BOOK II

With these words I was thinking that I had made an end of the discussion; but
the end, in truth, proved to be only a beginning. For Glaucon, who is always
the most pugnacious of men, was dissatisfied at Thrasymachus’ retirement; he
wanted to have the battle out. So he said to me: Socrates, do you wish really
to persuade us, or only to seem to have persuaded us, that to be just is always
better than to be unjust?
I should wish really to persuade you, I replied, if I could.
Then you certainly have not succeeded. Let me ask you now:–How would you
arrange goods–are there not some which we welcome for their own sakes, and
independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and
enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing follows from them?
I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied.
Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight, health, which
are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their results?
Certainly, I said.
And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the care of
the sick, and the physician’s art; also the various ways of money-making–these
do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no one would choose them
for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows
from them?
There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask?
Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place justice?
In the highest class, I replied,–among those goods which he who would be
happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of their results.
Then the many are of another mind; they think that justice is to be reckoned
in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued for the sake of

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rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be

avoided.
I know, I said, that this is their manner of thinking, and that this was the thesis
which Thrasymachus was maintaining just now, when he censured justice and
praised injustice. But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.
I wish, he said, that you would hear me as well as him, and then I shall see
whether you and I agree. For Thrasymachus seems to me, like a snake, to have
been charmed by your voice sooner than he ought to have been; but to my mind
the nature of justice and injustice have not yet been made clear. Setting aside
their rewards and results, I want to know what they are in themselves, and how
they inwardly work in the soul. If you, please, then, I will revive the argument
of Thrasymachus. And first I will speak of the nature and origin of justice ac-
cording to the common view of them. Secondly, I will show that all men who
practise justice do so against their will, of necessity, but not as a good. And
thirdly, I will argue that there is reason in this view, for the life of the unjust is
after all better far than the life of the just–if what they say is true, Socrates, since
I myself am not of their opinion. But still I acknowledge that I am perplexed
when I hear the voices of Thrasymachus and myriads of others dinning in my
ears; and, on the other hand, I have never yet heard the superiority of justice
to injustice maintained by any one in a satisfactory way. I want to hear justice
praised in respect of itself; then I shall be satisfied, and you are the person from
whom I think that I am most likely to hear this; and therefore I will praise the
unjust life to the utmost of my power, and my manner of speaking will indica-
te the manner in which I desire to hear you too praising justice and censuring
injustice. Will you say whether you approve of my proposal?
Indeed I do; nor can I imagine any theme about which a man of sense would
oftener wish to converse.
I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall begin by speaking, as I
proposed, of the nature and origin of justice.
They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that
the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered
injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and
obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to
have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is
ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the
origin and nature of justice;–it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all,
which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to
suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle
point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and
honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is

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worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were

able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates,
of the nature and origin of justice.
Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have
not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this
kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will,
let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in
the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road,
following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only
diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are
supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power
as is said to have been possessed by Gyges, the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian.
According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king
of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the
earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he
descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow
brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead
body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on
but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now
the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their
monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having
the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn
the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the
rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer
present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the
collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always
with the same result–when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible,
when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the
messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced
the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took
the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just
put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of
such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep
his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked
out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or
kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God
among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust;
they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm
to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that
justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one
thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in
their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice,
and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you

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could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never
doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the
lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one
another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that
they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this.
Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and unjust, we must
isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the isolation to be effected? I
answer: Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man entirely just;
nothing is to be taken away from either of them, and both are to be perfectly
furnished for the work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other
distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician, who knows
intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and who, if he fails at
any point, is able to recover himself. So let the unjust make his unjust attempts
in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice: (he
who is found out is nobody:) for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed
just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must
assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow
him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation
for justice. If he have taken a false step he must be able to recover himself; he
must be one who can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come to light, and
who can force his way where force is required by his courage and strength, and
command of money and friends. And at his side let us place the just man in
his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem
good. There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured
and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of
justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in
justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state
of life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and let him be
thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see
whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And
let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust.
When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other
of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.
Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up for
the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two statues.
I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there is no
difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of them. This I will
proceed to describe; but as you may think the description a little too coarse, I
ask you to suppose, Socrates, that the words which follow are not mine.–Let
me put them into the mouths of the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you
that the just man who is thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound–will
have his eyes burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will

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be impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to
be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust than
of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not live with a view to
appearances– he wants to be really unjust and not to seem only:–
’His mind has a soil deep and fertile, Out of which spring his prudent counsels.’
In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the city; he can
marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will; also he can trade
and deal where he likes, and always to his own advantage, because he has no
misgivings about injustice; and at every contest, whether in public or private,
he gets the better of his antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and
out of his gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he
can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and magnificently,
and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to honour in a far better
style than the just, and therefore he is likely to be dearer than they are to the
gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and men are said to unite in making the life of
the unjust better than the life of the just.
I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when Adeimantus, his
brother, interposed: Socrates, he said, you do not suppose that there is nothing
more to be urged?
Why, what else is there? I answered.
The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned, he replied.
Well, then, according to the proverb, ’Let brother help brother’–if he fails in any
part do you assist him; although I must confess that Glaucon has already said
quite enough to lay me in the dust, and take from me the power of helping
justice.
Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more: There is another side to
Glaucon’s argument about the praise and censure of justice and injustice, whi-
ch is equally required in order to bring out what I believe to be his meaning.
Parents and tutors are always telling their sons and their wards that they are to
be just; but why? not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of character and
reputation; in the hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those
offices, marriages, and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the ad-
vantages accruing to the unjust from the reputation of justice. More, however,
is made of appearances by this class of persons than by the others; for they th-
row in the good opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower of benefits
which the heavens, as they say, rain upon the pious; and this accords with the
testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says, that the gods
make the oaks of the just–
’To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle; And the sheep are

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bowed down with the weight of their fleeces,’

and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And Homer has
a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is–
’As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god, Maintains justice; to whom
the black earth brings forth Wheat and barley, whose trees are bowed with fruit,
And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives him fish.’
Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son vouchsafe to
the just; they take them down into the world below, where they have the saints
lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly drunk, crowned with garlands; their
idea seems to be that an immortality of drunkenness is the highest meed of
virtue. Some extend their rewards yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the
faithful and just shall survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the
style in which they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another strain;
they bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water in a sieve;
also while they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and inflict upon them
the punishments which Glaucon described as the portion of the just who are
reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their invention supply. Such is their
manner of praising the one and censuring the other.
Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking about
justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose
writers. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and
virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice
and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion.
They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty;
and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honour them both
in public and private when they are rich or in any other way influential, whi-
le they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even though
acknowledging them to be better than the others. But most extraordinary of
all is their mode of speaking about virtue and the gods: they say that the gods
apportion calamity and misery to many good men, and good and happiness to
the wicked. And mendicant prophets go to rich men’s doors and persuade them
that they have a power committed to them by the gods of making an atonement
for a man’s own or his ancestor’s sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings
and feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a
small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they say, to exe-
cute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom they appeal, now
smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod;–
’Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and her
dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil,’
and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the gods

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may be influenced by men; for he also says:–

’The gods, too, may be turned from their purpose; and men pray to them and
avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by libations and the
odour of fat, when they have sinned and transgressed.’
And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus, who were
children of the Moon and the Muses–that is what they say–according to which
they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals, but whole cities,
that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amuse-
ments which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and
the dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains
of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.
He proceeded: And now when the young hear all this said about virtue and vi-
ce, and the way in which gods and men regard them, how are their minds likely
to be affected, my dear Socrates,–those of them, I mean, who are quickwitted,
and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower, and from all that they hear are
prone to draw conclusions as to what manner of persons they should be and in
what way they should walk if they would make the best of life? Probably the
youth will say to himself in the words of Pindar–
’Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may
be a fortress to me all my days?’
For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit
there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakeable. But if,
though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to
me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is
lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. I will describe around
me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house;
behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest of sages, re-
commends. But I hear some one exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness
is often difficult; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the ar-
gument indicates this, if we would be happy, to be the path along which we
should proceed. With a view to concealment we will establish secret brotherho-
ods and political clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who teach the art
of persuading courts and assemblies; and so, partly by persuasion and partly
by force, I shall make unlawful gains and not be punished. Still I hear a voice
saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can they be compelled. But
what if there are no gods? or, suppose them to have no care of human things–
why in either case should we mind about concealment? And even if there are
gods, and they do care about us, yet we know of them only from tradition and
the genealogies of the poets; and these are the very persons who say that they
may be influenced and turned by ’sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offe-

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rings.’ Let us be consistent then, and believe both or neither. If the poets speak
truly, why then we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of injustice; for
if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of heaven, we shall lose
the gains of injustice; but, if we are unjust, we shall keep the gains, and by our
sinning and praying, and praying and sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and
we shall not be punished. ’But there is a world below in which either we or our
posterity will suffer for our unjust deeds.’ Yes, my friend, will be the reflection,
but there are mysteries and atoning deities, and these have great power. That is
what mighty cities declare; and the children of the gods, who were their poets
and prophets, bear a like testimony.
On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather than the
worst injustice? when, if we only unite the latter with a deceitful regard to
appearances, we shall fare to our mind both with gods and men, in life and
after death, as the most numerous and the highest authorities tell us. Knowing
all this, Socrates, how can a man who has any superiority of mind or person or
rank or wealth, be willing to honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing
when he hears justice praised? And even if there should be some one who is
able to disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is best,
still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to forgive them, because
he also knows that men are not just of their own free will; unless, peradventure,
there be some one whom the divinity within him may have inspired with a ha-
tred of injustice, or who has attained knowledge of the truth–but no other man.
He only blames injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some weakness,
has not the power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that when he
obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.
The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the beginning of the ar-
gument, when my brother and I told you how astonished we were to find that
of all the professing panegyrists of justice–beginning with the ancient heroes
of whom any memorial has been preserved to us, and ending with the men of
our own time–no one has ever blamed injustice or praised justice except with a
view to the glories, honours, and benefits which flow from them. No one has
ever adequately described either in verse or prose the true essential nature of
either of them abiding in the soul, and invisible to any human or divine eye;
or shown that of all the things of a man’s soul which he has within him, justice
is the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil. Had this been the univer-
sal strain, had you sought to persuade us of this from our youth upwards, we
should not have been on the watch to keep one another from doing wrong, but
every one would have been his own watchman, because afraid, if he did wrong,
of harbouring in himself the greatest of evils. I dare say that Thrasymachus and
others would seriously hold the language which I have been merely repeating,
and words even stronger than these about justice and injustice, grossly, as I con-
ceive, perverting their true nature. But I speak in this vehement manner, as I

