The object of them will be first to promote religion, secondly to encourage friendship and intercourse between families; for families must be acquainted before they marry into one another, or great mistakes will occur.

At these festivals there shall be innocent dances of young men and maidens, who may have the opportunity of seeing one another in modest undress.

To the details of all this the masters of choruses and the guardians will attend, embodying in laws the results of their experience; and, after ten years, making the laws permanent, with the consent of the legislator, if he be alive, or, if he be not alive, of the guardians of the law, who shall perfect them and settle them once for all.

At least, if any further changes are required, the magistrates must take the whole people into counsel, and obtain the sanction of all the oracles.
Whenever any one who is between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five wants to marry, let him do so; but first let him hear the strain which we will address to him:-- My son, you ought to marry, but not in order to gain wealth or to avoid poverty; neither should you, as men are wont to do, choose a wife who is like yourself in property and character.

You ought to consult the interests of the state rather than your own pleasure; for by equal marriages a society becomes unequal.