reflecting upon all our words, which appear to me to be just the thing for a young man to hear and learn.  I would venture, then, to offer to the Director of Education this treatise of laws as a pattern for his guidance; and in case he should find any similar compositions, written or oral, I would have him carefully preserve them, and commit them in the first place to the teachers who are willing to learn them (he should turn off the teacher who refuses), and let them communicate the lesson to the young.

I have said enough to the teacher of letters; and now we will proceed to the teacher of the lyre.  He must be reminded of the advice which we gave to the sexagenarian minstrels; like them he should be quick to perceive the rhythms suited to the expression of virtue, and to reject the opposite.  With a view to the attainment of this object, the pupil and his instructor are to use the lyre because its notes are pure; the voice and string should coincide note for note:  nor should there be complex harmonies and contrasts of intervals, or variations of times or rhythms.  Three years’ study is not long enough to give a knowledge of these intricacies; and our pupils will have many things of more importance to learn.  The tunes and hymns which are to be consecrated for each festival have been already determined by us.

Having given these instructions to the Director of Music, let us now proceed to dancing and gymnastic, which must also be taught to boys and girls by masters and mistresses.  Our minister of education will have a great deal to do; and being an old man, how will he get through so much work?  There is no difficulty;—­the law will provide him with assistants, male and female; and he will consider how important his office is, and how great the responsibility of choosing them.  For if education prospers, the vessel of state sails merrily along; or if education fails, the consequences are not even to be mentioned.  Of dancing and gymnastics something has been said already.  We include under the latter military exercises, the various uses of arms, all that relates to horsemanship, and military evolutions and tactics.  There should be public teachers of both arts, paid by the state, and women as well as men should be trained in them.  The maidens should learn the armed dance, and the grown-up women be practised in drill and the use of arms, if only in case of extremity, when the men are gone out to battle, and they are left to guard their families.  Birds and beasts defend their young, but women instead of fighting run to the altars, thus degrading man below the level of the animals.  ’Such a lack of education, Stranger, is both unseemly and dangerous.’