Book 12
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Ath. In regard to these matters, is it not right that the interpreters, the teachers, the lawgivers, as the wardens of the rest, in dealing with him that requires knowledge and information, or with him that requires punishment and reproof for his sin, should excel all others in the art of instructing him in the quality of vice and virtue and exhibiting it fully? Or is some poet who comes into the State, or one who calls himself a trainer of youth, to be accounted evidently superior to him that has won prizes for all the virtues? In a State like that, where there are no wardens who are competent both in word and deed, and possessed of a competent knowledge of virtue,—is it surprising, I ask, if such a State, all unwarded as it is, suffers the same fate as do many of the States which exist today?
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Clin. Not at all, I should say.
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Ath. Well then, must we do what we now propose, or what? Must we contrive how our wardens shall have a more accurate grasp of virtue, both in word and deed, than the majority of men? For otherwise, how shall our State resemble a wise man’s head and senses, on the ground that it possesses within itself a similar kind of wardenship?
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Clin. What is this resemblance we speak of and wherein does it consist?
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Ath. Evidently we are comparing the State itself to the skull; and, of the wardens, the younger ones, who are selected as the most intelligent and nimble in every part of their souls, are set, as it were, like the eyes, in the top of the head, and survey the State all round;
