Jowett: god

God, the Great Artist, Rep.   10. 596 (cp. Laws 10. 902 E); the Maker of all things, Rep. 10. 597 C; the best of causes, Tim. 29 A; the Creator, it. 30 foil.; Soph. 265; Statesm. 269,270 (cp.. Laws 10. 886 foil.); assisted in His work by subordinate deities, Tim. 41 A ; the Shepherd, Crit. 109; Statesm. 271, 275;—alone is wise, Phaedr. 278 D (cp. Tim. 51 E); not the author of evil, Rep. 2. 379, 380 A ; 3. 391 C (cp. 2. 364; Laws 2. 672 B); never changes, Rep. 2. 380; will not lie, it. 382 ; alone able to combine the many into one or dissolve the one into many, Tim. 68 D ; alone has absolute knowledge, Parm. 134 D; is perfect righteousness, Theaet. 176 C ; aided by chance and art in the government of the world, Laws 4. 709 (cp. 10. 889); moves in a straight line towards His end, it. 4,716A; the measure of all things, it. D ; will not receive the gifts of the wicked, it. E ; watches over the stranger and the suppliant, it. 5. 729 E ; cannot fight against necessity, it. 741 A; 7. 818 A (cp. Protag. 345 D); approves of the middle state, Laws 7. 792 D ; the nature of, a fit subject of enquiry, it. 821 (cp. 12. 966); has no cowardice, it. 10. 901 E; exercises thought for all, it. 902 B;—takes away the mind of the poet, Ion   534 (cp. Laws 3.682 A; 4. 719B; 2 Alcib. 147 C).

[138a] Socrates   : Alcibiades, are you on your way to offer a prayer to the god ? ALCIBIADES II  

Socrates : Well, just such a person, as I was saying, Alcibiades, [141a] was Oedipus ; and even in our time you will find many who do the same, not in a fit of anger, as he was : they think they pray not for something evil, but for something good. He neither prayed for that, nor thought he did, but there are others who are in the opposite case. For I imagine that if the god to whom you are now going should appear to you and first ask you, before you made any prayer, whether you would be content to become sovereign of the Athenian state and, on your accounting this as something poor and unimportant, should add "and of all the Greeks also" ; and if he saw [141b] you were still unsatisfied unless he promised you besides the mastery of all Europe, and should not merely promise you that, but on the self-same day a recognition by all men, if you so desired, of Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, as their sovereign — I imagine you would actually depart in a transport of delight, as having secured the greatest of goods. ALCIBIADES II  

Socrates : But come now, in Heaven’s name — for I suppose you see how great and strange is our perplexity, in which you, as it seems to me, have your share ; for you change about from this side to that without settling down for a moment, but as soon as you are firmly convinced of a thing you seem to slip out of it again and [148a] cease to hold the same view — well, if the god to whom you are going should even now appear to you and ask before you uttered any prayer, whether you would be content to obtain one of those things which were mentioned at the beginning, or whether he should leave you to pray as you were, how do you suppose you would make the best of your chance — by accepting his offer, or by praying for something on your own account ? ALCIBIADES II

Socrates : Then it is their admiration of this poet, Alcibiades, [148c] or perhaps the result of their own study, that causes the Spartans to offer a similar prayer whether the occasion be private or public — that the gods will give them for their own benefit the beautiful as well as the good : more than this no one can ever hear them pray for. The consequence is that to the present time they have been just as fortunate as any other people ; and if it has befallen them to be not invariably fortunate, it was anyhow not owing to their prayer. [148d] It rests with the gods, I conceive, to give us either what we may pray for or the reverse. And I would like to give you an account of something else, which I once heard from some of my seniors. A quarrel having arisen between the Athenians and the Spartans, it befell our city to be always unsuccessful in every battle by land and sea, and she could never win a victory. So the Athenians, in their annoyance at this result, and at a loss for some means of finding a deliverance from the trouble they were in, [148e] took counsel together and decided that the best thing they could do was to send and inquire of Ammon ; and moreover, to ask also for what reason the gods granted victory to the Spartans rather than to themselves : "for we" — such was the message — "offer up to them more and finer sacrifices than any of the Greeks, and have adorned their temples with votive emblems as no other people have done, and presented to the gods the costliest and stateliest processions year by year, and spent more money thus than [149a] all the rest of the Greeks together. But the Spartans have never taken any such pains, and indeed are so neglectful in their behavior to the gods, that they make a practice of sacrificing defective victims, and generally are very much behind us in the honors that they pay, though the wealth they possess is quite equal to that of our city." When they had so spoken, and added the question, what they should do in order to find a deliverance from the trouble they were in, [149b] the prophet’s only answer — evidently it was all that the god allowed — was to call them to him and say : "Thus saith Ammon to the Athenians : I would rather have the reverent reserve of the Spartans than all the ritual of the Greeks." So much he said, and not a word further. Now by "reverent reserve" I suppose the god could only mean their prayer, since in fact it differs greatly from those that are generally offered. [149c] For the Greeks in general either lead up bulls with gilded horns, or else present the gods with votive emblems, and pray for any odd thing, whether it be good or bad : so when the gods hear their irreverent speech they reject all these costly processions and sacrifices. Whereas I think we ought to be very cautious, and fully consider what is to be said and what is not. And in Homer too you will find other tales of a similar sort. For he relates how the Trojans, [149d] in making their bivouac, ALCIBIADES II

