Politics

​or rather because it makes them capable of contemplating the beauty of bodies. But to seek the useful everywhere is least of all fitting for great-souled and free people. Since it is clear that one must be educated by habits before by reason , and concerning the body before the intellect, it is clear from these things that we must hand over the children to gymnastics and physical training; for of these, the former makes the disposition of the body of a certain quality, while the latter makes its actions. Now, those of the cities that seem to take the greatest care of their children, some of them produce an athletic disposition, ruining both the appearance and the growth of their bodies, while the Laconians did not indeed commit this error, but render them beastly by their labors, as this being most advantageous towards courage. And yet, as has been said many times, one must not make this care looking either to a single virtue or to this one especially; and if indeed to this, they do not even find this. For neither among the other animals nor in the case of nations do we see courage accompanying the most wild, but rather the gentler and lion-like characters. And there are many of the nations that are ready for slaughter and cannibalism, just like the Achaeans and Heniochi around the Pontus, and others of the mainland nations, some similarly to these and others more so, which are predatory indeed, but have no share of courage. And furthermore, we know that the Laconians themselves , as long as they themselves alone applied themselves to laborious exercises, surpassed others, but now are left behind by others both in athletic contests and in warfare; for they did not excel by training their youth in this manner, but only by training against those who did not train. So that the beautiful, and not the beastly, must play the leading part; for neither a wolf nor any other of the wild beasts would contend in any noble danger, but rather a good man; whereas those who have let go of their children too much into these things, and have made them uneducated in necessary things, render them vulgar in truth, making them useful for only one task of civic life, and worse at this, as our argument says, than others. But one must judge not from their former deeds, but from those of now; for they now have rivals in education, whereas formerly they did not have. That, therefore, we must employ gymnastics, and how we must employ it, is agreed upon (for up to puberty, one must apply lighter exercises, excluding forced diet and compulsory labors, so that nothing may be an obstacle to growth;