Tyrtaeus, that you are chiefly praising those who achieve distinction in foreign and external warfare.” To this, I presume, he would agree, and say “ Yes"?
CUIN. Of course.
ATH. Yet, brave though these men are, we still maintain that they are far surpassed in bravery by those who are conspicuously brave in the greatest of wars ; and we also have a poet for witness,—Theognis (a citizen of Sicilian Megara), who says:
“In the day of grievous feud, O Cyrnus, the loyal warrior is worth his weight in silver and gold.”
Such a man, in a war much more grievous, is, we say, ever so much better than the other—nearly as much better, in fact, as the union of justice, prudence and wisdom with courage is better than courage by itself alone. For a man would never prove himself loyal and sound in civil war if devoid of goodness in its entirety ; whereas in the war of which Tyrtaeus speaks there are vast numbers of mercenaries ready to die fighting? “with well-planted feet apart,” of whom the majority, with but few exceptions, prove themselves reckless, unjust, violent, and pre-eminently foolish, What, then, is the conclusion to which our present discourse is tending, and what point is it trying to make clear by these statements? Plainly it is this: both the Heaven-taught legislator of Crete and every legislator who is worth his salt will most assuredly legislate always with a single eye to1 Theognis, v. 77-8 (Bergk). He wrote sententious poetry about 550 B.c. 2 Tyrt. xi. 21,
