he opposite also of the greatest
and most numerous sort of pleasures.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And does not the legislator and every one who is good for
anything, hold this fear in the greatest honour? This is what he terms
reverence, and the confidence which is the reverse of this he terms
insolence; and the latter he always deems to be a very great evil both
to individuals and to states.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Does not this kind of fear preserve us in many important ways?
What is there which so surely gives victory and safety in war? For there
are two things which give victory--confidence before enemies, and fear
of disgrace before friends.

CLEINIAS: There are.

ATHENIAN: Then each of us should be fearless and also fearful; and why
we should be either has now been determined.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And when we want to make any one fearless, we and the law
bring him face to face with many fears.

CLEINIAS: Clearly.

ATHENIAN: And when we want to make him rightly fearful, must we not
introduce him to shameless pleasures, and train him to take up arms
against them, and to overcome them? Or does this principle apply to
courage only, and must he who would be perfect in valour fight against
and overcome his own natural character,--since if he be unpractised and
inexperienced in such conflicts, he will not be half the man which he
might have been,--and are we to suppose, that with temperance it is
otherwise, and that he who has never fought with the shameless and
unrighteous temptations of his pleasures and lusts, and conquered them,
in earnest and in play, by word, deed, and act, will still be perfectly
temperate?

CLEINIAS: A most unlikely supposition.

ATHENIAN: Suppose that some God had given a fear-potion to men, and
that the more a man drank of this the more he regarded himself at
every draught as a child of misfortune, and that he feared everything
happening or about to happen to him; and that at last the most
courageous of men utterly lost his presence of mind for a time, and
only came to himself again when he had slept off the influence of the
draught.

CLEINIAS: But has such a draught, Stranger, ever really been known among
men?

ATHENIAN: No; but, if there had been, might not such a draught have been
of use to the legislator as a test of courage? Might we not go and say
to him, 'O legislator, whether you are legislating for the Cretan, or
for any other state, would you