Complete Works (223 page)

I gather that you love or have loved such a boy yourself, and I agree with you. Tell me this, however: Is excessive pleasure compatible with moderation? How can it be, since it drives one mad just as much as pain does?

What about with the rest of virtue?

No.
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Well, then, is it compatible with violence and licentiousness?

Very much so.

Can you think of a greater or keener pleasure than sexual pleasure?

I can’t—or a madder one either.

But the right kind of love is by nature the love of order and beauty that has been moderated by education in music and poetry?

That’s right.

Therefore, the right kind of love has nothing mad or licentious about it?

No, it hasn’t.

Then sexual pleasure mustn’t come into it, and the lover and the boy [b] he loves must have no share in it, if they are to love and be loved in the right way?

By god, no, Socrates, it mustn’t come into it.

It seems, then, that you’ll lay it down as a law in the city we’re establishing that if a lover can persuade a boy to let him, then he may kiss him, be with him, and touch him, as a father would a son, for the sake of what is fine and beautiful, but—turning to the other things—his association [c] with the one he cares about must never seem to go any further than this, otherwise he will be reproached as untrained in music and poetry and lacking in appreciation for what is fine and beautiful.

That’s right.

Does it seem to you that we’ve now completed our account of education in music and poetry? Anyway, it has ended where it ought to end, for it ought to end in the love of the fine and beautiful.

I agree.

After music and poetry, our young people must be given physical training.

Of course.

In this, too, they must have careful education from childhood throughout [d] life. The matter stands, I believe, something like this—but you, too, should look into it. It seems to me that a fit body doesn’t by its own virtue make the soul good, but instead that the opposite is true—a good soul by its own virtue makes the body as good as possible. How does it seem to you?

The same.

Then, if we have devoted sufficient care to the mind, wouldn’t we be right, in order to avoid having to do too much talking, to entrust it with the detailed supervision of the body, while we indicate only the general [e] patterns to be followed?

Certainly.

We said that our prospective guardians must avoid drunkenness, for it is less appropriate for a guardian to be drunk and not to know where on earth he is than it is for anyone else.

It would be absurd for a guardian to need a guardian.

What about food? Aren’t these men athletes in the greatest contest?

They are.

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Then would the regimen currently prescribed for athletes in training be suitable for them?

Perhaps it would.

Yet it seems to result in sluggishness and to be of doubtful value for health. Or haven’t you noticed that these athletes sleep their lives away and that, if they deviate even a little from their orderly regimen, they become seriously and violently ill?

I have noticed that.

Then our warrior athletes need a more sophisticated kind of training. They must be like sleepless hounds, able to see and hear as keenly as possible and to endure frequent changes of water and food, as well as summer and winter weather on their campaigns, without faltering in [b] health.

That’s how it seems to me, too.

Now, isn’t the best physical training akin to the simple music and poetry we were describing a moment ago?

How do you mean?

I mean a simple and decent physical training, particularly the kind involved in training for war.

What would it be like?

You might learn about such things from Homer. You know that, when his heroes are campaigning, he doesn’t give them fish to banquet on, even though they are by the sea in the Hellespont, nor boiled meat either. Instead, he gives them only roasted meat, which is the kind most easily [c] available to soldiers, for it’s easier nearly everywhere to use fire alone than to carry pots and pans.

That’s right.

Nor, I believe, does Homer mention sweet desserts anywhere. Indeed, aren’t even the other athletes aware that, if one’s body is to be sound, one must keep away from all such things?

They’re right to be aware of it, at any rate, and to avoid such things.

If you think that, then it seems that you don’t approve of Syracusan [d] cuisine or of Sicilian-style dishes.

I do not.

Then you also object to Corinthian girlfriends for men who are to be in good physical condition.

Absolutely.

What about the reputed delights of Attic pastries?

I certainly object to them, too.

I believe that we’d be right to compare this diet and this entire life-style to the kinds of lyric odes and songs that are composed in all sorts of modes and rhythms. [e]

Certainly.

