Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [209]
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Well, and will he not be yet more ashamed if he has to stand up and sing in the theatre to a mixed audience?--and if moreover when he is required to do so, like the other choirs who contend for prizes, and have been trained under a singing master, he is pinched and hungry, he will certainly have a feeling of shame and discomfort which will make him very unwilling to exhibit.
CLEINIAS: No doubt.
ATHENIAN: How, then, shall we reassure him, and get him to sing? Shall we begin by enacting that boys shall not taste wine at all until they are eighteen years of age; we will tell them that fire must not be poured upon fire, whether in the body or in the soul, until they begin to go to work-- this is a precaution which has to be taken against the excitableness of youth;--afterwards they may taste wine in moderation up to the age of thirty, but while a man is young he should abstain altogether from intoxication and from excess of wine; when, at length, he has reached forty years, after dinner at a public mess, he may invite not only the other Gods, but Dionysus above all, to the mystery and festivity of the elder men, making use of the wine which he has given men to lighten the sourness of old age; that in age we may renew our youth, and forget our sorrows; and also in order that the nature of the soul, like iron melted in the fire, may become softer and so more impressible. In the first place, will not any one who is thus mellowed be more ready and less ashamed to sing--I do not say before a large audience, but before a moderate company; nor yet among strangers, but among his familiars, and, as we have often said, to chant, and to enchant?
CLEINIAS: He will be far more ready.
ATHENIAN: There will be no impropriety in our using such a method of persuading them to join with us in song.
CLEINIAS: None at all.
ATHENIAN: And what strain will they sing, and what muse will they hymn? The strain should clearly be one suitable to them.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And what strain is suitable for heroes? Shall they sing a choric strain?
CLEINIAS: Truly, Stranger, we of Crete and Lacedaemon know no strain other than that which we have learnt and been accustomed to sing in our chorus.
ATHENIAN: I dare say; for you have never acquired the knowledge of the most beautiful kind of song, in your military way of life, which is modelled after the camp, and is not like that of dwellers in cities; and you have your young men herding and feeding together like young colts. No one takes his own individual colt and drags him away from his fellows against his will, raging and foaming, and gives him a groom to attend to him alone, and trains and rubs him down privately, and gives him the qualities in education which will make him not only a good soldier, but also a governor of a state and of cities. Such an one, as we said at first, would be a greater warrior than he of whom Tyrtaeus sings; and he would honour courage everywhere, but always as the fourth, and not as the first part of virtue, either in individuals or states.
CLEINIAS: Once more, Stranger, I must complain that you depreciate our lawgivers.
ATHENIAN: Not intentionally, if at all, my good friend; but whither the argument leads, thither let us follow; for if there be indeed some strain of song more beautiful than that of the choruses or the public theatres, I should like to impart it to those who, as we say, are ashamed of these, and want to have the best.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: When things have an accompanying charm, either the best thing in them is this very charm, or there is some rightness or utility possessed by them;--for example, I should say that eating and drinking, and the use of food in general, have an accompanying charm which we call pleasure; but that this rightness and utility is just the healthfulness of the things served up to us, which is their true rightness.