hose
who are able to endure amid pleasures, and have had the opportunity of
enjoying them, they being often the worst of mankind. One half of their
souls will be a slave, the other half free; and they will not be worthy
to be called in the true sense men and freemen. Tell me whether you
assent to my words?

CLEINIAS: On first hearing, what you say appears to be the truth; but to
be hasty in coming to a conclusion about such important matters would be
very childish and simple.

ATHENIAN: Suppose, Cleinias and Megillus, that we consider the virtue
which follows next of those which we intended to discuss (for after
courage comes temperance), what institutions shall we find relating to
temperance, either in Crete or Lacedaemon, which, like your military
institutions, differ from those of any ordinary state.

MEGILLUS: That is not an easy question to answer; still I should say
that the common meals and gymnastic exercises have been excellently
devised for the promotion both of temperance and courage.

ATHENIAN: There seems to be a difficulty, Stranger, with regard to
states, in making words and facts coincide so that there can be no
dispute about them. As in the human body, the regimen which does good in
one way does harm in another; and we can hardly say that any one course
of treatment is adapted to a particular constitution. Now the gymnasia
and common meals do a great deal of good, and yet they are a source of
evil in civil troubles; as is shown in the case of the Milesian, and
Boeotian, and Thurian youth, among whom these institutions seem always
to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient and natural custom of love
below the level, not only of man, but of the beasts. The charge may be
fairly brought against your cities above all others, and is true also
of most other states which especially cultivate gymnastics. Whether
such matters are to be regarded jestingly or seriously, I think that
the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises out of the intercourse
between men and women; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of
women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was
originally due to unbridled lust. The Cretans are always accused of
having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus because they wanted
to justify themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the
practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver.
Leaving the story, we may observe that any specul