 Interpretations that see the main aim of the preludes as providing, along with the rest of the citizens’ education, a rational, although less than fully philosophic, grasp of basic ethical principles need not hold that this is the only aim of the preludes or that there is only one kind of prelude. Plato does include some preludes – e.g. those to laws pertaining to murders that are especially heinous in that they are fully voluntary and committed out of desire for pleasure, envy and so on – that work primarily by rhetorical means or appeal to myths that Plato probably did not accept as literally true (e.g. 870D–871A). Such preludes are designed, as Saunders notes, for those citizens who have badly failed to benefit from Magnesia’s educational system (Saunders 1992, 210–11). Such preludes are a last resort before the infliction of punishment and are aimed at the inevitable failures among the citizens. Interpretations stressing the rational aim of the preludes argue that Magnesia’s education is intended to give the citizens as a whole the ability to follow the more sophisticated preludes and that such preludes are not restricted to an elite sub-class of citizens.