old to our disciples from their youth
upwards, if we mean them to honour the gods and their parents, and to
value friendship with one another.

Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.

But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons
besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of
death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

Certainly not, he said.

And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle
rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real
and terrible?

Impossible.

Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales
as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to but rather to
commend the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are
untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.

That will be our duty, he said.

Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages,
beginning with the verses,

I would rather he a serf on the land of a poor and portionless
man than rule over all the dead who have come to nought.

We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto feared,

Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should
be seen both of mortals and immortals.

And again:

O heavens! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and
ghostly form but no mind at all!

Again of Tiresias:--

[To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,] that he
alone should be wise; but the other souls are flitting shades.

Again:--

The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamentng her
fate, leaving manhood and youth.

Again:--

And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the
earth.

And,--

As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of the has
dropped out of the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling
and cling to one another, so did they with shrilling cry hold
together as they moved.

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike
out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or
unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical
charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who
are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

Undoubtedly.

Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling