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Book II Chapter 31

Attributed to Xenophon, From the Letter to Agesilaus

You sent to ask me to come to you, saying that you wished to consult about your son: by what means and in what way he might preserve Spartan customs while also sharing in foreign studies.¹⁴³¹ But I too am seriously ill. For, as you know, I have reached an advanced age, and the doctors are concerned about cheerfulness, as though I were considering something other than choosing a just life and honoring death so long as it is not shameful [construction uncertain].¹⁴³² But if we are spared, you will also hear from us, when we meet, what I have sent.¹⁴³³ If one ⟨of the⟩ usual misfortunes should occur, let the letter then be your instruction, setting out what you wished to learn.¹⁴³⁴

Letter to Agesilaus continued

⟨The⟩ law that leads toward the plausible, Agesilaus, is certainly a human judgment.¹⁴³⁵ Yet the one Lycurgus found is better than any; to hunt spurious things with spurious means is futile labor.¹⁴³⁶ So offer the boy no human learning. Turn to the one recorded as second, but first and alone established among the gods,¹⁴³⁷ which is knowing intellect, ⟨always⟩ remaining the same in the same way.¹⁴³⁸

From the Letter to Agesilaus, continued

“But where, my noble friend,” you will say, “can one acquire this?” From philosophical men, whom I could piously call divine. For no law written by base men and tainted with false opinion rules them; the kinship of their nature leads toward better studies.¹⁴³⁹ ⟨Nor⟩, if you are found out, will you face a charge of unlawful conduct.¹⁴⁴⁰ For you will not be caught as a lover of human laws, nor will you be a praiser of foreign ones, but of divine and eternal laws, held in every respect to be more worthy of learning than anything else. Let the way, then, have been shown to you in this manner.¹⁴⁴¹

From the Letter to Agesilaus, continued

I can, however, set out for you what instills a love of virtue; greater and more numerous matters would be the task of better men.¹⁴⁴² Let the nourishment of the body be that customary among the Laconians. For a young and newly growing soul, let it be accounts containing hodas [uncertain word] of men whose lives have been distinguished by virtue.¹⁴⁴³ Let disorderly games or old women’s stories that instill a lowly cast of mind be gone.¹⁴⁴⁴ Let the boy spend most of his time with temperate men, where he will see and hear like things. Habit naturally rules all living creatures, and the human being most of all. For we are liable, Agesilaus, to imitate what is said and done.¹⁴⁴⁵

Plato, From the Sophist

We must distinguish two kinds of badness in the soul. — What kinds? — One like disease in the body, the other like ugliness arising in it. — I do not understand. — Perhaps you have not regarded disease and internal conflict as the same. — Nor do I know how I should answer that. — Do you understand internal conflict as anything other than the destruction, through some disagreement, of what is naturally akin? — Nothing else. — And ugliness: is it anything other than the single kind of disproportion that is ugly everywhere? — Nothing else at all.¹⁴⁴⁶ — Well then, in people in a bad condition, have we not noticed opinions conflicting with desires, anger with pleasures, reasoning with pains, and all these with one another in the soul? — Very much so. — Yet all these must necessarily be naturally akin. — Of course. — Then we shall speak correctly if we call vice internal conflict and disease of the soul. — Quite correctly indeed.¹⁴⁴⁷

Plato continued

What of things that move, set themselves a target and try to reach it, yet at every impulse go astray and miss it? Shall we say that they suffer this through proportion in their relations to one another, or, on the contrary, through lack of proportion? — Clearly through lack of proportion.¹⁴⁴⁸ — Yet we know that every soul is unwillingly ignorant of whatever it does not know. — Certainly. — And ignorance, when the soul strives for truth but its understanding goes off course, is nothing other than a derangement of the mind. — Quite so. — Then an uncomprehending soul must be regarded as ugly and lacking proportion. — It seems so.¹⁴⁴⁹ — Thus there are, it appears, these two kinds of evil in it: one called vice by most people, most clearly a disease of the soul. — Yes. — The other they call ignorance, but they are unwilling to acknowledge it as badness when it alone occurs in the soul. — We must fully concede what I questioned when you said it just now: that there are two kinds of badness in the soul. Cowardice, intemperance and injustice must all be regarded as disease in us, while the condition of much and varied ignorance must be regarded as ugliness.¹⁴⁵⁰

Plato continued

Then have not two arts arisen to deal with these two bodily conditions? — Which two? — Gymnastics for ugliness, medicine for disease. — It appears so.¹⁴⁵¹ — And for insolence, injustice and cowardice, is not the art of punishment naturally the most appropriate corrective of all the arts? — That is likely, at least, according to human opinion, so to speak.¹⁴⁵² — What then? For ignorance as a whole, could anyone name another art more correctly than teaching? — None. — Come, should we say that teaching has only one kind, or more, with two chief kinds within it? Consider. — I am considering. — And I think we might find the answer most quickly in this way. — How? — By seeing whether ignorance itself has some division down the middle. For if it is twofold, it clearly compels teaching also to have two parts, one for each of its two kinds.¹⁴⁵³ — Well then, is what we are now seeking at all clear to you?