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must frankly confess to you, because I want to hear from you the opposite side;
and I would ask you to show not only the superiority which justice has over
injustice, but what effect they have on the possessor of them which makes the
one to be a good and the other an evil to him. And please, as Glaucon requested
of you, to exclude reputations; for unless you take away from each of them his
true reputation and add on the false, we shall say that you do not praise justice,
but the appearance of it; we shall think that you are only exhorting us to keep
injustice dark, and that you really agree with Thrasymachus in thinking that
justice is another’s good and the interest of the stronger, and that injustice is a
man’s own profit and interest, though injurious to the weaker. Now as you ha-
ve admitted that justice is one of that highest class of goods which are desired
indeed for their results, but in a far greater degree for their own sakes–like sight
or hearing or knowledge or health, or any other real and natural and not merely
conventional good–I would ask you in your praise of justice to regard one point
only: I mean the essential good and evil which justice and injustice work in the
possessors of them. Let others praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying
the rewards and honours of the one and abusing the other; that is a manner of
arguing which, coming from them, I am ready to tolerate, but from you who
have spent your whole life in the consideration of this question, unless I hear
the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And therefore, I
say, not only prove to us that justice is better than injustice, but show what they
either of them do to the possessor of them, which makes the one to be a good
and the other an evil, whether seen or unseen by gods and men.
I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but on hearing
these words I was quite delighted, and said: Sons of an illustrious father, that
was not a bad beginning of the Elegiac verses which the admirer of Glaucon
made in honour of you after you had distinguished yourselves at the battle of
Megara:–
’Sons of Ariston,’ he sang, ’divine offspring of an illustrious hero.’
The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly divine in being able
to argue as you have done for the superiority of injustice, and remaining uncon-
vinced by your own arguments. And I do believe that you are not convinced–
this I infer from your general character, for had I judged only from your spee-
ches I should have mistrusted you. But now, the greater my confidence in you,
the greater is my difficulty in knowing what to say. For I am in a strait betwe-
en two; on the one hand I feel that I am unequal to the task; and my inability
is brought home to me by the fact that you were not satisfied with the answer
which I made to Thrasymachus, proving, as I thought, the superiority which
justice has over injustice. And yet I cannot refuse to help, while breath and spe-
ech remain to me; I am afraid that there would be an impiety in being present
when justice is evil spoken of and not lifting up a hand in her defence. And
therefore I had best give such help as I can.

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Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let the question drop, but
to proceed in the investigation. They wanted to arrive at the truth, first, about
the nature of justice and injustice, and secondly, about their relative advantages.
I told them, what I really thought, that the enquiry would be of a serious nature,
and would require very good eyes. Seeing then, I said, that we are no great wits,
I think that we had better adopt a method which I may illustrate thus; suppose
that a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters
from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be found
in another place which was larger and in which the letters were larger–if they
were the same and he could read the larger letters first, and then proceed to the
lesser–this would have been thought a rare piece of good fortune.
Very true, said Adeimantus; but how does the illustration apply to our enquiry?
I will tell you, I replied; justice, which is the subject of our enquiry, is, as you
know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an individual, and sometimes as
the virtue of a State.
True, he replied.
And is not a State larger than an individual?
It is.
Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and more easily
discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and
injustice, first as they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, pro-
ceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them.
That, he said, is an excellent proposal.
And if we imagine the State in process of creation, we shall see the justice and
injustice of the State in process of creation also.
I dare say.
When the State is completed there may be a hope that the object of our search
will be more easily discovered.
Yes, far more easily.
But ought we to attempt to construct one? I said; for to do so, as I am inclined
to think, will be a very serious task. Reflect therefore.
I have reflected, said Adeimantus, and am anxious that you should proceed.
A State, I said, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is
self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. Can any other origin of a State be
imagined?

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There can be no other.

Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply them,
one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and when these
partners and helpers are gathered together in one habitation the body of inha-
bitants is termed a State.
True, he said.
And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another receives, un-
der the idea that the exchange will be for their good.
Very true.
Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is
necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
Of course, he replied.
Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is the condition of life
and existence.
Certainly.
The second is a dwelling, and the third clothing and the like.
True.
And now let us see how our city will be able to supply this great demand: We
may suppose that one man is a husbandman, another a builder, some one else
a weaver–shall we add to them a shoemaker, or perhaps some other purveyor
to our bodily wants?
Quite right.
The barest notion of a State must include four or five men.
Clearly.
And how will they proceed? Will each bring the result of his labours into a
common stock?–the individual husbandman, for example, producing for four,
and labouring four times as long and as much as he need in the provision of
food with which he supplies others as well as himself; or will he have nothing to
do with others and not be at the trouble of producing for them, but provide for
himself alone a fourth of the food in a fourth of the time, and in the remaining
three fourths of his time be employed in making a house or a coat or a pair of
shoes, having no partnership with others, but supplying himself all his own
wants?
Adeimantus thought that he should aim at producing food only and not at pro-
ducing everything.

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Probably, I replied, that would be the better way; and when I hear you say this,
I am myself reminded that we are not all alike; there are diversities of natures
among us which are adapted to different occupations.
Very true.
And will you have a work better done when the workman has many occupati-
ons, or when he has only one?
When he has only one.
Further, there can be no doubt that a work is spoilt when not done at the right
time?
No doubt.
For business is not disposed to wait until the doer of the business is at leisure;
but the doer must follow up what he is doing, and make the business his first
object.
He must.
And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily
and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him
and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.
Undoubtedly.
Then more than four citizens will be required; for the husbandman will not
make his own plough or mattock, or other implements of agriculture, if they
are to be good for anything. Neither will the builder make his tools–and he too
needs many; and in like manner the weaver and shoemaker.
True.
Then carpenters, and smiths, and many other artisans, will be sharers in our
little State, which is already beginning to grow?
True.
Yet even if we add neatherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen, in order that our
husbandmen may have oxen to plough with, and builders as well as husband-
men may have draught cattle, and curriers and weavers fleeces and hides,–still
our State will not be very large.
That is true; yet neither will it be a very small State which contains all these.
Then, again, there is the situation of the city–to find a place where nothing need
be imported is wellnigh impossible.
Impossible.

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Then there must be another class of citizens who will bring the required supply
from another city?
There must.
But if the trader goes empty-handed, having nothing which they require who
would supply his need, he will come back empty-handed.
That is certain.
And therefore what they produce at home must be not only enough for them-
selves, but such both in quantity and quality as to accommodate those from
whom their wants are supplied.
Very true.
Then more husbandmen and more artisans will be required?
They will.
Not to mention the importers and exporters, who are called merchants?
Yes.
Then we shall want merchants?
We shall.
And if merchandise is to be carried over the sea, skilful sailors will also be
needed, and in considerable numbers?
Yes, in considerable numbers.
Then, again, within the city, how will they exchange their productions? To se-
cure such an exchange was, as you will remember, one of our principal objects
when we formed them into a society and constituted a State.
Clearly they will buy and sell.
Then they will need a market-place, and a money-token for purposes of exchan-
ge.
Certainly.
Suppose now that a husbandman, or an artisan, brings some production to mar-
ket, and he comes at a time when there is no one to exchange with him,– is he
to leave his calling and sit idle in the market-place?
Not at all; he will find people there who, seeing the want, undertake the office of
salesmen. In well-ordered states they are commonly those who are the weakest
in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for any other purpose; their duty
is to be in the market, and to give money in exchange for goods to those who

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desire to sell and to take money from those who desire to buy.
This want, then, creates a class of retail-traders in our State. Is not ’retailer’ the
term which is applied to those who sit in the market-place engaged in buying
and selling, while those who wander from one city to another are called mer-
chants?
Yes, he said.
And there is another class of servants, who are intellectually hardly on the level
of companionship; still they have plenty of bodily strength for labour, which
accordingly they sell, and are called, if I do not mistake, hirelings, hire being
the name which is given to the price of their labour.
True.
Then hirelings will help to make up our population?
Yes.
And now, Adeimantus, is our State matured and perfected?
I think so.
Where, then, is justice, and where is injustice, and in what part of the State did
they spring up?
Probably in the dealings of these citizens with one another. I cannot imagine
that they are more likely to be found any where else.
I dare say that you are right in your suggestion, I said; we had better think the
matter out, and not shrink from the enquiry.
Let us then consider, first of all, what will be their way of life, now that we have
thus established them. Will they not produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and
shoes, and build houses for themselves? And when they are housed, they will
work, in summer, commonly, stripped and barefoot, but in winter substantially
clothed and shod. They will feed on barley-meal and flour of wheat, baking
and kneading them, making noble cakes and loaves; these they will serve up
on a mat of reeds or on clean leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds
strewn with yew or myrtle. And they and their children will feast, drinking of
the wine which they have made, wearing garlands on their heads, and hymning
the praises of the gods, in happy converse with one another. And they will take
care that their families do not exceed their means; having an eye to poverty or
war.
But, said Glaucon, interposing, you have not given them a relish to their meal.
True, I replied, I had forgotten; of course they must have a relish–salt, and oli-
ves, and cheese, and they will boil roots and herbs such as country people pre-

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pare; for a dessert we shall give them figs, and peas, and beans; and they will
roast myrtle-berries and acorns at the fire, drinking in moderation. And with
such a diet they may be expected to live in peace and health to a good old age,
and bequeath a similar life to their children after them.
Yes, Socrates, he said, and if you were providing for a city of pigs, how else
would you feed the beasts?
But what would you have, Glaucon? I replied.
Why, he said, you should give them the ordinary conveniences of life. People
who are to be comfortable are accustomed to lie on sofas, and dine off tables,
and they should have sauces and sweets in the modern style.
Yes, I said, now I understand: the question which you would have me consider
is, not only how a State, but how a luxurious State is created; and possibly there
is no harm in this, for in such a State we shall be more likely to see how justice
and injustice originate. In my opinion the true and healthy constitution of the
State is the one which I have described. But if you wish also to see a State at
fever-heat, I have no objection. For I suspect that many will not be satisfied
with the simpler way of life. They will be for adding sofas, and tables, and
other furniture; also dainties, and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and
cakes, all these not of one sort only, but in every variety; we must go beyond
the necessaries of which I was at first speaking, such as houses, and clothes, and
shoes: the arts of the painter and the embroiderer will have to be set in motion,
and gold and ivory and all sorts of materials must be procured.
True, he said.
Then we must enlarge our borders; for the original healthy State is no longer
sufficient. Now will the city have to fill and swell with a multitude of callings
which are not required by any natural want; such as the whole tribe of hun-
ters and actors, of whom one large class have to do with forms and colours;
another will be the votaries of music–poets and their attendant train of rhap-
sodists, players, dancers, contractors; also makers of divers kinds of articles,
including women’s dresses. And we shall want more servants. Will not tutors
be also in request, and nurses wet and dry, tirewomen and barbers, as well as
confectioners and cooks; and swineherds, too, who were not needed and there-
fore had no place in the former edition of our State, but are needed now? They
must not be forgotten: and there will be animals of many other kinds, if people
eat them.
Certainly.
And living in this way we shall have much greater need of physicians than
before?

