Behind Hercules were herdsmen driving 20 oxen, followed by a huge procession of men, old men, women, and children, as well as pipers, drummers, and trumpeters playing cheerful melodies.

The parade is over, and it is only the beginning of the celebrations, which are followed by various competitions.

The most important race of the festival is the Hercules race: competitors must carry a five-metre-long, thigh-thick cedar wood and cover a distance of 40 metres to pass the heats. In the next knockout round, the players need to pick up the weighting stone pillars, and they need to lift the five-kilogram shot put to see how long they hold on...... One of the most important hurdles is pulling the carriage, and countless spectators cheer for the contestants, watching them pull the huge carriage with a certain load, tense the muscles of the whole body, and use all their strength to pull the carriage forward like a strong horse.

The winner of the championship will be given the title of "Kingdom Hercules" of the year, and after receiving the blessing of the priests of the Temple of Hercules, he will be paraded around the city surrounded by a warm crowd, and will also be received and eaten with King Davers, in addition to a substantial material reward.

Another important competition during the celebration is wrestling. Everyone knows that Hercules is a master wrestler. In particular, his battle with the giant Antaeus is well known. After nine years of development, the wrestling tournament held at the Hercules Festival in the Kingdom of Dionya is no less large than the traditional four Greek games. Compared with winning in the four major games, the main thing is honor; Winning the championship in Turiyi's wrestling tournament also comes with a lot of gold and silver prizes, so there are many competitors, and every match is quite intense.

The wrestling tournament lasts almost a month, just in time for the end of the festivities, and its champions are treated in the same way as the champions of the Hercules tournaments.

It is said that the spectators of these two competitions were often watched by members of the Ministry of Military Affairs and the commanders of the corps. For these two competitions were not only for citizens and prospective citizens, but also for freemen, Gentiles, and even slaves. If they get good results, they will be persuaded by the Ministry of War to join the Kingdom of Dioonia or free from slavery, because such good players are usually good soldiers.

In addition to these two competitions, there are other interesting competitions at the celebration. For example: bull riding competition, sheep race, pig driving competition...... This is also a sign of respect for Hercules, the patron saint of livestock. The fun hill climb is a testament to Hercules' adventurous spirit, while the hilarious wife-hugging run pays homage to the merry god......

So, unlike other celebrations, the Hercules celebrations are always filled with laughter. While being happy, Plato also found that at least half of the participants and spectators of the various competitions were non-Greeks, and they could fully feel their reverence for the Greek god from the heart, enjoying the joy of the games and interacting harmoniously with the Greek citizens.

Plato did not wait until the end of the celebration, and in early June he left King Davers and the Dionian Academy, preparing to return to Athens, where he still had a lot of business to attend to.

Davers threw him a farewell banquet.

At the banquet, Plato happily said: "Thank you very much for this period of time, Your Majesty Davers, for your great help to me!" I had plenty of time to observe the workings of the Dionian kingdom, and I found that Dioonia had a number of advantages over other Greek city-states.

First of all, Dionya attached great importance to education, and the construction of schools in various cities at the expense of the government made it possible for children over the age of six to implement almost universal basic literacy education in the kingdom. This kind of education is all-encompassing, not only teaching mathematics, literature, rhetoric, logic, philosophy...... Sculpture, music, and dance are also taught to nurture their minds, and physical exercises are carried out to strengthen their bodies. When they reach adulthood, they will be the gold and silver of Dionia, and they will easily become good citizens of the kingdom.

Second, although Dionya emphasized the role of law, it actually placed more emphasis on moral education. Otherwise, you will not believe in Hades as the protector of your kingdom. Promote Hades' just and strict punishment in hell to guide the people to do more good deeds in their lifetime...... The same is true of your admiration for Hera, which led the people to love marriage and family, which played a very important role in the stability of the kingdom. Dionia's use of the gods to guide citizens towards good was a very novel but effective method that was well worth learning from other city-states.

