Zeus

King ZEUS, give unto us what is good, whether we pray or pray not ; ALCIBIADES II

Demodocus : Then do you mind if we step aside here from the street into the portico of ZEUS the Liberator ? THEAGES

Socrates : Then do you know who were their good kings ? Minos and Rhadamanthus, the sons of ZEUS and Europa ; those laws were theirs. MINOS

So if I now proceed to relate how Minos is eulogized by Homer (319b) and Hesiod, my purpose is to prevent you, a man sprung from a man, from making a mistake in regard to a hero who was the son of ZEUS. For Homer, in telling of Crete that there were in it many men and “ninety cities,” says : MINOS

And amongst them is the mighty city of Cnossos, where Minos was king, having colloquy with mighty ZEUS in the ninth year. MINOS

(319c) Now here in Homer we have a eulogy of Minos, briefly expressed, such as the poet never composed for a single one of the heroes. For that ZEUS is a sophist, and that sophistry is a highly honorable art, he makes plain in many other places, and particularly here. For he says that Minos consorted and discoursed with ZEUS in the ninth year, and went regularly to be educated by ZEUS as though he were a sophist. And the fact that Homer assigned this privilege of having been educated by ZEUS to no one among the heroes but Minos makes this a marvellous piece of praise. (319d) And in the Ghost-raising in the Odyssey he has described Minos as judging with a golden scepter in his hand, but not Rhadamanthus : Rhadamanthus he has neither described here as judging nor anywhere as consorting with ZEUS ; wherefore I say that Minos above all persons has been eulogized by Homer. For to have been the son of ZEUS, and to have been the only one who was educated by ZEUS, is praise unsurpassable.For the meaning of the verse — “he was king having colloquy with mighty ZEUS in the ninth year” — (319e) is that Minos was a disciple of ZEUS. For colloquies are discourses, and he who has colloquy is a disciple by means of discourse. So every ninth year Minos repaired to the cave of ZEUS, to learn some things, and to show his knowledge of others that he had learnt from ZEUS in the preceding nine years. Some there are who suppose that he who has colloquy is a cup-companion and fellow-jester of ZEUS : but one may take the following as a proof that (320a) they who suppose so are babblers. For of all the many nations of men, both Greek and foreign, the only people who refrain from drinking-bouts and the jesting that occurs where there is wine, are the Cretans, and after them the Spartans, who learnt it from the Cretans. In Crete it is one of their laws which Minos ordained that they are not to drink with each other to intoxication. And yet it is evident that the things he thought honorable were what he ordained as lawful for his people as well. For surely Minos did not, like an inferior person, (320b) think one thing and do another, different from what he thought : no, this intercourse, as I say, was held by means of discussion for education in virtue. Wherefore he ordained for his people these very laws, which have made Crete happy through the length of time, and Sparta happy also, since she began to use them ; for they are divine. MINOS

Who was most kingly of mortal kings, and lorded it over more neighboring folk than any, holding the scepter of ZEUS : therewith it was that he ruled the cities as king. MINOS

And by the scepter of ZEUS he means nothing else than the education that he had of ZEUS, whereby he directed Crete. MINOS

Hippias : Yes, by ZEUS, too much so. LESSER HIPPIAS

Hippias : He is false about number also, by ZEUS. LESSER HIPPIAS

Tomorrow, after sacrificing to ZEUS and all the gods, (he says), I will load my ships well and drag them into the sea ; then you shall see, if you like and if it interests you, early in the morning my ships sailing the fishy Hellespont (370c) and my men eagerly rowing in them ; and if the glorious Earthshaker should grant me a fair voyage, on the third day I should come to fertile Phthia. LESSER HIPPIAS

Hippias : No, by ZEUS, it was not, Socrates. GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : Far from it indeed, by ZEUS. GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : By ZEUS, Hippias, it is lucky for you that the Lacedaemonians do not enjoy hearing one recite the list of our archons from Solon’s time ; if they did, you would have trouble in learning it by heart. GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : And by ZEUS, Socrates, I have just lately gained reputation there by telling about noble or beautiful pursuits, recounting what those of a young man should be. For I have a very beautiful discourse composed about them, well arranged in its words and also in other respects. And the plan of the discourse, and its beginning, is something like this : After the fall of Troy, the story goes that Neoptolemus asked Nestor (286b) what the noble and beautiful pursuits were, by following which a young man would become most famous ; so after that we have Nestor speaking and suggesting to him very many lawful and most beautiful pursuits. That discourse, then, I delivered there and intend to deliver here the day after tomorrow in Pheidostratus’s schoolroom, with many other things worth hearing ; for Eudicus, the son of Apemantus, asked me to do so. Now be sure to be there yourself and to bring others (286c) who are able to judge of discourses that they hear. GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : Yes, surely, by ZEUS, a small one, Socrates, and, I may say, of no value. GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : Yes, by ZEUS, Socrates, and to me that is very queer. GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : By ZEUS, my good friend, then neither is the beautiful good, nor the good beautiful ; or does it seem to you possible, after what has been said ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : No, by ZEUS, it does not appear so to me. GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : No, by ZEUS, it does not please me at all. GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Right, by ZEUS, Hippias ! (297d) And it pleases me least of all the things we have said. GREATER HIPPIAS

Once upon a time there were gods only, and no mortal creatures. But when the time came that these also should be created, the gods fashioned them out of earth and fire and various mixtures of both elements in the interior of the earth ; and when they were about to bring them into the light of day, they ordered Prometheus and Epimetheus to equip them, and to distribute to them severally their proper qualities. Epimetheus said to Prometheus : “Let me distribute, and do you inspect.” This was agreed, and Epimetheus made the distribution. There were some to whom he gave strength without swiftness, while he equipped the weaker with swiftness ; some he armed, and others he left unarmed ; and devised for the latter some other means of preservation, making some large, and having their size as a protection, and others small, whose nature was to fly in the air or burrow in the ground ; this was to be their way of escape. Thus did he compensate them with the view of preventing any race from becoming extinct. And when he had provided against their destruction by one another, he contrived also a means of protecting them against the seasons of heaven ; clothing them with close hair and thick skins sufficient to defend them against the winter cold and able to resist the summer heat, so that they might have a natural bed of their own when they wanted to rest ; also he furnished them with hoofs and hair and hard and callous skins under their feet. Then he gave them varieties of food-herb of the soil to some, to others fruits of trees, and to others roots, and to some again he gave other animals as food. And some he made to have few young ones, while those who were their prey were very prolific ; and in this manner the race was preserved. Thus did Epimetheus, who, not being very wise, forgot that he had distributed among the brute animals all the qualities which he had to give — and when he came to man, who was still unprovided, he was terribly perplexed. Now while he was in this perplexity, Prometheus came to inspect the distribution, and he found that the other animals were suitably furnished, but that man alone was naked and shoeless, and had neither bed nor arms of defence. The appointed hour was approaching when man in his turn was to go forth into the light of day ; and Prometheus, not knowing how he could devise his salvation, stole the mechanical arts of Hephaestus and Athene, and fire with them (they could neither have been acquired nor used without fire), and gave them to man. Thus man had the wisdom necessary to the support of life, but political wisdom he had not ; for that was in the keeping of ZEUS, and the power of Prometheus did not extend to entering into the citadel of heaven, where ZEUS dwelt, who moreover had terrible sentinels ; but he did enter by stealth into the common workshop of Athene and Hephaestus, in which they used to practise their favourite arts, and carried off Hephaestus’ art of working by fire, and also the art of Athene, and gave them to man. And in this way man was supplied with the means of life. But Prometheus is said to have been afterwards prosecuted for theft, owing to the blunder of Epimetheus. PROTAGORAS

Now man, having a share of the divine attributes, was at first the only one of the animals who had any gods, because he alone was of their kindred ; and he would raise altars and images of them. He was not long in inventing articulate speech and names ; and he also constructed houses and clothes and shoes and beds, and drew sustenance from the earth. Thus provided, mankind at first lived dispersed, and there were no cities. But the consequence was that they were destroyed by the wild beasts, for they were utterly weak in comparison of them, and their art was only sufficient to provide them with the means of life, and did not enable them to carry on war against the animals : food they had, but not as yet the art of government, of which the art of war is a part. After a while the desire of self-preservation gathered them into cities ; but when they were gathered together, having no art of government, they evil intreated one another, and were again in process of dispersion and destruction. ZEUS feared that the entire race would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. Hermes asked ZEUS how he should impart justice and reverence among men : — Should he distribute them as the arts are distributed ; that is to say, to a favoured few only, one skilled individual having enough of medicine or of any other art for many unskilled ones ? “Shall this be the manner in which I am to distribute justice and reverence among men, or shall I give them to all ?” “To all,” said ZEUS ; “I should like them all to have a share ; for cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, as in the arts. And further, make a law by my order, that he who has no part in reverence and justice shall be put to death, for he is a plague of the state.” PROTAGORAS

Thought him still speaking ; still stood fixed to hear. At length, when the truth dawned upon me, that he had really finished, not without difficulty I began to collect myself, and looking at Hippocrates, I said to him : O son of Apollodorus, how deeply grateful I am to you for having brought me hither ; I would not have missed the speech of Protagoras for a great deal. For I used to imagine that no human care could make men good ; but I know better now. Yet I have still one very small difficulty which I am sure that Protagoras will easily explain, as he has already explained so much. If a man were to go and consult Pericles or any of our great speakers about these matters, he might perhaps hear as fine a discourse ; but then when one has a question to ask of any of them, like books, they can neither answer nor ask ; and if any one challenges the least particular of their speech, they go ringing on in a long harangue, like brazen pots, which when they are struck continue to sound unless some one puts his hand upon them ; whereas our friend Protagoras can not only make a good speech, as he has already shown, but when he is asked a question he can answer briefly ; and when he asks he will wait and hear the answer ; and this is a very rare gift. Now I, Protagoras, want to ask of you a little question, which if you will only answer, I shall be quite satisfied. You were saying that virtue can be taught ; — that I will take upon your authority, and there is no one to whom I am more ready to trust. But I marvel at one thing about which I should like to have my mind set at rest. You were speaking of ZEUS sending justice and reverence to men ; and several times while you were speaking, justice, and temperance, and holiness, and all these qualities, were described by you as if together they made up virtue. Now I want you to tell me truly whether virtue is one whole, of which justice and temperance and holiness are parts ; or whether all these are only the names of one and the same thing : that is the doubt which still lingers in my mind. PROTAGORAS

I swear by ZEUS that you believe absolutely in none at all. APOLOGY

Socrates : Then let us consider, by comparing our lot with theirs, whether the Spartan and Persian kings appear to be of inferior birth. Do we not know that the former are descendants of Hercules and the latter of Achaemenes, and that the line of Hercules and the line of Achaemenes go back to Perseus, son of ZEUS ? ALCIBIADES I

(121a) Alcibiades : Yes, and mine, Socrates, to Eurysaces, and that of Eurysaces to ZEUS ! ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Yes, and mine, noble Alcibiades, to Daedalus, and Daedalus to Hephaestus, son of ZEUS ! But take the lines of those people, going back from them : you have a succession of kings reaching to ZEUS — on the one hand, kings of Argos and Sparta ; on the other, of Persia, which they have always ruled, and frequently Asia also, as at present ; whereas we are private persons ourselves, and so were our fathers. And then, (121b) suppose that you had to make what show you could of your ancestors, and of Salamis as the native land of Eurysaces, or of Aegina as the home of the yet earlier Aeacus, to impress Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, how you must expect to be laughed at ! Why, I am afraid we are quite outdone by those persons in pride of birth and upbringing altogether. Or have you not observed how great are the advantages of the Spartan kings, and how their wives are kept under statutory ward of the ephors, in order that every possible precaution may be taken against the king being born (121c) of any but the Heracleidae ? And the Persian king so far surpasses us that no one has a suspicion that he could have been born of anybody but the king before him ; and hence the king’s wife has nothing to guard her except fear. When the eldest son, the heir to the throne, is born, first of all the king’s subjects who are in his palace have a feast, and then for ever after on that date the whole of Asia celebrates the king’s birthday with sacrifice and feasting : but when we are born, as the comic poet says, (121d) even the neighbors barely notice it, Alcibiades. After that comes the nurture of the child, not at the hands of a woman-nurse of little worth, but of the most highly approved eunuchs in the king’s service, who are charged with the whole tendance of the new-born child, and especially with the business of making him as handsome as possible by moulding his limbs into a correct shape ; and while doing this they are in high honor. (121e) When the boys are seven years old they are given horses and have riding lessons, and they begin to follow the chase. And when the boy reaches fourteen years he is taken over by the royal tutors, as they call them there : these are four men chosen as the most highly esteemed among the Persians of mature age, namely, the wisest one, the justest one, the most temperate one, (122a) and the bravest one. The first of these teaches him the magian lore of Zoroaster, son of Horomazes ; and that is the worship of the gods : he teaches him also what pertains to a king. The justest teaches him to be truthful all his life long ; the most temperate, not to be mastered by even a single pleasure, in order that he may be accustomed to be a free man and a veritable king, who is the master first of all that is in him, not the slave ; while the bravest trains him to be fearless and undaunted, telling him that to be daunted is to be enslaved. But you, (122b) Alcibiades, had a tutor set over you by Pericles from amongst his servants,who was old as to be the most useless of them, Zopyrus the Thracian. I might describe to you at length the nurture and education of your competitors, were it not too much of a task ; and besides, what I have said suffices to show the rest that follows thereon. But about your birth, Alcibiades, or nurture or education, or about those of any other Athenian, one may say that nobody cares, unless it be some lover whom you chance to have. And again, if you chose to glance at the wealth, the luxury, (122c) the robes with sweeping trains, the anointings with myrrh, the attendant troops of menials, and all the other refinements of the Persians, you would be ashamed at your own case, on perceiving its inferiority to theirs. Should you choose, again, to look at the temperance and orderliness, the facility and placidity, the magnanimity and discipline, the courage and endurance, and the toil-loving, success-loving, honor-loving spirit of the Spartans, you would count yourself but a child(122d) in all these things. If again you regard wealth, and think yourself something in that way, I must not keep silence on this point either, if you are to realize where you stand. For in this respect you have only to look at the wealth of the Spartans, and you will perceive that our riches here are far inferior to theirs. Think of all the land that they have both in their own and in the Messenian country : not one of our estates could compete with theirs in extent and excellence, nor again in ownership of slaves, and especially of those of the helot class, nor yet of horses, (122e) nor of all the flocks and herds that graze in Messene. However, I pass over all these things : but there is more gold and silver privately held in Lacedaemon than in the whole of Greece ; for during many generations treasure has been passing in to them from every part of Greece, and often from the barbarians also, but not passing out to anyone ; and just as in the fable of Aesop, (123a) where the fox remarked to the lion on the direction of the footmarks, the traces of the money going into Lacedaemon are clear enough, but nowhere are any to be seen of it coming out ; so that one can be pretty sure that those people are the richest of the Greeks in gold and silver, and that among themselves the richest is the king ; for the largest and most numerous receipts of the kind are those of the kings, (123b) and besides there is the levy of the royal tribute in no slight amount, which the Spartans pay to their kings. Now, the Spartan fortunes, though great compared with the wealth of other Greeks, are nought beside that of the Persians and their king. For I myself was once told by a trustworthy person, who had been up to their court, that he traversed a very large tract of excellent land, nearly a day’s journey, which the inhabitants called the girdle of the king’s wife, and another which was similarly called her veil ; (123c) and many other fine and fertile regions reserved for the adornment of the consort ; and each of these regions was named after some part of her apparel. So I imagine, if someone should say to the king’s mother Amestris, who was wife of Xerxes, “The son of Deinomache intends to challenge your son ; the mother’s dresses are worth perhaps fifty minae at the outside, while the son has under three hundred acres at Erchiae,” she would wonder to what on earth this (123d) Alcibiades could be trusting, that he proposed to contend against Artaxerxes ; and I expect she would remark — “The only possible things that the man can be trusting to for his enterprise are industry and wisdom ; for these are the only things of any account among the Greeks.” Whereas if she were informed that this Alcibiades who is actually making such an attempt is, in the first place, as yet barely twenty years old, and secondly, altogether uneducated ; and further, that when his lover tells him that he must first learn, and take pains over himself, and practise, (123e) before he enters on a contest with the king, he refuses, and says he will do very well as he is ; I expect she would ask in surprise, “On what, then, can the youngster rely ?” And if we told her, “On beauty, stature, birth, wealth, and mental gifts,” she would conclude we were mad, Alcibiades, when she compared the advantages of her own people in all these respects. And I imagine that even Lampido, daughter of Leotychides (124a) and wife of Archidamus and mother of Agis, who have all been kings, would wonder in the same way, when she compared her people’s resources, at your intention of having a contest with her son despite your bad upbringing. And yet, does it not strike you as disgraceful that our enemies’ wives should have a better idea of the qualities that we need for an attempt against them than we have ourselves ? Ah, my remarkable friend, listen to me and the Delphic motto, (124b) “Know thyself” ; for these people are our competitors, not those whom you think ; and there is nothing that will give us ascendancy over them save only pains and skill. If you are found wanting in these, you will be found wanting also in achievement of renown among Greeks and barbarians both ; and of this I observe you to be more enamored than anyone else ever was of anything. ALCIBIADES I

Now then, I said, making an offering of the third or last argument to ZEUS the Saviour, let us begin again, and ask, in the first place, whether it is or is not possible for a person to know that he knows and does not know what he knows and does not know ; and in the second place, whether, if perfectly possible, such knowledge is of any use. CHARMIDES

Yes, indeed, said Ctesippus ; I know only too well ; and very ridiculous the tale is : for although he is a lover, and very devotedly in love, he has nothing particular to talk about to his beloved which a child might not say. Now is not that ridiculous ? He can only speak of the wealth of Democrates, which the whole city celebrates, and grandfather Lysis, and the other ancestors of the youth, and their stud of horses, and their victory at the Pythian games, and at the Isthmus, and at Nemea with four horses and single horses — these are the tales which he composes and repeats. And there is greater twaddle still. Only the day before yesterday he made a poem in which he described the entertainment of Heracles, who was a connexion of the family, setting forth how in virtue of this relationship he was hospitably received by an ancestor of Lysis ; this ancestor was himself begotten of ZEUS by the daughter of the founder of the deme. And these are the sort of old wives’ tales which he sings and recites to us, and we are obliged to listen to him. LYSIS

Euth. Piety is doing as I am doing ; that is to say, prosecuting any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime — whether he be your father or mother, or whoever he may be — that makes no difference ; and not to prosecute them is impiety. And please to consider, Socrates, what a notable proof I will give you of the truth of my words, a proof which I have already given to others : — of the principle, I mean, that the impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not men regard ZEUS as the best and most righteous of the gods ? — and yet they admit that he bound his father (Cronos) because he wickedly devoured his sons, and that he too had punished his own father (Uranus) for a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when I proceed against my father, they are angry with me. So inconsistent are they in their way of talking when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned. EUTHYPHRO

Soc. May not this be the reason, Euthyphro, why I am charged with impiety — that I cannot away with these stories about the gods ? and therefore I suppose that people think me wrong. But, as you who are well informed about them approve of them, I cannot do better than assent to your superior wisdom. What else can I say, confessing as I do, that I know nothing about them ? Tell me, for the love of ZEUS, whether you really believe that they are true. EUTHYPHRO

Soc. Then, my friend, I remark with surprise that you have not answered the question which I asked. For I certainly did not ask you to tell me what action is both pious and impious : but now it would seem that what is loved by the gods is also hated by them. And therefore, Euthyphro, in thus chastising your father you may very likely be doing what is agreeable to ZEUS but disagreeable to Cronos or Uranus, and what is acceptable to Hephaestus but unacceptable to Here, and there may be other gods who have similar differences of opinion. EUTHYPHRO

Of ZEUS, the author and creator of all these things, EUTHYPHRO

Pol. By ZEUS, I did. GORGIAS

Soc. Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale, which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only, but which, as I believe, is a true tale, for I mean to speak the truth. Homer tells us, how ZEUS and Poseidon and Pluto divided the empire which they inherited from their father. Now in the days of Cronos there existed a law respecting the destiny of man, which has always been, and still continues to be in Heaven — that he who has lived all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil ; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, and even quite lately in the reign of ZEUS, the judgment was given on the very day on which the men were to die ; the judges were alive, and the men were alive ; and the consequence was that the judgments were not well given. Then Pluto and the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to ZEUS, and said that the souls found their way to the wrong places. ZEUS said : “I shall put a stop to this ; the judgments are not well given, because the persons who are judged have their clothes on, for they are alive ; and there are many who, having evil souls, are apparelled in fair bodies, or encased in wealth or rank, and, when the day of judgment arrives, numerous witnesses come forward and testify on their behalf that they have lived righteously. The judges are awed by them, and they themselves too have their clothes on when judging ; their eyes and ears and their whole bodies are interposed as a well before their own souls. All this is a hindrance to them ; there are the clothes of the judges and the clothes of the judged — What is to be done ? I will tell you : — In the first place, I will deprive men of the foreknowledge of death, which they possess at present : this power which they have Prometheus has already received my orders to take from them : in the second place, they shall be entirely stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are dead ; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead — he with his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked souls ; and they shall die suddenly and be deprived of all their kindred, and leave their brave attire strewn upon the earth — conducted in this manner, the judgment will be just. I knew all about the matter before any of you, and therefore I have made my sons judges ; two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe, Aeacus. And these, when they are dead, shall give judgment in the meadow at the parting of the ways, whence the two roads lead, one to the Islands of the Blessed, and the other to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who come from Asia, and Aeacus those who come from Europe. And to Minos I shall give the primacy, and he shall hold a court of appeal, in case either of the two others are in any doubt : — then the judgment respecting the last journey of men will be as just as possible.” GORGIAS

Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as the argument shows. And never mind if some one despises you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind ; let him strike you, by ZEUS, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practise of virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we have practised virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our minds ; so utterly stupid are we ! Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go ; and in this exhort all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow you ; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth. GORGIAS

Socrates : Yes, by ZEUS, I certainly do. MENEXENUS

Menexenus : And by ZEUS, Socrates, Aspasia, by your account, deserves to be congratulated if she is really capable of composing a speech like that, woman though she is. MENEXENUS

Any. Yes, by ZEUS, and of ignorance too. MENO

By ZEUS, said Ctesippus, interrupting, I only wish that you would give me some proof which would enable me to know whether you speak truly. EUTHYDEMUS

Then, after a pause, in which he seemed to be lost in the contemplation of something great, he said : Tell me, Socrates, have you an ancestral ZEUS ? Here, anticipating the final move, like a person caught in a net, who gives a desperate twist that he may get away, I said : No, Dionysodorus, I have not. EUTHYDEMUS

And have not other Athenians, he said, an ancestral ZEUS ? EUTHYDEMUS

That name, I said, is not to be found among the Ionians, whether colonists or citizens of Athens ; an ancestral Apollo there is, who is the father of Ion, and a family ZEUS, and a ZEUS guardian of the phratry, and an Athene guardian of the phratry. But the name of ancestral ZEUS is unknown to us. EUTHYDEMUS

No matter, said Dionysodorus, for you admit that you have Apollo, ZEUS, and Athene. EUTHYDEMUS

Well then, said he, if you admit that ZEUS and the other gods are yours, can you sell them or give them away or do what you will with them, as you would with other animals ? EUTHYDEMUS

Soc. Many terrible misfortunes are said to have happened to him in his life — last of all, came the utter ruin of his country ; and after his death he had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the world below — all this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You might imagine that some person who wanted to call him Talantatos (the most weighted down by misfortune), disguised the name by altering it into Tantalus ; and into this form, by some accident of tradition, it has actually been transmuted. The name of ZEUS, who is his alleged father, has also an excellent meaning, although hard to be understood, because really like a sentence, which is divided into two parts, for some call him Zena, and use the one half, and others who use the other half call him Dia ; the two together signify the nature of the God, and the business of a name, as we were saying, is to express the nature. For there is none who is more the author of life to us and to all, than the lord and king of all. Wherefore we are right in calling him Zena and Dia, which are one name, although divided, meaning the God through whom all creatures always have life (di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei). There is an irreverence, at first sight, in calling him son of Cronos (who is a proverb for stupidity), and we might rather expect ZEUS to be the child of a mighty intellect. Which is the fact ; for this is the meaning of his father’s name : Kronos quasi Koros (Choreo, to sweep), not in the sense of a youth, but signifying to chatharon chai acheraton tou nou, the pure and garnished mind (sc. apo tou chorein). He, as we are informed by tradition, was begotten of Uranus, rightly so called (apo tou oran ta ano) from looking upwards ; which, as philosophers tell us, is the way to have a pure mind, and the name Uranus is therefore correct. If I could remember the genealogy of Hesiod, I would have gone on and tried more conclusions of the same sort on the remoter ancestors of the Gods, — then I might have seen whether this wisdom, which has come to me all in an instant, I know not whence, will or will not hold good to the end. CRATYLUS

Her. I think, Socrates, that we have said enough of this class of words. But have we any more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that which you were giving of ZEUS ? I should like to know whether any similar principle of correctness is to be applied to them. CRATYLUS

Soc. To be sure. But what comes next ? — of ZEUS we have spoken. CRATYLUS

Soc. Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother ; Here is the lovely one (erate) — for ZEUS, according to tradition, loved and married her ; possibly also the name may have been given when the legislator was thinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of the air (aer), putting the end in the place of the beginning. You will recognize the truth of this if you repeat the letters of Here several times over. People dread the name of Pherephatta as they dread the name of Apollo — and with as little reason ; the fear, if I am not mistaken, only arises from their ignorance of the nature of names. But they go changing the name into Phersephone, and they are terrified at this ; whereas the new name means only that the Goddess is wise (sophe) ; for seeing that all things in the world are in motion (pheromenon), that principle which embraces and touches and is able to follow them, is wisdom. And therefore the Goddess may be truly called Pherepaphe (Pherepapha), or some name like it, because she touches that which is (tou pheromenon ephaptomene), herein showing her wisdom. And Hades, who is wise, consorts with her, because she is wise. They alter her name into Pherephatta now-a-days, because the present generation care for euphony more than truth. There is the other name, Apollo, which, as I was saying, is generally supposed to have some terrible signification. Have you remarked this fact ? CRATYLUS

Soc. The orai should be spelt in the old Attic way, if you desire to know the probable truth about them ; they are rightly called the orai because they divide (orizousin) the summers and winters and winds and the fruits of the earth. The words eniautos and etos appear to be the same, — “that which brings to light the plants and growths of the earth in their turn, and passes them in review within itself (en eauto exetazei)” : this is broken up into two words, eniautos from en eauto, and etos from etazei, just as the original name of ZEUS was divided into Zena and Dia ; and the whole proposition means that his power of reviewing from within is one, but has two names, two words etos and eniautos being thus formed out of a single proposition. CRATYLUS

And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses ? The elder one, having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite — she is the daughter of Uranus ; the younger, who is the daughter of ZEUS and Dione — her we call common ; and the Love who is her fellow-worker is rightly named common, as the other love is called heavenly. All the gods ought to have praise given to them, but not without distinction of their natures ; and therefore I must try to distinguish the characters of the two Loves. Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them ; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil ; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise. The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul — the most foolish beings are the objects of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger than the other, and she was born of the union of the male and female, and partakes of both. SYMPOSIUM

At last, after a good deal of reflection, ZEUS discovered a way. He said : “Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners ; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers ; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.” He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair ; and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself : he would thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel) ; he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last ; he left a few, however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state. After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart ; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them, being the sections of entire men or women, and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when ZEUS in pity of them invented a new plan : he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this had not been always their position and they sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another ; and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue ; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life : so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man. SYMPOSIUM

Of his courage and justice and temperance I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom — and according to the measure of my ability I must try to do my best. In the first place he is a poet (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art), and he is also the source of poesy in others, which he could not be if he were not himself a poet. And at the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he had no music in him before ; this also is a proof that Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts ; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing ? Are they not all the works his wisdom, born and begotten of him ? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame ? — he whom Love touches riot walks in darkness. The arts of medicine and archery and divination were discovered by Apollo, under the guidance of love and desire ; so that he too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody of the Muses, the metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of Athene, the empire of ZEUS over gods and men, are all due to Love, who was the inventor of them. And so Love set in order the empire of the gods — the love of beauty, as is evident, for with deformity Love has no concern. In the days of old, as I began by saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were ruled by Necessity ; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. Therefore, Phaedrus, I say of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, and the cause of what is fairest and best in all other things. And there comes into my mind a line of poetry in which he is said to be the god who SYMPOSIUM

“What then is Love ?” I asked ; “Is he mortal ?” “No.” “What then ?” “As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two.” “What is he, Diotima ?” “He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.” “And what,” I said, “is his power ?” “He interprets,” she replied, “between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods ; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man ; but through Love. all the intercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual ; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love. “And who,” I said, “was his father, and who his mother ?” “The tale,” she said, “will take time ; nevertheless I will tell you. On the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on such occasions, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse for nectar (there was no wine in those days), went into the garden of ZEUS and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down at his side and conceived love, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and also because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant. And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him ; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in ; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest ; and like his mother he is always in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and good ; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources ; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’s nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth ; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this : No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already ; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself : he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.” “But — who then, Diotima,” I said, “are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish ?” “A child may answer that question,” she replied ; “they are those who are in a mean between the two ; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful ; and therefore Love is also a philosopher : or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. And of this too his birth is the cause ; for his father is wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all beautiful. For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and blessed ; but the principle of love is of another nature, and is such as I have described.” SYMPOSIUM

Phaedr. Yes, he was staying with Epicrates, here at the house of Morychus ; that house which is near the temple of Olympian ZEUS. PHAEDRUS

Phaedr. Now don’t talk in that way, Socrates, but let me have your real opinion ; I adjure you, by ZEUS, the god of friendship, to tell me whether you think that any Hellene could have said more or spoken better on the same subject. PHAEDRUS

The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine, and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods. The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like ; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace ; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away. ZEUS, the mighty lord, holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, ordering all and taking care of all ; and there follows him the array of gods and demigods, marshalled in eleven bands ; Hestia alone abides at home in the house of heaven ; of the rest they who are reckoned among the princely twelve march in their appointed order. They see many blessed sights in the inner heaven, and there are many ways to and fro, along which the blessed gods are passing, every one doing his own work ; he may follow who will and can, for jealousy has no place in the celestial choir. But when they go to banquet and festival, then they move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven. The chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly ; but the others labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer to the earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained : — and this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the soul. For the immortals, when they are at the end of their course, go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven, and the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they behold the things beyond. But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily ? It is such as I will describe ; for I must dare to speak the truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned ; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. In the revolution she beholds justice, and temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men call existence, but knowledge absolute in existence absolute ; and beholding the other true existences in like manner, and feasting upon them, she passes down into the interior of the heavens and returns home ; and there the charioteer putting up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. PHAEDRUS

Thus far I have been speaking of the fourth and last kind of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true beauty ; he would like to fly away, but he cannot ; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world below ; and he is therefore thought to be mad. And I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest and the offspring of the highest to him who has or shares in it, and that he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it. For, as has been already said, every soulsoul of man has in the way of nature beheld true being ; this was the condition of her passing into the form of man. But all souls do not easily recall the things of the other world ; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their hearts turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them ; and they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement ; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them : they are seen through a glass dimly ; and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty. There was a time when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty shining in brightness — we philosophers following in the train of ZEUS, others in company with other gods ; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining impure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell. Let me linger over the memory of scenes which have passed away. PHAEDRUS