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Much greater.
And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants will be
too small now, and not enough?
Quite true.
Then a slice of our neighbours’ land will be wanted by us for pasture and tillage,
and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves, they exceed the limit of
necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of wealth?
That, Socrates, will be inevitable.
And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not?
Most certainly, he replied.
Then without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, thus much
we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from causes
which are also the causes of almost all the evils in States, private as well as
public.
Undoubtedly.
And our State must once more enlarge; and this time the enlargement will be
nothing short of a whole army, which will have to go out and fight with the
invaders for all that we have, as well as for the things and persons whom we
were describing above.
Why? he said; are they not capable of defending themselves?
No, I said; not if we were right in the principle which was acknowledged by all
of us when we were framing the State: the principle, as you will remember, was
that one man cannot practise many arts with success.
Very true, he said.
But is not war an art?
Certainly.
And an art requiring as much attention as shoemaking?
Quite true.
And the shoemaker was not allowed by us to be a husbandman, or a weaver, or
a builder–in order that we might have our shoes well made; but to him and to
every other worker was assigned one work for which he was by nature fitted,
and at that he was to continue working all his life long and at no other; he
was not to let opportunities slip, and then he would become a good workman.
Now nothing can be more important than that the work of a soldier should be

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well done. But is war an art so easily acquired that a man may be a warrior
who is also a husbandman, or shoemaker, or other artisan; although no one
in the world would be a good dice or draught player who merely took up the
game as a recreation, and had not from his earliest years devoted himself to this
and nothing else? No tools will make a man a skilled workman, or master of
defence, nor be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them, and
has never bestowed any attention upon them. How then will he who takes up
a shield or other implement of war become a good fighter all in a day, whether
with heavy-armed or any other kind of troops?
Yes, he said, the tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond
price.
And the higher the duties of the guardian, I said, the more time, and skill, and
art, and application will be needed by him?
No doubt, he replied.
Will he not also require natural aptitude for his calling?
Certainly.
Then it will be our duty to select, if we can, natures which are fitted for the task
of guarding the city?
It will.
And the selection will be no easy matter, I said; but we must be brave and do
our best.
We must.
Is not the noble youth very like a well-bred dog in respect of guarding and
watching?
What do you mean?
I mean that both of them ought to be quick to see, and swift to overtake the
enemy when they see him; and strong too if, when they have caught him, they
have to fight with him.
All these qualities, he replied, will certainly be required by them.
Well, and your guardian must be brave if he is to fight well?
Certainly.
And is he likely to be brave who has no spirit, whether horse or dog or any
other animal? Have you never observed how invincible and unconquerable is
spirit and how the presence of it makes the soul of any creature to be absolutely
fearless and indomitable?

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I have.
Then now we have a clear notion of the bodily qualities which are required in
the guardian.
True.
And also of the mental ones; his soul is to be full of spirit?
Yes.
But are not these spirited natures apt to be savage with one another, and with
everybody else?
A difficulty by no means easy to overcome, he replied.
Whereas, I said, they ought to be dangerous to their enemies, and gentle to their
friends; if not, they will destroy themselves without waiting for their enemies
to destroy them.
True, he said.
What is to be done then? I said; how shall we find a gentle nature which has
also a great spirit, for the one is the contradiction of the other?
True.
He will not be a good guardian who is wanting in either of these two qualities;
and yet the combination of them appears to be impossible; and hence we must
infer that to be a good guardian is impossible.
I am afraid that what you say is true, he replied.
Here feeling perplexed I began to think over what had preceded.–My friend, I
said, no wonder that we are in a perplexity; for we have lost sight of the image
which we had before us.
What do you mean? he said.
I mean to say that there do exist natures gifted with those opposite qualities.
And where do you find them?
Many animals, I replied, furnish examples of them; our friend the dog is a very
good one: you know that well-bred dogs are perfectly gentle to their familiars
and acquaintances, and the reverse to strangers.
Yes, I know.
Then there is nothing impossible or out of the order of nature in our finding a
guardian who has a similar combination of qualities?

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Certainly not.
Would not he who is fitted to be a guardian, besides the spirited nature, need to
have the qualities of a philosopher?
I do not apprehend your meaning.
The trait of which I am speaking, I replied, may be also seen in the dog, and is
remarkable in the animal.
What trait?
Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry; when an acquaintance, he
welcomes him, although the one has never done him any harm, nor the other
any good. Did this never strike you as curious?
The matter never struck me before; but I quite recognise the truth of your re-
mark.
And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming;–your dog is a true philo-
sopher.
Why?
Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the
criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of
learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge
and ignorance?
Most assuredly.
And is not the love of learning the love of wisdom, which is philosophy?
They are the same, he replied.
And may we not say confidently of man also, that he who is likely to be gentle
to his friends and acquaintances, must by nature be a lover of wisdom and
knowledge?
That we may safely affirm.
Then he who is to be a really good and noble guardian of the State will require
to unite in himself philosophy and spirit and swiftness and strength?
Undoubtedly.
Then we have found the desired natures; and now that we have found them,
how are they to be reared and educated? Is not this an enquiry which may be
expected to throw light on the greater enquiry which is our final end– How do
justice and injustice grow up in States? for we do not want either to omit what
is to the point or to draw out the argument to an inconvenient length.

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Adeimantus thought that the enquiry would be of great service to us.

Then, I said, my dear friend, the task must not be given up, even if somewhat
long.
Certainly not.
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story-telling, and our story shall be
the education of our heroes.
By all means.
And what shall be their education? Can we find a better than the traditional
sort?–and this has two divisions, gymnastic for the body, and music for the
soul.
True.
Shall we begin education with music, and go on to gymnastic afterwards?
By all means.
And when you speak of music, do you include literature or not?
I do.
And literature may be either true or false?
Yes.
And the young should be trained in both kinds, and we begin with the false?
I do not understand your meaning, he said.
You know, I said, that we begin by telling children stories which, though not
wholly destitute of truth, are in the main fictitious; and these stories are told
them when they are not of an age to learn gymnastics.
Very true.
That was my meaning when I said that we must teach music before gymnastics.
Quite right, he said.
You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work, espe-
cially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the
character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.
Quite true.
And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may
be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most
part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they

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are grown up?

We cannot.
Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction,
and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad;
and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones
only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they
mould the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must
be discarded.
Of what tales are you speaking? he said.
You may find a model of the lesser in the greater, I said; for they are necessarily
of the same type, and there is the same spirit in both of them.
Very likely, he replied; but I do not as yet know what you would term the grea-
ter.
Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, and the rest of the
poets, who have ever been the great story-tellers of mankind.
But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with them?
A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a lie, and, what is more,
a bad lie.
But when is this fault committed?
Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and
heroes,–as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a likeness
to the original.
Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blameable; but what are the
stories which you mean?
First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high places, which the
poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie too,–I mean what Hesiod says
that Uranus did, and how Cronus retaliated on him. The doings of Cronus, and
the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true,
ought certainly not to be lightly told to young and thoughtless persons; if possi-
ble, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for
their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery, and they should sa-
crifice not a common (Eleusinian) pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim;
and then the number of the hearers will be very few indeed.
Why, yes, said he, those stories are extremely objectionable.
Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be repeated in our State; the young
man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he is far from

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doing anything outrageous; and that even if he chastises his father when he
does wrong, in whatever manner, he will only be following the example of the
first and greatest among the gods.
I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those stories are quite unfit to
be repeated.
Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarrelling
among themselves as of all things the basest, should any word be said to them
of the wars in heaven, and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one
another, for they are not true. No, we shall never mention the battles of the gi-
ants, or let them be embroidered on garments; and we shall be silent about the
innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relatives.
If they would only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is unholy, and
that never up to this time has there been any quarrel between citizens; this is
what old men and old women should begin by telling children; and when they
grow up, the poets also should be told to compose for them in a similar spirit.
But the narrative of Hephaestus binding Here his mother, or how on another oc-
casion Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten, and
all the battles of the gods in Homer–these tales must not be admitted into our
State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For a
young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that
he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unaltera-
ble; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear
should be models of virtuous thoughts.
There you are right, he replied; but if any one asks where are such models to be
found and of what tales are you speaking–how shall we answer him?
I said to him, You and I, Adeimantus, at this moment are not poets, but founders
of a State: now the founders of a State ought to know the general forms in which
poets should cast their tales, and the limits which must be observed by them,
but to make the tales is not their business.
Very true, he said; but what are these forms of theology which you mean?
Something of this kind, I replied:–God is always to be represented as he truly is,
whatever be the sort of poetry, epic, lyric or tragic, in which the representation
is given.
Right.
And is he not truly good? and must he not be represented as such?
Certainly.
And no good thing is hurtful?

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No, indeed.
And that which is not hurtful hurts not?
Certainly not.
And that which hurts not does no evil?
No.
And can that which does no evil be a cause of evil?
Impossible.
And the good is advantageous?
Yes.
And therefore the cause of well-being?
Yes.
It follows therefore that the good is not the cause of all things, but of the good
only?
Assuredly.
Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but
he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men.
For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to
be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere,
and not in him.
That appears to me to be most true, he said.
Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of the folly
of saying that two casks
’Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots,’
and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two
’Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good;’
but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill,
’Him wild hunger drives o’er the beauteous earth.’
And again–
’Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us.’
And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties, which was really
the work of Pandarus, was brought about by Athene and Zeus, or that the strife

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and contention of the gods was instigated by Themis and Zeus, he shall not
have our approval; neither will we allow our young men to hear the words of
Aeschylus, that
’God plants guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a house.’
And if a poet writes of the sufferings of Niobe–the subject of the tragedy in
which these iambic verses occur–or of the house of Pelops, or of the Trojan war
or on any similar theme, either we must not permit him to say that these are
the works of God, or if they are of God, he must devise some explanation of
them such as we are seeking; he must say that God did what was just and right,
and they were the better for being punished; but that those who are punished
are miserable, and that God is the author of their misery–the poet is not to be
permitted to say; though he may say that the wicked are miserable because they
require to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from God;
but that God being good is the author of evil to any one is to be strenuously
denied, and not to be said or sung or heard in verse or prose by any one whether
old or young in any well-ordered commonwealth. Such a fiction is suicidal,
ruinous, impious.
I agree with you, he replied, and am ready to give my assent to the law.
Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the gods, to which
our poets and reciters will be expected to conform,–that God is not the author
of all things, but of good only.
That will do, he said.
And what do you think of a second principle? Shall I ask you whether God is a
magician, and of a nature to appear insidiously now in one shape, and now in
another–sometimes himself changing and passing into many forms, sometimes
deceiving us with the semblance of such transformations; or is he one and the
same immutably fixed in his own proper image?
I cannot answer you, he said, without more thought.
Well, I said; but if we suppose a change in anything, that change must be effec-
ted either by the thing itself, or by some other thing?
Most certainly.
And things which are at their best are also least liable to be altered or discompo-
sed; for example, when healthiest and strongest, the human frame is least liable
to be affected by meats and drinks, and the plant which is in the fullest vigour
also suffers least from winds or the heat of the sun or any similar causes.
Of course.
And will not the bravest and wisest soul be least confused or deranged by any

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external influence?
True.
And the same principle, as I should suppose, applies to all composite things–
furniture, houses, garments: when good and well made, they are least altered
by time and circumstances.
Very true.
Then everything which is good, whether made by art or nature, or both, is least
liable to suffer change from without?
True.
But surely God and the things of God are in every way perfect?
Of course they are.
Then he can hardly be compelled by external influence to take many shapes?
He cannot.
But may he not change and transform himself?
Clearly, he said, that must be the case if he is changed at all.
And will he then change himself for the better and fairer, or for the worse and
more unsightly?
If he change at all he can only change for the worse, for we cannot suppose him
to be deficient either in virtue or beauty.
Very true, Adeimantus; but then, would any one, whether God or man, desire
to make himself worse?
Impossible.
Then it is impossible that God should ever be willing to change; being, as is
supposed, the fairest and best that is conceivable, every God remains absolutely
and for ever in his own form.
That necessarily follows, he said, in my judgment.
Then, I said, my dear friend, let none of the poets tell us that
’The gods, taking the disguise of strangers from other lands, walk up and down
cities in all sorts of forms;’
and let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, neither let any one, either in tragedy
or in any other kind of poetry, introduce Here disguised in the likeness of a
priestess asking an alms

