I can imagine that some lusty youth overhears what we are saying, and roars out in abusive terms that we are legislating for impossibilities.

And so a person might have said of the syssitia, or common meals; but this is refuted by facts, although even now they are not extended to women.

'True.' There is no impossibility or super-humanity in my proposed law, as I shall endeavour to prove.

'Do so.' Will not a man find abstinence more easy when his body is sound than when he is in ill-condition?
'Yes.' Have we not heard of Iccus of Tarentum and other wrestlers who abstained wholly for a time?
Yet they were infinitely worse educated than our citizens, and far more lusty in their bodies.

And shall they have abstained for the sake of an athletic contest, and our citizens be incapable of a similar endurance for the sake of a much nobler victory,--the victory over pleasure, which is true happiness?
Will not the fear of impiety enable them to conquer that which many who were inferior to them have conquered?
'I dare say.' And therefore the law must plainly declare that our citizens should not fall below the other animals, who live all together in flocks, and yet remain pure and chaste until the time of procreation comes, when they pair, and are ever after faithful to their compact.