Alcibiades : Why, Socrates, it in no wise differs from yours and the god’s ; for indeed it would not be fitting for me to record my vote against the god. ALCIBIADES II

Socrates : You see, then, how unsafe it is for you to approach the god with your prayers, for it may chance that when he hears your irreverent speech he will reject your sacrifice altogether, and you may perhaps be accorded some other bad thing as well. In my opinion, therefore, it is best to hold your peace : for I expect you will not consent to use the Spartan’s prayer, you have such a romantic spirit — to give it the fairest of folly’s names. [150d] It is necessary, therefore, to bide one’s time until one can learn how one should behave towards gods and men. ALCIBIADES II

That be might well discern both god and man, ALCIBIADES II

Socrates : I mean my and your fellow-citizen, Pisistratus’s son Hipparchus  , of Philaidae, who was the eldest and wisest of Pisistratus’s sons, and who, among the many goodly proofs of wisdom that he showed, first brought the poems of Homer into this country of ours, and compelled the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea to recite them in relay, one man following on another, as [228c] they still do now. He dispatched a fifty-oared galley for Anacreon of Teos, and brought him into our city. Simonides of Ceos he always had about him, prevailing on him by plenteous fees and gifts. All this he did from a wish to educate the citizens, in order that he might have subjects of the highest excellence ; for he thought it not right to grudge wisdom to any, so noble and good was he. And when his people in the city had been educated and were admiring him for his wisdom, [228d] he proceeded next, with the design of educating those of the countryside, to set up figures of Hermes for them along the roads in the midst of the city and every district town ; and then, after selecting from his own wise lore, both learnt from others and discovered for himself, the things that he considered the wisest, he threw these into elegiac form and inscribed them on the figures as verses of his own and testimonies of his wisdom, so that in the first place [228e] his people should not admire those wise Delphic legends of "Know thyself" and "Nothing overmuch", and the other sayings of the sort, but should rather regard as wise the utterances of Hipparchus ; and that in the second place, through passing up and down and reading his words and acquiring a taste for his wisdom, they might resort hither from the country for the completion of their education. There are two such inscriptions of his : on the left side [229a] of each Hermes there is one in which the god says that he stands in the midst of the city or the township, while on the right side he says : HIPPARCHUS

Theages   : I should indeed pray, I imagine, that I might become a despot, [126a] if possible, over all men, and failing that, over as many as might be ; so would you, I imagine, and everybody else besides : nay, even more, I daresay, that I might become a god ; but I did not say I desired that. THEAGES