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’For the life-giving daughters of Inachus the river of Argos;’

–let us have no more lies of that sort. Neither must we have mothers under the
influence of the poets scaring their children with a bad version of these myths–
telling how certain gods, as they say, ’Go about by night in the likeness of so
many strangers and in divers forms;’ but let them take heed lest they make
cowards of their children, and at the same time speak blasphemy against the
gods.
Heaven forbid, he said.
But although the gods are themselves unchangeable, still by witchcraft and de-
ception they may make us think that they appear in various forms?
Perhaps, he replied.
Well, but can you imagine that God will be willing to lie, whether in word or
deed, or to put forth a phantom of himself?
I cannot say, he replied.
Do you not know, I said, that the true lie, if such an expression may be allowed,
is hated of gods and men?
What do you mean? he said.
I mean that no one is willingly deceived in that which is the truest and highest
part of himself, or about the truest and highest matters; there, above all, he is
most afraid of a lie having possession of him.
Still, he said, I do not comprehend you.
The reason is, I replied, that you attribute some profound meaning to my words;
but I am only saying that deception, or being deceived or uninformed about the
highest realities in the highest part of themselves, which is the soul, and in that
part of them to have and to hold the lie, is what mankind least like;–that, I say,
is what they utterly detest.
There is nothing more hateful to them.
And, as I was just now remarking, this ignorance in the soul of him who is de-
ceived may be called the true lie; for the lie in words is only a kind of imitation
and shadowy image of a previous affection of the soul, not pure unadulterated
falsehood. Am I not right?
Perfectly right.
The true lie is hated not only by the gods, but also by men?
Yes.

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Whereas the lie in words is in certain cases useful and not hateful; in dealing
with enemies–that would be an instance; or again, when those whom we call
our friends in a fit of madness or illusion are going to do some harm, then it is
useful and is a sort of medicine or preventive; also in the tales of mythology,
of which we were just now speaking–because we do not know the truth about
ancient times, we make falsehood as much like truth as we can, and so turn it
to account.
Very true, he said.
But can any of these reasons apply to God? Can we suppose that he is ignorant
of antiquity, and therefore has recourse to invention?
That would be ridiculous, he said.
Then the lying poet has no place in our idea of God?
I should say not.
Or perhaps he may tell a lie because he is afraid of enemies?
That is inconceivable.
But he may have friends who are senseless or mad?
But no mad or senseless person can be a friend of God.
Then no motive can be imagined why God should lie?
None whatever.
Then the superhuman and divine is absolutely incapable of falsehood?
Yes.
Then is God perfectly simple and true both in word and deed; he changes not;
he deceives not, either by sign or word, by dream or waking vision.
Your thoughts, he said, are the reflection of my own.
You agree with me then, I said, that this is the second type or form in which we
should write and speak about divine things. The gods are not magicians who
transform themselves, neither do they deceive mankind in any way.
I grant that.
Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying dream
which Zeus sends to Agamemnon; neither will we praise the verses of Aeschy-
lus in which Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials
’Was celebrating in song her fair progeny whose days were to be long, and to
know no sickness. And when he had spoken of my lot as in all things blessed

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of heaven he raised a note of triumph and cheered my soul. And I thought that
the word of Phoebus, being divine and full of prophecy, would not fail. And
now he himself who uttered the strain, he who was present at the banquet, and
who said this–he it is who has slain my son.’
These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse our anger;
and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus; neither shall we allow tea-
chers to make use of them in the instruction of the young, meaning, as we do,
that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be true worshippers of the gods
and like them.
I entirely agree, he said, in these principles, and promise to make them my laws.

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Such then, I said, are our principles of theology–some tales are to be told, and
others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth upwards, if we mean
them to honour the gods and their parents, and to value friendship with one
another.
Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.
But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these,
and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of death? Can any man be
courageous who has the fear of death in him?
Certainly not, he said.
And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than
defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?
Impossible.
Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well
as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile but rather to commend
the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and will
do harm to our future warriors.
That will be our duty, he said.
Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning
with the verses,
’I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule
over all the dead who have come to nought.’
We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto feared,
’Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should be seen both
of mortals and immortals.’
And again:–

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’O heavens! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and ghostly form but no
mind at all!’
Again of Tiresias:–
’(To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,) that he alone should be
wise; but the other souls are flitting shades.’
Again:–
’The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamenting her fate, leaving
manhood and youth.’
Again:–
’And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the earth.’
And,–
’As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of them has dropped out of
the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling and cling to one another, so did
they with shrilling cry hold together as they moved.’
And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out
these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to
the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less
are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who
should fear slavery more than death.
Undoubtedly.
Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling names which describe
the world below–Cocytus and Styx, ghosts under the earth, and sapless shades,
and any similar words of which the very mention causes a shudder to pass
through the inmost soul of him who hears them. I do not say that these horrible
stories may not have a use of some kind; but there is a danger that the nerves
of our guardians may be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them.
There is a real danger, he said.
Then we must have no more of them.
True.
Another and a nobler strain must be composed and sung by us.
Clearly.
And shall we proceed to get rid of the weepings and wailings of famous men?
They will go with the rest.

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But shall we be right in getting rid of them? Reflect: our principle is that the
good man will not consider death terrible to any other good man who is his
comrade.
Yes; that is our principle.
And therefore he will not sorrow for his departed friend as though he had suf-
fered anything terrible?
He will not.
Such an one, as we further maintain, is sufficient for himself and his own hap-
piness, and therefore is least in need of other men.
True, he said.
And for this reason the loss of a son or brother, or the deprivation of fortune, is
to him of all men least terrible.
Assuredly.
And therefore he will be least likely to lament, and will bear with the greatest
equanimity any misfortune of this sort which may befall him.
Yes, he will feel such a misfortune far less than another.
Then we shall be right in getting rid of the lamentations of famous men, and ma-
king them over to women (and not even to women who are good for anything),
or to men of a baser sort, that those who are being educated by us to be the
defenders of their country may scorn to do the like.
That will be very right.
Then we will once more entreat Homer and the other poets not to depict Achil-
les, who is the son of a goddess, first lying on his side, then on his back, and
then on his face; then starting up and sailing in a frenzy along the shores of
the barren sea; now taking the sooty ashes in both his hands and pouring them
over his head, or weeping and wailing in the various modes which Homer has
delineated. Nor should he describe Priam the kinsman of the gods as praying
and beseeching,
’Rolling in the dirt, calling each man loudly by his name.’
Still more earnestly will we beg of him at all events not to introduce the gods
lamenting and saying,
’Alas! my misery! Alas! that I bore the bravest to my sorrow.’
But if he must introduce the gods, at any rate let him not dare so completely to
misrepresent the greatest of the gods, as to make him say–

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’O heavens! with my eyes verily I behold a dear friend of mine chased round
and round the city, and my heart is sorrowful.’
Or again:–
Woe is me that I am fated to have Sarpedon, dearest of men to me, subdued at
the hands of Patroclus the son of Menoetius.’
For if, my sweet Adeimantus, our youth seriously listen to such unworthy re-
presentations of the gods, instead of laughing at them as they ought, hardly
will any of them deem that he himself, being but a man, can be dishonoured
by similar actions; neither will he rebuke any inclination which may arise in his
mind to say and do the like. And instead of having any shame or self-control,
he will be always whining and lamenting on slight occasions.
Yes, he said, that is most true.
Yes, I replied; but that surely is what ought not to be, as the argument has just
proved to us; and by that proof we must abide until it is disproved by a better.
It ought not to be.
Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of laughter which
has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction.
So I believe.
Then persons of worth, even if only mortal men, must not be represented as
overcome by laughter, and still less must such a representation of the gods be
allowed.
Still less of the gods, as you say, he replied.
Then we shall not suffer such an expression to be used about the gods as that of
Homer when he describes how
’Inextinguishable laughter arose among the blessed gods, when they saw
Hephaestus bustling about the mansion.’
On your views, we must not admit them.
On my views, if you like to father them on me; that we must not admit them is
certain.
Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to
the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines
should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with
them.
Clearly not, he said.

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Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State
should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with
their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good. But nobody else
should meddle with anything of the kind; and although the rulers have this
privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return is to be deemed a more
heinous fault than for the patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the
truth about his own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for a
sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the ship and the rest of the
crew, and how things are going with himself or his fellow sailors.
Most true, he said.
If, then, the ruler catches anybody beside himself lying in the State,
’Any of the craftsmen, whether he be priest or physician or carpenter,’
he will punish him for introducing a practice which is equally subversive and
destructive of ship or State.
Most certainly, he said, if our idea of the State is ever carried out.
In the next place our youth must be temperate?
Certainly.
Are not the chief elements of temperance, speaking generally, obedience to com-
manders and self-control in sensual pleasures?
True.
Then we shall approve such language as that of Diomede in Homer,
’Friend, sit still and obey my word,’
and the verses which follow,
’The Greeks marched breathing prowess, ...in silent awe of their leaders,’
and other sentiments of the same kind.
We shall.
What of this line,
’O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog and the heart of a stag,’
and of the words which follow? Would you say that these, or any similar im-
pertinences which private individuals are supposed to address to their rulers,
whether in verse or prose, are well or ill spoken?
They are ill spoken.

