ation about laws turns
almost entirely on pleasure and pain, both in states and in individuals:
these are two fountains which nature lets flow, and he who draws from
them where and when, and as much as he ought, is happy; and this
holds of men and animals--of individuals as well as states; and he who
indulges in them ignorantly and at the wrong time, is the reverse of
happy.

MEGILLUS: I admit, Stranger, that your words are well spoken, and I
hardly know what to say in answer to you; but still I think that the
Spartan lawgiver was quite right in forbidding pleasure. Of the Cretan
laws, I shall leave the defence to my Cnosian friend. But the laws of
Sparta, in as far as they relate to pleasure, appear to me to be the
best in the world; for that which leads mankind in general into the
wildest pleasure and licence, and every other folly, the law has clean
driven out; and neither in the country nor in towns which are under the
control of Sparta, will you find revelries and the many incitements of
every kind of pleasure which accompany them; and any one who meets a
drunken and disorderly person, will immediately have him most severely
punished, and will not let him off on any pretence, not even at the time
of a Dionysiac festival; although I have remarked that this may happen
at your performances 'on the cart,' as they are called; and among our
Tarentine colonists I have seen the whole city drunk at a Dionysiac
festival; but nothing of the sort happens among us.

ATHENIAN: O Lacedaemonian Stranger, these festivities are praiseworthy
where there is a spirit of endurance, but are very senseless when they
are under no regulations. In order to retaliate, an Athenian has only
to point out the licence which exists among your women. To all such
accusations, whether they are brought against the Tarentines, or us, or
you, there is one answer which exonerates the practice in question from
impropriety. When a stranger expresses wonder at the singularity of
what he sees, any inhabitant will naturally answer him:--Wonder not, O
stranger; this is our custom, and you may very likely have some other
custom about the same things. Now we are speaking, my friends, not
about men in general, but about the merits and defects of the lawgivers
themselves. Let us then discourse a little more at length about
intoxication, which is a very important subject, and will seriously task
the discrimination of the legislator. I am not speaking of drinking,