Complete Works (280 page)

[638]
M
EGILLUS
: Oh, but my fine sir, when we get weapons in our hands we rout the lot of them.

A
THENIAN
: Oh, but my
dear
sir, you must not say that. Many a time an army has been defeated and routed in the past, and will be in the future, without any very obvious reason. Merely to point to victory or defeat in battle is hardly to advance a clear and indisputable criterion of the merits [b] or demerits of a given practice. Larger states, you see, defeat smaller ones in battle, and the Syracusans enslave the Locrians, the very people who are supposed to be governed by the best laws you could find in those parts; the Athenians enslave the Ceians, and we could find plenty of other similar instances. It is by discussing the individual practice itself that we should try to convince ourselves of its qualities: for the moment, we ought to leave defeats and victories out of account, and simply say that such-and-such a practice is good and such-and-such is bad. First, though, listen to my explanation of the correct way to judge the relative value of these practices.

[c] M
EGILLUS
: Well then, let’s have the explanation.

A
THENIAN
: I think that everyone who sets out to discuss a practice with the intention of censuring it or singing its praises as soon as it is mentioned is employing quite the wrong procedure. You might as well condemn cheese
¹¹
out of hand when you heard somebody praising its merits as a food, without stopping to ask about what effect it has and how it is taken (by which I mean such questions as how it should be given, who should take it, what should go with it, in what condition it should be served, and [d] the state of health required of those who eat it). But this is just what I think we are doing in our discussion. We have only to hear the word ‘drunkenness’, and one side immediately disparages it while the other praises it—a pointless procedure if there ever was one. Each puts up enthusiastic witnesses to endorse its recommendations: one side thinks that the number of its witnesses clinches the matter, the other points to the sight of the teetotalers conquering in battle—not that the facts of the case are beyond dispute even here. Now, if this is the way we are going [e] to work one by one through the other customs, I for one shall find it goes against the grain. I want to discuss our present subject, drunkenness, by following a different—and, I think, correct—procedure, to see if I can demonstrate the right way to conduct an inquiry into such matters as these in general. Thousands and thousands of states, you see, differ from your pair of states in their view of these things, and would be prepared to fight it out in discussion.

[639]
M
EGILLUS
: Certainly, if a correct method of inquiry into such matters is available, we ought not to shy away from hearing what it is.

A
THENIAN
: Let us conduct the inquiry more or less like this: suppose somebody were to praise goat-keeping, and commended the goat as a valuable article of possession; suppose somebody else were to disparage goats because he had seen some doing damage to cultivated land by grazing on it without a goatherd, and were to find similar fault with every animal he saw under incompetent control or none at all. What do we think of the censure of someone like that? Does it carry any weight at all?

M
EGILLUS
: Hardly.

A
THENIAN
: If a man possesses only the science of navigation, can we say that he will be a useful captain on board a ship, and ignore the question [b] whether he suffers from seasickness or not? Can we say that, or can’t we?

M
EGILLUS
: Certainly not, at any rate if, for all his skill, he’s prone to the complaint you mention.

A
THENIAN
: What about the commander of an army? Is he capable of taking command just by virtue of military skill, in spite of being a coward in face of danger? The ‘seasickness’ in this case is produced by being, as it were, drunk with terror.

M
EGILLUS
: Hardly a capable commander, that.

A
THENIAN
: And what if he combines cowardice with incompetence?

M
EGILLUS
: You are describing a downright useless fellow—a commander of the daintiest of dainty women, not of men at all.

A
THENIAN
: Take any social gathering you like, which functions naturally [c] under a leader and serves a useful purpose under his guidance: what are we to think of the observer who praises or censures it although he has never seen it gathered together and running properly under its leader, but always with bad leaders or none at all? Given that kind of observer and that kind of gathering, do we reckon that his blame or praise will have any value?

M
EGILLUS
: How could it, when he has never seen or joined any of these [d] gatherings run in the proper way?

A
THENIAN
: Hold on a moment. There are many kinds of gatherings, and presumably we’d say drinkers and drinking-parties were one?

M
EGILLUS
: Of course.

A
THENIAN
: Has anyone
ever
seen such a gathering run in the proper way? You two, of course, find the answer easy: ‘Never, absolutely never’; drinking-parties are just not held in your countries, besides being illegal. But I have come across a great many, in different places, and I have investigated pretty nearly all of them. However, I have never seen or heard [e] of one that was properly conducted throughout; one could approve of a few insignificant details, but most of them were mismanaged virtually all the time.

C
LINIAS
: What are you getting at, sir? Be a little more explicit. As you said, we have no experience of such events, so that even if we did find ourselves at one we would probably be unable to tell off-hand which
[640]
features were correct and which not.

A
THENIAN
: Very likely. But you can try to understand from my explanation. You appreciate that each and every assembly and gathering for any purpose whatever should invariably have a leader?

C
LINIAS
: Of course.

A
THENIAN
: We said a moment ago that if it is a case of men fighting, their leader must be brave.

C
LINIAS
: Yes, indeed.

A
THENIAN
: And a brave man, surely, is less thrown off balance by fears than cowards are.

[b] C
LINIAS
: That too is true enough.

A
THENIAN
: If there were some device by which we could put in charge of an army a commander who was completely fearless and imperturbable, this is what we should make every effort to do, surely?

C
LINIAS
: It certainly is.

A
THENIAN
: But the man we are discussing now is not going to take the lead in hostile encounters as between enemies, but in the peaceful meetings of friends with friends, gathering to foster mutual goodwill.

C
LINIAS
: Exactly.

