which will be the better judge--he who destroys the worse and lets the
better rule, or he who lets the better rule and makes the others
voluntarily obey; or, thirdly, he who destroys no one, but reconciles the
two parties? 'The last, clearly.' But the object of such a judge or
legislator would not be war. 'True.' And as there are two kinds of war,
one without and one within a state, of which the internal is by far the
worse, will not the legislator chiefly direct his attention to this
latter? He will reconcile the contending factions, and unite them against
their external enemies. 'Certainly.' Every legislator will aim at the
greatest good, and the greatest good is not victory in war, whether civil
or external, but mutual peace and good-will, as in the body health is
preferable to the purgation of disease. He who makes war his object
instead of peace, or who pursues war except for the sake of peace, is not
a true statesman. 'And yet, Stranger, the laws both of Crete and Sparta
aim entirely at war.' Perhaps so; but do not let us quarrel about your
legislators--let us be gentle; they were in earnest quite as much as we
are, and we must try to discover their meaning. The poet Tyrtaeus (you
know his poems in Crete, and my Lacedaemonian friend is only too familiar
with them)--he was an Athenian by birth, and a Spartan citizen:--'Well,'
he says, 'I sing not, I care not about any man, however rich or happy,
unless he is brave in war.' Now I should like, in the name of us all, to
ask the poet a question. Oh Tyrtaeus, I would say to him, we agree with
you in praising those who excel in war, but which kind of war do you
mean?--that dreadful war which is termed civil, or the milder sort which
is waged against foreign enemies? You say that you abominate 'those who
are not eager to taste their enemies' blood,' and you seem to mean chiefly
their foreign enemies. 'Certainly he does.' But we contend that there are
men better far than your heroes, Tyrtaeus, concerning whom another poet,
Theognis the Sicilian, says that 'in a civil broil they are worth their
weight in gold and silver.' For in a civil war, not only courage, but