[399a]
that are called lax.” “Will you make
any use of them for warriors?” “None at all,”
he said; “but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian.”
“I don't know1 the musical modes,” I said, “but leave
us that mode2 that would
fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is
engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed,
either meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap,
[399b]
in all these conditions confronts
fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for
such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but voluntary,3 either
trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him—whether
it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and
admonition—or contrariwise yielding himself to another who
petitioning or teaching him or trying to change his opinions, and in
consequence faring according to his wish, and not bearing himself
arrogantly, but in all this acting modestly and moderately
[399c]
and acquiescing in the outcome. Leave us these
two modes—the forced and the voluntary—that will best
imitate the utterances of men failing or succeeding, the temperate, the
brave—leave us these.” “Well,” said
he, “you are asking me to leave none other than those I just spoke
of.” “Then,” said I, “we shall not
need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings or whose compass
includes all the harmonies.” “Not in my
opinion,” said he. “Then we shall not maintain makers of
triangles and harps and all other
[399d]
many
stringed and poly-harmonic4
instruments.” “Apparently not.”
“Well, will you admit to the city flute-makers and flute-players?
Or is not the flute the most 'many-stringed' of instruments and do not the
pan-harmonics5 themselves imitate
it?” “Clearly,” he said. “You have
left,” said I, “the lyre and the cither. These are
useful6 in the
city, and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe
on.7” “So our argument
indicates,” he said.
[399e]
“We are not innovating, my friend, in preferring Apollo and the
instruments of Apollo to Marsyas and his instruments.”
“No, by heaven!” he said, “I think
not.” “And by the dog,8” said I, “we
have all unawares purged the city which a little while ago we said was
wanton.9” “In that we show our good
sense,” he said.“Come
then, let us complete the purification. For upon harmonies would follow the
consideration of rhythms: we must not pursue complexity nor great variety in
the basic movements,10 but must observe what are the rhythms of a life that is orderly
and brave, and after observing them
1 Plato, like a lawyer or popular essayist, affects ignorance of the technical details; or perhaps rather he wishes to disengage his main principle from the specialists' controversy about particular modes of music and their names.
2 ἐκείνην may mean, but does not say, Dorian, which the Laches(188 D) pronounces the only true Greek harmony. This long anacoluthic sentence sums up the whole matter with impressive repetition and explicit enumeration of all types of conduct in peace and war, and implied reference to Plato's doctrine of the two fundamental temperaments, the swift and the slow, the energetic and the mild. Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought, nn. 59, 70, 481.
3 Cf. Laws 814 E.
4 Metaphorically. The “many-toned instrumentation of the flutes,” as Pindar calls it, Ol. vii. 12, can vie with the most complex and many-stringed lyre of musical innovation.
5 Cf. 404 D, the only other occurrence of the word in Plato.
6 Cf. my note on Timaeus 47 C, in A.J.P. vol. x. p. 61.
7 Ancient critics noted this sentence as an adaptation of sound to sense. Cf. Demetr.Περὶ ἑρμ185. The sigmas and iotas may be fancied to suggest the whistling notes of the syrinx. So Lucretius v. 1385 “tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum.” Cf. on Catullus 61. 13 “voce carmina tinnula.”
8 The so-called Rhadamanthine oath to avoid taking the names of the gods in vain. Cf. 592 A, Apology 21 E, Blaydes on Aristophanes Wasps 83.
9 Cf. 372 E. Dummler, Proleg. p. 62, strangely affirms that this is an express retraction of the ἀληθινὴ πόλις. This is to misapprehend Plato's method. He starts with the indispensable minimum of a simple society, develops it by Herbert Spencer's multiplication of effects into an ordinary Greek city, then reforms it by a reform of education and finally transforms it into his ideal state by the rule of the philosopher kings. Cf. Introduction p. xiv.
10 Practically the feet.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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