mankind.

CLEINIAS: Quite true.

ATHENIAN: Were we not saying that on such occasions the souls of the
drinkers become like iron heated in the fire, and grow softer and
younger, and are easily moulded by him who knows how to educate and
fashion them, just as when they were young, and that this fashioner of
them is the same who prescribed for them in the days of their youth,
viz., the good legislator; and that he ought to enact laws of the
banquet, which, when a man is confident, bold, and impudent, and
unwilling to wait his turn and have his share of silence and speech, and
drinking and music, will change his character into the opposite--such
laws as will infuse into him a just and noble fear, which will take up
arms at the approach of insolence, being that divine fear which we have
called reverence and shame?

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: And the guardians of these laws and fellow-workers with them
are the calm and sober generals of the drinkers; and without their help
there is greater difficulty in fighting against drink than in fighting
against enemies when the commander of an army is not himself calm; and
he who is unwilling to obey them and the commanders of Dionysiac feasts
who are more than sixty years of age, shall suffer a disgrace as great
as he who disobeys military leaders, or even greater.

CLEINIAS: Right.

ATHENIAN: If, then, drinking and amusement were regulated in this way,
would not the companions of our revels be improved? they would part
better friends than they were, and not, as now, enemies. Their whole
intercourse would be regulated by law and observant of it, and the sober
would be the leaders of the drunken.

CLEINIAS: I think so too, if drinking were regulated as you propose.

ATHENIAN: Let us not then simply censure the gift of Dionysus as bad and
unfit to be received into the State. For wine has many excellences, and
one pre-eminent one, about which there is a difficulty in speaking to
the many, from a fear of their misconceiving and misunderstanding what
is said.

CLEINIAS: To what do you refer?

ATHENIAN: There is a tradition or story, which has somehow crept about
the world, that Dionysus was robbed of his wits by his stepmother Here,
and that out of revenge he inspires Bacchic furies and dancing madnesses
in others; for which reason he gave men wine. Such traditions concerning
the Gods I leave to those who think that they may be safely uttered
(compare Euthyph.; Republic); I onl