Page - 1395 - in The Complete Plato

ruggedness of the soil, not providing anything in great abundance. Had there been abundance, there might have been a great export trade, and a great return of gold and silver; which, as we may safely affirm, has the most fatal results on a State whose aim is the attainment of just and noble sentiments: this was said by us, if you remember, in the previous discussion. Cleinias. I remember, and am of opinion that we both were and are in the right. Athenian. Well, but let me ask, how is the country supplied with timber for ship–building? Cleinias. There is no fir of any consequence, nor pine, and not much cypress; and you will find very little stone–pine or plane–wood, which shipwrights always require for the interior of ships. Athenian. These are also natural advantages. Cleinias. Why so? Athenian. Because no city ought to be easily able to imitate its enemies in what is mischievous. Cleinias. How does that bear upon any of the matters of which we have been speaking? Athenian. Remember, my good friend, what I said at first about the Cretan laws, that they look to one thing only, and this, as you both agreed, was war; and I replied that such laws, in so far as they tended to promote virtue, were good; but in that they regarded a part only, and not the whole of virtue, I disapproved of them. And now I hope that you in your turn will follow and watch me if I legislate with a view to anything but virtue, or with a view to a part of virtue only. For I consider that the true lawgiver, like an archer, aims only at that on which some eternal beauty is always attending, and dismisses everything else, whether wealth or any other benefit, when separated from virtue. I was saying that the imitation of enemies was a bad thing; and I was thinking of a case in which a maritime people are harassed by enemies, as the Athenians were by Minos (I do not speak from any desire to recall past grievances); but he, as we know, was a great naval potentate, who compelled the inhabitants of Attica to pay him a cruel tribute; and in those days they had no ships of war as they now have, nor was the country filled with ship–timber, and therefore they could not readily build them. Hence they could not learn how to imitate their enemy at sea, and in this way, becoming sailors themselves, directly repel their enemies. Better for them to have lost many times over the seven youths, than that heavy–armed and stationary troops should have been turned into sailors, and accustomed to be often leaping on 1395