: Then the boys ought to have dancing masters, and the girls
dancing mistresses to exercise them.

CLEINIAS: Very good.

ATHENIAN: Then once more let us summon him who has the chief concern
in the business, the superintendent of youth [i.e. the director of
education]; he will have plenty to do, if he is to have the charge of
music and gymnastic.

CLEINIAS: But how will an old man be able to attend to such great
charges?

ATHENIAN: O my friend, there will be no difficulty, for the law has
already given and will give him permission to select as his assistants
in this charge any citizens, male or female, whom he desires; and he
will know whom he ought to choose, and will be anxious not to make a
mistake, from a due sense of responsibility, and from a consciousness of
the importance of his office, and also because he will consider that
if young men have been and are well brought up, then all things go
swimmingly, but if not, it is not meet to say, nor do we say, what will
follow, lest the regarders of omens should take alarm about our
infant state. Many things have been said by us about dancing and about
gymnastic movements in general; for we include under gymnastics all
military exercises, such as archery, and all hurling of weapons, and the
use of the light shield, and all fighting with heavy arms, and military
evolutions, and movements of armies, and encampings, and all that
relates to horsemanship. Of all these things there ought to be public
teachers, receiving pay from the state, and their pupils should be the
men and boys in the state, and also the girls and women, who are to know
all these things. While they are yet girls they should have practised
dancing in arms and the whole art of fighting--when grown-up women,
they should apply themselves to evolutions and tactics, and the mode of
grounding and taking up arms; if for no other reason, yet in case
the whole military force should have to leave the city and carry on
operations of war outside, that those who will have to guard the young
and the rest of the city may be equal to the task; and, on the other
hand, when enemies, whether barbarian or Hellenic, come from without
with mighty force and make a violent assault upon them, and thus compel
them to fight for the possession of the city, which is far from being
an impossibility, great would be the disgrace to the state, if the women
had been so miserably trained that they could not fight for their young,
as bir