Political fragments of Archytas and other ancient Pythagoreans/From the treatise of Diotogenes on sanctity 1
FROM THE TREATISE OF DIOTOGENES ON SANCTITY.
It is necessary that the laws should not be enclosed in houses, and by gates, but in the manners of the citizens. What, therefore, is the principle of every polity? The education of youth. For vines will never bear useful fruit, unless they are well cultivated; nor will horses ever become excellent, if colts are not properly trained. For recently produced fruit receives a figure especially similar to that which touches and is near to it. And men prudently attend to the manner in which vines ought to be cut and taken care of; but in things pertaining to the education of their own species, they conduct themselves negligently and rashly; though neither vines nor wine govern men, but man and the soul of man. And we commit the nurture of a plant, indeed, to a man of some worth, and think that he who takes care of it, deserves no less than two mina; but we commit the education of youth to some Illyrian or Thracian, who are men of no worth. The first legislators, however, as they could not render the middle class of mankind stable, adjoined [in their education] dancing and rhythm, which participate of motion alone and order; and besides these they added sports, some of which exhorted them to fellowship, but others to truth and mental acuteness. In a similar manner also they instituted for those who through intoxication or repletion had committed any crime, the pipe and harmony, by which they gave an arrangement to the mind, so that the manners being matured and rendered mild, they might be capable of being adorned.