On one thing they were agreed, the protagonists of Plato's dialogues The Republic and Laws : that the weal and woe of the community depended on the substance of childhood education, that the greatest care had to be taken to give the future elites of the ideal state a basic education in music and gymnastics, and that – conversely – the introduction of new musical compositions, dances and motoric skills had to be prevented at all costs. “Then, Glaucon”, we read in The Republic (401d), “is not musical education of paramount importance … because rhythm and harmony enter most powerfully into the innermost part of the soul and lay forcible hands upon it …? ”

In Laws (656d–657a), the Athenian praised as a shining example – “worthy in the highest degree of a statesman and a legislator” – the 10,000-year-old Egyptian custom

Never praise new songs, it says elsewhere, in The Republic (424c): “[One] must beware of changing to a new kind of music, for the change always involves far-reaching danger. Any alteration in the modes of music is always followed by alteration in the most fundamental laws of the state.”

This claim, so easily made by Plato and his companions, is hard for modern readers to digest. A harangue on progressive teaching methods, a lesson on childhood education for preschoolers is the last thing we expect when consulting a work supposedly concerned with the state and constitutions. Plato's enemies are pleased that we find it discomforting. When Popper crusaded against “The Spell of Plato” he certainly had the “aestheticism” of the Greek in mind, “ the desire to build a world which is not only a little better and more rational than ours, but which is free from all its ugliness.”