SOLON Why, my worthy friend, I remember your admonitions in the beginning and do not wish the discussion to meander out of its channel for fear of confusing your memory with its flow. However, I shall discuss this, too, in brief, as best I can. To consider it carefully would be matter for another conversation.
We harmonize their minds by causing them to learn by heart the laws of the community, which are exposed in public for everyone to read, written in large letters, and tell what one should do and what one should refrain from doing; also by causing them to hold converse with good men, from whom they learn to say what is fitting and do what is right, to associate with one another on an equal footing, not to aim at what is base, to seek what is noble, and to do no violence. These men we call sophists and philosophers. Furthermore, assembling them in the theatre, we instruct them publicly through comedies and tragedies, in which they behold both the virtues and the vices of the ancients, in order that they may recoil from the vices and emulate the virtues. The comedians, indeed, we allow to abuse and ridicule any citizens whom they perceive to be following practices that are base and unworthy of the city, not only for the sake of those men themselves, since they are made better by chiding, but for the sake of the general public, that they may shun castigation for similar offences.
