Complete Works (311 page)

A
THENIAN
: There is no problem here, my friend. The law has already given him permission, which it will not withdraw, to recruit as assistant supervisors any citizens he may wish, of either sex. He will know whom [d] to choose, and a sober respect for his office and a realization of its importance will make him anxious not to choose wrongly, because he’ll be well aware that only if the younger generation has received and goes on receiving a correct education shall we find everything is ‘plain sailing’, whereas if not—well, it would be inappropriate to describe the consequences, and as the state is young we shall refrain from doing so, out of respect for the feelings of the excessively superstitious.

Well then, on these topics too—I mean dances and the entire range of movements involved in physical training—we have already said a great deal. We are establishing gymnasia for all physical exercises of a military kind—archery and deployment of missiles in general, skirmishing, heavy-armed [e] fighting of every variety, tactical maneuvers, marches of every sort, pitching camp, and also the various disciplines of the cavalryman. In all these subjects there must be public instructors paid out of public funds; their lessons must be attended by the boys and men of the state, and the girls and women as well, because they too have to master all these techniques. While still girls, they must practice every kind of dancing and fighting in armor; when grown women, they must play their part in maneuvering, getting into battle formation and taking off and putting on weapons,
[814]
if only to ensure that if it ever proves necessary for the whole army to leave the state and take the field abroad, so that the children and the rest of the population are left unprotected, the women will at least be able to defend them. On the other hand—and this is one of those things we can’t swear is impossible—suppose a large and powerful army, whether Greek or not, were to force a way into the country and make them fight a desperate battle for the very existence of the state. It would be a disaster for their society if its women proved to have been so shockingly ill-educated that [b] they couldn’t even rival female birds, who are prepared to run every risk and die for their chicks fighting against the most powerful of wild animals. What if, instead of that, the women promptly made off to temples and thronged every altar and sanctuary, and covered the human race with the disgrace of being by nature the most lily-livered creatures under the sun?

C
LINIAS
: By heaven, sir, no state in which that happened could avoid disgrace—quite apart from the damage that would be caused. [c]

A
THENIAN
: So let’s lay down a law to the effect that women must not neglect to cultivate the techniques of fighting, at any rate to the extent indicated. These are skills which all citizens, male and female, must take care to acquire.

C
LINIAS
: That gets my vote, at least.

A
THENIAN
: Now for wrestling. We’ve partly dealt with this already, but we haven’t described what in my eyes is its most important feature. But it’s not easy to find words to explain it unless at the same time someone gives an actual demonstration with his body. So we’ll postpone a decision on this point till we can support our statements with concrete examples [d] and prove, among other points we’ve mentioned, that of all physical movements, those involved in our kind of wrestling are the most closely related to those demanded in warfare, and in particular that we should practice wrestling for the sake of military efficiency, rather than cultivate the latter in order to be better wrestlers.

C
LINIAS
: You’re right in that, at least.

A
THENIAN
: So let’s accept what we’ve said so far as an adequate statement of what wrestling can do for a man. The proper term for most of the other [e] movements that can be executed by the body as a whole is ‘dancing’. Two varieties, the decent and the disreputable, have to be distinguished. The first is a representation of the movements of graceful people, and the aim is to create an effect of grandeur; the second imitates the movements of unsightly people and tries to present them in an unattractive light. Both have two subdivisions. The first subdivision of the decent kind represents handsome, courageous soldiers locked in the violent struggles of war; the second portrays a man of temperate character enjoying moderate pleasures
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in a state of prosperity, and the natural name for this is ‘dance of peace’. The dance of war differs fundamentally from the dance of peace, and the correct name for it will be the ‘Pyrrhic’. It depicts the motions executed to avoid blows and shots of all kinds (dodging, retreating, jumping into the air, crouching); and it also tries to represent the opposite kind of motion, the more aggressive postures adopted for shooting and discharging javelins and delivering various kinds of blows. In these dances, which portray fine [b] physiques and noble characters, the correct posture is maintained if the body is kept erect in a state of vigorous tension, with the limbs extended nearly straight. A posture with the opposite characteristics we reject as
not
correct. As for the dance of peace, the point we have to watch in every chorus-performer is this: how successfully—or how disastrously—does he keep up the fine style of dancing to be expected from men who’ve been brought up under good laws? This means we’d better distinguish the [c] dubious style of dancing from the style we may accept without question. So can we define the two? Where should the line be drawn between them? ‘Bacchic’ dances and the like, which (the dancers allege) are a ‘representation’ of drunken persons they call Nymphs and Pans and Sileni and Satyrs, and which are performed during ‘purifications’ and ‘initiations’, are something of a problem: taken as a group, they cannot be termed either ‘dances of peace’ or ‘dances of war’, and indeed they resist all attempts to label them. The best procedure, I think, is to treat them as separate from ‘war-dances’ [d] and ‘dances of peace’, and put them in a category of their own which a statesman may ignore as outside his province. That will entitle us to leave them on one side and get back to dances of peace and war, both of which undeniably deserve our attention.