Now the lover who is taken to be the attendant of ZEUS is better able to bear the winged god, and can endure a heavier burden ; but the attendants and companions of Ares, when under the influence of love, if they fancy that they have been at all wronged, are ready to kill and put an end to themselves and their beloved. And he who follows in the train of any other god, while he is unspoiled and the impression lasts, honours and imitates him, as far as he is able ; and after the manner of his god he behaves in his intercourse with his beloved and with the rest of the world during the first period of his earthly existence. Every one chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship. The followers of ZEUS desire that their beloved should have a soul like him ; and therefore they seek out some one of a philosophical and imperial nature, and when they have found him and loved him, they do all they can to confirm such a nature in him, and if they have no experience of such a disposition hitherto, they learn of any one who can teach them, and themselves follow in the same way. And they have the less difficulty in finding the nature of their own god in themselves, because they have been compelled to gaze intensely on him ; their recollection clings to him, and they become possessed of him, and receive from him their character and disposition, so far as man can participate in God. The qualities of their god they attribute to the beloved, wherefore they love him all the more, and if, like the Bacchic Nymphs, they draw inspiration from ZEUS, they pour out their own fountain upon him, wanting to make him as like as possible to their own god. But those who are the followers of Here seek a royal love, and when they have found him they do just the same with him ; and in like manner the followers of Apollo, and of every other god walking in the ways of their god, seek a love who is to be made like him whom they serve, and when they have found him, they themselves imitate their god, and persuade their love to do the same, and educate him into the manner and nature of the god as far as they each can ; for no feelings of envy or jealousy are entertained by them towards their beloved, but they do their utmost to create in him the greatest likeness of themselves and of the god whom they honour. Thus fair and blissful to the beloved is the desire of the inspired lover, and the initiation of which I speak into the mysteries of true love, if he be captured by the lover and their purpose is effected. Now the beloved is taken captive in the following manner : — PHAEDRUS

And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. For fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good. And the beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the lover ; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen ; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when his feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which ZEUS when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again ; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one ; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering. them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. And thus he loves, but he knows not what ; he does not understand and cannot explain his own state ; he appears to have caught the infection of blindness from another ; the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover, both cease from their pain, but when he is away then he longs as he is longed for, and has love’s image, love for love (Anteros) lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only, and his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker ; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace him, and probably not long afterwards his desire is accomplished. When they meet, the wanton steed of the lover has a word to say to the charioteer ; he would like to have a little pleasure in return for many pains, but the wanton steed of the beloved says not a word, for he is bursting with passion which he understands not ; — he throws his arms round the lover and embraces him as his dearest friend ; and, when they are side by side, he is not in it state in which he can refuse the lover anything, if he ask him ; although his fellow-steed and the charioteer oppose him with the arguments of shame and reason. PHAEDRUS

Str. How are we to call it ? By ZEUS, have we not lighted unwittingly upon our free and noble science, and in looking for the Sophist have we not entertained the philosopher unawares ? SOPHIST

Str. I see that you enter into my meaning ; — no, that blessed and spontaneous life does not belong to the present cycle of the world, but to the previous one, in which God superintended the whole revolution of the universe ; and the several parts the universe were distributed under the rule. certain inferior deities, as is the way in some places still There were demigods, who were the shepherds of the various species and herds of animals, and each one was in all respects sufficient for those of whom he was the shepherd ; neither was there any violence, or devouring of one another or war or quarrel among them ; and I might tell of ten thousand other blessings, which belonged to that dispensation. The reason why the life of man was, as tradition says, spontaneous, is as follows : In those days God himself was their shepherd, and ruled over them, just as man, over them, who is by comparison a divine being, still rules over the lower animals. Under him there were no forms of government or separate possession of women and children ; for all men rose again from the earth, having no memory, of the past. And although they had nothing of this sort, the earth gave them fruits in abundance, which grew on trees and shrubs unbidden, and were not planted by the hand of man. And they dwelt naked, and mostly in the open air, for the temperature of their seasons, was mild ; and they had no beds, but lay on Soft couches of grass, which grew plentifully out of : the earth. Such was the life of man in the days of Cronos, Socrates ; the character of our present life which is said to be under ZEUS, you know from your own experience. Can you, and will you, determine which of them you deem the happier ? STATESMAN

Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and from these sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that generation ; and from Cronos and Rhea sprang ZEUS and Here, and all those who are said to be their brethren, and others who were the children of these. TIMAEUS

Such was the vast power which the god settled in the lost island of Atlantis ; and this he afterwards directed against our land for the following reasons, as tradition tells : For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well-affectioned towards the god, whose seed they were ; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentleness with wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, caring little for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them ; neither were they intoxicated by luxury ; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control ; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtue and friendship with one another, whereas by too great regard and respect for them, they are lost and friendship with them. By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them ; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts ; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power. ZEUS, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows — CRITIAS

Soc. And in the divine nature of ZEUS would you not say that there is the soul and mind of a king, because there is in him the power of the cause ? And other gods have other attributes, by which they are pleased to be called. PHILEBUS

Soc. Well then, by ZEUS, let us proceed, and I will make what I believe to be a fair summary of the argument. PHILEBUS

Soc. Then let us sum up and reassert what has been said, thus offering the third libation to the saviour ZEUS. PHILEBUS

Cleinias. A God, Stranger ; in very truth a, God : among us Cretans he is said to have been ZEUS, but in Lacedaemon, whence our friend here comes, I believe they would say that Apollo is their lawgiver : would they not, Megillus ? LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Yes, and a noble reputation it was, worthy of a son of ZEUS. As you and Megillus have been trained in these institutions, I dare say that you will not be unwilling to give an account of your government and laws ; on our way we can pass the time pleasantly in about them, for I am told that the distance from Cnosus to the cave and temple of ZEUS is considerable ; and doubtless there are shady places under the lofty trees, which will protect us from this scorching sun. Being no longer young, we may often stop to rest beneath them, and get over the whole journey without difficulty, beguiling the time by conversation. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. You ought to have said, Stranger — The Cretan laws are with reason famous among the Hellenes ; for they fulfil the object of laws, which is to make those who use them happy ; and they confer every sort of good. Now goods are of two kinds : there are human and there are divine goods, and the human hang upon the divine ; and the state which attains the greater, at the same time acquires the less, or, not having the greater, has neither. Of the lesser goods the first is health, the second beauty, the third strength, including swiftness in running and bodily agility generally, and the fourth is wealth, not the blind god (Pluto), but one who is keen of sight, if only he has wisdom for his companion. For wisdom is chief and leader of the divine dass of goods, and next follows temperance ; and from the union of these two with courage springs justice, and fourth in the scale of virtue is courage. All these naturally take precedence of the other goods, and this is the order in which the legislator must place them, and after them he will enjoin the rest of his ordinances on the citizens with a view to these, the human looking to the divine, and the divine looking to their leader mind. Some of his ordinances will relate to contracts of marriage which they make one with another, and then to the procreation and education of children, both male and female ; the duty of the lawgiver will be to take charge of his citizens, in youth and age, and at every time of life, and to give them punishments and rewards ; and in reference to all their intercourse with one another, he ought to consider their pains and pleasures and desires, and the vehemence of all their passions ; he should keep a watch over them, and blame and praise them rightly by the mouth of the laws themselves. Also with regard to anger and terror, and the other perturbations of the soul, which arise out of misfortune, and the deliverances from them which prosperity brings, and the experiences which come to men in diseases, or in war, or poverty, or the opposite of these ; in all these states he should determine and teach what is the good and evil of the condition of each. In the next place, the legislator has to be careful how the citizens make their money and in what way they spend it, and to have an eye to their mutual contracts and dissolutions of contracts, whether voluntary or involuntary : he should see how they order all this, and consider where justice as well as injustice is found or is wanting in their several dealings with one another ; and honour those who obey the law, and impose fixed penalties on those who disobey, until the round of civil life is ended, and the time has come for the consideration of the proper funeral rites and honours of the dead. And the lawgiver reviewing his work, will appoint guardians to preside over these things — some who walk by intelligence, others by true opinion only, and then mind will bind together all his ordinances and show them to be in harmony with temperance and justice, and not with wealth or ambition. This is the spirit, Stranger, in which I was and am desirous that you should pursue the subject. And I want to know the nature of all these things, and how they are arranged in the laws of ZEUS, as they are termed, and in those of the Pythian Apollo, which Minos and Lycurgus gave ; and how the order of them is discovered to his eyes, who has experience in laws gained either by study or habit, although they are far from being self-evident to the rest of mankind like ourselves. LAWS BOOK I

Meg. Very good ; and suppose that you first criticize this praiser of ZEUS and the laws of Crete. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. There seems to be a difficulty, Stranger, with regard to states, in making words and facts coincide so that there can be no dispute about them. As in the human body, the regimen which does good in one way does harm in another ; and we can hardly say that any one course of treatment is adapted to a particular constitution. Now the gymnasia and common meals do a great deal of good, and yet they are a source of evil in civil troubles ; as is shown in the case of the Milesian, and Boeotian, and Thurian youth, among whom these institutions seem always to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient and natural custom of love below the level, not only of man, but of the beasts. The charge may be fairly brought against your cities above all others, and is true also of most other states which especially cultivate gymnastics. Whether such matters are to be regarded jestingly or seriously, I think that the pleasure is to be deemed natural which arises out of the intercourse between men and women ; but that the intercourse of men with men, or of women with women, is contrary to nature, and that the bold attempt was originally due to unbridled lust. The Cretans are always accused of having invented the story of Ganymede and ZEUS because they wanted to justify themselves in the enjoyment of unnatural pleasures by the practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver. Leaving the story, we may observe that any speculation about laws turns almost entirely on pleasure and pain, both in states and in individuals : these are two fountains which nature lets flow, and he who draws from them where and when, and as much as he ought, is happy ; and this holds of men and animals — of individuals as well as states ; and he who indulges in them ignorantly and at the wrong time, is the reverse of happy. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. How ! Then may Heaven make us to be of one mind, for now we are of two. To me, dear Cleinias, the truth of what I am saying is as plain as the fact that Crete is an island. And, if I were a lawgiver, I would try to make the poets and all the citizens speak in this strain, and I would inflict the heaviest penalties on any one in all the land who should dare to say that there are bad men who lead pleasant lives, or that the profitable and gainful is one thing, and the just another ; and there are many other matters about which I should make my citizens speak in a manner different from the Cretans and Lacedaemonians of this age, and I may say, indeed, from the world in general. For tell me, my good friends, by ZEUS and Apollo tell me, if I were to ask these same Gods who were your legislators — Is not the most just life also the pleasantest ? or are there two lives, one of which is the justest and the other the pleasantest ? — and they were to reply that there are two ; and thereupon I proceeded to ask, (that would be the right way of pursuing the enquiry), Which are the happier — those who lead the justest, or those who lead the pleasantest life ? and they replied, Those who lead the pleasantest — that would be a very strange answer, which I should not like to put into the mouth of the Gods. The words will come with more propriety from the lips of fathers and legislators, and therefore I will repeat my former questions to one of them, and suppose him to say again that he who leads the pleasantest life is the happiest. And to that I rejoin : — O my father, did you not wish me to live as happily as possible ? And yet you also never ceased telling me that I should live as justly as possible. Now, here the giver of the rule, whether he be legislator or father, will be in a dilemma, and will in vain endeavour to be consistent with himself. But if he were to declare that the justest life is also the happiest, every one hearing him would enquire, if I am not mistaken, what is that good and noble principle in life which the law approves, and which is superior to pleasure. For what good can the just man have which is separated from pleasure ? Shall we say that glory and fame, coming from Gods and men, though good and noble, are nevertheless unpleasant, and infamy pleasant ? Certainly not, sweet legislator. Or shall we say that the not-doing of wrong and there being no wrong done is good and honourable, although there is no pleasure in it, and that the doing wrong is pleasant, but evil and base ? LAWS BOOK II

