Book 8
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Ath. What then? Is the fighting force of our State to venture to come forward every time to fight for their lives, their children, their goods, and for the whole State, after a less thorough preparation than the competitors we have been describing? And so is their lawgiver, through fear lest these training-bouts may appear ridiculous to some, to refrain from laying down laws whereby he will ordain field-operations, of which the minor kind, without heavy arms, will take place daily, if possible,—and to this end both the choristry and all the gymnastic shall be directed,—while the others, as a major kind of gymnastics in full armor, he shall order to be held at least once a month? In this latter kind they will engage in contests with one another throughout the whole country, contending in the capturing of forts and in ambuscades and in all forms of mimic warfare;
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Ath. in fact, they shall do literal fighting with ballsSphaeromachia was a (hand) ball contest between opposing sides (something like our hockey or polo matches). and darts as nearly real as possible,—though the points of the darts shall be made less dangerous,—in order that their games of combat may not be devoid of some element of alarm, but may provide terrors and indicate to some extent who is stout-hearted and who not: to the former the lawgiver shall duly assign honors, to the latter degradation, that thus he may prepare the whole State to be serviceable throughout life in the real contest. Moreover, if a man gets killed in these sham fights, inasmuch as the murder is involuntary, he shall pronounce the slayer to be pure of hands, when he has been legally purified; for he will reflect that, when a few men die, others equally good will grow up in their place, whereas, once fear is, so to speak, dead, he will be unable to find a test to distinguish, in all such cases, the good from the bad,— and that is a far greater evil than the other for a State.
