ut, as we are only talking,
there is no objection to changing the order. If, however, our plan of
legislation is ever to take effect, then the house shall precede the
marriage if God so will, and afterwards we will come to the regulations
about marriage; but at present we are only describing these matters in a
general outline.

CLEINIAS: Quite true.

ATHENIAN: The temples are to be placed all round the agora, and the
whole city built on the heights in a circle (compare Arist. Pol.), for
the sake of defence and for the sake of purity. Near the temples are to
be placed buildings for the magistrates and the courts of law; in these
plaintiff and defendant will receive their due, and the places will be
regarded as most holy, partly because they have to do with holy things:
and partly because they are the dwelling-places of holy Gods: and in
them will be held the courts in which cases of homicide and other trials
of capital offences may fitly take place. As to the walls, Megillus, I
agree with Sparta in thinking that they should be allowed to sleep in
the earth, and that we should not attempt to disinter them (compare
Arist. Pol.); there is a poetical saying, which is finely expressed,
that 'walls ought to be of steel and iron, and not of earth;' besides,
how ridiculous of us to be sending out our young men annually into
the country to dig and to trench, and to keep off the enemy by
fortifications, under the idea that they are not to be allowed to set
foot in our territory, and then, that we should surround ourselves
with a wall, which, in the first place, is by no means conducive to the
health of cities, and is also apt to produce a certain effeminacy in
the minds of the inhabitants, inviting men to run thither instead of
repelling their enemies, and leading them to imagine that their safety
is due not to their keeping guard day and night, but that when they are
protected by walls and gates, then they may sleep in safety; as if they
were not meant to labour, and did not know that true repose comes from
labour, and that disgraceful indolence and a careless temper of mind
is only the renewal of trouble. But if men must have walls, the private
houses ought to be so arranged from the first that the whole city may
be one wall, having all the houses capable of defence by reason of their
uniformity and equality towards the streets (compare Arist. Pol.). The
form of the city being that of a single dwelling will have an agreeable
a