Crete.

ATHENIAN: Come now and let us all join in asking this question of
Tyrtaeus: O most divine poet, we will say to him, the excellent praise
which you have bestowed on those who excel in war sufficiently proves
that you are wise and good, and I and Megillus and Cleinias of Cnosus
do, as I believe, entirely agree with you. But we should like to be
quite sure that we are speaking of the same men; tell us, then, do you
agree with us in thinking that there are two kinds of war; or what would
you say? A far inferior man to Tyrtaeus would have no difficulty
in replying quite truly, that war is of two kinds,--one which is
universally called civil war, and is, as we were just now saying, of all
wars the worst; the other, as we should all admit, in which we fall out
with other nations who are of a different race, is a far milder form of
warfare.

CLEINIAS: Certainly, far milder.

ATHENIAN: Well, now, when you praise and blame war in this high-flown
strain, whom are you praising or blaming, and to which kind of war are
you referring? I suppose that you must mean foreign war, if I am to
judge from expressions of yours in which you say that you abominate
those

'Who refuse to look upon fields of blood, and will not draw near and
strike at their enemies.'

And we shall naturally go on to say to him,--You, Tyrtaeus, as it seems,
praise those who distinguish themselves in external and foreign war; and
he must admit this.

CLEINIAS: Evidently.

ATHENIAN: They are good; but we say that there are still better men
whose virtue is displayed in the greatest of all battles. And we too
have a poet whom we summon as a witness, Theognis, citizen of Megara in
Sicily:

'Cyrnus,' he says, 'he who is faithful in a civil broil is worth his
weight in gold and silver.'

And such an one is far better, as we affirm, than the other in a more
difficult kind of war, much in the same degree as justice and temperance
and wisdom, when united with courage, are better than courage only; for
a man cannot be faithful and good in civil strife without having all
virtue. But in the war of which Tyrtaeus speaks, many a mercenary
soldier will take his stand and be ready to die at his post, and yet
they are generally and almost without exception insolent, unjust,
violent men, and the most senseless of human beings. You will ask what
the conclusion is, and what I am seeking to prove: I maintain that
the divine legislator of Crete, like any other who is