xcellent, O Lacedaemonian Stranger. But how ought we to
define courage? Is it to be regarded only as a combat against fears and
pains, or also against desires and pleasures, and against flatteries;
which exercise such a tremendous power, that they make the hearts even
of respectable citizens to melt like wax?

MEGILLUS: I should say the latter.

ATHENIAN: In what preceded, as you will remember, our Cnosian friend was
speaking of a man or a city being inferior to themselves:--Were you not,
Cleinias?

CLEINIAS: I was.

ATHENIAN: Now, which is in the truest sense inferior, the man who is
overcome by pleasure or by pain?

CLEINIAS: I should say the man who is overcome by pleasure; for all men
deem him to be inferior in a more disgraceful sense, than the other who
is overcome by pain.

ATHENIAN: But surely the lawgivers of Crete and Lacedaemon have not
legislated for a courage which is lame of one leg, able only to meet
attacks which come from the left, but impotent against the insidious
flatteries which come from the right?

CLEINIAS: Able to meet both, I should say.

ATHENIAN: Then let me once more ask, what institutions have you in
either of your states which give a taste of pleasures, and do not avoid
them any more than they avoid pains; but which set a person in the midst
of them, and compel or induce him by the prospect of reward to get the
better of them? Where is an ordinance about pleasure similar to that
about pain to be found in your laws? Tell me what there is of this
nature among you:--What is there which makes your citizen equally brave
against pleasure and pain, conquering what they ought to conquer, and
superior to the enemies who are most dangerous and nearest home?

MEGILLUS: I was able to tell you, Stranger, many laws which were
directed against pain; but I do not know that I can point out any great
or obvious examples of similar institutions which are concerned with
pleasure; there are some lesser provisions, however, which I might
mention.

CLEINIAS: Neither can I show anything of that sort which is at all
equally prominent in the Cretan laws.

ATHENIAN: No wonder, my dear friends; and if, as is very likely, in our
search after the true and good, one of us may have to censure the laws
of the others, we must not be offended, but take kindly what another
says.

CLEINIAS: You are quite right, Athenian Stranger, and we will do as you
say.

ATHENIAN: At our time of life, Cleinias, there shou