Jowett: vices

Soc. And as for the Muse of Tragedy, that solemn and august personage — what are her aspirations ? Is all her aim and desire only to give pleasure to the spectators, or does she fight against them and refuse to speak of their pleasant vices, and willingly proclaim in word and song truths welcome and unwelcome ? — which in your judgment is her character ? GORGIAS

Str. I mean that we speak of man, for example, under many names — that we attribute to him colours and forms and magnitudes and virtues and vices, in all of which instances and in ten thousand others we not only speak of him as a man, but also as good, and having number-less other attributes, and in the same way anything else which we originally supposed to be one is described by us as many, and under many names. SOPHIST

Ath. And since we have reached this point in our legislation, and have fallen into a difficulty by reason of the vices of mankind, I affirm that our ordinance should simply run in the following terms : Our citizens ought not to fall below the nature of birds and beasts in general, who are born in great multitudes, and yet remain until the age for procreation virgin and unmarried, but when they have reached the proper time of life are coupled, male and female, and lovingly pair together, and live the rest of their lives in holiness and innocence, abiding firmly in their original compact : — surely, we will say to them, you should be better than the animals. But if they are corrupted by the other Hellenes and the common practice of barbarians, and they see with their eyes and hear with their ears of the so-called free love everywhere prevailing among them, and they themselves are not able to get the better of the temptation, the guardians of the law, exercising the functions of lawgivers, shall devise a second law against them. LAWS BOOK VIII

Assuredly not. And, further, they are likely to have a bad effect on those who hear them ; for everybody will begin to excuse his own vices when he is convinced that similar wickednesses are always being perpetrated by THE REPUBLIC   BOOK III