Plato in Italy

dressed as women. Charondas believed that true courage could never be inspired by fear.

Charondas was very severe in everything that concerned customs. Without customs, laws are worth nothing. He instituted a censorship against both those who led a dissolute life, and those others who consorted with the dissolute; because it is precisely through these ill-omened friendships that the customs of a city are corrupted, and the vices of one become the vices, first of many, then of all.

In Athens no such laws are known. In Corinth, if a man lives too prodigally, there is a magistrate who takes care to know what he possesses: if he finds him rich, he allows him to squander with impunity; if poor, he condemns him, and, out of suspicion of hidden vices, banishes him from the city (1). The law of the Corinthians is the law of a commercial people; that of Charondas, who does not believe that the wealth of a private individual ever gives him the right to corrupt the customs of a city, is the law of a wise man.

We admire so much that law of Solon by which all those fathers who do not teach their sons a trade are declared infamous. Cha-

(1) Athen.