to be the rule of their lives. We must watch them from
their youth upwards, and make them perform actions in which they are
most likely to forget or to be deceived, and he who remembers and is
not deceived is to be selected, and he who falls in the trial is to be
rejected. That will be the way?

Yes.

And there should also be toils and pains and conflicts prescribed for
them, in which they will be made to give further proof of the same
qualities.

Very right, he replied.

And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments that is the third
sort of test--and see what will be their behaviour: like those who take
colts amid noise and tumult to see if they are of a timid nature, so
must we take our youth amid terrors of some kind, and again pass them
into pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is proved in
the furnace, that we may discover whether they are armed against all
enchantments, and of a noble bearing always, good guardians of
themselves and of the music which they have learned, and retaining
under all circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as
will be most serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he
who at every age, as boy and youth and in mature life, has come out of
the trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed a ruler and guardian
of the State; he shall be honoured in life and death, and shall receive
sepulture and other memorials of honour, the greatest that we have to
give. But him who fails, we must reject. I am inclined to think that
this is the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians should be
chosen and appointed. I speak generally, and not with any pretension
to exactness.

And, speaking generally, I agree with you, he said.

And perhaps the word 'guardian' in the fullest sense ought to be
applied to this higher class only who preserve us against foreign
enemies and maintain peace among our citizens at home, that the one may
not have the will, or the others the power, to harm us. The young men
whom we before called guardians may be more properly designated
auxiliaries and supporters of the principles of the rulers.

I agree with you, he said.

How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we
lately spoke--just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that
be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?

What sort of lie? he said.

Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician tale of what has often
occur