Socrates : "How charming you are, Socrates !" he will say. "But is not a beautiful mare beautiful, which even the god praised in his oracle ?" [288c] What shall we say, Hippias ? Shall we not say that the mare is beautiful, I mean the beautiful mare ? For how could we dare to deny that the beautiful thing is beautiful ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Hippias : Quite true, Socrates for what the god said is quite correct, too ; for very beautiful mares are bred in our country. GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Listen then. For I am sure that after this he will say : "Yes, but, Socrates, if we compare maidens with gods, [289b] will not the same thing happen to them that happened to pots when compared with maidens ? Will not the most beautiful maiden appear ugly ? Or does not Heracleitus, whom you cite, mean just this, that the wisest of men, if compared with a god, will appear a monkey, both in wisdom and in beauty and in everything else ?" Shall we agree, Hippias, that the most beautiful maiden is ugly if compared with the gods ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : I will tell you, imitating him in the same way as a while ago, that I may not use to you such harsh and uncouth words as he uses to me. For you may be sure, "Tell me, Socrates," he will say, "do you think it would be unjust if you got a beating for singing such a long dithyramb so unmusically and so far from the question ?" "How so ?" I shall say. "How so ?" he will say ; "are you not able to remember that I asked for the absolute beautiful, [292d] by which everything to which it is added has the property of being beautiful, both stone and stick and man and god and every act and every acquisition of knowledge ? For what I am asking is this, man : what is absolute beauty ? and I cannot make you hear what I say any more than if you were a stone sitting beside me, and a millstone at that, having neither ears nor brain." Would you, then, not be angry, Hippias, if I should be frightened and should reply in this way ? "Well, but Hippias said that this was the beautiful ; [292e] and yet I asked him, just as you asked me, what is beautiful to all and always." What do you say ? Will you not be angry if I say that ? GREATER HIPPIAS

I dare say, Athenians, that someone among you will reply, "Why is this, Socrates, and what is the origin of these accusations of you : for there must have been something strange which you have been doing ? All this great fame and talk about you would never have arisen if you had been like other men : tell us, then, why this is, as we should be sorry to judge hastily of you." Now I regard this as a fair challenge, and I will endeavor to explain to you the origin of this name of "wise," and of this evil fame. Please to attend then. And although some of you may think I am joking, I declare that I will tell you the entire truth. Men of Athens, this reputation of mine has come of a certain sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of wisdom, I reply, such wisdom as is attainable by man, for to that extent I am inclined to believe that I am wise ; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have a superhuman wisdom, which I may fail to describe, because I have it not myself ; and he who says that I have, speaks falsely, and is taking away my character. And here, O men of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say something extravagant. For the word which I will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who is worthy of credit, and will tell you about my wisdom — whether I have any, and of what sort — and that witness shall be the god of Delphi. You must have known Chaerephon ; he was early a friend of mine, and also a friend of yours, for he shared in the exile of the people, and returned with you. Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous in all his doings, and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell him whether — as I was saying, I must beg you not to interrupt — he asked the oracle to tell him whether there was anyone wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered that there was no man wiser. Chaerephon is dead himself, but his brother, who is in court, will confirm the truth of this story. APOLOGY

Why do I mention this ? Because I am going to explain to you why I have such an evil name. When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean ? and what is the interpretation of this riddle ? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men ? And yet he is a god and cannot lie ; that would be against his nature. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, "Here is a man who is wiser than I am ; but you said that I was the wisest." Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him — his name I need not mention ; he was a politician whom I selected for examination — and the result was as follows : When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself ; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise ; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away : Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is — for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him. APOLOGY

This investigation has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind, and has given occasion also to many calumnies, and I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others : but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise ; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing ; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. And so I go my way, obedient to the god, and make inquisition into the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise ; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise ; and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god. APOLOGY

Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras ; and you have but a bad opinion of the judges, if you fancy them ignorant to such a degree as not to know that those doctrines are found in the books of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian, who is full of them. And these are the doctrines which the youth are said to learn of Socrates, when there are not unfrequently exhibitions of them at the theatre (price of admission one drachma at the most) ; and they might cheaply purchase them, and laugh at Socrates if he pretends to father such eccentricities. And so, Meletus, you really think that I do not believe in any god ? APOLOGY

