possible for our city to come to be. Or wouldn’t you be satisfied with that? I would be satisfied with it.b

So would I. Then next, it seems, we should try to discover and point out what’s

now badly done in cities that keeps them from being governed in that way and what’s the smallest change that would enable our city to reach our sort of constitution—one change, if possible, or if not one, two, and if not two, then the fewest in number and the least extensive.

That’s absolutely right.c There is one change we could point to that, in my opinion, would

accomplish this. It’s certainly neither small nor easy, but it is possible. What is it? Well, I’ve now come to what we likened to the greatest wave. But I shall

say what I have to say, even if the wave is a wave of laughter that will simply drown me in ridicule and contempt. So listen to what I’m going to say.

Say on. Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and

leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who atd present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils, Glaucon, nor, I think, will the human race. And, until this happens, the constitution we’ve been describing in theory will never be born to the fullest extent possible or see the light ofe the sun. It’s because I saw how very paradoxical this statement would be that I hesitated to make it for so long, for it’s hard to face up to the fact that there can be no happiness, either public or private, in any other city.

Socrates, after hurling a speech and statement like that at us, you must expect that a great many people (and not undistinguished ones either) will cast off their cloaks and, stripped for action, snatch any available weapon, and make a determined rush at you, ready to do terrible things.474 So, unless you can hold them off by argument and escape, you really will pay the penalty of general derision.

Well, you are the one that brought this on me.

Republic V 1101

And I was right to do it. However, I won’t betray you, but rather defend you in any way I can—by goodwill, by urging you on, and perhaps by being able to give you more appropriate answers than someone else. So, with the promise of this assistance, try to show the unbelievers that things are as you say they are. b

I must try it, then, especially since you agree to be so great an ally. If we’re to escape from the people you mention, I think we need to define for them who the philosophers are that we dare to say must rule. And once that’s clear, we should be able to defend ourselves by showing that the people we mean are fitted by nature both to engage in philosophy and to rule in a city, while the rest are naturally fitted to leave philosophy c alone and follow their leader.

This would be a good time to give that definition. Come, then, follow me, and we’ll see whether or not there’s some way

to set it out adequately. Lead on. Do you need to be reminded or do you remember that, if it’s rightly

said that someone loves something, then he mustn’t love one part of it and not another, but he must love all of it?16

I think you’ll have to remind me, for I don’t understand it at all. d That would be an appropriate response, Glaucon, for somebody else to

make. But it isn’t appropriate for an erotically inclined man to forget that all boys in the bloom of youth pique the interest of a lover of boys and arouse him and that all seem worthy of his care and pleasure. Or isn’t that the way you people behave to fine and beautiful boys? You praise a snub-nosed one as cute, a hook-nosed one you say is regal, one in between is well proportioned, dark ones look manly, and pale ones are children of the gods. And as for a honey-colored boy, do you think that this very term e is anything but the euphemistic coinage of a lover who found it easy to tolerate sallowness, provided it was accompanied by the bloom of youth? In a word, you find all kinds of terms and excuses so as not to reject 475 anyone whose flower is in bloom.

If you insist on taking me as your example of what erotically inclined men do, then, for the sake of the argument, I agree.

Further, don’t you see wine-lovers behave in the same way? Don’t they love every kind of wine and find any excuse to enjoy it?

Certainly. And I think you see honor-lovers, if they can’t be generals, be captains,

and, if they can’t be honored by people of importance and dignity, they put up with being honored by insignificant and inferior ones, for they desire the whole of honor. b

Exactly. Then do you agree to this or not? When we say that someone desires

something, do we mean that he desires everything of that kind or that he desires one part of it but not another?

16. See 438a–b.

1102 Glaucon/Socrates

We mean he desires everything. Then won’t we also say that the philosopher doesn’t desire one part of

wisdom rather than another, but desires the whole thing? Yes, that’s true. And as for the one who’s choosy about what he learns, especially if

he’s young and can’t yet give an account of what is useful and what isn’t, we won’t say that he is a lover of learning or a philosopher, forc we wouldn’t say that someone who’s choosy about his food is hungry or has an appetite for food or is a lover of food—instead, we’d say that he is a bad eater.

And we’d be right to say it. But the one who readily and willingly tries all kinds of learning, who

turns gladly to learning and is insatiable for it, is rightly called a philoso- pher, isn’t he?

Then many strange people will be philosophers, for the lovers of sightsd seem to be included, since they take pleasure in learning things. And the lovers of sounds are very strange people to include as philosophers, for they would never willingly attend a serious discussion or spend their time that way, yet they run around to all the Dionysiac festivals, omitting none, whether in cities or villages, as if their ears were under contract to listen to every chorus. Are we to say that these people—and those who learn similar things or petty crafts—are philosophers?e

No, but they are like philosophers. And who are the true philosophers? Those who love the sight of truth. That’s right, but what exactly do you mean by it? It would not be easy to explain to someone else, but I think that you

will agree to this. To what? Since the beautiful is the opposite of the ugly, they are two. Of course.476 And since they are two, each is one? I grant that also. And the same account is true of the just and the unjust, the good and

the bad, and all the forms. Each of them is itself one, but because they manifest themselves everywhere in association with actions, bodies, and one another, each of them appears to be many.

