Book 1
637
Meg. What you say, Stranger, is excellent, I suppose; nonetheless I am at a loss to know what reply I should make to it. Still, in my opinion, the Lacedaemonian lawgiver was right in ordaining the avoidance of pleasures, while as to the laws of Cnosus—our friend Clinias, if he thinks fit, will defend them. The rules about pleasures at Sparta seem to me the best in the world. For our law banished entirely from the land that institution which gives the most occasion for men to fall into excessive pleasures and riotous and follies of every description; neither in the country nor in the cities controlled by Spartiates is a drinking-club to be seen nor any of the practices which belong to such and foster to the utmost all kinds of pleasure. Indeed there is not a man who would not punish at once and most severely any drunken reveller he chanced to meet with, nor would even the feast of Dionysus serve as an excuse to save him—a revel such as I once upon a time witnessed on the wagonsAt the Feast of Dionysus in Athens it was customary for revellers mounted on wagons to indulge in scurrilous language during the processions. in your country; and at our colony of Tarentum, too, saw the whole city drunk at the Dionysia. But with us no such thing is possible.