Now, what about the non-combatant Muse? The dances she leads in honor of the gods and children of gods will comprise one broad category of dances performed with a sense of well-being. This is how we shall [e] distinguish between the two forms this feeling may take: (1) the particularly keen pleasure felt by people who have emerged from trouble and danger to a state of happiness; (2) the quieter pleasures of those whose past good fortune has not only continued but increased. Now, take a man in either of these situations. The greater his pleasure the brisker his body’s movements; more modest pleasures make his actions correspondingly less brisk. Again, the more composed the man’s temperament, and the tougher he has been
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trained to be, the more deliberate are his movements; on the other hand, if he’s a coward and has not been trained to show restraint, his actions are wilder and his postures change more violently. And in general, when a man uses his voice to talk or sing, he finds it very difficult to keep his body still. This is the origin of the whole art of dancing: the gestures that express what one is saying. Some of us make gestures that are invariably in harmony with our words, but some of us fail. In fact, one has only to reflect on many other ancient terms that have come down to us, to see [b] that they should be commended for their aptness and accuracy. One such term describes the dances performed by those who enjoy prosperity and seek only moderate pleasures: it’s just the right word, and whoever coined it must have been a real musician. He very sensibly gave all such dances the name
‘emmeleiai’,
¹⁷
and established two categories of approved dancing, the ‘war-dance’ (which he called ‘Pyrrhic’) and ‘dance of peace’
(‘emmeleiai’)
, [c] thus giving each its apt and appropriate title. The lawgiver should give an outline of them, and the Guardian of the Laws should see where they are to be found; then, after hunting them out, he must combine the dance-sequences with the other musical elements, and allocate each sacrifice and feast in the calendar the style of dance that is appropriate. After thus consecrating the whole list of dances, he must henceforth refrain from altering any feature either of the dancing or the singing: the same state and the same citizens (who should all be the same sort of people, as [d] far as possible), should enjoy the same pleasures in the same fashion: that is the secret of a happy and a blessed life.

So much for the way men of superior physique and noble character should perform in choruses of the kind we’ve prescribed. We are now obliged to examine and pronounce on the misshapen bodies and degraded outlook of those performers who have turned to producing ludicrous and comic effects by exploiting the opportunities for humorous mimicry offered by dialogue, song and dance. Now anyone who means to acquire a discerning [e] judgment will find it impossible to understand the serious side of things in isolation from their ridiculous aspect, or indeed appreciate anything at all except in the light of its opposite. But if we intend to acquire virtue, even on a small scale, we can’t be serious and comic too, and this is precisely why we must learn to recognize buffoonery, to avoid being trapped by our ignorance of it into doing or saying anything ridiculous when there’s no call for it. Such mimicry must be left to slaves and hired aliens, and no one must ever take it at all seriously. No citizen or citizeness must be found learning it, and the performances must always contain some new twist. With that law, and that explanation of it, humorous
[817]
amusements—usually known as ‘comedy’—may be dismissed.

But what about our ‘serious’ poets, as they’re called, the tragedians? Suppose some of them were to come forward and ask us some such question as this: ‘Gentlemen, may we enter your state and country, or not? And may we bring our work with us? Or what’s your policy on this point?’ What would be the right reply for us to make to these inspired geniuses? [b] This, I think: ‘Most honored guests, we’re tragedians ourselves, and our tragedy is the finest and best we can create. At any rate, our entire state has been constructed so as to be a “representation” of the finest and noblest life—the very thing we maintain is most genuinely a tragedy. So we are poets like yourselves, composing in the same
genre,
and your competitors as artists and actors in the finest drama, which true law alone has the [c] natural powers to “produce” to perfection (of that we’re quite confident). So don’t run away with the idea that we shall ever blithely allow you to set up stage in the market-place and bring on your actors whose fine voices will carry further than ours. Don’t think we’ll let you declaim to women and children and the general public, and talk about the same practices as we do but treat them differently—indeed, more often than not, so as virtually to contradict us. We should be absolutely daft, and so would any [d] state as a whole, to let you go ahead as we’ve described before the authorities had decided whether your work was fit to be recited and suitable for public performance or not. So, you sons of the charming Muses, first of all show your songs to the authorities for comparison with ours, and if your doctrines seem the same as or better than our own, we’ll let you produce your plays; but if not, friends, that we can never do.’

[e] So as regards chorus performances in general and the question of learning a part in them, custom will march hand in hand with law—dealing with slaves and their masters separately, if you are agreeable.

C
LINIAS
: How could we fail to agree, at any rate for the moment?

A
THENIAN
: For gentlemen three related disciplines still remain: (1) computation and the study of numbers; (2) measurements of lines, surfaces and solids; (3) the mutual relationship of the heavenly bodies as they
[818]
revolve in their courses. None of these subjects must be studied in minute detail by the general public, but only by a chosen few (and who they are, we shall say when the time comes, when our discussion is drawing to a close). But what about the man in the street? It would certainly be a disgrace for him to be ignorant of what people very rightly call the ‘indispensable rudiments’; but it will be difficult—impossible, even—for him to make a minute study of the entire subject. However, we can’t dispense with the basic necessities, which was probably the point in the mind of the coiner [b] of that saying about God, to the effect that ‘not even God will be found at odds with necessity’
¹⁸
—presumably divine necessities, because if you interpret the remark as referring to necessities in the mortal realm, as do most people who quote such things, it’s by far the most naive remark that could be made.

C
LINIAS
: Well, then, sir, what necessities, divine rather than the other sort, are relevant to these studies?

A
THENIAN
: These, I think: the necessities of which at least
some
practical and theoretical knowledge will always be essential for every god, spirit [c] or hero who means to take charge of human beings in a responsible fashion. A man, at any rate, will fall a long way short of such godlike standards if he can’t recognize one, two and three, or odd and even numbers in general, or hasn’t the faintest notion how to count, or can’t reckon up the days and nights, and is ignorant of the revolutions of the sun and moon and the other heavenly bodies. It’s downright stupid to expect that anyone who wants to make the slightest progress in the highest branches of knowledge [d] can afford to ignore any of these subjects. But what parts of them should be studied, and how intensively, and when? Which topics should be combined, and which kept separate? How will they be synthesized? These are the first questions we have to answer, and then with these preliminary lessons to guide us we may advance to the remaining studies. This is the natural procedure enforced by the necessity with which we maintain no god contends now, or ever will.