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SOLON Then you must first let me tell you briefly what our ideas are about a city and its citizens. We consider that a city is not the buildings, such as walls and temples and docks. These constitute a firm-set, immovable body, so to speak, for the shelter and protection of the community, but the whole significance is in the citizens, we hold, for it is they _ who fill it, plan and carry out everything, and keep it safe; they are something like what the soul is within the individual. So, having noted this, we naturally take care of the city’s body, as you see, beautifying. it so that it may be as fair as possible, not only well furnished inside with buildings but most securely fenced with these external ramparts. But above all and at all hazards we endeavour to insure that the citizens shall be virtuous in soul and strong in body, thinking that such men, joined together in public life, will make good use of themselves in times of peace, will bring the city safe out of war, and will keep it always free and prosperous. Their early upbringing we entrust to mothers, nurses, and tutors, to train and rear them with liberal teachings; but when at length they become able to understand what is right, when modesty, shame, fear, and ambition spring up in them, and when at length their very bodies seem well fitted for hardships as they get firmer and become more strongly compacted, then we take them in hand and teach them, not only prescribing them certain disciplines and exercises for the soul, but in certain other ways habituating their bodies also to hardships. We have not thought it sufficient for each man to be as he was born, either in body or in soul, but we want education and disciplines for them by which their good traits may be much improved and their bad altered for the better. We take example from the farmers, who shelter and enclose their plants while they are small and young, so that they may not be injured by the breezes: but when the stalk at last begins to thicken, they prune away the excessive growth and expose them te the winds to be shaken and tossed, in that way making them more fruitful.
