sational innovations of modern days; and he points with approval to Egypt, where certain forms had been consecrated in the temples, from which neither painter nor sculptor was allowed to deviate, and where for ten thousand years they had preserved their chants and the statues of their gods unchanged.[1] The poet should not be left to his own devices; for bad music, like a bad companion, tends to corrupt the character: both the music and the words should be supervised by the magistrate, prizes for the best poems should be awarded by competent judges, and the moral of every lay or legend should be, that all earthly gifts—whether health, beauty, or wealth—are as nothing in comparison with a just and holy life. And in the "City of the Magnetes," where his own laws are to be promulgated, the following is to be the theme of the music consecrated by the State, and appointed to be sung by three choirs—children, youths, and men:—
"All our three choruses shall sing to the young and tender souls of children, reciting in their strains all the noble thoughts of which we have already spoken, or are about to speak; and the sum of them shall be, that the life which is by the gods deemed to be the happiest is the holiest;—we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth, and the minds of our young disciples will be more likely to receive these words of ours, than any others which we might address to them. . . . And those who are too old to sing will tell stories, illustrating the same virtues as with the voice of an oracle."—J.
We can never exactly tell how far Plato's views on
- ↑ Laws, ii. 660.
