In the spirit of the statesman who said, 'Let me make the ballads of a country, and I care not who make their laws,' Plato would say, 'Let the amusements of children be unchanged, and they will not want to change the laws.

The 'Goddess Harmonia' plays a great part in Plato's ideas of education.

The natural restless force of life in children, 'who do nothing but roar until they are three years old,' is gradually to be reduced to law and order.

As in the Republic, he fixes certain forms in which songs are to be composed: (1) they are to be strains of cheerfulness and good omen; (2) they are to be hymns or prayers addressed to the Gods; (3) they are to sing only of the lawful and good.
The poets are again expelled or rather ironically invited to depart; and those who remain are required to submit their poems to the censorship of the magistrates.

Youth are no longer compelled to commit to memory many thousand lyric and tragic Greek verses; yet, perhaps, a worse fate is in store for them.