s 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 are armed. The runner
should enter the lists in armour, and in the races which our heralds
proclaim, no prize is to be given except to armed warriors. Let there be
six courses--first, the stadium; secondly, the diaulos or double course;
thirdly, the horse course; fourthly, the long course; fifthly, races (1)
between heavy-armed soldiers who shall pass over sixty stadia and
finish at a temple of Ares, and (2) between still more heavily-armed
competitors who run over smoother ground; sixthly, a race for archers,
who shall run over hill and dale a distance of a hundred stadia, and
their goal shall be a temple of Apollo and Artemis. There shall be three
contests of each kin