ll we treat our enemies? Shall Hellenes be
enslaved? No; for there is too great a risk of the whole race passing
under the yoke of the barbarians. Or shall the dead be despoiled?
Certainly not; for that sort of thing is an excuse for skulking, and has
been the ruin of many an army. There is meanness and feminine malice in
making an enemy of the dead body, when the soul which was the owner has
fled--like a dog who cannot reach his assailants, and quarrels with
the stones which are thrown at him instead. Again, the arms of Hellenes
should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods; they are a
pollution, for they are taken from brethren. And on similar grounds
there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic territory--the
houses should not be burnt, nor more than the annual produce carried
off. For war is of two kinds, civil and foreign; the first of which is
properly termed 'discord,' and only the second 'war;' and war between
Hellenes is in reality civil war--a quarrel in a family, which is ever
to be regarded as unpatriotic and unnatural, and ought to be prosecuted
with a view to reconciliation in a true phil-Hellenic spirit, as of
those who would chasten but not utterly enslave. The war is not against
a whole nation who are a friendly multitude of men, women, and children,
but only against a few guilty persons; when they are punished peace will
be restored. That is the way in which Hellenes should war against one
another--and against barbarians, as they war against one another now.

'But, my dear Socrates, you are forgetting the main question: Is such a
State possible? I grant all and more than you say about the blessedness
of being one family--fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters, going out
to war together; but I want to ascertain the possibility of this ideal
State.' You are too unmerciful. The first wave and the second wave I
have hardly escaped, and now you will certainly drown me with the third.
When you see the towering crest of the wave, I expect you to take pity.
'Not a whit.'

Well, then, we were led to form our ideal polity in the search after
justice, and the just man answered to the just State. Is this ideal at
all the worse for being impracticable? Would the picture of a perfectly
beautiful man be any the worse because no such man ever lived? Can any
reality come up to the idea? Nature will not allow words to be fully
realized; but if I am to try and realize the ideal of the State in a
measure,