Just as embellishment in the one gives rise to licentiousness, doesn’t it give rise to illness in the other? But simplicity in music and poetry makes for moderation in the soul, and in physical training it makes for bodily health?

That’s absolutely true.

And as licentiousness and disease breed in the city, aren’t many law
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courts and hospitals opened? And don’t medicine and law give themselves solemn airs when even large numbers of free men take them very seriously?

How could it be otherwise?

Yet could you find a greater sign of bad and shameful education in a city than that the need for skilled doctors and lawyers is felt not only by inferior people and craftsmen but by those who claim to have been brought up in the manner of free men? Don’t you think it’s shameful and a great [b] sign of vulgarity to be forced to make use of a justice imposed by others, as masters and judges, because you are unable to deal with the situation yourself?

I think that’s the most shameful thing of all.

Yet isn’t it even more shameful when someone not only spends a good part of his life in court defending himself or prosecuting someone else but, through inexperience of what is fine, is persuaded to take pride in [c] being clever at doing injustice and then exploiting every loophole and trick to escape conviction—and all for the sake of little worthless things and because he’s ignorant of how much better and finer it is to arrange one’s own life so as to have no need of finding a sleepy or inattentive judge?

This case is even more shameful than the other.

And doesn’t it seem shameful to you to need medical help, not for wounds or because of some seasonal illness, but because, through idleness [d] and the life-style we’ve described, one is full of gas and phlegm like a stagnant swamp, so that sophisticated Asclepiad doctors are forced to come up with names like “flatulence” and “catarrh” to describe one’s diseases?

It does. And those certainly are strange new names for diseases.

Indeed, I don’t suppose that they even existed in the time of Asclepius himself. I take it as a proof of this that his sons at Troy didn’t criticize [e] either the woman who treated Eurypylus when he was wounded, or Patroclus who prescribed the treatment, which consisted of Pramnian wine with barley meal and grated cheese sprinkled on it, though such treatment
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is now thought to cause inflammation.
²⁹

Yet it’s a strange drink to give someone in that condition.

Not if you recall that they say that the kind of modern medicine that plays nursemaid to the disease wasn’t used by the Asclepiads before Herodicus. He was a physical trainer who became ill, so he mixed physical training with medicine and wore out first himself and then many others [b] as well.

How did he do that?

By making his dying a lengthy process. Always tending his mortal illness, he was nonetheless, it seems, unable to cure it, so he lived out his life under medical treatment, with no leisure for anything else whatever. If he departed even a little from his accustomed regimen, he became completely worn out, but because his skill made dying difficult, he lived into old age.

That’s a fine prize for his skill.

One that’s appropriate for someone who didn’t know that it wasn’t [c] because he was ignorant or inexperienced that Asclepius failed to teach this type of medicine to his sons, but because he knew that everyone in a well-regulated city has his own work to do and that no one has the leisure to be ill and under treatment all his life. It’s absurd that we recognize this to be true of craftsmen while failing to recognize that it’s equally true of those who are wealthy and supposedly happy.

How is that?

When a carpenter is ill, he expects to receive an emetic or a purge from [d] his doctor or to get rid of his disease through surgery or cautery. If anyone prescribed a lengthy regimen to him, telling him that he should rest with his head bandaged and so on, he’d soon reply that he had no leisure to be ill and that life is no use to him if he has to neglect his work and always be concerned with his illness. After that he’d bid good-bye to his doctor, [e] resume his usual way of life, and either recover his health or, if his body couldn’t withstand the illness, he’d die and escape his troubles.

It is believed to be appropriate for someone like that to use medicine in this way.

Is that because his life is of no profit to him if he doesn’t do his work?
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Obviously.

But the rich person, we say, has no work that would make his life unlivable if he couldn’t do it.

That’s what people say, at least.

That’s because you haven’t heard the saying of Phocylides that, once you have the means of life, you must practice virtue.
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I think he must also practice virtue before that.

