The legislator may be conceived to make the following address to himself:  —­With what object am I training my citizens?  Are they not strivers for mastery in the greatest of combats?  Certainly, will be the reply.  And if they were boxers or wrestlers, would they think of entering the lists without many days’ practice?  Would they not as far as possible imitate all the circumstances of the contest; and if they had no one to box with, would they not practise on a lifeless image, heedless of the laughter of the spectators?  And shall our soldiers go out to fight for life and kindred and property unprepared, because sham fights are thought to be ridiculous?  Will not the legislator require that his citizens shall practise war daily, performing lesser exercises without arms, while the combatants on a greater scale will carry arms, and take up positions, and lie in ambuscade?  And let their combats be not without danger, that opportunity may be given for distinction, and the brave man and the coward may receive their meed of honour or disgrace.  If occasionally a man is killed, there is no great harm done—­there are others as good as he is who will replace him; and the state can better afford to lose a few of her citizens than to lose the only means of testing them.

‘We agree, Stranger, that such warlike exercises are necessary.’  But why are they so rarely practised?  Or rather, do we not all know the reasons?  One of them (1) is the inordinate love of wealth.  This absorbs the soul of a man, and leaves him no time for any other pursuit.  Knowledge is valued by him only as it tends to the attainment of wealth.  All is lost in the desire of heaping up gold and silver; anybody is ready to do anything, right or wrong, for the sake of eating and drinking, and the indulgence of his animal passions.  ‘Most true.’  This is one of the causes which prevents a man being a good soldier, or anything else which is good; it converts the temperate and orderly into shopkeepers or servants, and the brave into burglars or pirates.  Many of these latter are men of ability, and are greatly to be pitied, because their souls are hungering and thirsting all their lives long.  The bad forms of government (2) are another reason—­ democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, which, as I was saying, are not states, but states of discord, in which the rulers are afraid of their subjects, and therefore do not like them to become rich, or noble, or valiant.  Now our state will escape both these causes of evil; the society is perfectly free, and has plenty of leisure, and is not allowed by the laws to be absorbed in the pursuit of wealth; hence we have an excellent field for a perfect education, and for the introduction of martial pastimes.  Let us proceed to describe the character of these pastimes.  All gymnastic exercises in our state must have a military character; no other will be allowed.  Activity and quickness are most useful in war; and yet these qualities do not attain their greatest efficiency unless the competitors