mpelled
to pass through life always hungering?

CLEINIAS: Then that is one cause, Stranger; but you spoke of another.

ATHENIAN: Thank you for reminding me.

CLEINIAS: The insatiable lifelong love of wealth, as you were saying,
is one cause which absorbs mankind, and prevents them from rightly
practising the arts of war: Granted; and now tell me, what is the other?

ATHENIAN: Do you imagine that I delay because I am in a perplexity?

CLEINIAS: No; but we think that you are too severe upon the money-loving
temper, of which you seem in the present discussion to have a peculiar
dislike.

ATHENIAN: That is a very fair rebuke, Cleinias; and I will now proceed
to the second cause.

CLEINIAS: Proceed.

ATHENIAN: I say that governments are a cause--democracy, oligarchy,
tyranny, concerning which I have often spoken in the previous discourse;
or rather governments they are not, for none of them exercises a
voluntary rule over voluntary subjects; but they may be truly called
states of discord, in which while the government is voluntary, the
subjects always obey against their will, and have to be coerced; and
the ruler fears the subject, and will not, if he can help, allow him to
become either noble, or rich, or strong, or valiant, or warlike at all.
These two are the chief causes of almost all evils, and of the evils of
which I have been speaking they are notably the causes. But our state
has escaped both of them; for her citizens have the greatest leisure,
and they are not subject to one another, and will, I think, be made by
these laws the reverse of lovers of money. Such a constitution may be
reasonably supposed to be the only one existing which will accept the
education which we have described, and the martial pastimes which have
been perfected according to our idea.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Then next we must remember, about all gymnastic contests, that
only the warlike sort of them are to be practised and to have prizes
of victory; and those which are not military are to be given up. The
military sort had better be completely described and established by law;
and first, let us speak of running and swiftness.

CLEINIAS: Very good.

ATHENIAN: Certainly the most military of all qualities is general
activity of body, whether of foot or hand. For escaping or for capturing
an enemy, quickness of foot is required; but hand-to-hand conflict and
combat need vigour and strength.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: N