and who is uneducated; but if not, then we
certainly shall not know wherein lies the safeguard of education, and
whether there is any or not.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Let us follow the scent like hounds, and go in pursuit of
beauty of figure, and melody, and song, and dance; if these escape us,
there will be no use in talking about true education, whether Hellenic
or barbarian.

CLEINIAS: Yes.

ATHENIAN: And what is beauty of figure, or beautiful melody? When a
manly soul is in trouble, and when a cowardly soul is in similar
case, are they likely to use the same figures and gestures, or to give
utterance to the same sounds?

CLEINIAS: How can they, when the very colours of their faces differ?

ATHENIAN: Good, my friend; I may observe, however, in passing, that in
music there certainly are figures and there are melodies: and music is
concerned with harmony and rhythm, so that you may speak of a melody or
figure having good rhythm or good harmony--the term is correct enough;
but to speak metaphorically of a melody or figure having a 'good
colour,' as the masters of choruses do, is not allowable, although
you can speak of the melodies or figures of the brave and the coward,
praising the one and censuring the other. And not to be tedious, let us
say that the figures and melodies which are expressive of virtue of soul
or body, or of images of virtue, are without exception good, and those
which are expressive of vice are the reverse of good.

CLEINIAS: Your suggestion is excellent; and let us answer that these
things are so.

ATHENIAN: Once more, are all of us equally delighted with every sort of
dance?

CLEINIAS: Far otherwise.

ATHENIAN: What, then, leads us astray? Are beautiful things not the same
to us all, or are they the same in themselves, but not in our opinion
of them? For no one will admit that forms of vice in the dance are more
beautiful than forms of virtue, or that he himself delights in the forms
of vice, and others in a muse of another character. And yet most persons
say, that the excellence of music is to give pleasure to our souls.
But this is intolerable and blasphemous; there is, however, a much more
plausible account of the delusion.

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: The adaptation of art to the characters of men. Choric
movements are imitations of manners occurring in various actions,
fortunes, dispositions,--each particular is imitated, and those to whom
the words, or songs, or dances ar