Ath. Whether the better is ever really conquered by the worse, is aquestion which requires more discussion, and may be therefore left forthe present. But I now quite understand your meaning when you say thatcitizens who are of the same race and live in the same cities mayunjustly conspire, and having the superiority in numbers mayovercome and enslave the few just; and when they prevail, the statemay be truly called its own inferior and therefore bad; and whenthey are defeated, its own superior and therefore good.
Cle. Your remark, Stranger, is a paradox, and yet we cannot possiblydeny it.
Ath. Here is another case for consideration;-in a family there maybe several brothers, who are the offspring of a single pair; verypossibly the majority of them may be unjust, and the just may be ina minority.
Cle. Very possibly.
Ath. And you and I ought not to raise a question of words as towhether this family and household are rightly said to be superior whenthey conquer, and inferior when they are conquered; for we are not nowconsidering what may or may not be the proper or customary way ofspeaking, but we are considering the natural principles of right andwrong in laws.
Cle. What you say, Stranger, is most true.
Meg. Quite excellent, in my opinion, as far as we have gone.
Ath. Again; might there not be a judge over these brethren, ofwhom we were speaking?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Now, which would be the better judge-one who destroyed thebad and appointed the good to govern themselves; or one who, whileallowing the good to govern, let the bad live, and made themvoluntarily submit? Or third, I suppose, in the scale of excellencemight be placed a judge, who, finding the family distracted, notonly did not destroy any one, but reconciled them to one another forever after, and gave them laws which they mutually observed, and wasable to keep them friends.
Cle. The last would be by far the best sort of judge and legislator.
Ath. And yet the aim of all the laws which he gave would be thereverse of war.
Cle. Very true.
Ath. And will he who constitutes the state and orders the life ofman have in view external war, or that kind of intestine war calledcivil, which no one, if he could prevent, would like to have occurringin his own state; and when occurring, every one would wish to bequit of as soon as possible?
Cle. He would have the latter chiefly in view.
Ath. And would he prefer that this civil war should be terminated bythe destruction of one of the parties, and by the victory of theother, or that peace and friendship should be re-established, andthat, being reconciled, they should give their attention to foreignenemies?
Cle. Every one would desire the latter in the case of his own state.
Ath. And would not that also be the desire of the legislator?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. And would not every one always make laws for the sake of thebest?
Cle. To be sure.
Ath. But war, whether external or civil, is not the best, and theneed of either is to be deprecated; but peace with one another, andgood will, are best. Nor is the victory of the state over itself to beregarded as a really good thing, but as a necessity; a man might aswell say that the body was in the best state when sick and purged bymedicine, forgetting that there is also a state of the body whichneeds no purge. And in like manner no one can be a true statesman,whether he aims at the happiness of the individual or state, who looksonly, or first of all, to external warfare; nor will he ever be asound legislator who orders peace for the sake of war, and not war forthe sake of peace.
Cle. I suppose that there is truth, Stranger, in that remark ofyours; and yet I am greatly mistaken if war is not the entire aimand object of our own institutions, and also of the Lacedaemonian.
Ath. I dare say; but there is no reason why we should rudely quarrelwith one another about your legislators, instead of gently questioningthem, seeing that both we and they are equally in earnest. Pleasefollow me and the argument closely:-And first I will put forwardTyrtaeus, an Athenian by birth, but also a Spartan citizen, who of allmen was most eager about war: Well, he says, "I sing not, I carenot, about any man, even if he were the richest of men, andpossessed every good (and then he gives a whole list of them), if hebe not at all times a brave warrior." I imagine that you, too, musthave heard his poems; our Lacedaemonian friend has probably heard morethan enough of them.
Meg. Very true.
Cle. And they have found their way from Lacedaemon to Crete.
Ath. Come now and let us all join in asking this question ofTyrtaeus: O most divine poet, we will say to him, the excellent praisewhich you have bestowed on those who excel in war sufficientlyproves that you are wise and good, and I and Megillus and Cleiniasof Cnosus do, as I believe, entirely agree with you. But we shouldlike to be quite sure that we are speaking of the same men; tell us,then, do you agree with us in thinking that there are two kinds ofwar; or what would you say? A far inferior man to Tyrtaeus wouldhave no difficulty in replying quite truly, that war is of two kindsone which is universally called civil war, and is as we were justnow saying, of all wars the worst; the other, as we should alladmit, in which we fall out with other nations who are of adifferent race, is a far milder form of warfare.
Cle. Certainly, far milder.
Ath. Well, now, when you praise and blame war in this high-flownstrain, whom are you praising or blaming, and to which kind of war areyou referring? I suppose that you must mean foreign war, if I am tojudge from expressions of yours in which you say that you abominatethoseWho refuse to look upon fields of blood, and will not draw nearand strike at their enemies.
And we shall naturally go on to say to him-You, Tyrtaeus, as it seems,praise those who distinguish themselves in external and foreign war;and he must admit this.
Cle. Evidently.
Ath. They are good; but we say that there are still better men whosevirtue is displayed in the greatest of all battles. And we too havea poet whom we summon as a witness, Theognis, citizen of Megara inSicily:
Cyrnus, he who is faithful in a civil broil is worth his weight ingold and silver.