Analysis

Plato sees no real difference in the gymnastic required of children and of professional soldiers; training in the use of arms is simply a difference of degree. The ideal citizen will remain morally and physically fit throughout life. This idea of training in both gymnastic and the academic, a healthy mind in a healthy body, has endured throughout most of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, in the Western world.

Glossary

Hellespont another name for the Dardanelles, a strait in northwest Turkey connecting the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea. The ancient Phrygian city of Troy (site of the Trojan War) was located in Asia Minor near the Aegean end of the strait.

Asclepius in Greek mythology, the god of healing and medicine.

Pandarus a leader of the Lycians in the Trojan War; a Trojan hero in the Iliad.

Menelaus king of Sparta, Agamemnon’s brother, and husband of Helen of Troy, whose abduction by the Trojan Paris (son of King Priam) was the legendary cause of the Trojan War.