then, that there is a certain education in which a child
may be instructed, not as useful nor as necessary, but as noble and
liberal: but whether this is one or more than one, and of what sort they
are, and how to be taught, shall be considered hereafter: we are now got
so far on our way as to show that we have the testimony of the ancients
in our favour, by what they have delivered down upon education--for
music makes this plain. Moreover, it is necessary to instruct children
in what is useful, not only on account of its being useful in itself,
as, for instance, to learn to read, but also as the means of acquiring
other different sorts of instruction: thus they should be instructed
in painting, not only to prevent their being mistaken in purchasing
pictures, or in buying or selling of vases, but rather as it makes
[1338b] them judges of the beauties of the human form; for to be always
hunting after the profitable ill agrees with great and freeborn
souls. As it is evident whether a boy should be first taught morals or
reasoning, and whether his body or his understanding should be first
cultivated, it is plain that boys should be first put under the care of
the different masters of the gymnastic arts, both to form their bodies
and teach them their exercises.

CHAPTER IV

Now those states which seem to take the greatest care of their
children's education, bestow their chief attention on wrestling, though
it both prevents the increase of the body and hurts the form of it. This
fault the Lacedaemonians did not fall into, for they made their children
fierce by painful labour, as chiefly useful to inspire them with
courage: though, as we have already often said, this is neither the
only thing nor the principal thing necessary to attend to; and even with
respect to this they may not thus attain their end; for we do not find
either in other animals, or other nations, that courage necessarily
attends the most cruel, but rather the milder, and those who have the
dispositions of lions: for there are many people who are eager both
to kill men and to devour human flesh, as the Achaeans and Heniochi in
Pontus, and many others in Asia, some of whom are as bad, others worse
than these, who indeed live by tyranny, but are men of no courage. Nay,
we know that the Lacedaemonians themselves, while they continued those
painful labours, and were superior to all others (though now they are
inferior to many, both in war and gymnastic