1431.Τοῦ αὐτοῦ, of the same author, carries forward Xenophon’s name. This letter belongs to the pseudonymous or apocryphal Xenophon letter collection; the Agesilaus letter is fragment VII in Hercher’s numbering. See Anna Marchewka, Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium 32(2) (2022), pp. 5–7, DOI 10.14746/sppgl.2022.XXXII.2.1. The numerical subdivisions and continued labels serve layout only.

1432.The text prints ζωὴν δικαίαν, a just life. The relation of βουλευομένου to the following genitive participles is not secure; the English gives a qualified construal. The qualification μέχρι μὴ αἰσχρός ἐστι, so long as it is not shameful, is retained.

1433.Wachsmuth rejects [διὰ στόματος], by word of mouth, following Usener. It remains visible in Greek but is omitted from the running English. Meeting and hearing from the writer are expressed by the remaining words.

1434.Wachsmuth prints Meineke’s supplied ⟨τῶν⟩, reflected by ⟨of the⟩. The usual misfortunes contrasts with being spared, without naming a particular outcome; the letter would provide instruction if a meeting became impossible.

1435.Wachsmuth prints Usener’s supplied article ⟨ὁ⟩, reflected by ⟨The⟩. Τὸ εἰκός can mean what is likely, plausible or appropriate; its precise force in the contrast with human judgment is uncertain here.

1436.Lycurgus is named as the finder of a superior law. Νόθα, spurious things, and νόθοις, with spurious things, leave the objects and means of the hunting metaphor unspecified; the English does not identify a particular foreign curriculum.

1437.No noun is repeated after the masculine article in the printed Greek. Usener’s proposed ⟨νόμων⟩, of laws, appears only in the apparatus and is not adopted. The relation of recorded as second to first among the gods remains uncertain.

1438.Νοῦς ἐπιστήμων is knowing intellect. Its sameness and constancy distinguish it from the human judgments described above. Wachsmuth prints Usener’s supplied ⟨ἀεὶ⟩, ⟨always⟩.

1439.This refers back to the divine mind described in the preceding unit. The contrast is between laws written by human beings and the affinity of nature that leads the philosophers toward better studies.

1440.Wachsmuth prints Hercher’s supplied ⟨οὐδὲ⟩, reflected by ⟨Nor⟩. Δίκην φεύγειν is the legal idiom for facing prosecution, with the alleged offense in the genitive, here παρανόμων (LSJ, φεύγω IV). The sentence denies that the recipient will face such a charge; it does not describe fleeing punishment.

1441.The printed ἀξιομαθητοτέρων means more worthy of learning. The apparatus explains a shortened manuscript form with a compendium as this comparative, while also recording Dindorf’s different conjecture. The Greek here follows the form in Wachsmuth’s main text.

1442.The writer limits his own claim: he offers what can awaken love of virtue, while reserving greater and more extensive instruction for better men. The main text reads ὅσα and ἀρετῆς; the latter is Meineke’s correction of the manuscript’s ἀρχῆς.

1443.Λάκωσι is the main text’s form for the Laconians. The following ὁδὰς is difficult and is retained as printed, without confidently translating it as paths. The apparatus records proposals including commands, songs and praises, as well as the possibility of a participle meaning guiding. English therefore marks the uncertain word rather than adopting one of these repairs.

1444.Παιδιαί means games or amusements. The letter dismisses both disorderly games and old women’s stories in connection with the lowly cast of mind they instill; the account preserves its characterization.

1445.The boy is the subject understood in ἔστω, ὄψεται and ἀκούσεται. Temperate follows σώφροσιν; the final sentences connect habitual company and the imitation of words and deeds.

1446.Κακία begins broadly as badness or defect; πονηρία at the end names vice. The comparison distinguishes internal discord, likened to disease, from disproportion, likened to ugliness.

1447.Στάσις is conflict within what belongs together. Opinions, desires, anger, pleasure, reasoning and pain are treated as naturally related elements whose disagreement constitutes vice. The numerical subdivisions and continued labels divide one uninterrupted excerpt for layout only; the source identifies the passage as Sophist 227D-230E.

1448.The target image links failure to lack of proportion, ἀμετρία, rather than the internal conflict discussed before. The printed θέμενον is singular amid plural participles; the English follows the continuing plural subject without substituting a different Greek reading.

1449.The argument presents ignorance as an unwilling failure of understanding while the soul aims at truth. Παραφροσύνη, a derangement of the mind, continues the image of understanding going astray from its target, truth.

1450.The respondent now accepts both categories. The English takes μόνον as by itself; it can also be taken as only in the soul. The translation keeps broad badness distinct from the more specific vice.

1451.Gymnastics and medicine supply the bodily counterparts in the analogy. The Greek repeatedly uses dual forms for the two conditions and the two arts; the English expresses their pairing without reproducing the grammatical dual.

1452.Κολαστική is the art of punishment or correction; δίκη here names its corrective function. The reply explicitly qualifies the proposed correspondence as likely according to human opinion.

1453.The inquiry divides teaching by first dividing the ignorance it addresses. No two forms of teaching have yet been named at this point; the following dialogue develops the distinction.