with magisterial powers. There are to be law-courts and judges—though arbitration is recommended where it is possible—and there is a high court of appeal.
Marriages are to be strictly regulated, since their object is to produce a noble and healthy offspring. Slaves should be treated with more perfect justice than we show to equals, and all levity and cruelty towards them should be avoided.
Then follow some desultory remarks on education, which should (Plato thinks) be compulsory—since children belong more to the State than to their parents—and should be directed by a competent minister of public instruction. Infants should be reared with great care—soothed with song, "for they roar continually the first three years of their life"—and carried about in their nurses' arms, "as you see our young nobles carry their fighting-cocks." At the age of six, boys are to be separated from girls, and are to learn riding and the use of weapons. Their amusements are to be carefully watched, as any change in them may breed revolution in the State. They are to learn dancing to give them stately and graceful movement, and wrestling to give them quickness and agility, and music to humanise their souls. But both music and song are to be strictly regulated; there is to be a censorship of the press, and all objectionable poetry is to be expunged. (Plato hints that the "homilies" with which his laws are prefaced would be admirable exercises to be committed to memory.) Till the age of thirteen they are to learn their grammar and letters; afterwards the use of the lyre, and grave and