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They may very possibly afford some amusement, but they do not conduce to
temperance. And therefore they are likely to do harm to our young men–you
would agree with me there?
Yes.
And then, again, to make the wisest of men say that nothing in his opinion is
more glorious than
’When the tables are full of bread and meat, and the cup-bearer carries round
wine which he draws from the bowl and pours into the cups,’
is it fit or conducive to temperance for a young man to hear such words? Or the
verse
’The saddest of fates is to die and meet destiny from hunger?’
What would you say again to the tale of Zeus, who, while other gods and men
were asleep and he the only person awake, lay devising plans, but forgot them
all in a moment through his lust, and was so completely overcome at the sight
of Here that he would not even go into the hut, but wanted to lie with her on
the ground, declaring that he had never been in such a state of rapture before,
even when they first met one another
’Without the knowledge of their parents;’
or that other tale of how Hephaestus, because of similar goings on, cast a chain
around Ares and Aphrodite?
Indeed, he said, I am strongly of opinion that they ought not to hear that sort of
thing.
But any deeds of endurance which are done or told by famous men, these they
ought to see and hear; as, for example, what is said in the verses,
’He smote his breast, and thus reproached his heart, Endure, my heart; far wor-
se hast thou endured!’
Certainly, he said.
In the next place, we must not let them be receivers of gifts or lovers of money.
Certainly not.
Neither must we sing to them of
’Gifts persuading gods, and persuading reverend kings.’
Neither is Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, to be approved or deemed to have
given his pupil good counsel when he told him that he should take the gifts
of the Greeks and assist them; but that without a gift he should not lay aside

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his anger. Neither will we believe or acknowledge Achilles himself to have

been such a lover of money that he took Agamemnon’s gifts, or that when he
had received payment he restored the dead body of Hector, but that without
payment he was unwilling to do so.
Undoubtedly, he said, these are not sentiments which can be approved.
Loving Homer as I do, I hardly like to say that in attributing these feelings
to Achilles, or in believing that they are truly attributed to him, he is guilty
of downright impiety. As little can I believe the narrative of his insolence to
Apollo, where he says,
’Thou hast wronged me, O far-darter, most abominable of deities. Verily I
would be even with thee, if I had only the power;’
or his insubordination to the river-god, on whose divinity he is ready to lay
hands; or his offering to the dead Patroclus of his own hair, which had been
previously dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius, and that he actually
performed this vow; or that he dragged Hector round the tomb of Patroclus,
and slaughtered the captives at the pyre; of all this I cannot believe that he
was guilty, any more than I can allow our citizens to believe that he, the wise
Cheiron’s pupil, the son of a goddess and of Peleus who was the gentlest of men
and third in descent from Zeus, was so disordered in his wits as to be at one time
the slave of two seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not untainted by
avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods and men.
You are quite right, he replied.
And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be repeated, the tale of The-
seus son of Poseidon, or of Peirithous son of Zeus, going forth as they did to
perpetrate a horrid rape; or of any other hero or son of a god daring to do su-
ch impious and dreadful things as they falsely ascribe to them in our day: and
let us further compel the poets to declare either that these acts were not done
by them, or that they were not the sons of gods;–both in the same breath they
shall not be permitted to affirm. We will not have them trying to persuade our
youth that the gods are the authors of evil, and that heroes are no better than
men–sentiments which, as we were saying, are neither pious nor true, for we
have already proved that evil cannot come from the gods.
Assuredly not.
And further they are likely to have a bad effect on those who hear them; for
everybody will begin to excuse his own vices when he is convinced that similar
wickednesses are always being perpetrated by–
’The kindred of the gods, the relatives of Zeus, whose ancestral altar, the altar
of Zeus, is aloft in air on the peak of Ida,’

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and who have

’the blood of deities yet flowing in their veins.’
And therefore let us put an end to such tales, lest they engender laxity of morals
among the young.
By all means, he replied.
But now that we are determining what classes of subjects are or are not to be
spoken of, let us see whether any have been omitted by us. The manner in
which gods and demigods and heroes and the world below should be treated
has been already laid down.
Very true.
And what shall we say about men? That is clearly the remaining portion of our
subject.
Clearly so.
But we are not in a condition to answer this question at present, my friend.
Why not?
Because, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that about men poets and
story-tellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements when they tell us
that wicked men are often happy, and the good miserable; and that injustice is
profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man’s own loss and another’s
gain–these things we shall forbid them to utter, and command them to sing and
say the opposite.
To be sure we shall, he replied.
But if you admit that I am right in this, then I shall maintain that you have
implied the principle for which we have been all along contending.
I grant the truth of your inference.
That such things are or are not to be said about men is a question which we
cannot determine until we have discovered what justice is, and how naturally
advantageous to the possessor, whether he seem to be just or not.
Most true, he said.
Enough of the subjects of poetry: let us now speak of the style; and when this
has been considered, both matter and manner will have been completely trea-
ted.
I do not understand what you mean, said Adeimantus.

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Then I must make you understand; and perhaps I may be more intelligible if I
put the matter in this way. You are aware, I suppose, that all mythology and
poetry is a narration of events, either past, present, or to come?
Certainly, he replied.
And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union of the
two?
That again, he said, I do not quite understand.
I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have so much difficulty in
making myself apprehended. Like a bad speaker, therefore, I will not take the
whole of the subject, but will break a piece off in illustration of my meaning.
You know the first lines of the Iliad, in which the poet says that Chryses prayed
Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that Agamemnon flew into a passion
with him; whereupon Chryses, failing of his object, invoked the anger of the
God against the Achaeans. Now as far as these lines,
’And he prayed all the Greeks, but especially the two sons of Atreus, the chiefs
of the people,’
the poet is speaking in his own person; he never leads us to suppose that he is
any one else. But in what follows he takes the person of Chryses, and then he
does all that he can to make us believe that the speaker is not Homer, but the
aged priest himself. And in this double form he has cast the entire narrative of
the events which occurred at Troy and in Ithaca and throughout the Odyssey.
Yes.
And a narrative it remains both in the speeches which the poet recites from time
to time and in the intermediate passages?
Quite true.
But when the poet speaks in the person of another, may we not say that he
assimilates his style to that of the person who, as he informs you, is going to
speak?
Certainly.
And this assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture,
is the imitation of the person whose character he assumes?
Of course.
Then in this case the narrative of the poet may be said to proceed by way of
imitation?
Very true.

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Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never conceals himself, then again the
imitation is dropped, and his poetry becomes simple narration. However, in
order that I may make my meaning quite clear, and that you may no more say,
’I don’t understand,’ I will show how the change might be effected. If Homer
had said, ’The priest came, having his daughter’s ransom in his hands, suppli-
cating the Achaeans, and above all the kings;’ and then if, instead of speaking
in the person of Chryses, he had continued in his own person, the words would
have been, not imitation, but simple narration. The passage would have run
as follows (I am no poet, and therefore I drop the metre), ’The priest came and
prayed the gods on behalf of the Greeks that they might capture Troy and re-
turn safely home, but begged that they would give him back his daughter, and
take the ransom which he brought, and respect the God. Thus he spoke, and
the other Greeks revered the priest and assented. But Agamemnon was wroth,
and bade him depart and not come again, lest the staff and chaplets of the God
should be of no avail to him–the daughter of Chryses should not be released, he
said–she should grow old with him in Argos. And then he told him to go away
and not to provoke him, if he intended to get home unscathed. And the old
man went away in fear and silence, and, when he had left the camp, he called
upon Apollo by his many names, reminding him of everything which he had
done pleasing to him, whether in building his temples, or in offering sacrifice,
and praying that his good deeds might be returned to him, and that the Acha-
eans might expiate his tears by the arrows of the god,’–and so on. In this way
the whole becomes simple narrative.
I understand, he said.
Or you may suppose the opposite case–that the intermediate passages are omit-
ted, and the dialogue only left.
That also, he said, I understand; you mean, for example, as in tragedy.
You have conceived my meaning perfectly; and if I mistake not, what you fai-
led to apprehend before is now made clear to you, that poetry and mythology
are, in some cases, wholly imitative–instances of this are supplied by tragedy
and comedy; there is likewise the opposite style, in which the poet is the only
speaker–of this the dithyramb affords the best example; and the combination of
both is found in epic, and in several other styles of poetry. Do I take you with
me?
Yes, he said; I see now what you meant.
I will ask you to remember also what I began by saying, that we had done with
the subject and might proceed to the style.
Yes, I remember.
In saying this, I intended to imply that we must come to an understanding

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about the mimetic art,–whether the poets, in narrating their stories, are to be
allowed by us to imitate, and if so, whether in whole or in part, and if the latter,
in what parts; or should all imitation be prohibited?
You mean, I suspect, to ask whether tragedy and comedy shall be admitted into
our State?
Yes, I said; but there may be more than this in question: I really do not know as
yet, but whither the argument may blow, thither we go.
And go we will, he said.
Then, Adeimantus, let me ask you whether our guardians ought to be imitators;
or rather, has not this question been decided by the rule already laid down that
one man can only do one thing well, and not many; and that if he attempt many,
he will altogether fail of gaining much reputation in any?
Certainly.
And this is equally true of imitation; no one man can imitate many things as
well as he would imitate a single one?
He cannot.
Then the same person will hardly be able to play a serious part in life, and at the
same time to be an imitator and imitate many other parts as well; for even when
two species of imitation are nearly allied, the same persons cannot succeed in
both, as, for example, the writers of tragedy and comedy–did you not just now
call them imitations?
Yes, I did; and you are right in thinking that the same persons cannot succeed
in both.
Any more than they can be rhapsodists and actors at once?
True.
Neither are comic and tragic actors the same; yet all these things are but imita-
tions.
They are so.
And human nature, Adeimantus, appears to have been coined into yet smaller
pieces, and to be as incapable of imitating many things well, as of performing
well the actions of which the imitations are copies.
Quite true, he replied.
If then we adhere to our original notion and bear in mind that our guardians,
setting aside every other business, are to dedicate themselves wholly to the
maintenance of freedom in the State, making this their craft, and engaging in

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no work which does not bear on this end, they ought not to practise or imitate
anything else; if they imitate at all, they should imitate from youth upward only
those characters which are suitable to their profession–the courageous, tempe-
rate, holy, free, and the like; but they should not depict or be skilful at imitating
any kind of illiberality or baseness, lest from imitation they should come to be
what they imitate. Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early
youth and continuing far into life, at length grow into habits and become a se-
cond nature, affecting body, voice, and mind?
Yes, certainly, he said.
Then, I said, we will not allow those for whom we profess a care and of whom
we say that they ought to be good men, to imitate a woman, whether young or
old, quarrelling with her husband, or striving and vaunting against the gods in
conceit of her happiness, or when she is in affliction, or sorrow, or weeping; and
certainly not one who is in sickness, love, or labour.
Very right, he said.
Neither must they represent slaves, male or female, performing the offices of
slaves?
They must not.
And surely not bad men, whether cowards or any others, who do the reverse of
what we have just been prescribing, who scold or mock or revile one another in
drink or out of drink, or who in any other manner sin against themselves and
their neighbours in word or deed, as the manner of such is. Neither should they
be trained to imitate the action or speech of men or women who are mad or bad;
for madness, like vice, is to be known but not to be practised or imitated.
Very true, he replied.
Neither may they imitate smiths or other artificers, or oarsmen, or boatswains,
or the like?
How can they, he said, when they are not allowed to apply their minds to the
callings of any of these?
Nor may they imitate the neighing of horses, the bellowing of bulls, the murmur
of rivers and roll of the ocean, thunder, and all that sort of thing?
Nay, he said, if madness be forbidden, neither may they copy the behaviour of
madmen.
You mean, I said, if I understand you aright, that there is one sort of narrative
style which may be employed by a truly good man when he has anything to
say, and that another sort will be used by a man of an opposite character and
education.

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And which are these two sorts? he asked.

