4.4
Now, it is not worth while to censure the common run of legislators, who fail through ignorance or weakness. But when a wise man had consented to be king over a people newly constituted and pliant to his every wish, what should have been his first care, unless it was the rearing of boys and the training of youths so that there might be no confusing differences in their characters, but that they might be moulded and fashioned from the very outset so as to walk harmoniously together in the same path of virtue?
4.5
This, indeed, was what helped Lycurgus to secure, among other things, the stability and permanence of his laws. The Spartans took oaths to maintain these laws, it is true, but this would have availed little had he not, by means of his training and education of the boys, infused his laws, as it were, into their characters, and made the emulous love of his government an integral part of their rearing. The result was that for more than five hundred years the sovereign and fundamental features of his legislation remained in force, like a strong and penetrating dye.
4.6
But that which was the end and aim of Numa’s government, namely, the continuance of peace and friendship between Rome and other nations, straightway vanished from the earth with him. After his death the double doors of the templeCf. Numa, xx. 1. which he had kept continuously closed, as if he really had war caged and confined there, were thrown wide open, and Italy was filled with the blood of the slain. Thus not even for a little time did the beautiful edifice of justice which he had reared remain standing, because it lacked the cement of education.
