worthy of
consideration, will always and above all things in making laws have
regard to the greatest virtue; which, according to Theognis, is loyalty
in the hour of danger, and may be truly called perfect justice. Whereas,
that virtue which Tyrtaeus highly praises is well enough, and was
praised by the poet at the right time, yet in place and dignity may be
said to be only fourth rate (i.e., it ranks after justice, temperance,
and wisdom.).

CLEINIAS: Stranger, we are degrading our inspired lawgiver to a rank
which is far beneath him.

ATHENIAN: Nay, I think that we degrade not him but ourselves, if we
imagine that Lycurgus and Minos laid down laws both in Lacedaemon and
Crete mainly with a view to war.

CLEINIAS: What ought we to say then?

ATHENIAN: What truth and what justice require of us, if I am not
mistaken, when speaking in behalf of divine excellence;--that the
legislator when making his laws had in view not a part only, and this
the lowest part of virtue, but all virtue, and that he devised classes
of laws answering to the kinds of virtue; not in the way in which modern
inventors of laws make the classes, for they only investigate and offer
laws whenever a want is felt, and one man has a class of laws about
allotments and heiresses, another about assaults; others about ten
thousand other such matters. But we maintain that the right way of
examining into laws is to proceed as we have now done, and I admired the
spirit of your exposition; for you were quite right in beginning with
virtue, and saying that this was the aim of the giver of the law, but I
thought that you went wrong when you added that all his legislation had
a view only to a part, and the least part of virtue, and this called
forth my subsequent remarks. Will you allow me then to explain how I
should have liked to have heard you expound the matter?

CLEINIAS: By all means.

ATHENIAN: You ought to have said, Stranger--The Cretan laws are with
reason famous among the Hellenes; for they fulfil the object of laws,
which is to make those who use them happy; and they confer every sort of
good. Now goods are of two kinds: there are human and there are divine
goods, and the human hang upon the divine; and the state which attains
the greater, at the same time acquires the less, or, not having the
greater, has neither. Of the lesser goods the first is health, the
second beauty, the third strength, including swiftness in running and
bodily agility gen