Socrates who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself the poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool, but we ourselves, for our souls’ good, should continue to employ

Socrates the more austere and less delightful poet and tale-teller, who would imitate the diction of the good man and would tell his tale in the patterns which we prescribed in the beginning, when we set out to educate our soldiers.” “We certainly should do that if it rested with us.” “And now, my friend,” said I, “we may say that we have completely finished the part of music that concerns speeches and tales. For we have set forth what is to be said and how it is to be said.” “I think so too,” he replied.

“After this, then,” said I, “comes the manner of song and tunes?” “Obviously.” “And having gone thus far, could not everybody discover what we must say of their character in order to conform to what has already been said?” “I am afraid that “everybody” does not include me,” laughed Glaucon; “I cannot sufficiently divine off-hand what we ought to say, though I have a suspicion.” “You certainly, I presume,” said I,

“have sufficient a understanding of this—that the song is composed of three things, the words, the tune, and the rhythm?” “Yes,” said he, “that much.” “And so far as it is words, it surely in no manner differs from words not sung in the requirement of conformity to the patterns and manner that we have prescribed?” “True,” he said. “And again, the music and the rhythm must follow the speech.” “Of course.” “But we said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words.” “We do not.” “What, then,

are the dirge-like modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician.” “The mixed Lydian,” he said, “and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes.” “These, then,” said I, “we must do away with. For they are useless even to women who are to make the best of themselves, let alone to men.” “Assuredly.” “But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness and sloth.” “Yes.” “What, then, are the soft and convivial modes?” “There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes

that are called lax.”

Socrates “Will you make any use of them for warriors?” “None at all,” he said; “but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian.” “I don’t know the musical modes,” I said, “but leave us that mode that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap,

Socrates in all these conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but voluntary, either trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him—whether it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and admonition—or contrariwise yielding himself to another who petitioning or teaching him or trying to change his opinions, and in consequence faring according to his wish, and not bearing himself arrogantly, but in all this acting modestly and moderately

Socrates and acquiescing in the outcome. Leave us these two modes—the forced and the voluntary—that will best imitate the utterances of men failing or succeeding, the temperate, the brave—leave us these.” “Well,” said he, “you are asking me to leave none other than those I just spoke of.” “Then,” said I, “we shall not need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings or whose compass includes all the harmonies.” “Not in my opinion,” said he. “Then we shall not maintain makers of triangles and harps and all other

Socrates many stringed and poly-harmonic instruments.” “Apparently not.” “Well, will you admit to the city flute-makers and flute-players? Or is not the flute the most “many-stringed” of instruments and do not the pan-harmonics themselves imitate it?” “Clearly,” he said. “You have left,” said I, “the lyre and the cither. These are useful in the city, and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe on.” “So our argument indicates,” he said.

Socrates “We are not innovating, my friend, in preferring Apollo and the instruments of Apollo to Marsyas and his instruments.” “No, by heaven!” he said, “I think not.” “And by the dog,” said I, “we have all unawares purged the city which a little while ago we said was wanton.” “In that we show our good sense,” he said.

“Come then, let us complete the purification.”

“For upon harmonies would follow the consideration of rhythms: we must not pursue complexity nor great variety in the basic movements, but must observe what are the rhythms of a life that is orderly and brave, and after observing them

Socrates require the foot and the air to conform to that kind of man’s speech and not the speech to the foot and the tune. What those rhythms would be, it is for you to tell us as you did the musical modes.” “Nay, in faith,” he said, “I cannot tell. For that there are some three forms from which the feet are combined, just as there are four in the notes of the voice whence come all harmonies, is a thing that I have observed and could tell. But which are imitations of which sort of life, I am unable to say.”

Socrates “Well,” said I, “on this point we will take counsel with Damon, too, as to which are the feet appropriate to illiberality, and insolence or madness or other evils, and what rhythms we must leave for their opposites; and I believe I have heard him obscurely speaking of a foot that he called the enoplios, a composite foot, and a dactyl and an heroic foot, which he arranged, I know not how, to be equal up and down in the interchange of long and short, and unless I am mistaken he used the term iambic, and there was another foot that he called the trochaic,

Socrates and he added the quantities long and short. And in some of these, I believe, he censured and commended the tempo of the foot no less than the rhythm itself, or else some combination of the two; I can’t say. But, as I said, let this matter be postponed for Damon’s consideration. For to determine the truth of these would require no little discourse. Do you think otherwise?” “No, by heaven, I do not.” “But this you are able to determine—that seemliness and unseemliness are attendant upon the good rhythm and the bad.” “Of course.” “And, further, that

Socrates good rhythm and bad rhythm accompany, the one fair diction, assimilating itself thereto, and the other the opposite, and so of the apt and the unapt, if, as we were just now saying, the rhythm and harmony follow the words and not the words these.” “They certainly must follow the speech,” he said. “And what of the manner of the diction, and the speech?” said I. “Do they not follow and conform to the disposition of the soul?” “Of course.” “And all the rest to the diction?” “Yes.” “Good speech, then, good accord, and good grace,

Socrates and good rhythm wait upon good disposition, not that weakness of head which we euphemistically style goodness of heart, but the truly good and fair disposition of the character and the mind.” “By all means,” he said. “And must not our youth pursue these everywhere if they are to do what it is truly theirs to do?” “They must indeed.”

“And there is surely much of these qualities in painting

Socrates and in all similar craftsmanship—weaving is full of them and embroidery and architecture and likewise the manufacture of household furnishings and thereto the natural bodies of animals and plants as well. For in all these there is grace or gracelessness. And gracelessness and evil rhythm and disharmony are akin to evil speaking and the evil temper but the opposites are the symbols and the kin of the opposites, the sober and good disposition.” “Entirely so,” he said.

“Is it, then, only the poets that we must supervise and compel to embody in their poems the semblance of the good character or else not write poetry among us, or must we keep watch over the other craftsmen, and forbid them to represent the evil disposition, the licentious, the illiberal, the graceless, either in the likeness of living creatures or in buildings or in any other product of their art, on penalty, if unable to obey, of being forbidden to practise their art among us, that our guardians may not be bred among symbols of evil, as it were

in a pasturage of poisonous herbs, lest grazing freely and cropping from many such day by day they little by little and all unawares accumulate and build up a huge mass of evil in their own souls. But we must look for those craftsmen who by the happy gift of nature are capable of following the trail of true beauty and grace, that our young men, dwelling as it were in a salubrious region, may receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings from wholesome places health,

and so from earliest childhood insensibly guide them to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with beautiful reason.” “Yes,” he said, “that would be far the best education for them.” “And is it not for this reason, Glaucon,” said I, “that education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained,

and otherwise the contrary?”