Suppose, I answered, that a just and good man in the course of a narration
comes on some saying or action of another good man,–I should imagine that he
will like to personate him, and will not be ashamed of this sort of imitation: he
will be most ready to play the part of the good man when he is acting firmly
and wisely; in a less degree when he is overtaken by illness or love or drink,
or has met with any other disaster. But when he comes to a character which
is unworthy of him, he will not make a study of that; he will disdain such a
person, and will assume his likeness, if at all, for a moment only when he is
performing some good action; at other times he will be ashamed to play a part
which he has never practised, nor will he like to fashion and frame himself after
the baser models; he feels the employment of such an art, unless in jest, to be
beneath him, and his mind revolts at it.
So I should expect, he replied.
Then he will adopt a mode of narration such as we have illustrated out of Ho-
mer, that is to say, his style will be both imitative and narrative; but there will
be very little of the former, and a great deal of the latter. Do you agree?
Certainly, he said; that is the model which such a speaker must necessarily take.
But there is another sort of character who will narrate anything, and, the worse
he is, the more unscrupulous he will be; nothing will be too bad for him: and
he will be ready to imitate anything, not as a joke, but in right good earnest,
and before a large company. As I was just now saying, he will attempt to repre-
sent the roll of thunder, the noise of wind and hail, or the creaking of wheels,
and pulleys, and the various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of
instruments: he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or crow like a cock; his
entire art will consist in imitation of voice and gesture, and there will be very
little narration.
That, he said, will be his mode of speaking.
These, then, are the two kinds of style?
Yes.
And you would agree with me in saying that one of them is simple and has
but slight changes; and if the harmony and rhythm are also chosen for their
simplicity, the result is that the speaker, if he speaks correctly, is always pretty
much the same in style, and he will keep within the limits of a single harmony
(for the changes are not great), and in like manner he will make use of nearly
the same rhythm?
That is quite true, he said.

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Whereas the other requires all sorts of harmonies and all sorts of rhythms, if the
music and the style are to correspond, because the style has all sorts of changes.
That is also perfectly true, he replied.
And do not the two styles, or the mixture of the two, comprehend all poetry,
and every form of expression in words? No one can say anything except in one
or other of them or in both together.
They include all, he said.
And shall we receive into our State all the three styles, or one only of the two
unmixed styles? or would you include the mixed?
I should prefer only to admit the pure imitator of virtue.
Yes, I said, Adeimantus, but the mixed style is also very charming: and indeed
the pantomimic, which is the opposite of the one chosen by you, is the most
popular style with children and their attendants, and with the world in general.
I do not deny it.
But I suppose you would argue that such a style is unsuitable to our State, in
which human nature is not twofold or manifold, for one man plays one part
only?
Yes; quite unsuitable.
And this is the reason why in our State, and in our State only, we shall find a
shoemaker to be a shoemaker and not a pilot also, and a husbandman to be a
husbandman and not a dicast also, and a soldier a soldier and not a trader also,
and the same throughout?
True, he said.
And therefore when any one of these pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever
that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit
himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy
and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that in our State such as he
are not permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we have
anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall
send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our souls’ health
the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the
virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when
we began the education of our soldiers.
We certainly will, he said, if we have the power.
Then now, my friend, I said, that part of music or literary education which
relates to the story or myth may be considered to be finished; for the matter and

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manner have both been discussed.

I think so too, he said.
Next in order will follow melody and song.
That is obvious.
Every one can see already what we ought to say about them, if we are to be
consistent with ourselves.
I fear, said Glaucon, laughing, that the word ’every one’ hardly includes me, for
I cannot at the moment say what they should be; though I may guess.
At any rate you can tell that a song or ode has three parts–the words, the me-
lody, and the rhythm; that degree of knowledge I may presuppose?
Yes, he said; so much as that you may.
And as for the words, there will surely be no difference between words which
are and which are not set to music; both will conform to the same laws, and
these have been already determined by us?
Yes.
And the melody and rhythm will depend upon the words?
Certainly.
We were saying, when we spoke of the subject-matter, that we had no need of
lamentation and strains of sorrow?
True.
And which are the harmonies expressive of sorrow? You are musical, and can
tell me.
The harmonies which you mean are the mixed or tenor Lydian, and the full-
toned or bass Lydian, and such like.
These then, I said, must be banished; even to women who have a character to
maintain they are of no use, and much less to men.
Certainly.
In the next place, drunkenness and softness and indolence are utterly unbeco-
ming the character of our guardians.
Utterly unbecoming.
And which are the soft or drinking harmonies?
The Ionian, he replied, and the Lydian; they are termed ’relaxed.’

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Well, and are these of any military use?

Quite the reverse, he replied; and if so the Dorian and the Phrygian are the only
ones which you have left.
I answered: Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one warlike,
to sound the note or accent which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and
stern resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds or death
or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every such crisis meets the blows of
fortune with firm step and a determination to endure; and another to be used
by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of
necessity, and he is seeking to persuade God by prayer, or man by instruction
and admonition, or on the other hand, when he is expressing his willingness to
yield to persuasion or entreaty or admonition, and which represents him when
by prudent conduct he has attained his end, not carried away by his success, but
acting moderately and wisely under the circumstances, and acquiescing in the
event. These two harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the
strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate,
the strain of courage, and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave.
And these, he replied, are the Dorian and Phrygian harmonies of which I was
just now speaking.
Then, I said, if these and these only are to be used in our songs and melodies,
we shall not want multiplicity of notes or a panharmonic scale?
I suppose not.
Then we shall not maintain the artificers of lyres with three corners and com-
plex scales, or the makers of any other many-stringed curiously- harmonised
instruments?
Certainly not.
But what do you say to flute-makers and flute-players? Would you admit them
into our State when you reflect that in this composite use of harmony the flute
is worse than all the stringed instruments put together; even the panharmonic
music is only an imitation of the flute?
Clearly not.
There remain then only the lyre and the harp for use in the city, and the
shepherds may have a pipe in the country.
That is surely the conclusion to be drawn from the argument.
The preferring of Apollo and his instruments to Marsyas and his instruments is
not at all strange, I said.

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Not at all, he replied.

And so, by the dog of Egypt, we have been unconsciously purging the State,
which not long ago we termed luxurious.
And we have done wisely, he replied.
Then let us now finish the purgation, I said. Next in order to harmonies,
rhythms will naturally follow, and they should be subject to the same rules,
for we ought not to seek out complex systems of metre, or metres of every kind,
but rather to discover what rhythms are the expressions of a courageous and
harmonious life; and when we have found them, we shall adapt the foot and
the melody to words having a like spirit, not the words to the foot and melody.
To say what these rhythms are will be your duty–you must teach me them, as
you have already taught me the harmonies.
But, indeed, he replied, I cannot tell you. I only know that there are some three
principles of rhythm out of which metrical systems are framed, just as in sounds
there are four notes (i.e. the four notes of the tetrachord.) out of which all the
harmonies are composed; that is an observation which I have made. But of
what sort of lives they are severally the imitations I am unable to say.
Then, I said, we must take Damon into our counsels; and he will tell us what
rhythms are expressive of meanness, or insolence, or fury, or other unworthi-
ness, and what are to be reserved for the expression of opposite feelings. And
I think that I have an indistinct recollection of his mentioning a complex Cretic
rhythm; also a dactylic or heroic, and he arranged them in some manner which I
do not quite understand, making the rhythms equal in the rise and fall of the fo-
ot, long and short alternating; and, unless I am mistaken, he spoke of an iambic
as well as of a trochaic rhythm, and assigned to them short and long quantities.
Also in some cases he appeared to praise or censure the movement of the foot
quite as much as the rhythm; or perhaps a combination of the two; for I am
not certain what he meant. These matters, however, as I was saying, had better
be referred to Damon himself, for the analysis of the subject would be difficult,
you know? (Socrates expresses himself carelessly in accordance with his assu-
med ignorance of the details of the subject. In the first part of the sentence he
appears to be speaking of paeonic rhythms which are in the ratio of 3/2; in the
second part, of dactylic and anapaestic rhythms, which are in the ratio of 1/1;
in the last clause, of iambic and trochaic rhythms, which are in the ratio of 1/2
or 2/1.)
Rather so, I should say.
But there is no difficulty in seeing that grace or the absence of grace is an effect
of good or bad rhythm.
None at all.

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And also that good and bad rhythm naturally assimilate to a good and bad sty-
le; and that harmony and discord in like manner follow style; for our principle
is that rhythm and harmony are regulated by the words, and not the words by
them.
Just so, he said, they should follow the words.
And will not the words and the character of the style depend on the temper of
the soul?
Yes.
And everything else on the style?
Yes.
Then beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on
simplicity,–I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and
character, not that other simplicity which is only an euphemism for folly?
Very true, he replied.
And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make these graces
and harmonies their perpetual aim?
They must.
And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and constructive art
are full of them,–weaving, embroidery, architecture, and every kind of manu-
facture; also nature, animal and vegetable,–in all of them there is grace or the
absence of grace. And ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are ne-
arly allied to ill words and ill nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters
of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness.
That is quite true, he said.
But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to be re-
quired by us to express the image of the good in their works, on pain, if they
do anything else, of expulsion from our State? Or is the same control to be
extended to other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from exhibiting the
opposite forms of vice and intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculp-
ture and building and the other creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to
this rule of ours to be prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the
taste of our citizens be corrupted by him? We would not have our guardians
grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and the-
re browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by
little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own soul.
Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the
beautiful and graceful; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair

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sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluen-
ce of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from
a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness
and sympathy with the beauty of reason.
There can be no nobler training than that, he replied.
And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument
than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward
places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making
the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated
ungraceful; and also because he who has received this true education of the
inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature,
and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his
soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the
bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason
why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute the friend with whom
his education has made him long familiar.
Yes, he said, I quite agree with you in thinking that our youth should be trained
in music and on the grounds which you mention.
Just as in learning to read, I said, we were satisfied when we knew the letters of
the alphabet, which are very few, in all their recurring sizes and combinations;
not slighting them as unimportant whether they occupy a space large or small,
but everywhere eager to make them out; and not thinking ourselves perfect in
the art of reading until we recognise them wherever they are found:
True–
Or, as we recognise the reflection of letters in the water, or in a mirror, only
when we know the letters themselves; the same art and study giving us the
knowledge of both:
Exactly–
Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor our guardians, whom we have to edu-
cate, can ever become musical until we and they know the essential forms of
temperance, courage, liberality, magnificence, and their kindred, as well as the
contrary forms, in all their combinations, and can recognise them and their ima-
ges wherever they are found, not slighting them either in small things or great,
but believing them all to be within the sphere of one art and study.
Most assuredly.
And when a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are
cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has an eye to see
it?

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The fairest indeed.

And the fairest is also the loveliest?
That may be assumed.
And the man who has the spirit of harmony will be most in love with the love-
liest; but he will not love him who is of an inharmonious soul?
That is true, he replied, if the deficiency be in his soul; but if there be any merely
bodily defect in another he will be patient of it, and will love all the same.
I perceive, I said, that you have or have had experiences of this sort, and I agree.
But let me ask you another question: Has excess of pleasure any affinity to
temperance?
How can that be? he replied; pleasure deprives a man of the use of his faculties
quite as much as pain.
Or any affinity to virtue in general?
None whatever.
Any affinity to wantonness and intemperance?
Yes, the greatest.
And is there any greater or keener pleasure than that of sensual love?
No, nor a madder.
Whereas true love is a love of beauty and order–temperate and harmonious?
Quite true, he said.
Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to approach true love?
Certainly not.
Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed to come near the
lover and his beloved; neither of them can have any part in it if their love is of
the right sort?
No, indeed, Socrates, it must never come near them.
Then I suppose that in the city which we are founding you would make a law
to the effect that a friend should use no other familiarity to his love than a father
would use to his son, and then only for a noble purpose, and he must first have
the other’s consent; and this rule is to limit him in all his intercourse, and he
is never to be seen going further, or, if he exceeds, he is to be deemed guilty of
coarseness and bad taste.

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I quite agree, he said.

Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be the end of
music if not the love of beauty?
I agree, he said.
After music comes gymnastic, in which our youth are next to be trained.
Certainly.
Gymnastic as well as music should begin in early years; the training in it should
be careful and should continue through life. Now my belief is,–and this is a mat-
ter upon which I should like to have your opinion in confirmation of my own,
but my own belief is,–not that the good body by any bodily excellence impro-
ves the soul, but, on the contrary, that the good soul, by her own excellence,
improves the body as far as this may be possible. What do you say?
Yes, I agree.
Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in handing over
the more particular care of the body; and in order to avoid prolixity we will
now only give the general outlines of the subject.
Very good.
That they must abstain from intoxication has been already remarked by us; for
of all persons a guardian should be the last to get drunk and not know where
in the world he is.
Yes, he said; that a guardian should require another guardian to take care of
him is ridiculous indeed.
But next, what shall we say of their food; for the men are in training for the
great contest of all–are they not?
Yes, he said.
And will the habit of body of our ordinary athletes be suited to them?
Why not?
I am afraid, I said, that a habit of body such as they have is but a sleepy sort
of thing, and rather perilous to health. Do you not observe that these athletes
sleep away their lives, and are liable to most dangerous illnesses if they depart,
in ever so slight a degree, from their customary regimen?
Yes, I do.
Then, I said, a finer sort of training will be required for our warrior athletes,
who are to be like wakeful dogs, and to see and hear with the utmost keenness;

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amid the many changes of water and also of food, of summer heat and winter
cold, which they will have to endure when on a campaign, they must not be
liable to break down in health.
That is my view.
The really excellent gymnastic is twin sister of that simple music which we were
just now describing.
How so?
Why, I conceive that there is a gymnastic which, like our music, is simple and
good; and especially the military gymnastic.
What do you mean?
My meaning may be learned from Homer; he, you know, feeds his heroes at
their feasts, when they are campaigning, on soldiers’ fare; they have no fish,
although they are on the shores of the Hellespont, and they are not allowed
boiled meats but only roast, which is the food most convenient for soldiers,
requiring only that they should light a fire, and not involving the trouble of
carrying about pots and pans.
True.
And I can hardly be mistaken in saying that sweet sauces are nowhere mentio-
ned in Homer. In proscribing them, however, he is not singular; all professional
athletes are well aware that a man who is to be in good condition should take
nothing of the kind.
Yes, he said; and knowing this, they are quite right in not taking them.
Then you would not approve of Syracusan dinners, and the refinements of Si-
cilian cookery?
I think not.
Nor, if a man is to be in condition, would you allow him to have a Corinthian
girl as his fair friend?
Certainly not.
Neither would you approve of the delicacies, as they are thought, of Athenian
confectionary?
Certainly not.
All such feeding and living may be rightly compared by us to melody and song
composed in the panharmonic style, and in all the rhythms.
Exactly.

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There complexity engendered licence, and here disease; whereas simplicity in

music was the parent of temperance in the soul; and simplicity in gymnastic of
health in the body.
Most true, he said.
But when intemperance and diseases multiply in a State, halls of justice and
medicine are always being opened; and the arts of the doctor and the lawyer
give themselves airs, finding how keen is the interest which not only the slaves
but the freemen of a city take about them.
Of course.
And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state of edu-
cation than this, that not only artisans and the meaner sort of people need the
skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also those who would profess to
have had a liberal education? Is it not disgraceful, and a great sign of want
of good-breeding, that a man should have to go abroad for his law and physic
because he has none of his own at home, and must therefore surrender himself
into the hands of other men whom he makes lords and judges over him?
Of all things, he said, the most disgraceful.
Would you say ’most,’ I replied, when you consider that there is a further stage
of the evil in which a man is not only a life-long litigant, passing all his days in
the courts, either as plaintiff or defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to
pride himself on his litigiousness; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty;
able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending
like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for what?–in order to
gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his life
as to be able to do without a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of
thing. Is not that still more disgraceful?
Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful.
Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has to
be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by indolence and a
habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill themselves with waters
and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of
Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not
this, too, a disgrace?
Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names to dise-
ases.
Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases in the days
of Asclepius; and this I infer from the circumstance that the hero Eurypylus,
after he has been wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well

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besprinkled with barley-meal and grated cheese, which are certainly inflamma-
tory, and yet the sons of Asclepius who were at the Trojan war do not blame the
damsel who gives him the drink, or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his case.
Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to be given to a person in
his condition.
Not so extraordinary, I replied, if you bear in mind that in former days, as is
commonly said, before the time of Herodicus, the guild of Asclepius did not
practise our present system of medicine, which may be said to educate disea-
ses. But Herodicus, being a trainer, and himself of a sickly constitution, by a
combination of training and doctoring found out a way of torturing first and
chiefly himself, and secondly the rest of the world.
How was that? he said.
By the invention of lingering death; for he had a mortal disease which he perpe-
tually tended, and as recovery was out of the question, he passed his entire life
as a valetudinarian; he could do nothing but attend upon himself, and he was
in constant torment whenever he departed in anything from his usual regimen,
and so dying hard, by the help of science he struggled on to old age.
A rare reward of his skill!
Yes, I said; a reward which a man might fairly expect who never understood
that, if Asclepius did not instruct his descendants in valetudinarian arts, the
omission arose, not from ignorance or inexperience of such a branch of medici-
ne, but because he knew that in all well-ordered states every individual has an
occupation to which he must attend, and has therefore no leisure to spend in
continually being ill. This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously
enough, do not apply the same rule to people of the richer sort.
How do you mean? he said.
I mean this: When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a rough and ready
cure; an emetic or a purge or a cautery or the knife,–these are his remedies. And
if some one prescribes for him a course of dietetics, and tells him that he must
swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort of thing, he replies at once that
he has no time to be ill, and that he sees no good in a life which is spent in
nursing his disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and therefore
bidding good-bye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary habits, and
either gets well and lives and does his business, or, if his constitution fails, he
dies and has no more trouble.
Yes, he said, and a man in his condition of life ought to use the art of medicine
thus far only.
Has he not, I said, an occupation; and what profit would there be in his life if

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he were deprived of his occupation?

Quite true, he said.
But with the rich man this is otherwise; of him we do not say that he has any
specially appointed work which he must perform, if he would live.
He is generally supposed to have nothing to do.
Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a man has a
livelihood he should practise virtue?
Nay, he said, I think that he had better begin somewhat sooner.
Let us not have a dispute with him about this, I said; but rather ask ourselves:
Is the practice of virtue obligatory on the rich man, or can he live without it?
And if obligatory on him, then let us raise a further question, whether this di-
eting of disorders, which is an impediment to the application of the mind in
carpentering and the mechanical arts, does not equally stand in the way of the
sentiment of Phocylides?
Of that, he replied, there can be no doubt; such excessive care of the body, when
carried beyond the rules of gymnastic, is most inimical to the practice of virtue.
Yes, indeed, I replied, and equally incompatible with the management of a hou-
se, an army, or an office of state; and, what is most important of all, irreconci-
leable with any kind of study or thought or self-reflection–there is a constant
suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and
hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely
stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in cons-
tant anxiety about the state of his body.
Yes, likely enough.
And therefore our politic Asclepius may be supposed to have exhibited the
power of his art only to persons who, being generally of healthy constitution
and habits of life, had a definite ailment; such as these he cured by purges and
operations, and bade them live as usual, herein consulting the interests of the
State; but bodies which disease had penetrated through and through he would
not have attempted to cure by gradual processes of evacuation and infusion: he
did not want to lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak fathers
begetting weaker sons; –if a man was not able to live in the ordinary way he
had no business to cure him; for such a cure would have been of no use either
to himself, or to the State.
Then, he said, you regard Asclepius as a statesman.
Clearly; and his character is further illustrated by his sons. Note that they were
heroes in the days of old and practised the medicines of which I am speaking at

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the siege of Troy: You will remember how, when Pandarus wounded Menelaus,
they
’Sucked the blood out of the wound, and sprinkled soothing remedies,’
but they never prescribed what the patient was afterwards to eat or drink in
the case of Menelaus, any more than in the case of Eurypylus; the remedies,
as they conceived, were enough to heal any man who before he was wounded
was healthy and regular in his habits; and even though he did happen to drink
a posset of Pramnian wine, he might get well all the same. But they would have
nothing to do with unhealthy and intemperate subjects, whose lives were of
no use either to themselves or others; the art of medicine was not designed for
their good, and though they were as rich as Midas, the sons of Asclepius would
have declined to attend them.
They were very acute persons, those sons of Asclepius.
Naturally so, I replied. Nevertheless, the tragedians and Pindar disobeying our
behests, although they acknowledge that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, say
also that he was bribed into healing a rich man who was at the point of death,
and for this reason he was struck by lightning. But we, in accordance with the
principle already affirmed by us, will not believe them when they tell us both;–
if he was the son of a god, we maintain that he was not avaricious; or, if he was
avaricious, he was not the son of a god.
All that, Socrates, is excellent; but I should like to put a question to you: Ought
there not to be good physicians in a State, and are not the best those who have
treated the greatest number of constitutions good and bad? and are not the best
judges in like manner those who are acquainted with all sorts of moral natures?
Yes, I said, I too would have good judges and good physicians. But do you
know whom I think good?
Will you tell me?
I will, if I can. Let me however note that in the same question you join two
things which are not the same.
How so? he asked.
Why, I said, you join physicians and judges. Now the most skilful physicians
are those who, from their youth upwards, have combined with the knowledge
of their art the greatest experience of disease; they had better not be robust in
health, and should have had all manner of diseases in their own persons. For
the body, as I conceive, is not the instrument with which they cure the body; in
that case we could not allow them ever to be or to have been sickly; but they
cure the body with the mind, and the mind which has become and is sick can
cure nothing.

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That is very true, he said.

But with the judge it is otherwise; since he governs mind by mind; he ought not
therefore to have been trained among vicious minds, and to have associated
with them from youth upwards, and to have gone through the whole calen-
dar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer the crimes of others as
he might their bodily diseases from his own self-consciousness; the honoura-
ble mind which is to form a healthy judgment should have had no experience
or contamination of evil habits when young. And this is the reason why in
youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practised upon by
the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls.
Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived.
Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he should have learned to
know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the na-
ture of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.
Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge.
Yes, I replied, and he will be a good man (which is my answer to your question);
for he is good who has a good soul. But the cunning and suspicious nature of
which we spoke,–he who has committed many crimes, and fancies himself to
be a master in wickedness, when he is amongst his fellows, is wonderful in the
precautions which he takes, because he judges of them by himself: but when
he gets into the company of men of virtue, who have the experience of age,
he appears to be a fool again, owing to his unseasonable suspicions; he cannot
recognise an honest man, because he has no pattern of honesty in himself; at
the same time, as the bad are more numerous than the good, and he meets with
them oftener, he thinks himself, and is by others thought to be, rather wise than
foolish.
Most true, he said.
Then the good and wise judge whom we are seeking is not this man, but the
other; for vice cannot know virtue too, but a virtuous nature, educated by time,
will acquire a knowledge both of virtue and vice: the virtuous, and not the
vicious, man has wisdom–in my opinion.
And in mine also.
This is the sort of medicine, and this is the sort of law, which you will sanction
in your state. They will minister to better natures, giving health both of soul
and of body; but those who are diseased in their bodies they will leave to die,
and the corrupt and incurable souls they will put an end to themselves.
That is clearly the best thing both for the patients and for the State.

