Athenian
Ath. That is indeed true, Clinias. What, then, do you think the lawgiver ought to do, seeing that these people have been armed in this way for a long time past? Should he merely stand up in the city and threaten all the people that unless they affirm that the gods exist and conceive them in their minds to be such as the law maintainsCp. Plat. Laws 634d, Plat. Laws 634e; Plat. Laws 859b, al. and so likewise with regard to the beautiful and the just and all the greatest things, as many as relate to virtue and vice, that they must regard and perform these in the way prescribed by the lawgiver in his writings; and that whosoever fails to show himself obedient to the laws must either be put to death or else be punished, in one case by stripes and imprisonment, in another by degradation, in others by poverty and exile? But as to persuasion, should the lawgiver, while enacting the people’s laws, refuse to blend any persuasion with his statements, and thus tame them so far as possible?