Again, Your Majesty Davers said to me before, 'You do not have a strict division of labor among the citizens of the Kingdom', but Dionya has a strict division of labor among the public officials of the Kingdom through a method called "examination". Let those who know the law be judges, let those who are good at making things be supervisors, let those who are good at making money manage trade, and let those who are good at statistics be in charge of money...... Even your generals have been promoted through the ranks of soldiers and officers, and most of your city administrators have rich experience in urban management. This is not at all like most Greek city-states, including Athens, where the high-ranking officials elected by the people through citizens' assemblies were mostly rhetorical, pandering hypocrites who did not know how to govern a city-state, let alone how to lead their troops to victory. The blindness and ignorance of the people allowed these people to hold the power of the city-state, how could they make the city-state strong!

And, Your Majesty Davers, you have given girls the same education and sports training as boys from an early age, and you have given them more property and freedom of life when they become adults, and although you have not yet made it possible for women to hold some public offices in the kingdom, you have done a very good job in the equality of men and women compared to other Greek city-states.

In addition, Dionya was also fair in the distribution of property. Each citizen of the kingdom is given five acres of land, which is then redistributed according to the citizen's contribution to the kingdom and other financial rewards, rather than having most of the kingdom's public property earned by the nobles and the rich......"

Hearing these words, Davers was in a good mood, and said half-jokingly and half-seriously to the other elders who came to the banquet: "Do you hear, our party members have so many advantages, you should have more confidence in the kingdom and work harder!" ”

The others responded with a smile.

Plato didn't laugh, he looked at Davers, and said seriously: "I found that Dionia has one of the greatest advantages, that is, Your Majesty Davers!" ”

"Me?"

"Yes." Plato began to get emotional and said loudly: "As a king of a nation, you are not above the law, but act according to the law. Instead of splurging and pursuing a luxurious life, you have a low-regulation system. As far as I know, the polity of the Kingdom of Dionia, and of these bills that have amazed me, are mostly the result of your suggestion, which is difficult to do without great knowledge, deep observation, and good judgment. And the only ones who can do all this are philosophers! Philosophers don't have to be well-known and written. My teacher, Socrates, always spoke but didn't write. But your Majesty Davers, you are a true philosopher king! ”

Speaking of this, Plato's expression was excited, and his eyes lit up: "I was wrong in my previous judgment, my ideal state is not that it cannot exist in reality, but that it is being realized, in Dionia!" ”

In his previous life, Plato had traveled to Tarantum, when Tarantum was in his prime, and Plato fell in love with the long-time consul Acheta, because as an important figure in the Pythagorean school, Acheta was the typical image of the "philosopher king" that Plato hoped for, so he greatly admired Acheta in his writings. But in this lifetime, when Acheta died early and Tarantum became a free city in the Kingdom of Dionia, Plato turned his attention to Davers, who had created more glory than Acheta.

Of course, Plato, who was proud of himself at the farewell banquet, did not admit that there was an obvious flaw in his book "The Ideal Republic" compared with the current situation of Dionia, that is, he had a somewhat narrow vision before, focusing only on one city, and even thought that the population of the city-state should be 5,040 people, and Dionia, with its huge population and vast land, could also govern well, which made his heart feel very touched.

With reluctance and a vision for the future, Plato left Turius and returned to Athens. While concentrating on teaching, he also devoted much of his energy to a deeper reflection on the political system of the city-state, and a few years later wrote the Davos Chapter, which he claimed to be worth far more than his previous Lycis, Gorgias, and Hippias...... and other articles, and no less than the book "Ideal Country", this is a later story.

Note: Finally finished writing this volume! I didn't dare to write about Plato, philosophy, or academic controversy before, because I was not good at it, and some book friends advised me to avoid it, but I later thought that since I was writing about ancient Greece, how could there be no scene of a hundred schools of thought contending in the classical era, so I wrote it head-on, and read several books for this purpose, although the writing was relatively superficial, I finally defeated myself.

The next volume is even more exciting, because there are things you want to see: Rome, Carthage, Etruscan, Egypt, Celtic, Iberia......

So the name of the next volume is "The Storm in the Western Mediterranean"!