Ath. But can a kingship be destroyed, or was any other form of government ever destroyed, by any but the rulers themselves ? No indeed, by ZEUS. Have we already forgotten what was said a little while ago ? LAWS BOOK III

Speaking generally, our glory is to follow the better and improve the inferior, which is susceptible of improvement, as far as this is possible. And of all human possessions, the soul is by nature most inclined to avoid the evil, and track out and find the chief good ; which when a man has found, he should take up his abode with it during the remainder of his life. Wherefore the soul also is second (or next to God) in honour ; and third, as every one will perceive, comes the honour of the body in natural order. Having determined this, we have next to consider that there is a natural honour of the body, and that of honours some are true and some are counterfeit. To decide which are which is the business of the legislator ; and he, I suspect, would intimate that they are as follows : — Honour is not to be given to the fair body, or to the strong or the swift or the tall, or to the healthy body (although many may think otherwise), any more than to their opposites ; but the mean states of all these habits are by far the safest and most moderate ; for the one extreme makes the soul braggart and insolent, and the other, illiberal and base ; and money, and property, and distinction all go to the same tune. The excess of any of these things is apt to be a source of hatreds and divisions among states and individuals ; and the defect of them is commonly a cause of slavery. And, therefore, I would not have any one fond of heaping up riches for the sake of his children, in order that he may leave them as rich as possible. For the possession of great wealth is of no use, either to them or to the state. The condition of youth which is free from flattery, and at the same time not in need of the necessaries of life, is the best and most harmonious of all, being in accord and agreement with our nature, and making life to be most entirely free from sorrow. Let parents, then, bequeath to their children not a heap of riches, but the spirit of reverence. We, indeed, fancy that they will inherit reverence from us, if we rebuke them when they show a want of reverence. But this quality is not really imparted to them by the present style of admonition, which only tells them that the young ought always to be reverential. A sensible legislator will rather exhort the elders to reverence the younger, and above all to take heed that no young man sees or hears one of themselves doing or saying anything disgraceful ; for where old men have no shame, there young men will most certainly be devoid of reverence. The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time ; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice. He who honours his kindred, and reveres those who share in the same Gods and are of the same blood and family, may fairly expect that the Gods who preside over generation will be propitious to him, and will quicken his seed. And he who deems the services which his friends and acquaintances do for him, greater and more important than they themselves deem them, and his own favours to them less than theirs to him, will have their good-will in the intercourse of life. And surely in his relations to the state and his fellow citizens, he is by far the best, who rather than the Olympic or any other victory of peace or war, desires to win the palm of obedience to the laws of his country, and who, of all mankind, is the person reputed to have obeyed them best through life. In his relations to strangers, a man should consider that a contract is a most holy thing, and that all concerns and wrongs of strangers are more directly dependent on the protection of God, than wrongs done to citizens ; for the stranger, having no kindred and friends, is more to be pitied by Gods and men. Wherefore, also, he who is most able to avenge him is most zealous in his cause ; and he who is most able is the genius and the god of the stranger, who follow in the train of ZEUS, the god of strangers. And for this reason, he who has a spark of caution in him, will do his best to pass through life without sinning against the stranger. And of offences committed, whether against strangers or fellow-countrymen, that against suppliants is the greatest. For the god who witnessed to the agreement made with the suppliant, becomes in a special manner the guardian of the sufferer ; and he will certainly not suffer unavenged. LAWS BOOK V

The next thing to be noted is, that the city should be placed as nearly as possible in the centre of the country ; we should choose a place which possesses what is suitable for a city, and this may easily be imagined and described. Then we will divide the city into twelve portions, first founding temples to Hestia, to ZEUS and to Athene, in a spot which we will call the Acropolis, and surround with a circular wall, making the division of the entire city and country radiate from this point. The twelve portions shall be equalized by the provision that those which are of good land shall be smaller. while those of inferior quality shall be larger. The number of the lots shall be 5040, and each of them shall be divided into two, and every allotment shall be composed of two such sections ; one of land near the city, the other of land which is at a distance. This arrangement shall be carried out in the following manner : The section which is near the city shall be added to that which is on borders, and form one lot, and the portion which is next nearest shall be added to the portion which is next farthest ; and so of the rest. Moreover, in the two sections of the lots the same principle of equalization of the soil ought to be maintained ; the badness and goodness shall be compensated by more and less. And the legislator shall divide the citizens into twelve parts, and arrange the rest of their property, as far as possible, so as to form twelve equal parts ; and there shall be a registration of all. After this they shall assign twelve lots to twelve Gods, and call them by their names, and dedicate to each God their several portions, and call the tribes after them. And they shall distribute the twelve divisions of the city in the same way in which they divided the country ; and every man shall have two habitations, one in the centre of the country, and the other at the extremity. Enough of the manner of settlement. LAWS BOOK V

The mode of election which has been described is in a mean between monarchy and democracy, and such a mean the state ought always to observe ; for servants and masters never can be friends, nor good and bad, merely because they are declared to have equal privileges. For to unequals equals become unequal, if they are not harmonized by measure ; and both by reason of equality, and by reason of inequality, cities are filled with seditions. The old saying, that “equality makes friendship,” is happy and also true ; but there is obscurity and confusion as to what sort of equality is meant. For there are two equalities which are called by the same name, but are in reality in many ways almost the opposite of one another ; one of them may be introduced without difficulty, by any state or any legislator in the distribution of honours : this is the rule of measure, weight, and number, which regulates and apportions them. But there is another equality, of a better and higher kind, which is not so easily recognized. This is the judgment of ZEUS ; among men it avails but little ; that little, however, is the source of the greatest good to individuals and states. For it gives to the greater more, and to the inferior less and in proportion to the nature of each ; and, above all, greater honour always to the greater virtue, and to the less less ; and to either in proportion to their respective measure of virtue and education. And this is justice, and is ever the true principle of states, at which we ought to aim, and according to this rule order the new city which is now being founded, and any other city which may be hereafter founded. To this the legislator should look — not to the interests of tyrants one or more, or to the power of the people, but to justice always ; which, as I was saying, the distribution of natural equality among unequals in each case. But there are times at which every state is compelled to use the words, “just,” “equal,” in a secondary sense, in the hope of escaping in some degree from factions. For equity and indulgence are infractions of the perfect and strict rule of justice. And this is the reason why we are obliged to use the equality of the lot, in order to avoid the discontent of the people ; and so we invoke God and fortune in our prayers, and beg that they themselves will direct the lot with a view to supreme justice. And therefore, although we are compelled to use both equalities, we should use that into which the element of chance enters as seldom as possible. LAWS BOOK VI

Let this then be our exhortation concerning marriage, and let us remember what was said before — that a man should cling to immortality, and leave behind him children’s children to be the servants of God in his place for ever. All this and much more may be truly said by way of prelude about the duty of marriage. But if a man will not listen and remains unsocial and alien among his fellow-citizens, and is still unmarried at thirty-five years of age, let him pay a yearly fine ; — he who of the highest class shall pay a fine of a hundred drachmae, and he who is of the second dass a fine of seventy drachmae ; the third class shall pay sixty drachmae, and the fourth thirty drachmae, and let the money be sacred to Here ; he who does not pay the fine annually shall owe ten times the sum, which the treasurer of the goddess shall exact ; and if he fails in doing so, let him be answerable and give an account of the. money at his audit. He who refuses to marry shall be thus punished in money, and also be deprived of all honour which the younger show to the elder ; let no young man voluntarily obey him, and if he attempt to punish any one, let every one come to the rescue and defend the injured person, and he who is present and does not come to the rescue, shall be pronounced by the law to be a coward and a bad citizen. Of the marriage portion I have already spoken ; and again I say for the instruction of poor men that he who neither gives nor receives a dowry on account of poverty, has a compensation ; for the citizens of our state are provided with the necessaries of life, and wives will be less likely to be insolent, and husbands to be mean and subservient to them on account of property. And he who obeys this law will do a noble action ; but he who will not obey, and gives or receives more than fifty drachmae as the price of the marriage garments if he be of the lowest, or more than a mina, or a mina and-a-half, if he be of the third or second classes, or two minae if he be of the highest class, shall owe to the public treasury a similar sum, and that which is given or received shall be sacred to Here and ZEUS ; and let the treasurers of these Gods exact the money, as was said before about the unmarried — that the treasurers of Here were to exact the money, or pay the fine themselves. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. But may we not also say that the soul of the slave is utterly corrupt, and that no man of sense ought to trust them ? And the wisest of our poets, speaking of ZEUS, says : LAWS BOOK VI

Far-seeing ZEUS takes away half the understanding of men whom the day of slavery subdues. LAWS BOOK VI

Let us first of all, then, have a class of laws which shall be called the laws of husbandmen. And let the first of them be the law of ZEUS, the god of boundaries. Let no one shift the boundary line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or, if he dwells at the extremity of the land, of any stranger who is conterminous with him, considering that this is truly “to move the immovable,” and every one should be more willing to move the largest rock which is not a landmark, than the least stone which is the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours ; for ZEUS, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and ZEUS, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused, terrible are the wars which they stir up. He who obeys the law will never know the fatal consequences of disobedience, but he who despises the law shall be liable to a double penalty, the first coming from the Gods, and the second from the law. For let no one wilfully remove the boundaries of his neighbour’s land, and if any one does, let him who will inform the landowners, and let them bring him into court, and if he be convicted of re-dividing the land by stealth or by force, let the court determine what he ought to suffer or pay. In the next place, many small injuries done by neighbours to one another, through their multiplication, may cause a weight of enmity, and make neighbourhood a very disagreeable and bitter thing. Wherefore a man ought to be very careful of committing any offence against his neighbour, and especially of encroaching on his neighbour’s land ; for any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another. He who encroaches on his neighbour’s land, and transgresses his boundaries, shall make good the damage, and, to cure him of his impudence and also of his meanness, he shall pay a double penalty to the injured party. Of these and the like matters the wardens of the country shall take cognizance, and be the judges of them and assessors of the damage ; in the more important cases, as has been already said, the whole number of them belonging to any one of the twelve divisions shall decide, and in the lesser cases the commanders : or, again, if any one pastures his cattle on his neighbour’s land, they shall see the injury, and adjudge the penalty. And if any one, by decoying the bees, gets possession of another’s swarms, and draws them to himself by making noises, he shall pay the damage ; or if anyone sets fire to his own wood and takes no care of his neighbour’s property, he shall be fined at the discretion of the magistrates. And if in planting he does not leave a fair distance between his own and his neighbour’s land, he shall be punished, in accordance with the enactments of many law givers, which we may use, not deeming it necessary that the great legislator of our state should determine all the trifles which might be decided by any body ; for example, husbandmen have had of old excellent laws about waters, and there is no reason why we should propose to divert their course : who likes may draw water from the fountain-head of the common stream on to his own land, if he do not cut off the spring which clearly belongs to some other owner ; and he may take the water in any direction which he pleases, except through a house or temple or sepulchre, but he must be careful to do no harm beyond the channel. And if there be in any place a natural dryness of the earth, which keeps in the rain from heaven, and causes a deficiency in the supply of water, let him dig down on his own land as far as the clay, and if at this depth he finds no water, let him obtain water from his neighbours, as much, as is required for his servants’ drinking, and if his neighbours, too, are limited in their supply, let him have a fixed measure, which shall be determined by the wardens of the country. This he shall receive each day, and on these terms have a share of his neighbours’ water. If there be heavy rain, and one of those on the lower ground injures some tiller of the upper ground, or some one who has a common wall, by refusing to give the man outlet for water ; or, again, if some one living on the higher ground recklessly lets off the water on his lower neighbour, and they cannot come to terms with one another, let him who will call in a warden of the city, if he be in the city, or if he be in the country, warden of the country, and let him obtain a decision determining what each of them is to do. And he who will not abide by the decision shall suffer for his malignant and morose temper, and pay a fine to the injured party, equivalent to double the value of the injury, because he was unwilling to submit to the magistrates. LAWS BOOK VIII