That’s right. So, I draw this distinction: On one side are those you just now called

lovers of sights, lovers of crafts, and practical people; on the other side are those we are arguing about and whom one would alone call philosophers.b

How do you mean? The lovers of sights and sounds like beautiful sounds, colors, shapes,

and everything fashioned out of them, but their thought is unable to see and embrace the nature of the beautiful itself.

That’s for sure.

Republic V 1103

In fact, there are very few people who would be able to reach the beautiful itself and see it by itself. Isn’t that so?

Certainly. c What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn’t believe

in the beautiful itself and isn’t able to follow anyone who could lead him to the knowledge of it? Don’t you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state? Isn’t this dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?

I certainly think that someone who does that is dreaming. But someone who, to take the opposite case, believes in the beautiful

itself, can see both it and the things that participate in it and doesn’t believe that the participants are it or that it itself is the participants—is he living d in a dream or is he awake?

He’s very much awake. So we’d be right to call his thought knowledge, since he knows, but we

should call the other person’s thought opinion, since he opines? Right. What if the person who has opinion but not knowledge is angry with

us and disputes the truth of what we are saying? Is there some way to console him and persuade him gently, while hiding from him that he isn’t e in his right mind?

There must be. Consider, then, what we’ll say to him. Won’t we question him like this?

First, we’ll tell him that nobody begrudges him any knowledge he may have and that we’d be delighted to discover that he knows something. Then we’ll say: “Tell us, does the person who knows know something or nothing?” You answer for him.

He knows something. Something that is or something that is not?17

Something that is, for how could something that is not be known? 477 Then we have an adequate grasp of this: No matter how many ways

we examine it, what is completely is completely knowable and what is in no way is in every way unknowable?

A most adequate one. Good. Now, if anything is such as to be and also not to be, won’t it be

intermediate between what purely is and what in no way is? Yes, it’s intermediate. Then, as knowledge is set over what is, while ignorance is of necessity

set over what is not, mustn’t we find an intermediate between knowledge

17. Because of the ambiguity of the verb einai (“to be”), Socrates could be asking any or all of the following questions: (1) “Something that exists or something that does not exist?” (existential “is”); (2) “Something that is beautiful (say) or something that is not beautiful?” (predicative “is”); (3) “Something that is true or something that is not true?” (veridical “is”).

1104 Socrates/Glaucon

and ignorance to be set over what is intermediate between what is and what is not, if there is such a thing?b

Certainly. Do we say that opinion is something? Of course. A different power from knowledge or the same? A different one. Opinion, then, is set over one thing, and knowledge over another, accord-

ing to the power of each. Right. Now, isn’t knowledge by its nature set over what is, to know it as it is?

But first maybe we’d better be a bit more explicit. How so? Powers are a class of the things that are that enable us—or anythingc

else for that matter—to do whatever we are capable of doing. Sight, for example, and hearing are among the powers, if you understand the kind of thing I’m referring to.

I do. Here’s what I think about them. A power has neither color nor shape

nor any feature of the sort that many other things have and that I use to distinguish those things from one another. In the case of a power, I use only what it is set over and what it does, and by reference to these I calld each the power it is: What is set over the same things and does the same I call the same power; what is set over something different and does something different I call a different one. Do you agree?

I do. Then let’s back up. Is knowledge a power, or what class would you put

it in? It’s a power, the strongest of them all. And what about opinion, is it a power or some other kind of thing?e It’s a power as well, for it is what enables us to opine. A moment ago you agreed that knowledge and opinion aren’t the same. How could a person with any understanding think that a fallible power

is the same as an infallible one? Right. Then we agree that opinion is clearly different from knowledge.478 It is different. Hence each of them is by nature set over something different and does

something different? Necessarily. Knowledge is set over what is, to know it as it is? Yes. And opinion opines? Yes. Does it opine the very thing that knowledge knows, so that the knowable

and the opinable are the same, or is this impossible?

Republic V 1105

It’s impossible, given what we agreed, for if a different power is set over something different, and opinion and knowledge are different powers, then the knowable and the opinable cannot be the same. b

Then, if what is is knowable, the opinable must be something other than what is?

It must. Do we, then, opine what is not? Or is it impossible to opine what is

not? Think about this. Doesn’t someone who opines set his opinion over something? Or is it possible to opine, yet to opine nothing?

