and they gain the day, and then modesty, which
they call silliness, is ignominiously thrust into exile by them, and
temperance, which they nickname unmanliness, is trampled in the mire
and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and orderly
expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble
of evil appetites, they drive them beyond the border.

Yes, with a will.

And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now
in their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries,
the next thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy
and waste and impudence in bright array having garlands on their heads,
and a great company with them, hymning their praises and calling them
by sweet names; insolence they term breeding, and anarchy liberty, and
waste magnificence, and impudence courage. And so the young man passes
out of his original nature, which was trained in the school of
necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary
pleasures.

Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.

After this he lives on, spending his money and labour and time on
unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary ones; but if he be
fortunate, and is not too much disordered in his wits, when years have
elapsed, and the heyday of passion is over--supposing that he then
re-admits into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not
wholly give himself up to their successors--in that case he balances
his pleasures and lives in a sort of equilibrium, putting the
government of himself into the hands of the one which comes first and
wins the turn; and when he has had enough of that, then into the hands
of another; he despises none of them but encourages them all equally.

Very true, he said.

Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of
advice; if any one says to him that some pleasures are the
satisfactions of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires,
and that he ought to use and honour some and chastise and master the
others--whenever this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says
that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another.

Yes, he said; that is the way with him.

Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the
hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute;
then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a
turn at gy