In the second place, our citizens should have separate houses duly ordered, and this will be the order proper for men like them. There shall be twelve hamlets, one in the middle of each twelfth portion, and in each hamlet they shall first set apart a market-place, and the temples of the Gods, and of their attendant demigods ; and if there be any local deities of the Magnetes, or holy seats of other ancient deities, whose memory has been preserved, to these let them pay their ancient honours. But Hestia, and ZEUS, and Athene will have temples everywhere together with the God who presides in each of the twelve districts. And the first erection of houses shall be around these temples, where the ground is highest, in order to provide the safest and most defensible place of retreat for the guards. All the rest of the country they shall settle in the following manner : — They shall make thirteen divisions of the craftsmen ; one of them they shall establish in the city, and this, again, they shall subdivide into twelve lesser divisions, among the twelve districts of the city, and the remainder shall be distributed in the country round about ; and in each village they shall settle various classes of craftsmen, with a view to the convenience of the husbandmen. And the chief officers of the wardens of the country shall superintend all these matters, and see how many of them, and which class of them, each place requires ; and fix them where they are likely to be least troublesome, and most useful to the husbandman. And the wardens of the city shall see to similar matters in the city. LAWS BOOK VIII

Laws are partly framed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they thay live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil. These are the persons who cause the word to be spoken which I am about to utter ; for them the legislator legislates of necessity, and in the hope that there may be no need of his laws. He who shall dare to lay violent hands upon his father or mother, or any still older relative, having no fear either of the wrath of the Gods above, or of the punishments that are spoken of in the world below, but transgresses in contempt of ancient and universal traditions as though he were too wise to believe in them, requires some extreme measure of prevention. Now death is not the worst that can happen to men ; far worse are the punishments which are said to pursue them in the world below. But although they are most true tales, they work on such souls no prevention ; for if they had any effect there would be no slayers of mothers, or impious hands lifted up against parents ; and therefore the punishments of this world which are inflicted during life ought not in such cases to fall short, if possible, of the terrors of the world below. Let our enactment then be as follows : — If a man dare to strike his father or his mother, or their fathers or mothers, he being at the time of sound mind, then let any one who is at hand come to the rescue as has been already said, and the metic or stranger who comes to the rescue shall be called to the first place in the games ; but if he do not come he shall suffer the punishment of perpetual exile. He who is not a metic, if he comes to the rescue, shall have praise, and if he do not come, blame. And if a slave come to the rescue, let him be made free, but if he do not come the rescue, let him receive 100 strokes of the whip, by order of the wardens of the agora, if the occurrence take place in the agora ; or if somewhere in the city beyond the limits of the agora, any warden of the city is in residence shall punish him ; or if in the country, then the commanders of the wardens of the country. If those who are near at the time be inhabitants of the same place, whether they be youths, or men, or women, let them come to the rescue and denounce him as the impious one ; and he who does not come to the rescue shall fall under the curse of ZEUS, the God of kindred and of ancestors, according to law. And if any one is found guilty of assaulting a parent, let him in the first place be for ever banished from the city into the country, and let him abstain from the temples ; and if he do not abstain, the wardens of the country shall punish him with blows, or in any way which they please, and if he return he shall be put to death. And if any freeman eat or drink, or have any other sort of intercourse with him, or only meeting him have voluntarily touched him, he shall not enter into any temple, nor into the agora, nor into the city, until he is purified ; for he should consider that he has become tainted by a curse. And if he disobeys the law, and pollutes the city and the temples contrary to law, and one of the magistrates sees him and does not indict him, when he gives in his account this omission shall be a most serious charge. LAWS BOOK IX

When a man makes an agreement which he does not fulfil, unless the agreement be of a nature which the law or a vote of the assembly does not allow, or which he has made under the influence of some unjust compulsion, or which he is prevented from fulfilling against his will by some unexpected chance, the other party may go to law with him in the courts of the tribes, for not having completed his agreement, if the parties are not able previously to come to terms before arbiters or before their neighbours. The class of craftsmen who have furnished human life with the arts is dedicated to Hephaestus and Athene ; and there is a class of craftsmen who preserve the works of all craftsmen by arts of defence, the votaries of Ares and Athene, to which divinities they too are rightly dedicated. All these continue through life serving the country and the people ; some of them are leaders in battle ; others make for hire implements and works, and they ought not to deceive in such matters, out of respect to the Gods who are their ancestors. If any craftsman through indolence omit to execute his work in a given time, not reverencing the God who gives him the means of life, but considering, foolish fellow, that he is his own God and will let him off easily, in the first place, he shall suffer at the hands of the God, and in the second place, the law shall follow in a similar spirit. He shall owe to him who contracted with him the price of the works which he has failed in performing, and he shall begin again and execute them gratis in the given time. When a man undertakes a work, the law gives him the same advice which was given to the seller, that he should not attempt to raise the price, but simply ask the value ; this the law enjoins also on the contractor ; for the craftsman assuredly knows the value of his work. Wherefore, in free states the man of art ought not to attempt to impose upon private individuals by the help of his art, which is by nature a true thing ; and he who is wronged in a matter of this sort, shall have a right of action against the party who has wronged him. And if any one lets out work to a craftsman, and does not pay him duly according to the lawful agreement, disregarding ZEUS the guardian of the city and Athene, who are the partners of the state, and overthrows the foundations of society for the sake of a little gain, in his case let the law and the Gods maintain the common bonds of the state. And let him who, having already received the work in exchange, does not pay the price in the time agreed, pay double the price ; and if a year has elapsed, although interest is not to be taken on loans, yet for every drachma which he owes to the contractor let him pay a monthly interest of an obol. Suits about these matters are to be decided by the courts of the tribes ; and by the way, since we have mentioned craftsmen at all, we must not forget the other craft of war, in which generals and tacticians are the craftsmen, who undertake voluntarily the work of our safety, as other craftsmen undertake other public works ; — if they execute their work well the law will never tire of praising him who gives them those honours which are the just rewards of the soldier ; but if any one, having already received the benefit of any noble service in war, does not make the due return of honour, the law will blame him. Let this then be the law, having an ingredient of praise, not compelling but advising the great body of the citizens to honour the brave men who are the saviours of the whole state, whether by their courage or by their military skill ; — they should honour them, I say, in the second place ; for the first and highest tribute of respect is to be given to those who are able above other men to honour the words of good legislators. LAWS BOOK XI

If any man refuses to be a witness, he who wants him shall summon him, and he who is summoned shall come to the trial ; and if he knows and is willing to bear witness, let him bear witness, but if he says he does not know let him swear by the three divinities ZEUS, and Apollo, and Themis, that he does not, and have no more to do with the cause. And he who is summoned to give witness and does not answer to his summoner, shall be liable for the harm which ensues according to law. And if a person calls up as a witness any one who is acting as a judge, let him give his witness, but he shall not afterwards vote in the cause. A free woman may give her witness and plead, if she be more than forty years of age, and may bring an action if she have no husband ; but if her husband be alive she shall only be allowed to bear witness. A slave of either sex and a child shall be allowed to give evidence and to plead, but only in cases of murder ; and they must produce sufficient sureties that they will certainly remain until the trial, in case they should be charged with false witness. And either of the parties in a cause may bring an accusation of perjury against witnesses, touching their evidence in whole or in part, if he asserts that such evidence has been given ; but the accusation must be brought previous to the final decision of the cause. The magistrates shall preserve the accusations of false witness, and have them kept under the seal of both parties, and produce them on the day when the trial for false witness takes place. If a man be twice convicted of false witness, he shall not be required, and if thrice, he shall not be allowed to bear witness ; and if he dare to witness after he has been convicted three times, let any one who pleases inform against him to the magistrates, and let the magistrates hand him over to the court, and if he be convicted he shall be punished with death. And in any case in which the evidence is rightly found to be false, and yet to have given the victory to him who wins the suit, and more than half the witnesses are condemned, the decision which was gained by these means shall be a discussion and a decision as to whether the suit was determined by that false evidence or and in whichever way the decision may be given, the previous suit shall be determined accordingly. LAWS BOOK XI

If a herald or an ambassador carry a false message from our city to any other, or bring back a false message from the city to which he is sent, or be proved to have brought back, whether from friends or enemies, in his capacity of herald or ambassador, what they have never said, let him be indicted for having violated, contrary to the law, the commands and duties imposed upon him by Hermes and ZEUS, and let there be a penalty fixed, which he shall suffer or pay if he be convicted. LAWS BOOK XII

Theft is a mean, and robbery a shameless thing ; and none of the sons of ZEUS delight in fraud and violence, or ever practised, either. Wherefore let no one be deluded by poets or mythologers into a mistaken belief of such such things, nor let him suppose, when he thieves or is guilty of violence, that he is doing nothing base, but only what the Gods themselves do. For such tales are untrue and improbable ; and he who steals or robs contrary to the law, is never either a God or the son of a God ; of this the legislator ought to be better informed than all the, poets put together. Happy is he and may he be forever happy, who is persuaded and listens to our words ; but he who disobeys shall have to contend against the following law : — If a man steal anything belonging to the public, whether that which he steals be much or little, he shall have the same punishment. For he who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power, and he who takes up a greater amount ; not having deposited it, is wholly unjust. Wherefore the law is not disposed to inflict a less penalty on the one than on the other because his theft, is less, but on the ground that the thief may possibly be in one case still curable, and may in another case be incurable. If any one convict in a court of law a stranger or a slave of a theft of public property, let the court determine what punishment he shall suffer, or what penalty he shall pay, bearing in mind that he is probably not incurable. But the citizen who has been brought up as our citizens will have been, if he be found guilty of robbing his country by fraud or violence, whether he be caught in the act or not, shall be punished with death ; for he is incurable. LAWS BOOK XII

