power in public opinion when no breath is heard adverse to the law; and the legislator who would enslave these enslaving passions must consecrate such a public opinion all through the city.  ‘Good:  but how can you create it?’ A fair objection; but I promised to try and find some means of restraining loves to their natural objects.  A law which would extirpate unnatural love as effectually as incest is at present extirpated, would be the source of innumerable blessings, because it would be in accordance with nature, and would get rid of excess in eating and drinking and of adulteries and frenzies, making men love their wives, and having other excellent effects.  I can imagine that some lusty youth overhears what we are saying, and roars out in abusive terms that we are legislating for impossibilities.  And so a person might have said of the syssitia, or common meals; but this is refuted by facts, although even now they are not extended to women.  ‘True.’  There is no impossibility or super-humanity in my proposed law, as I shall endeavour to prove.  ‘Do so.’  Will not a man find abstinence more easy when his body is sound than when he is in ill-condition?  ‘Yes.’  Have we not heard of Iccus of Tarentum and other wrestlers who abstained wholly for a time?  Yet they were infinitely worse educated than our citizens, and far more lusty in their bodies.  And shall they have abstained for the sake of an athletic contest, and our citizens be incapable of a similar endurance for the sake of a much nobler victory,—­the victory over pleasure, which is true happiness?  Will not the fear of impiety enable them to conquer that which many who were inferior to them have conquered?  ‘I dare say.’  And therefore the law must plainly declare that our citizens should not fall below the other animals, who live all together in flocks, and yet remain pure and chaste until the time of procreation comes, when they pair, and are ever after faithful to their compact.  But if the corruption of public opinion is too great to allow our first law to be carried out, then our guardians of the law must turn legislators, and try their hand at a second law.  They must minimize the appetites, diverting the vigour of youth into other channels, allowing the practice of love in secret, but making detection shameful.  Three higher principles may be brought to bear on all these corrupt natures.  ‘What are they?’ Religion, honour, and the love of the higher qualities of the soul.  Perhaps this is a dream only, yet it is the best of dreams; and if not the whole, still, by the grace of God, a part of what we desire may be realized.  Either men may learn to abstain wholly from any loves, natural or unnatural, except of their wedded wives; or, at least, they may give up unnatural loves; or, if detected, they shall be punished with loss of citizenship, as aliens from the state in their morals.  ‘I entirely agree with you,’ said Megillus, ‘but Cleinias must speak for himself.’  ’I will give my opinion by-and-by.’