Book VIII - Page 2

summer heat; and
they should go out en masse, including their wives and their children,
when the magistrates determine to lead forth the whole people, or in
separate portions when summoned by them; and they should always provide
that there should be games and sacrificial feasts, and they should have
tournaments, imitating in as lively a manner as they can real battles. And
they should distribute prizes of victory and valour to the competitors,
passing censures and encomiums on one another according to the characters
which they bear in the contests and in their whole life, honouring him who
seems to be the best, and blaming him who is the opposite. And let poets
celebrate the victors--not however every poet, but only one who in the
first place is not less than fifty years of age; nor should he be one who,
although he may have musical and poetical gifts, has never in his life
done any noble or illustrious action; but those who are themselves good
and also honourable in the state, creators of noble actions--let their
poems be sung, even though they be not very musical. And let the judgment
of them rest with the instructor of youth and the other guardians of the
laws, who shall give them this privilege, and they alone shall be free to
sing; but the rest of the world shall not have this liberty. Nor shall any
one dare to sing a song which has not been approved by the judgment of the
guardians of the laws, not even if his strain be sweeter than the songs of
Thamyras and Orpheus; but only such poems as have been judged sacred and
dedicated to the Gods, and such as are the works of good men, in which
praise or blame has been awarded and which have been deemed to fulfil
their design fairly.

The regulations about war, and about liberty of speech in poetry, ought to
apply equally to men and women. The legislator may be supposed to argue
the question in his own mind: Who are my citizens for whom I have set in
order the city? Are they not competitors in the greatest of all contests,
and have they not innumerable rivals? To be sure, will be the natural
reply. Well, but if we were training boxers, or pancratiasts, or any other
sort of athletes, would they never meet until the hour of contest arrived;
and should we do nothing to prepare ourselves previously by daily
practice? Surely, if we were boxers, we should have been learning to fight
for many days before, and exercising ourselves in imitating all those
blows and wards which we were intending to use in the hour of conflict;
and in order that we might come as near to reality as possible, instead of
cestuses we should put on boxing-gloves, that the blows and the wards
might be practised by us to the utmost of our power. And if there were a
lack of competitors, the ridicule of