Now a state which makes money from the cultivation of the soil only, and has no foreign trade, must consider what it will do about the emigration of its own people to other countries, and the reception of strangers from elsewhere. About these matters the legislator has to consider, and he will begin by trying to persuade men as far as he can. The intercourse of cities with one another is apt to create a confusion of manners ; strangers, are always suggesting novelties to strangers. When states are well governed by good laws the mixture causes the greatest possible injury ; but seeing that most cities are the reverse of well-ordered, the confusion which arises in them from the reception of strangers, and from the citizens themselves rushing off into other cities, when any one either young or old desires to travel anywhere abroad at whatever time, is of no consequence. On the other hand, the refusal of states to receive others, and for their own citizens never to go to other places, is an utter impossibility, and to the rest of the world is likely to appear ruthless and uncivilized ; it is a practise adopted by people who use harsh words, such as xenelasia or banishment of strangers, and who have harsh and morose ways, as men think. And to be thought or not to be thought well of by the rest of the world is no light matter ; for the many are not so far wrong in their judgment of who are bad and who are good, as they are removed from the nature of virtue in themselves. Even bad men have a divine instinct which guesses rightly, and very many who are utterly depraved form correct notions and judgments of the differences between the good and bad. And the generality of cities are quite right in exhorting us to value a good reputation in the world, for there is no truth greater and more important than this — that he who is really good (I am speaking of the man who would be perfect) seeks for reputation with, but not without, the reality of goodness. And our Cretan colony ought also to acquire the fairest and noblest reputation for virtue from other men ; and there is every reason to expect that, if the reality answers to the idea, she will before of the few well-ordered cities which the sun and the other Gods behold. Wherefore, in the matter of journeys to other countries and the reception of strangers, we enact as follows : — In the first place, let no one be allowed to go anywhere at all into a foreign country who is less than forty years of age ; and no one shall go in a private capacity, but only in some public one, as a herald, or on an embassy ; or on a sacred mission. Going abroad on an expedition or in war, not to be included among travels of the class authorized by the state. To Apollo at Delphi and to ZEUS at Olympia and to Nemea and to the Isthmus, — citizens should be sent to take part in the sacrifices and games there dedicated to the Gods ; and they should send as many as possible, and the best and fairest that can be found, and they will make the city renowned at holy meetings in time of peace, procuring a glory which shall be the converse of that which is gained in war ; and when they come home they shall teach the young that the institutions of other states are inferior to their own. And they shall send spectators of another sort, if they have the consent of the guardians, being such citizens as desire to look a little more at leisure at the doings of other men ; and these no law shall hinder. For a city which has no experience of good and bad men or intercourse with them, can never be thoroughly, and perfectly civilized, nor, again, can the citizens of a city properly observe the laws by habit only, and without an intelligent understanding of them. And there always are in the world a few inspired men whose acquaintance is beyond price, and who spring up quite as much in ill-ordered as in well-ordered cities. These are they whom the citizens of a well ordered city should be ever seeking out, going forth over sea and over land to find him who is incorruptible — that he may establish more firmly institutions in his own state which are good already ; and amend what is deficient ; for without this examination and enquiry a city will never continue perfect any more than if the examination is ill-conducted. LAWS BOOK XII

Let such be the character of the person who goes abroad, and let him go abroad under these conditions. In the next place, the stranger who comes from abroad should be received in a friendly spirit. Now there are four kinds of strangers, of whom we must make some mention — the first is he who comes and stays throughout the summer ; this class are like birds of passage, taking wing in pursuit of commerce, and flying over the sea to other cities, while the season lasts ; he shall be received in market-places and harbours and public buildings, near the city but outside, by those magistrates who are appointed to superintend these matters ; and they shall take care that a stranger, whoever he be, duly receives justice ; but he shall not be allowed to make any innovation. They shall hold the intercourse with him which is necessary, and this shall be as little as possible. The second kind is just a spectator who comes to see with his eyes and hear with his ears the festivals of the Muses ; such ought to have entertainment provided them at the temples by hospitable persons, and the priests and ministers of the temples should see and attend to them. But they should not remain more than a reasonable time ; let them see and hear that for the sake of which they came, and then go away, neither having suffered nor done any harm. The priests shall be their judges, if any of them receive or do any wrong up to the sum of fifty drachmae, but if any greater charge be brought, in such cases the suit shall come before the wardens of the agora. The third kind of stranger is he who comes on some public business from another land, and is to be received with public honours. He is to be received only by the generals and commanders of horse and foot, and the host by whom he is entertained, in conjunction with the Prytanes, shall have the sole charge of what concerns him. There is a fourth dass of persons answering to our spectators, who come from another land to look at ours. In the first place, such visits will be rare, and the visitor should be at least fifty years of age ; he may possibly be wanting to see something that is rich and rare in other states, or himself to show something in like manner to another city. Let such an one, then, go unbidden to the doors of the wise and rich, being one of them himself : let him go, for example, to the house of the superintendent of education, confident that he is a fitting guest of such a host, or let him go to the house of some of those who have gained the prize of virtue and hold discourse with them, both learning from them, and also teaching them ; and when he has seen and heard all, he shall depart, as a friend taking leave of friends, and be honoured by them with gifts and suitable tributes of respect. These are the customs, according to which our city should receive all strangers of either sex who come from other countries, and should send forth her own citizens, showing respect to ZEUS, the God of hospitality, not forbidding strangers at meals and sacrifices, as is the manner which prevails among the children of the Nile, nor driving them away by savage proclamations. LAWS BOOK XII

Now the gods — ZEUS and Hera and all the rest — each man must regard in what light he pleases, though according to the same law, and must take this account as reliable. But as our visible gods, greatest and most honorable and having keenest vision every way, we must count first the order of the stars and all else that we perceive existing with them ; and after these, and (984e) next below these, the divine spirits, and air-born race, holding the third and middle situation, cause of interpretation, which we must surely honor with prayers for the sake of an auspicious journey across. We must say of either of these two creatures — that which is of ether and, next to it, of air — that it is not entirely plain to sight : when it is near by, it is not made manifest to us ; (985a) but partaking of extraordinary intelligence, as belonging to an order which is quick to learn and strong in memory, we may say that they understand the whole of our thoughts, and show extraordinary kindness to anyone of us who is a good man and true, and hate him who is utterly evil, as one who already partakes of suffering. For we know that God, who has the privilege of the divine portion, is remote from these affections of pain and pleasure, but has a share of intelligence and knowledge in every sphere ; and the heaven being filled full of live creatures, (985b) they interpret all men and all things both to one another and to the most exalted gods, because the middle creatures move both to earth and to the whole of heaven with a lightly rushing motion. The kind which is of water, the fifth, we shall be right in representing as a semi-divine product of that element, and it is at one time seen, but at another is concealed through becoming obscure, presenting a marvel in the dimness of vision. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

