y spoken both as to the character of the selection
of them, and the manner in which they are to be amended and consecrated.
But we have not as yet spoken, O illustrious guardian of education,
of the manner in which your pupils are to use those strains which are
written in prose, although you have been informed what martial strains
they are to learn and practise; what relates in the first place to the
learning of letters, and secondly, to the lyre, and also to calculation,
which, as we were saying, is needful for them all to learn, and any
other things which are required with a view to war and the management of
house and city, and, looking to the same object, what is useful in the
revolutions of the heavenly bodies--the stars and sun and moon, and
the various regulations about these matters which are necessary for the
whole state--I am speaking of the arrangements of days in periods of
months, and of months in years, which are to be observed, in order that
seasons and sacrifices and festivals may have their regular and natural
order, and keep the city alive and awake, the Gods receiving the honours
due to them, and men having a better understanding about them: all these
things, O my friend, have not yet been sufficiently declared to you by
the legislator. Attend, then, to what I am now going to say: We were
telling you, in the first place, that you were not sufficiently informed
about letters, and the objection was to this effect--that you were never
told whether he who was meant to be a respectable citizen should apply
himself in detail to that sort of learning, or not apply himself at all;
and the same remark holds good of the study of the lyre. But now we say
that he ought to attend to them. A fair time for a boy of ten years old
to spend in letters is three years; the age of thirteen is the proper
time for him to begin to handle the lyre, and he may continue at this
for another three years, neither more nor less, and whether his father
or himself like or dislike the study, he is not to be allowed to spend
more or less time in learning music than the law allows. And let him who
disobeys the law be deprived of those youthful honours of which we shall
hereafter speak. Hear, however, first of all, what the young ought to
learn in the early years of life, and what their instructors ought to
teach them. They ought to be occupied with their letters until they
are able to read and write; but the acquisition of perfect beauty or