mire. A good man is not prostrated at the loss of children or fortune.
Neither is death terrible to him; and therefore lamentations over the dead
should not be practised by men of note; they should be the concern of
inferior persons only, whether women or men. Still worse is the
attribution of such weakness to the gods; as when the goddesses say, 'Alas!
my travail!' and worst of all, when the king of heaven himself laments his
inability to save Hector, or sorrows over the impending doom of his dear
Sarpedon. Such a character of God, if not ridiculed by our young men, is
likely to be imitated by them. Nor should our citizens be given to excess
of laughter--'Such violent delights' are followed by a violent re-action.
The description in the Iliad of the gods shaking their sides at the
clumsiness of Hephaestus will not be admitted by us. 'Certainly not.'

Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood, as we were
saying, is useless to the gods, and only useful to men as a medicine. But
this employment of falsehood must remain a privilege of state; the common
man must not in return tell a lie to the ruler; any more than the patient
would tell a lie to his physician, or the sailor to his captain.

In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists in
self-control and obedience to authority. That is a lesson which Homer
teaches in some places: 'The Achaeans marched on breathing prowess, in
silent awe of their leaders;'--but a very different one in other places:
'O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog, but the heart of a stag.'
Language of the latter kind will not impress self-control on the minds of
youth. The same may be said about his praises of eating and drinking and
his dread of starvation; also about the verses in which he tells of the
rapturous loves of Zeus and Here, or of how Hephaestus once detained Ares
and Aphrodite in a net on a similar occasion. There is a nobler strain
heard in the words:--'Endure, my soul, thou hast endured worse.' Nor must