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And thus our youth, having been educated only in that simple music which, as
we said, inspires temperance, will be reluctant to go to law.
Clearly.
And the musician, who, keeping to the same track, is content to practise the
simple gymnastic, will have nothing to do with medicine unless in some extre-
me case.
That I quite believe.
The very exercises and tolls which he undergoes are intended to stimulate the
spirited element of his nature, and not to increase his strength; he will not, like
common athletes, use exercise and regimen to develope his muscles.
Very right, he said.
Neither are the two arts of music and gymnastic really designed, as is often
supposed, the one for the training of the soul, the other for the training of the
body.
What then is the real object of them?
I believe, I said, that the teachers of both have in view chiefly the improvement
of the soul.
How can that be? he asked.
Did you never observe, I said, the effect on the mind itself of exclusive devotion
to gymnastic, or the opposite effect of an exclusive devotion to music?
In what way shown? he said.
The one producing a temper of hardness and ferocity, the other of softness and
effeminacy, I replied.
Yes, he said, I am quite aware that the mere athlete becomes too much of a
savage, and that the mere musician is melted and softened beyond what is good
for him.
Yet surely, I said, this ferocity only comes from spirit, which, if rightly educated,
would give courage, but, if too much intensified, is liable to become hard and
brutal.
That I quite think.
On the other hand the philosopher will have the quality of gentleness. And this
also, when too much indulged, will turn to softness, but, if educated rightly,
will be gentle and moderate.
True.

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And in our opinion the guardians ought to have both these qualities?
Assuredly.
And both should be in harmony?
Beyond question.
And the harmonious soul is both temperate and courageous?
Yes.
And the inharmonious is cowardly and boorish?
Very true.
And, when a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul
through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs of which
we were just now speaking, and his whole life is passed in warbling and the
delights of song; in the first stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in
him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless. But,
if he carries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins
to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of
his soul; and he becomes a feeble warrior.
Very true.
If the element of spirit is naturally weak in him the change is speedily accom-
plished, but if he have a good deal, then the power of music weakening the
spirit renders him excitable;–on the least provocation he flames up at once, and
is speedily extinguished; instead of having spirit he grows irritable and passio-
nate and is quite impracticable.
Exactly.
And so in gymnastics, if a man takes violent exercise and is a great feeder, and
the reverse of a great student of music and philosophy, at first the high condition
of his body fills him with pride and spirit, and he becomes twice the man that
he was.
Certainly.
And what happens? if he do nothing else, and holds no converse with the
Muses, does not even that intelligence which there may be in him, having no
taste of any sort of learning or enquiry or thought or culture, grow feeble and
dull and blind, his mind never waking up or receiving nourishment, and his
senses not being purged of their mists?
True, he said.
And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncivilized, never using the

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weapon of persuasion,–he is like a wild beast, all violence and fierceness, and
knows no other way of dealing; and he lives in all ignorance and evil conditions,
and has no sense of propriety and grace.
That is quite true, he said.
And as there are two principles of human nature, one the spirited and the
other the philosophical, some God, as I should say, has given mankind two
arts answering to them (and only indirectly to the soul and body), in order that
these two principles (like the strings of an instrument) may be relaxed or drawn
tighter until they are duly harmonized.
That appears to be the intention.
And he who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest proportions, and best
attempers them to the soul, may be rightly called the true musician and harmo-
nist in a far higher sense than the tuner of the strings.
You are quite right, Socrates.
And such a presiding genius will be always required in our State if the govern-
ment is to last.
Yes, he will be absolutely necessary.
Such, then, are our principles of nurture and education: Where would be the
use of going into further details about the dances of our citizens, or about their
hunting and coursing, their gymnastic and equestrian contests? For these all
follow the general principle, and having found that, we shall have no difficulty
in discovering them.
I dare say that there will be no difficulty.
Very good, I said; then what is the next question? Must we not ask who are to
be rulers and who subjects?
Certainly.
There can be no doubt that the elder must rule the younger.
Clearly.
And that the best of these must rule.
That is also clear.
Now, are not the best husbandmen those who are most devoted to husbandry?
Yes.
And as we are to have the best of guardians for our city, must they not be those

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who have most the character of guardians?

Yes.
And to this end they ought to be wise and efficient, and to have a special care
of the State?
True.
And a man will be most likely to care about that which he loves?
To be sure.
And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as having the same
interests with himself, and that of which the good or evil fortune is supposed
by him at any time most to affect his own?
Very true, he replied.
Then there must be a selection. Let us note among the guardians those who in
their whole life show the greatest eagerness to do what is for the good of their
country, and the greatest repugnance to do what is against her interests.
Those are the right men.
And they will have to be watched at every age, in order that we may see
whether they preserve their resolution, and never, under the influence either
of force or enchantment, forget or cast off their sense of duty to the State.
How cast off? he said.
I will explain to you, I replied. A resolution may go out of a man’s mind either
with his will or against his will; with his will when he gets rid of a falsehood
and learns better, against his will whenever he is deprived of a truth.
I understand, he said, the willing loss of a resolution; the meaning of the unwil-
ling I have yet to learn.
Why, I said, do you not see that men are unwillingly deprived of good, and
willingly of evil? Is not to have lost the truth an evil, and to possess the truth a
good? and you would agree that to conceive things as they are is to possess the
truth?
Yes, he replied; I agree with you in thinking that mankind are deprived of truth
against their will.
And is not this involuntary deprivation caused either by theft, or force, or en-
chantment?
Still, he replied, I do not understand you.

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I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the tragedians. I only mean that
some men are changed by persuasion and that others forget; argument steals
away the hearts of one class, and time of the other; and this I call theft. Now
you understand me?
Yes.
Those again who are forced, are those whom the violence of some pain or grief
compels to change their opinion.
I understand, he said, and you are quite right.
And you would also acknowledge that the enchanted are those who change
their minds either under the softer influence of pleasure, or the sterner influence
of fear?
Yes, he said; everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
Therefore, as I was just now saying, we must enquire who are the best guardians
of their own conviction that what they think the interest of the State is to be the
rule of their lives. We must watch them from their youth upwards, and make
them perform actions in which they are most likely to forget or to be deceived,
and he who remembers and is not deceived is to be selected, and he who fails
in the trial is to be rejected. That will be the way?
Yes.
And there should also be toils and pains and conflicts prescribed for them, in
which they will be made to give further proof of the same qualities.
Very right, he replied.
And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments–that is the third sort of
test–and see what will be their behaviour: like those who take colts amid noise
and tumult to see if they are of a timid nature, so must we take our youth amid
terrors of some kind, and again pass them into pleasures, and prove them more
thoroughly than gold is proved in the furnace, that we may discover whether
they are armed against all enchantments, and of a noble bearing always, good
guardians of themselves and of the music which they have learned, and retai-
ning under all circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as will
be most serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he who at every age,
as boy and youth and in mature life, has come out of the trial victorious and pu-
re, shall be appointed a ruler and guardian of the State; he shall be honoured in
life and death, and shall receive sepulture and other memorials of honour, the
greatest that we have to give. But him who fails, we must reject. I am inclined
to think that this is the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians should
be chosen and appointed. I speak generally, and not with any pretension to
exactness.

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And, speaking generally, I agree with you, he said.

And perhaps the word ’guardian’ in the fullest sense ought to be applied to this
higher class only who preserve us against foreign enemies and maintain peace
among our citizens at home, that the one may not have the will, or the others
the power, to harm us. The young men whom we before called guardians may
be more properly designated auxiliaries and supporters of the principles of the
rulers.
I agree with you, he said.
How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately
spoke–just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and
at any rate the rest of the city?
What sort of lie? he said.
Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician tale (Laws) of what has often
occurred before now in other places, (as the poets say, and have made the world
believe,) though not in our time, and I do not know whether such an event could
ever happen again, or could now even be made probable, if it did.
How your words seem to hesitate on your lips!
You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you have heard.
Speak, he said, and fear not.
Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face,
or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to communi-
cate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people.
They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training
which they received from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time
they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they them-
selves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were
completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country being
their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to
defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the
earth and their own brothers.
You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were going
to tell.
True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have only told you half. Citizens,
we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you
differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of
these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour; others
he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen

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and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally
be preserved in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden
parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And
God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above all else, that there
is nothing which they should so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be
such good guardians, as of the purity of the race. They should observe what
elements mingle in their offspring; for if the son of a golden or silver parent
has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks,
and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has to
descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be
sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are raised
to honour, and become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when
a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale; is
there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?
Not in the present generation, he replied; there is no way of accomplishing this;
but their sons may be made to believe in the tale, and their sons’ sons, and
posterity after them.
I see the difficulty, I replied; yet the fostering of such a belief will make them
care more for the city and for one another. Enough, however, of the fiction,
which may now fly abroad upon the wings of rumour, while we arm our earth-
born heroes, and lead them forth under the command of their rulers. Let them
look round and select a spot whence they can best suppress insurrection, if any
prove refractory within, and also defend themselves against enemies, who like
wolves may come down on the fold from without; there let them encamp, and
when they have encamped, let them sacrifice to the proper Gods and prepare
their dwellings.
Just so, he said.
And their dwellings must be such as will shield them against the cold of winter
and the heat of summer.
I suppose that you mean houses, he replied.
Yes, I said; but they must be the houses of soldiers, and not of shop- keepers.
What is the difference? he said.
That I will endeavour to explain, I replied. To keep watch-dogs, who, from
want of discipline or hunger, or some evil habit or other, would turn upon the
sheep and worry them, and behave not like dogs but wolves, would be a foul
and monstrous thing in a shepherd?
Truly monstrous, he said.
And therefore every care must be taken that our auxiliaries, being stronger than

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our citizens, may not grow to be too much for them and become savage tyrants
instead of friends and allies?
Yes, great care should be taken.
And would not a really good education furnish the best safeguard?
But they are well-educated already, he replied.
I cannot be so confident, my dear Glaucon, I said; I am much more certain
that they ought to be, and that true education, whatever that may be, will have
the greatest tendency to civilize and humanize them in their relations to one
another, and to those who are under their protection.
Very true, he replied.
And not only their education, but their habitations, and all that belongs to them,
should be such as will neither impair their virtue as guardians, nor tempt them
to prey upon the other citizens. Any man of sense must acknowledge that.
He must.
Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to realize
our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should have any property
of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither should they have a
private house or store closed against any one who has a mind to enter; their
provisions should be only such as are required by trained warriors, who are
men of temperance and courage; they should agree to receive from the citizens a
fixed rate of pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they
will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will
tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they
have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not
to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner metal
has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And
they alone of all the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under
the same roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be
their salvation, and they will be the saviours of the State. But should they ever
acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become housekeepers
and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants instead of allies of
the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against,
they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external
enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State,
will be at hand. For all which reasons may we not say that thus shall our State be
ordered, and that these shall be the regulations appointed by us for guardians
concerning their houses and all other matters?
Yes, said Glaucon.

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