[86] We would say in answer to these criticisms, “My good sirs, the lawgiver is not curtailing any ruler’s garrison, nor is he incapacitating the army which he has collected by cutting off the more effective part of the force, the cavalry. He is trying his best to improve it, that by an increase, both in strength and numbers, those who are fighting side by side may most easily overcome their enemies.
[87] For who was so capable as he, in virtue of abundant acquaintance with these matters, to marshal an army by phalanxes and draw it up in order of battle and to appoint captains and corps-commanders and the other leaders of larger or smaller bodies of men, or to impart to those who would make a right use of it all that has been found out in the way of tactics and strategy?
[88] But the fact is that he is not talking in this passage about a cavalry force, which a sovereign has to organize for the overthrow of an unfriendly power and for the safety of his friends. He is speaking about that irrational and unmeasured and unruly movement in the soul to check which is in her interest, lest some day it turn back all her people to Egypt, the country of the body, and forcibly render it a lover of pleasure and passion rather than of God and virtue. For he who acquires a multitude of horses cannot fail, as the lawgiver himself said, to take the road to Egypt.
[89] For when the soul is swaying and tossing like a vessel, now to the side of the mind now to that of body, owing to the violence of the passions and misdeeds that rage against her, and the billows rising mountains high sweep over her, then in all likelihood the mind becomes waterlogged and sinks; and the bottom to which it sinks is nothing else than the body, of which Egypt is the figure.