Socrates : Speak I must, I suppose. Now, although it is hard for a lover to parley with a man who does not yield to lovers  , I must make bold nevertheless to put my meaning into words. For if I saw you, Alcibiades, content with the things I set forth just now, and minded to pass your life in enjoying them, I should long ago have put away my love, [105a] so at least I persuade myself : but as it is, I shall propound to your face quite another set of your thoughts, whereby you will understand that I have had you continually before my mind. For I believe, if some god should ask you : "Alcibiades, do you prefer to live with your present possessions, or to die immediately if you are not to have the chance of acquiring greater things ?" I believe you would choose to die. But let me tell you what I imagine must be the present hope of your life. You think that if you come shortly before the Athenian Assembly — which [105b] you expect to occur in a very few days — you will stand forth and prove to the people that you are more worthy of honor than either Pericles or anyone else who has ever existed, and that having proved this you will have the greatest power in the state ; and that if you are the greatest here, you will be the same among all the other Greeks, and not only Greeks, but all the barbarians who inhabit the same continent with us. And if that same god should say to you again, that you are to hold sway here in Europe, [105c] but are not to be allowed to cross over into Asia and to interfere with the affairs of that region, I believe you would be equally loth to live on those sole conditions either — if you are not to fill, one may say, the whole world with your name and your power ; and I fancy that, except Cyrus and Xerxes, you think there has never existed a single man who was of any account. So then that this is your hope, I know well enough ; I am not merely guessing. And I daresay you will reply, since you know that what I say is true : "Well, [105d] Socrates, and what has that to do with your point ?" I am going to tell you, dear son of Cleinias and Deinomache. Without me it is impossible for all those designs of yours to be crowned with achievement ; so great is the power I conceive myself to have over your affairs and over you, and it is for this very reason, I believe, that the god has so long prevented me from talking with you, and I was waiting to see when he would allow me. For as [105e] you have hopes of proving yourself in public to be invaluable to the state and, having proved it, of winning forthwith unlimited power, so do I hope to win supreme power over you by proving that I am invaluable to you, and that neither guardian nor kinsman nor anyone else is competent to transmit to you the power that you long for except me, with the god’s help, however. In your younger days, to be sure, before you had built such high hopes, the god, as I believe, prevented me from talking with you, in order that I might not waste my words : but now he has set me on ; [106a] for now you will listen to me. ALCIBIADES I

His approving answers reassured me, and I began by degrees to regain confidence, and the vital heat returned. Such, Charmides  , I said, is the nature of the charm, which I learned when serving with the army from one of the physicians of the Thracian king Zamolxis, who are to be so skilful that they can even give immortality. This Thracian told me that in these notions of theirs, which I was just now mentioning, the Greek physicians are quite right as far as they go ; but Zamolxis, he added, our king, who is also a god, says further, "that as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul ; and this," he said, "is the reason why the cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also ; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well." For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates, as he declared, in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes. And therefore if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul ; that is the first thing. And the cure, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms are fair words ; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance is, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole body. And he who taught me the cure and the charm at the same time added a special direction : "Let no one," he said, "persuade you to cure the head, until he has first given you his soul to be cured by the charm. For this," he said, "is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body." And he added with emphasis, at the same time making me swear to his words, "Let no one, however rich, or noble, or fair, persuade you to give him the cure, without the charm." Now I have sworn, and I must keep my oath, and therefore if you will allow me to apply the Thracian charm first to your soul, as the stranger directed, I will afterwards proceed to apply the cure to your head. But if not, I do not know what I am to do with you, my dear Charmides. CHARMIDES

But that, Socrates, he said, is impossible ; and therefore if this is, as you imply, the necessary consequence of any of my previous admissions, I will withdraw them, rather than admit that a man can be temperate or wise who does not know himself ; and I am not ashamed to confess that I was in error. For self-knowledge would certainly be maintained by me to be the very essence of knowledge, and in this I agree with him who dedicated the inscription, "Know thyself !" at Delphi. That word, if I am not mistaken, is put there as a sort of salutation which the god addresses to those who enter the temple ; as much as to say that the ordinary salutation of "Hail !" is not right, and that the exhortation "Be temperate !" would be a far better way of saluting one another. The notion of him who dedicated the inscription was, as I believe, that the god speaks to those who enter his temple, not as men speak ; but, when a worshipper enters, the first word which he hears is "Be temperate !" This, however, like a prophet he expresses in a sort of riddle, for "Know thyself !" and "Be temperate !" are the same, as I maintain, and as the letters imply, and yet they may be easily misunderstood ; and succeeding sages who added "Never too much," or, "Give a pledge, and evil is nigh at hand," would appear to have so misunderstood them ; for they imagined that "Know thyself !" was a piece of advice which the god gave, and not his salutation of the worshippers at their first coming in ; and they dedicated their own inscription under the idea that they too would give equally useful pieces of advice. Shall I tell you, Socrates, why I say all this ? My object is to leave the previous discussion (in which I know not whether you or I are more right, but, at any rate, no clear result was attained), and to raise a new one in which I will attempt to prove, if you deny, that temperance is self-knowledge. CHARMIDES

