fear which the coward never knows—­ made them fight for their altars and their homes, and saved them from being dispersed all over the world.  ’Your words, Athenian, are worthy of your country.’  And you Megillus, who have inherited the virtues of your ancestors, are worthy to hear them.  Let me ask you to take the moral of my tale.  The Persians have lost their liberty in absolute slavery, and we in absolute freedom.  In ancient times the Athenian people were not the masters, but the servants of the laws.  ‘Of what laws?’ In the first place, there were laws about music, and the music was of various kinds:  there was one kind which consisted of hymns, another of lamentations; there was also the paean and the dithyramb, and the so-called ‘laws’ (nomoi) or strains, which were played upon the harp.  The regulation of such matters was not left to the whistling and clapping of the crowd; there was silence while the judges decided, and the boys, and the audience in general, were kept in order by raps of a stick.  But after a while there arose a new race of poets, men of genius certainly, however careless of musical truth and propriety, who made pleasure the only criterion of excellence.  That was a test which the spectators could apply for themselves; the whole audience, instead of being mute, became vociferous, and a theatrocracy took the place of an aristocracy.  Could the judges have been free, there would have been no great harm done; a musical democracy would have been well enough—­ but conceit has been our ruin.  Everybody knows everything, and is ready to say anything; the age of reverence is gone, and the age of irreverence and licentiousness has succeeded.  ‘Most true.’  And with this freedom comes disobedience to rulers, parents, elders,—­in the latter days to the law also; the end returns to the beginning, and the old Titanic nature reappears—­men have no regard for the Gods or for oaths; and the evils of the human race seem as if they would never cease.  Whither are we running away?  Once more we must pull up the argument with bit and curb, lest, as the proverb says, we should fall off our ass.  ‘Good.’  Our purpose in what we have been saying is to prove that the legislator ought to aim at securing for a state three things—­freedom, friendship, wisdom.  And we chose two states;—­one was the type of freedom, and the other of despotism; and we showed that when in a mean they attained their highest perfection.  In a similar spirit we spoke of the Dorian expedition, and of the settlement on the hills and in the plains of Troy; and of music, and the use of wine, and of all that preceded.

And now, has our discussion been of any use?  ’Yes, stranger; for by a singular coincidence the Cretans are about to send out a colony, of which the settlement has been confided to the Cnosians.  Ten commissioners, of whom I am one, are to give laws to the colonists, and we may give any which we please—­Cretan or foreign.  And therefore let us make a selection from what has been said, and then proceed with the construction of the state.’  Very good:  I am quite at your service.  ‘And I too,’ says Megillus.