Kitap 1
633
Meg. The fourth also I may attempt to state: it is the training, widely prevalent amongst us, in hardy endurance of pain, by means both of manual contests and of robberies carried out every time at the risk of a sound drubbing; moreover, the Crypteia, Or Secret Service. Young Spartans policed the country to suppress risings among the Helots. as it is called, affords a wonderfully severe training in hardihood, as the men go bare-foot in winter and sleep without coverlets and have no attendants, but wait on themselves and rove through the whole countryside both by night and by day. Moreover in our games, The Naked Games, held about midsummer. we have severe tests of endurance, when men unclad do battle with the violence of the heat,—and there are other instances so numerous that the recital of them would be well-nigh endless.
633
Ath. Splendid, O Stranger of Lacedaemon! But come now, as to courage, how shall we define it? Shall we define it quite simply as battling against fears and pains only, or as against desires also and pleasures, with their dangerous enticements and flatteries, which melt men’s hearts like wax—even men most reverenced in their own conceit.
633
Meg. The latter definition is, I think, the right one: courage is battling against them all.
633
Ath. Earlier in our discourse (if I am not mistaken) Clinias here used the expression self-inferior of a State or an individual: did you not do so, O Stranger of Cnosus?
633
Clin. Most certainly.
633
Ath. At present do we apply the term bad to the man who is inferior to pains, or to him also who is inferior to pleasures?
633
Clin. To the man who is inferior to pleasures more than to the other, in my opinion. All of us, indeed, when we speak of a man who is shamefully self-inferior, mean one who is mastered by pleasures rather than one who is mastered by pains.