La. I cannot understand what Nicias would be at, Socrates ; for he represents the courageous man as neither a soothsayer, nor a physician, nor in any other character, unless he means to say that he is a god. My opinion is that he does not like honestly to confess that he is talking nonsense, but that he shuffles up and down in order to conceal the difficulty into which he has got himself. You and I, Socrates, might have practised a similar shuffle just now, if we had only wanted to avoid the appearance of inconsistency. And if we had been arguing in a court of law there might have been reason in so doing ; but why should a man deck himself out with vain words at a meeting of friends such as this ? LACHES

Soc. O Callicles, if there were not some community of feelings among mankind, however varying in different persons — I mean to say, if every man’s feelings were peculiar to himself and were not shared by the rest of his species — I do not see how we could ever communicate our impressions to one another. I make this remark because I perceive that you and I have a common feeling. For we are lovers both, and both of us have two loves apiece : — I am the lover of Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias — I and of philosophy ; and you of the Athenian Demus, and of Demus the son of Pyrilampes. Now, I observe that you, with all your cleverness, do not venture to contradict your favourite in any word or opinion of his ; but as he changes you change, backwards and forwards. When the Athenian Demus denies anything that you are saying in the assembly, you go over to his opinion ; and you do the same with Demus, the fair young son of Pyrilampes. For you have not the power to resist the words and ideas of your loves ; and is a person were to express surprise at the strangeness of what you say from time to time when under their influence, you would probably reply to him, if you were honest, that you cannot help saying what your loves say unless they are prevented ; and that you can only be silent when they are. Now you must understand that my words are an echo too, and therefore you need not wonder at me ; but if you want to silence me, silence philosophy, who is my love, for she is always telling me what I am telling you, my friend ; neither is she capricious like my other love, for the son of Cleinias says one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, but philosophy is always true. She is the teacher at whose words you are. now wondering, and you have heard her yourself. Her you must refute, and either show, as I was saying, that to do injustice and to escape punishment is not the worst of all evils ; or, if you leave her word unrefuted, by the dog the god of Egypt, I declare, O Callicles, that Callicles will never be at one with himself, but that his whole life, will be a discord. And yet, my friend, I would rather that my lyre should be inharmonious, and that there should be no music in the chorus which I provided ; aye, or that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me, rather than that I myself should be at odds with myself, and contradict myself. GORGIAS

Soc. Let me now remind you of what I was saying to Gorgias and Polus ; I was saying, as you will not have forgotten, that there were some processes which aim only at pleasure, and know nothing of a better and worse, and there are other processes which know good and evil. And I considered that cookery, which I do not call an art, but only an experience, was of the former class, which is concerned with pleasure, and that the art of medicine was of the class which is concerned with the good. And now, by the god of friendship, I must beg you, Callicles, not to jest, or to imagine that I am jesting with you ; do not answer at random and contrary to your real opinion — for you will observe that we are arguing about the way of human life ; and to a man who has any sense at all, what question can be more serious than this ? — whether he should follow after that way of life to which you exhort me, and act what you call the manly part of speaking in the assembly, and cultivating rhetoric, and engaging in public affairs, according to the principles now in vogue ; or whether he should pursue the life of philosophy — and in what the latter way differs from the former. But perhaps we had better first try to distinguish them, as I did before, and when we have come to an agreement that they are distinct, we may proceed to consider in what they differ from one another, and which of them we should choose. Perhaps, however, you do not even now understand what I mean ? GORGIAS

Soc. I suppose that I can ; just now, at any rate, the speeches which I am making are long enough because you refuse to answer me. But I adjure you by the god of friendship, my good sir, do tell me whether there does not appear to you to be a great inconsistency in saying that you have made a man good, and then blaming him for being bad ? GORGIAS

Is not that which you would deem your own, he said, that which you have in your own power, and which you are able to use as you would desire, for example, an ox or a sheep would you not think that which you could sell and give and sacrifice to any god whom you pleased, to be your own, and that which you could not give or sell or sacrifice you would think not to be in your own power ? EUTHYDEMUS  

