The mercenary soldier is ready to die at his post; yet he is commonly a violent, senseless creature.  And the legislator, whether inspired or uninspired, will make laws with a view to the highest virtue; and this is not brute courage, but loyalty in the hour of danger.  The virtue of Tyrtaeus, although needful enough in his own time, is really of a fourth-rate description.  ’You are degrading our legislator to a very low level.’  Nay, we degrade not him, but ourselves, if we believe that the laws of Lycurgus and Minos had a view to war only.  A divine lawgiver would have had regard to all the different kinds of virtue, and have arranged his laws in corresponding classes, and not in the modern fashion, which only makes them after the want of them is felt,—­about inheritances and heiresses and assaults, and the like.  As you truly said, virtue is the business of the legislator; but you went wrong when you referred all legislation to a part of virtue, and to an inferior part.  For the object of laws, whether the Cretan or any other, is to make men happy.  Now happiness or good is of two kinds—­there are divine and there are human goods.  He who has the divine has the human added to him; but he who has lost the greater is deprived of both.  The lesser goods are health, beauty, strength, and, lastly, wealth; not the blind God, Pluto, but one who has eyes to see and follow wisdom.  For mind or wisdom is the most divine of all goods; and next comes temperance, and justice springs from the union of wisdom and temperance with courage, which is the fourth or last.  These four precede other goods, and the legislator will arrange all his ordinances accordingly, the human going back to the divine, and the divine to their leader mind.  There will be enactments about marriage, about education, about all the states and feelings and experiences of men and women, at every age, in weal and woe, in war and peace; upon all the law will fix a stamp of praise and blame.  There will also be regulations about property and expenditure, about contracts, about rewards and punishments, and finally about funeral rites and honours of the dead.  The lawgiver will appoint guardians to preside over these things; and mind will harmonize his ordinances, and show them to be in agreement with temperance and justice.  Now I want to know whether the same principles are observed in the laws of Lycurgus and Minos, or, as I should rather say, of Apollo and Zeus.  We must go through the virtues, beginning with courage, and then we will show that what has preceded has relation to virtue.

‘I wish,’ says the Lacedaemonian, ’that you, Stranger, would first criticize Cleinias and the Cretan laws.’  Yes, is the reply, and I will criticize you and myself, as well as him.  Tell me, Megillus, were not the common meals and gymnastic training instituted by your legislator with a view to war?  ’Yes; and next in the order of importance comes hunting, and fourth the endurance of pain in boxing contests, and in the beatings which are the