Republic

Will you make any use of them for warriors? None at all, he said; but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian. I don’t know the musical modes, I said, but leave us that mode that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap, in all these conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but voluntary, either trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him—whether it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and admonition—or contrariwise yielding himself to another who petitioning or teaching him or trying to change his opinions, and in consequence faring according to his wish, and not bearing himself arrogantly, but in all this acting modestly and moderately and acquiescing in the outcome. Leave us these two modes—the forced and the voluntary—that will best imitate the utterances of men failing or succeeding, the temperate, the brave—leave us these. Well, said he, you are asking me to leave none other than those I just spoke of. Then, said I, we shall not need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings or whose compass includes all the harmonies. Not in my opinion, said he. Then we shall not maintain makers of triangles and harps and all other many stringed and poly-harmonic instruments. Apparently not. Well, will you admit to the city flute-makers and flute-players? Or is not the flute the most many-stringed of instruments and do not the pan-harmonics themselves imitate it? Clearly, he said. You have left, said I, the lyre and the cither. These are useful in the city, and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe on. So our argument indicates, he said. We are not innovating, my friend, in preferring Apollo and the instruments of Apollo to Marsyas and his instruments. No, by heaven! he said, I think not. And by the dog, said I, we have all unawares purged the city which a little while ago we said was wanton. In that we show our good sense, he said. Come then, let us complete the purification.