Socrates took his place on the couch, and supped with the rest ; and then libations were offered, and after a hymn had been sung to the god, and there had been the usual ceremonies, they were about to commence drinking, when Pausanias said, And now, my friends, how can we drink with least injury to ourselves ? I can assure you that I feel severely the effect of yesterday’s potations, and must have time to recover ; and I suspect that most of you are in the same predicament, for you were of the party yesterday. Consider then : How can the drinking be made easiest ? SYMPOSIUM  

but that of Phaedrus  . For often he says to me in an indignant tone : "What a strange thing it is, Eryximachus, that, whereas other gods have poems and hymns made in their honour, the great and glorious god, Love, has no encomiast among all the poets who are so many. There are the worthy sophists too — the excellent Prodicus for example, who have descanted in prose on the virtues of Heracles and other heroes ; and, what is still more extraordinary, I have met with a philosophical work in which the utility of salt has been made the theme of an eloquent discourse ; and many other like things have had a like honour bestowed upon them. And only to think that there should have been an eager interest created about them, and yet that to this day no one has ever dared worthily to hymn Love’s praises ! So entirely has this great deity been neglected." Now in this Phaedrus seems to me to be quite right, and therefore I want to offer him a contribution ; also I think that at the present moment we who are here assembled cannot do better than honour the god Love. If you agree with me, there will be no lack of conversation ; for I mean to propose that each of us in turn, going from left to right, shall make a speech in honour of Love. Let him give us the best which he can ; and Phaedrus, because he is sitting first on the left hand, and because he is the father of the thought, shall begin. SYMPOSIUM

Phaedrus began by affirming that love is a mighty god, and wonderful among gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For he is the eldest of the gods, which is an honour to him ; and a proof of his claim to this honour is, that of his parents there is no memorial ; neither poet nor prose-writer has ever affirmed that he had any. As Hesiod says : SYMPOSIUM

And Acusilaus agrees with Hesiod. Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live at principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able to implant so well as love. Of what am I speaking ? Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour ; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms ? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger ? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time ; Love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover. SYMPOSIUM

Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which Love is to us the lord and minister ; and let no one oppose him — he is the enemy of the gods who oppose him. For if we are friends of the God and at peace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and Agathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class which I have been describing. But my words have a wider application — they include men and women everywhere ; and I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best in the next degree and under present circumstances must be the nearest approach to such an union ; and that will be the attainment of a congenial love. Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature, and giving us high hopes for the future, for he promises that if we are pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed. This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love, which, although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed by the shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn ; each, or rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left. SYMPOSIUM

Here Phaedrus interrupted them, saying : not answer him, my dear Agathon ; for if he can only get a partner with whom he can talk, especially a good-looking one, he will no longer care about the completion of our plan. Now I love to hear him talk ; but just at present I must not forget the encomium on Love which I ought to receive from him and from every one. When you and he have paid your tribute to the god, then you may talk. SYMPOSIUM

— The previous speakers, instead of praising the god Love, or unfolding his nature, appear to have congratulated mankind on the benefits which he confers upon them. But I would rather praise the god first, and then speak of his gifts ; this is always the right way of praising everything. May I say without impiety or offence, that of all the blessed gods he is the most blessed because he is the fairest and best ? And he is the fairest : for, in the first place, he is the youngest, and of his youth he is himself the witness, fleeing out of the way of age, who is swift enough, swifter truly than most of us like : — Love hates him and will not come near him ; but youth and love live and move together — like to like, as the proverb says. Many things were said by Phaedrus about Love in which I agree with him ; but I cannot agree that he is older than Iapetus and Kronos : — not so ; I maintain him to be the youngest of the gods, and youthful ever. The ancient doings among the gods of which Hesiod and Parmenides   spoke, if the tradition of them be true, were done of Necessity and not Love ; had Love been in those days, there would have been no chaining or mutilation of the gods, or other violence, but peace and sweetness, as there is now in heaven, since the rule of Love began. SYMPOSIUM

herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness — that she walks not upon the hard but upon the soft. Let us adduce a similar proof of the tenderness of Love ; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of both god, and men, which are of all things the softest : in them he walks and dwells and makes his home. Not in every soul without exception, for Where there is hardness he departs, where there is softness there he dwells ; and nestling always with his feet and in all manner of ways in the softest of soft places, how can he be other than the softest of all things ? Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as the youngest, and also he is of flexile form ; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way into and out of every soul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especial manner the attribute of Love ; ungrace and love are always at war with one another. The fairness of his complexion is revealed by his habitation among the flowers ; for he dwells not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether of body or soul or aught else, but in the place of flowers and scents, there he sits and abides. Concerning the beauty of the god I have said enough ; and yet there remains much more which I might say. Of his virtue I have now to speak : his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any god or any man ; for he suffers not by force if he suffers ; force comes not near him, neither when he acts does he act by force. For all men in all things serve him of their own free will, and where there is voluntary agreement, there, as the laws which are the lords of the city say, is justice. And not only is he just but exceedingly temperate, for Temperance is the acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and no pleasure ever masters Love ; he is their master and they are his servants ; and if he conquers them he must be temperate indeed. As to courage, even the God of War is no match for him ; he is the captive and Love is the lord, for love, the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the tale runs ; and the master is stronger than the servant. And if he conquers the bravest of all others, he must be himself the bravest. 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

