nd the like. Indeed it is as much the
business of the legislator as anything else, to banish every indecent
expression out of the state: for from a permission to speak whatever is
shameful, very quickly arises the doing it, and this particularly with
young people: for which reason let them never speak nor hear any such
thing: but if it appears that any freeman has done or said anything that
is forbidden before he is of age to be thought fit to partake of the
common meals, let him be punished by disgrace and stripes; but if a
person above that age does so, let him be treated as you would a
slave, on account of his being infamous. Since we forbid his speaking
everything which is forbidden, it is necessary that he neither sees
obscene stories nor pictures; the magistrates therefore are to take care
that there are no statues or pictures of anything of this nature, except
only to those gods to whom the law permits them, and to which the law
allows persons of a certain age to pay their devotions, for themselves,
their wives, and children. It should also be illegal for young persons
to be present either at iambics or comedies before they are arrived at
that age when they are allowed to partake of the pleasures of the table:
indeed a good education will preserve them from all the evils which
attend on these things. We have at present just touched upon this
subject; it will be our business hereafter, when we properly come to
it, to determine whether this care of children is unnecessary, or,
if necessary, in what manner it must be done; at present we have only
mentioned it as necessary. Probably the saying of Theodoras, the tragic
actor, was not a bad one: That he would permit no one, not even the
meanest actor, to go upon the stage before him, that he might first
engage the ear of the audience. The same thing happens both in our
connections with men and things: what we meet with first pleases best;
for which reason children should be kept strangers to everything which
is bad, more particularly whatsoever is loose and offensive to good
manners. When five years are accomplished, the two next may be very
properly employed in being spectators of those exercises they will
afterwards have to learn. There are two periods into which education
ought to be divided, according to the age of the child; the one is from
his being seven years of age to the time of puberty; the other from
thence till he is one-and-twenty: for those who divide ages