We won’t quarrel with Phocylides about this. But let’s try to find out whether the rich person must indeed practice virtue and whether his life is not worth living if he doesn’t or whether tending an illness, while it is an obstacle to applying oneself to carpentry and the other crafts, is no [b] obstacle whatever to taking Phocylides’ advice.

But excessive care of the body, over and above physical training, is pretty well the biggest obstacle of all. It’s troublesome in managing a household, in military service, and even in a sedentary public office.

Yet the most important of all, surely, is that it makes any kind of learning, [c] thought, or private meditation difficult, for it’s always imagining some headaches or dizziness and accusing philosophy of causing them. Hence, wherever this kind of virtue is practiced and examined, excessive care of the body hinders it, for it makes a person think he’s ill and be all the time concerned about his body.

It probably does.

Therefore, won’t we say that Asclepius knew this, and that he taught medicine for those whose bodies are healthy in their natures and habits [d] but have some specific disease? His medicine is for these people with these habits. He cured them of their disease with drugs or surgery and then ordered them to live their usual life so as not to harm their city’s affairs. But for those whose bodies were riddled with disease, he didn’t attempt to prescribe a regimen, drawing off a little here and pouring in a little there, in order to make their life a prolonged misery and enable them to produce offspring in all probability like themselves. He didn’t think that [e] he should treat someone who couldn’t live a normal life, since such a person would be of no profit either to himself or to the city.

The Asclepius you’re talking about was quite a statesman.

Clearly. And don’t you see that because he was a statesman his sons turned out to be good men at Troy, practicing medicine as I say they did?
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Don’t you remember that they “sucked out the blood and applied gentle potions” to the wound Pandarus inflicted on Menelaus, but without prescribing what he should eat or drink after that, any more than they did for Eurypylus?
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They considered their drugs to be sufficient to cure men who were healthy and living an orderly life before being wounded, even [b] if they happened to drink wine mixed with barley and cheese right after receiving their wounds. But they didn’t consider the lives of those who were by nature sick and licentious to be profitable either to themselves or to anyone else. Medicine isn’t intended for such people and they shouldn’t be treated, not even if they’re richer than Midas.

The sons of Asclepius you’re talking about were indeed very sophisticated.

Appropriately so. But Pindar and the tragedians don’t agree with us.
³²
They say that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, that he was bribed with gold to heal a rich man, who was already dying, and that he was killed by lightning for doing so. But, in view of what we said before, we won’t [c] believe this. We’ll say that if Asclepius was the son of a god, he was not a money-grubber, and that if he was a money-grubber, he was not the son of a god.

That’s right. But what do you say about the following, Socrates? Don’t we need to have good doctors in our city? And the best will surely be those who have handled the greatest number of sick and of healthy people. [d] In the same way, the best judges will be those who have associated with people whose natures are of every kind.

I agree that the doctors and judges must be good. But do you know the kind I consider to be so?

If you’ll tell me.

I’ll try. But you ask about things that aren’t alike in the same question.

In what way?

The cleverest doctors are those who, in addition to learning their craft, have had contact with the greatest number of very sick bodies from childhood on, have themselves experienced every illness, and aren’t very healthy by nature, for they don’t treat bodies with their bodies, I suppose—if they [e] did, we wouldn’t allow their bodies to be or become bad. Rather they treat the body with their souls, and it isn’t possible for the soul to treat anything well, if it is or has been bad itself.

That’s right.

As for the judge, he
does
rule other souls with his own soul. And it isn’t
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possible for a soul to be nurtured among vicious souls from childhood, to associate with them, to indulge in every kind of injustice, and come through it able to judge other people’s injustices from its own case, as it can diseases of the body. Rather, if it’s to be fine and good, and a sound judge of just things, it must itself remain pure and have no experience of bad character while it’s young. That’s the reason, indeed, that decent people appear simple and easily deceived by unjust ones when they are young. It’s because they have no models in themselves of the evil experiences of [b] the vicious to guide their judgments.