[c] A
THENIAN
: But we can assume that this sort of assembly will get rather drunk, so it won’t be free of a certain amount of disturbance, I suppose.

C
LINIAS
: Of course not—I imagine precisely the opposite.

A
THENIAN
: To start with, then, the members of the gathering will need a leader?

C
LINIAS
: Of course they will, more than anybody else.

A
THENIAN
: Presumably we should if possible equip them with a leader who can keep his head?

C
LINIAS
: Naturally.

A
THENIAN
: And he should also, presumably, be a man who knows how to handle a social gathering, because his duty is not only to preserve the existing friendliness among its members, but to see that it is strengthened [d] as a result of the party.

C
LINIAS
: Quite true.

A
THENIAN
: So, when men become merry with drink, don’t they need someone put in charge of them who is sober and discreet rather than the opposite? If the man in charge of the revellers were himself a drinker, or young and indiscreet, he ought to thank his lucky stars if he managed to avoid starting some serious trouble.

C
LINIAS
: Lucky? I’ll say so!

A
THENIAN
: Consequently, an attack on such gatherings in cities where [e] they are conducted impeccably might not in itself amount to unjustified criticism, provided the critic were attacking the institution itself. But if he abuses the institution simply because he sees every possible mistake being made in running it, he clearly does not realize, first, that this is a case of mismanagement, and secondly that any and every practice will appear in the same light if it is carried on without a sober leader to control it. Surely you appreciate that a drunken steersman, or any commander of anything,
[641]
will always make a total wreck of his ship or chariot or army, or whatever else he may be directing?

C
LINIAS
: Yes, sir, there’s truth in
that,
certainly. But the next step is for you to tell us what conceivable benefit this custom of drinking parties would be to us, given proper management. For instance, to take our example of a moment ago, if an army were properly controlled, its soldiers would win the war and this would be a considerable benefit, and the same [b] reasoning applies to our other instances. But what solid benefit would it be to individuals or the state to instruct a drinking party how to behave itself?

A
THENIAN
: Well, what solid benefit are we to say it is to the state when just one lad or just one chorus of them has been properly instructed? If the question were put like that, we should say that the state gets very little benefit from just one; but ask in general what great benefit the state derives from the training by which it educates its citizens, and the reply will be perfectly straightforward. The good education they have received will make them good men, and being good they will achieve success in other [c] ways, and even conquer their enemies in battle. Education leads to victory; but victory, on occasions, results in the
loss
of education, because men often swell with pride when they have won a victory in war, and this pride fills them with a million other vices. Men have won many ‘Cadmean victories’, and will win many more, but there has never been such a thing as ‘Cadmean education’.
¹²

C
LINIAS
: It looks to us, my friend, as if you mean to imply that passing [d] the time with friends over a drink—provided we behave ourselves—is a considerable contribution to education.

A
THENIAN
: Most certainly.

C
LINIAS
: Well then, could you now produce some justification for this view?

A
THENIAN
: Justification? Only a god, sir, would be entitled to insist that this view is correct—there are so many conflicting opinions. But if necessary I am quite prepared to give my own, now that we have launched into a discussion of laws and political organizations.

C
LINIAS
: This is precisely what we are trying to discover—your own [e] opinion of the business we are now debating.

A
THENIAN
: Well then, let that be our agenda: you have to direct your efforts to understanding the argument, while I direct mine to expounding it as clearly as I can. But first listen to this, by way of preface: you’ll find every Greek takes it for granted that my city likes talking and does a great deal of it, whereas Sparta is a city of few words and Crete cultivates the
[642]
intellect rather than the tongue. I don’t want to make you feel that I am saying an awful lot about a triviality, if I deal exhaustively and at length with such a limited topic as drinking. In fact, the genuinely correct way to regulate drinking can hardly be explained adequately and clearly except in the context of a correct theory of culture; and it is impossible to explain this without considering the whole subject of education. That calls for a very long discussion indeed. So what do you think we ought to do now? What about skipping all this for the moment, and passing on to some [b] other legal topic?

M
EGILLUS
: As it happens, sir—perhaps you haven’t heard—my family represents the interests of your state, Athens, in Sparta. I dare say all children, when they learn they are
proxeni
¹³
of a state, conceive a liking for it from their earliest years; each of us thinks of the state he represents as a fatherland, second only to his own country. This is exactly my own [c] experience now. When the Spartans were criticizing or praising the Athenians, I used to hear the little children say, ‘Megillus, your state has done the dirty on us,’ or, ‘it has done us proud.’ By listening to all this and constantly resisting on your behalf the charges of Athens’ detractors, I acquired a whole-hearted affection for her, so that to this day I very much enjoy the sound of your accent. It is commonly said that when an Athenian is good, he is ‘very very good’, and I’m sure that’s right. They are unique in that they are good not because of any compulsion, but spontaneously, [d] by grace of heaven; it is all so genuine and unfeigned. So you’re welcome to speak as long as you like, so far as I’m concerned.

C
LINIAS
: I endorse your freedom to say as much as you like, sir: you’ll see that when you’ve heard what I have to say, too. You have probably heard that Epimenides, a man who was divinely inspired, was born hereabouts. He was connected with my family, and ten years before the Persian [e] attack he obeyed the command of the oracle to go to Athens,
¹⁴
where he performed certain sacrifices which the god had ordered. He told the Athenians, who were apprehensive at the preparations the Persians were making, that the Persians would not come for ten years, and that when they did, they would go back with all their intentions frustrated, after sustaining greater losses than they had inflicted. That was when my ancestors formed ties of friendship with you Athenians, and ever since then my
[643]
forebears and I have held you in affection.