It’s impossible. But someone who opines opines some one thing? Yes. Surely the most accurate word for that which is not isn’t “one thing”

but “nothing”? c Certainly. But we had to set ignorance over what is not and knowledge over what is? That’s right. So someone opines neither what is nor what is not? How could it be otherwise? Then opinion is neither ignorance nor knowledge? So it seems. Then does it go beyond either of these? Is it clearer than knowledge or

darker than ignorance? No, neither. Is opinion, then, darker than knowledge but clearer than ignorance? It is. Then it lies between them? d Yes. So opinion is intermediate between those two? Absolutely. Now, we said that, if something could be shown, as it were, to be and

not to be at the same time, it would be intermediate between what purely is and what in every way is not, and that neither knowledge nor ignorance would be set over it, but something intermediate between ignorance and knowledge?

Correct. And now the thing we call opinion has emerged as being intermediate

between them? It has. Apparently, then, it only remains for us to find what participates in both

being and not being and cannot correctly be called purely one or the other, e in order that, if there is such a thing, we can rightly call it the opinable, thereby setting the extremes over the extremes and the intermediate over the intermediate. Isn’t that so?

It is.

Now that these points have been established, I want to address a question to our friend who doesn’t believe in the beautiful itself or any form of the beautiful itself that remains always the same in all respects but who does believe in the many beautiful things—the lover of sights who wouldn’t allow anyone to say that the beautiful itself is one or that the just is one or any of the rest: “My dear fellow,” we’ll say, “of all the many beautiful things, is there one that will not also appear ugly? Or is there one of those just things that will not also appear unjust? Or one of those pious things that will not also appear impious?”

There isn’t one, for it is necessary that they appear to be beautiful in a way and also to be ugly in a way, and the same with the other things you asked about.

What about the many doubles? Do they appear any the less halves than doubles?

Not one. So, with the many bigs and smalls and lights and heavies, is any one

of them any more what we say it is than its opposite? No, each of them always participates in both opposites. Is any one of the manys what we say it is, then, any more than it is

not what he says it is? No, they are like the ambiguities one is entertained with at dinner parties

or like the children’s riddle about the eunuch who threw something at a bat—the one about what he threw at it and what it was in,18 for they are ambiguous, and one cannot understand them as fixedly being or fixedly not being or as both or as neither.

Then do you know how to deal with them? Or can you find a more appropriate place to put them than intermediate between being and not being? Surely, they can’t be more than what is or not be more than what is not, for apparently nothing is darker than what is not or clearer than what is.

Very true. We’ve now discovered, it seems, that the many conventions of the majority

of people about beauty and the others are rolling around as intermediates between what is not and what purely is.

We have. And we agreed earlier that anything of that kind would have to be called

the opinable, not the knowable—the wandering intermediate grasped by the intermediate power.

We did. As for those who study the many beautiful things but do not see the

beautiful itself and are incapable of following another who leads them to

18. The riddle seems to have been: A man who is not a man saw and did not see a bird that was not a bird in a tree (lit., a piece of wood) that was not a tree; he hit (lit., threw at) and did not hit it with a stone that was not a stone. The answer is that a eunuch with bad eyesight saw a bat on a rafter, threw a pumice stone at it, and missed.

1106 Socrates/Glaucon

479

b

c

d

e

Republic V 1107

it, who see many just things but not the just itself, and so with everything— these people, we shall say, opine everything but have no knowledge of anything they opine.

Necessarily. What about the ones who in each case study the things themselves that

are always the same in every respect? Won’t we say that they know and don’t opine?

That’s necessary too. Shall we say, then, that these people love and embrace the things that

knowledge is set over, as the others do the things that opinion is set over? 480 Remember we said that the latter saw and loved beautiful sounds and colors and the like but wouldn’t allow the beautiful itself to be anything?

We remember, all right. We won’t be in error, then, if we call such people lovers of opinion

rather than philosophers or lovers of wisdom and knowledge? Will they be angry with us if we call them that?

Not if they take my advice, for it isn’t right to be angry with those who speak the truth.

As for those who in each case embrace the thing itself, we must call them philosophers, not lovers of opinion?

Most definitely.

Book VI

And so, Glaucon, I said, after a somewhat lengthy and difficult discussion, 484 both the philosophers and the nonphilosophers came to light as who they are.

It probably wouldn’t have been easy, he said, to have them do it in a shorter one.

Apparently not. But for my part, I think that the matter would have been better illuminated if we had only it to discuss and not all the other things that remain to be treated in order to discover the difference between the just life and the unjust one. b

What’s our next topic? What else but the one that’s next in order? Since those who are able to

grasp what is always the same in all respects are philosophers, while those who are not able to do so and who wander among the many things that vary in every sort of way are not philosophers, which of the two should be the leaders in a city?

What would be a sensible answer to that? We should establish as guardians those who are clearly capable of guard-

ing the laws and the ways of life of the city. c That’s right. And isn’t it clear that a guardian who is to keep watch over anything

should be keen-sighted rather than blind?