I hear from Archedemus that you think that not only I myself should keep quiet but my friends also from doing or saying anything bad about you ; and that “you except Dion only.” (2.310c) Now your saying this, that Dion is excepted, implies that I have no control over my friends ; for had I had this control over you and Dion, as well as the rest, more blessings would have come to us all and to the rest of the Greeks also, as I affirm. But as it is, my greatness consists in making myself follow my own instructions. However, I do not say this as though what Cratistolus and Polyxenus have told you is to be trusted ; for it is said that (2.310d) one of these men declares that at Olympia he heard quite a number of my companions maligning you. No doubt his hearing is more acute than mine ; for I certainly heard no such thing. For the future, whenever anyone makes such a statement about any of us, what you ought, I think, to do is to send me a letter of inquiry ; for I shall tell the truth without scruple or shame. Now as for you and me, the relation in which we stand towards each other is really this. There is not a single Greek, one may say, to whom we are unknown, and our intercourse is a matter of common talk ; (2.310e) and you may be sure of this, that it will be common talk also in days to come, because so many have heard tell of it owing to its duration and its publicity. What, now, is the point of this remark ? I will go back to the beginning and tell you. It is natural for wisdom and great power to come together, and they are for ever pursuing and seeking each other and consorting together. Moreover, these are qualities which people delight in discussing themselves in private conversation and hearing others discuss (2.311a) in their poems. For example, when men talk about Hiero or about Pausanias the Lacedaemonian they delight to bring in their meeting with Simonides and what he did and said to them ; and they are wont to harp on Periander of Corinth and Thales of Miletus, and on Pericles and Anaxagoras, and on Croesus also and Solon as wise men with Cyrus as potentate. The poets, too, follow their example, and bring together Creon and Tiresias, (2.311b) Polyeidus and Minos, Agamemnon and Nestor, Odysseus and Palamedes ; and so it was, I suppose, that the earliest men also brought together Prometheus and ZEUS. And of these some were — as the poets tell — at feud with each other, and others were friends ; while others again were now friends and now foes, and partly in agreement and partly in disagreement. Now my object in saying all this is to make it clear, that when we ourselves die (2.311c) men’s talk about us will not likewise be silenced ; so that we must be careful about it. We must necessarily, it seems, have a care also for the future, seeing that, by some law of nature, the most slavish men pay no regard to it, whereas the most upright do all they can to ensure that they shall be well spoken of in the future. Now I count this as a proof that the dead have some perception of things here on earth ; for the best souls divine that this is so, (2.311d) while the worst deny it ; and the divinings of men who are godlike are of more authority than those of men who are not. I certainly think that, had it been in their power to rectify what was wrong in their intercourse, those men of the past whom I have mentioned would have striven to the utmost to ensure a better report of themselves than they now have. In our case, then — if God so grant — it still remains possible to put right whatever has been amiss in word or deed during our intercourse in the past. For I maintain that, as regards (2.311e) the true philosophy, men will think and speak well of it if we ourselves are upright, and ill if we are base. And in truth we could do nothing more pious than to give attention to this matter, nothing more impious than to disregard it. How this result should be brought about, and what is the just course to pursue, I will now explain. I came to Sicily with the reputation of being by far the most eminent of those engaged in philosophy ; and I desired, on my arrival (2.312a) in Syracuse, to gain your testimony as well, in order that I might get philosophy held in honor even by the multitude. In this, however, I was disappointed. But the reason I give for this is not that which is commonly given ; rather it was because you showed that you did not fully trust me but wished rather to get rid of me somehow and invite others in my place ; and owing, as I believe, to your distrust of me, you showed yourself inquisitive as to what my business was. Thereupon it was proclaimed aloud by many that you utterly despised me (2.312b) and were devoted to other affairs. This certainly was the story noised abroad. And now I will tell you what it is right to do after this, that so I may reply also to your question how you and I ought to behave towards each other. If you altogether despise philosophy, leave it alone. If, again, you have been taught by someone else or have yourself invented better doctrines than mine, hold them in honor. But if you are contented with my doctrines, then you should hold me also in special honor. So now, just as at the beginning, do you lead the way and I will follow. If I am honored (2.312c) by you, I will honor you ; but if I am not honored I will keep to myself. Moreover, if you honor me and take the lead in so doing, you will be thought to be honoring philosophy ; and the very fact that you have studied other systems as well will gain you the credit, in the eyes of many, of being a philosopher yourself. But if I honor you, while you do not honor me, I shall be deemed to be a man who worships and pursues after wealth ; and to such conduct everyone, we know, gives a bad name. So, to sum it all up, if you pay the honor, it will be a credit to both of us, but if I pay it a disgrace to both. (2.312d) So much, then, about this subject. As to the globe, there is something wrong with it ; and Archedemus will point it out to you when he arrives. There is also another matter — much more valuable and divine than the globe — which he most certainly must explain, as you were puzzled about it when you sent him. For, according to his report, you say that you have not had a sufficient demonstration of the doctrine concerning the nature of “the First.” Now I must expound it to you in a riddling way in order that, should the tablet come to any harm “in folds of ocean or of earth,” he that readeth may not understand. The matter stands thus : Related to (2.312e) the King of All are all things, and for his sake they are, and of all things fair He is the cause. And related to the Second are the second things and related to the Third the third. About these, then, the human soul strives to learn, looking to the things that are akin to itself, (2.313a) whereof none is fully perfect. But as to the King and the objects I have mentioned, they are of quite different quality. In the next place the soul inquires — “Well then, what quality have they ?” But the cause of all the mischief, O son of Dionysius and Doris, lies in this very question, or rather in the travail which this question creates in the soul ; and unless a man delivers himself from this he will never really attain the truth. You, however, declared to me in the garden, under the laurels, that you had formed this notion yourself and that it was a discovery of your own ; (2.313b) and I made answer that if it was plain to you that this was so, you would have saved me from a long discourse. I said, however, that I had never met with any other person who had made this discovery ; on the contrary most of the trouble I had was about this very problem. So then, after you had either, as is probable, got the true solution from someone else, or had possibly (by Heaven’s favor) hit on it yourself, you fancied you had a firm grip on the proofs of it, and so you omitted to make them fast ; thus your view of the truth sways now this way, now that, round about the apparent object ; whereas the true object is wholly different. (2.313c) Nor are you alone in this experience ; on the contrary, there has never yet been anyone, I assure you, who has not suffered the same confusion at the beginning, when he first learnt this doctrine from me ; and they all overcome it with difficulty, one man having more trouble and another less, but scarcely a single one of them escapes with but little. So now that this has occurred, and things are in this state, we have pretty well found an answer, as I think, to the question how we ought to behave towards each other. For seeing that you are testing my doctrines both by attending the lectures of other teachers and (2.313d) by examining my teaching side by side with theirs, as well as by itself, then, if the test you make is a true one, not only will these doctrines implant themselves now in your mind, but you also will be devoted both to them and to us. How, then, will this, and all that I have said, be brought to pass ? You have done right now in sending Archedemus ; and in the future also, after he returns to you and reports my answer, you will probably be beset later on with fresh perplexities. Then, if you are rightly advised, you will send Archedemus back to me, and he with his cargo will return to you again. (2.313e) And if you do this twice or thrice, and fully test the doctrines I send you, I shall be surprised if your present difficulties do not assume quite a new aspect. Do you, therefore, act so, and with confidence ; for there is no merchandise more fair than this or dearer to Heaven which you can ever dispatch or Archedemus transport. (2.314a) Beware, however, lest these doctrines be ever divulged to uneducated people. For there are hardly any doctrines, I believe, which sound more absurd than these to the vulgar, or, on the other hand, more admirable and inspired to men of fine disposition. For it is through being repeated and listened to frequently for many years that these doctrines are refined at length, like gold, with prolonged labor. But listen now to the most remarkable result of all. Quite a number of men there are (2.314b) who have listened to these doctrines — men capable of learning and capable also of holding them in mind and judging them by all sorts of tests — and who have been hearers of mine for no less than thirty years and are now quite old ; and these men now declare that the doctrines that they once held to be most incredible appear to them now the most credible, and what they then held most credible now appears the Opposite. So, bearing this in mind, have a care lest one day you should repent of what has now been divulged improperly. The greatest safeguard is to avoid writing and to learn by heart ; (2.314c) for it is not possible that what is written down should not get divulged. For this reason I myself have never yet written anything on these subjects, and no treatise by Plato exists or will exist, but those which now bear his name belong to a Socrates become fair and young. Fare thee well, and give me credence ; and now, to begin with, read this letter over repeatedly and then burn it up. LETTERS LETTER II

I took my departure, therefore, acting, so far as a man can act, in obedience to reason and justice, and for these reasons leaving my own occupations, which were certainly not discreditable ones, to put myself under a tyranny which did not seem likely to harmonise with my teaching or with myself. By my departure I secured my own freedom from the displeasure of ZEUS Xenios, and made myself clear of any charge on the part of philosophy, which would have been exposed to detraction, if any disgrace had come upon me for faint-heartedness and cowardice. LETTERS LETTER VII

These are the lessons which I tried to teach, first to Dion, secondly to Dionysios, and now for the third time to you. Do you obey me thinking of ZEUS the Preserver, the patron of third ventures, and looking at the lot of Dionysios and Dion, of whom the one who disobeyed me is living in dishonour, while he who obeyed me has died honourably. For the one thing which is wholly right and noble is to strive for that which is most honourable for a man’s self and for his country, and to face the consequences whatever they may be. For none of us can escape death, nor, if a man could do so, would it, as the vulgar suppose, make him happy. For nothing evil or good, which is worth mentioning at all, belongs to things soulless ; but good or evil will be the portion of every soul, either while attached to the body or when separated from it. LETTERS LETTER VII

I made my way to the Peloponnese to Olympia, where I found Dion a spectator at the Games, and told him what had occurred. Calling ZEUS to be his witness, he at once urged me with my relatives and friends to make preparations for taking vengeance on Dionysios — our ground for action being the breach of faith to a guest — so he put it and regarded it, while his own was his unjust expulsion and banishment. Hearing this, I told him that he might call my friends to his aid, if they wished to go ; “But for myself,” I continued, “you and others in a way forced me to be the sharer of Dionysios’ table and hearth and his associate in the acts of religion. He probably believed the current slanders, that I was plotting with you against him and his despotic rule ; yet feelings of scruple prevailed with him, and he spared my life. Again, I am hardly of the age for being comrade in arms to anyone ; also I stand as a neutral between you, if ever you desire friendship and wish to benefit one another ; so long as you aim at injuring one another, call others to your aid.” This I said, because I was disgusted with my misguided journeyings to Sicily and my ill-fortune there. But they disobeyed me and would not listen to my attempts at reconciliation, and so brought on their own heads all the evils which have since taken place. For if Dionysios had restored to Dion his property or been reconciled with him on any terms, none of these things would have happened, so far as human foresight can foretell. Dion would have easily been kept in check by my wishes and influence. But now, rushing upon one another, they have caused universal disaster. LETTERS LETTER VII

Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarrelling among themselves as of all things the basest, should any word be said to them of the wars in heaven, and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, for they are not true. No, we shall never mention the battles of the giants, or let them be embroidered on garments ; and we shall be silent about the innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relatives. If they would only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarrel between citizens ; this is what old men and old women should begin by telling children ; and when they grow up, the poets also should be told to compose them in a similar spirit. But the narrative of Hephaestus binding Here his mother, or how on another occasion ZEUS sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods in Homer — these tales must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal ; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable ; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts. THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

“Lie at the threshold of ZEUS, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots,” THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

and that he to whom ZEUS gives a mixture of the two THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

And if anyone asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties, which was really the work of Pandarus, was brought about by Athene and ZEUS, or that the strife and contention of the gods were instigated by Themis and ZEUS, he shall not have our approval ; neither will we allow our young men to hear the words of Aeschylus, that THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying dream which ZEUS sends to Agamemnon ; neither will we praise the verses of Aeschylus in which Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

What would you say again to the tale of ZEUS, who, while other gods and men were asleep and he the only person awake, lay devising plans, but forgot them all in a moment through his lust, and was so completely overcome at the sight of Here that he would not even go into the hut, but wanted to lie with her on the ground, declaring that he had never been in such a state of rapture before, even when they first met one another, THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

or his insubordination to the river-god, on whose divinity he is ready to lay hands ; or his offerings to the dead Patroclus of his own hair, which had been previously dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius, and that he actually performed this vow ; or that he dragged Hector round the tomb of Patroclus, and slaughtered the captives at the pyre ; of all this I cannot believe that he was guilty, any more than I can allow our citizens to believe that he, the wise Cheiron’s pupil, the son of a goddess and of Peleus who was the gentlest of men and third in descent from ZEUS, was so disordered in his wits as to be at one time the slave of two seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not untainted by avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods and men. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be repeated, the tale of Theseus, son of Poseidon, or of Peirithous, son of ZEUS, going forth as they did to perpetrate a horrid rape ; or of any other hero or son of a god daring to do such impious and dreadful things as they falsely ascribe to them in our day : and let us further compel the poets to declare either that these acts were done by them, or that they were not the sons of God ; both in the same breath they shall not be permitted to affirm. We will not have them trying to persuade our youth that the gods are the authors of evil, and that heroes are no better than men — sentiments which, as we were saying, are neither pious nor true, for we have already proved that evil cannot come from the gods. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

“The kindred of the gods, the relatives of ZEUS, whose ancestral altar, the altar of ZEUS, is aloft in air on the peak of Ida,” THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

By ZEUS, he said, the problem to be solved is anything but easy. Why, yes, I said, but the fact is that when a man is out of his depth, whether he has fallen into a little swimming-bath or into mid-ocean, he has to swim all the same. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Yes, that is quite clear. How, then, does a protector begin to change into a tyrant ? Clearly when he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple of Lycaean ZEUS. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

Twice in succession, then, has the just man overthrown the unjust in this conflict ; and now comes the third trial, which is dedicated to Olympian ZEUS the saviour : a sage whispers in my ear that no pleasure except that of the wise is quite true and pure — all others are a shadow only ; and surely this will prove the greatest and most decisive of falls ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And now since we have reverted to the subject of poetry, let this our defence serve to show the reasonableness of our former judgment in sending away out of our State an art having the tendencies which we have described ; for reason constrained us. But that she may not impute to us any harshness or want of politeness, let us tell her that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry ; of which there are many proofs, such as the saying of “the yelping hound howling at her lord,” or of one “mighty in the vain talk of fools,” and “the mob of sages circumventing ZEUS,” and the “subtle thinkers who are beggars after all” ; and there are innumerable other signs of ancient enmity between them. Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet friend and the sister art of imitation, that if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her — we are very conscious of her charms ; but we may not on that account betray the truth. I dare say, Glaucon, that you are as much charmed by her as I am, especially when she appears in Homer ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X