This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection, who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these : in sacrifices, feasts, dances, he is our lord — who sends courtesy and sends away discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness ; the friend of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods ; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him ; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace ; regardful of the good, regardless of the evil : in every word, work, wish, fear-saviour, pilot, comrade, helper ; glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest : in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men. Such is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet having a certain measure of seriousness, which, according to my ability, I dedicate to the god. SYMPOSIUM

When Agathon had done speaking, Aristodemus said that there was a general cheer ; the young man was thought to have spoken in a manner worthy of himself, and of the god. And Socrates, looking at Eryximachus, said : Tell me, son of Acumenus, was there not reason in my fears ? and was I not a true prophet when I said that Agathon would make a wonderful oration, and that I should be in a strait ? SYMPOSIUM

And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I heard from Diotima of Mantineia, a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with the admissions made by Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I made to the wise woman when she questioned me — I think that this will be the easiest way, and I shall take both parts myself as well as I can. As you, Agathon, suggested, I must speak first of the being and nature of Love, and then of his works. First I said to her in nearly the same words which he used to me, that Love was a mighty god, and likewise fair and she proved to me as I proved to him that, by my own showing, Love was neither fair nor good. "What do you mean, Diotima," I said, "is love then evil and foul ?" "Hush," she cried ; "must that be foul which is not fair ?" "Certainly," I said. "And is that which is not wise, ignorant ? do you not see that there is a mean between wisdom and ignorance ?" "And what may that be ?" I said. "Right opinion," she replied ; "which, as you know, being incapable of giving a reason, is not knowledge (for how can knowledge be devoid of reason ? nor again, ignorance, for neither can ignorance attain the truth), but is clearly something which is a mean between ignorance and wisdom." "Quite true," I replied. "Do not then insist," she said, "that what is not fair is of necessity foul, or what is not good evil ; or infer that because love is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil ; for he is in a mean between them." "Well," I said, "Love is surely admitted by all to be a great god." "By those who know or by those who do not know ?" "By all." "And how, Socrates," she said with a smile, "can Love be acknowledged to be a great god by those who say that he is not a god at all ?" "And who are they ?" I said. "You and I are two of them," she replied. "How can that be ?" I said. "It is quite intelligible," she replied ; "for you yourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy and fair of course you would — would to say that any god was not ?" "Certainly not," I replied. "And you mean by the happy, those who are the possessors of things good or fair ?" "Yes." "And you admitted that Love, because he was in want, desires those good and fair things of which he is in want ?" "Yes, I did." "But how can he be a god who has no portion in what is either good or fair ?" "Impossible." "Then you see that you also deny the divinity of Love." 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

Tell him, Cebes, he replied, that I had no idea of rivalling him or his poems ; which is the truth, for I knew that I could not do that. But I wanted to see whether I could purge away a scruple which I felt about certain dreams. In the course of my life I have often had intimations in dreams "that I should make music." The same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes in another, but always saying the same or nearly the same words : Make and cultivate music, said the dream. And hitherto I had imagined that this was only intended to exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which has always been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music. The dream was bidding me to do what I was already doing, in the same way that the competitor in a race is bidden by the spectators to run when he is already running. But I was not certain of this, as the dream might have meant music in the popular sense of the word, and being under sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite, I thought that I should be safer if I satisfied the scruple, and, in obedience to the dream, composed a few verses before I departed. And first I made a hymn in honor of the god of the festival, and then considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet or maker, should not only put words together but make stories, and as I have no invention, I took some fables of esop, which I had ready at hand and knew, and turned them into verse. Tell Evenus this, and bid him be of good cheer ; that I would have him come after me if he be a wise man, and not tarry ; and that to-day I am likely to be going, for the Athenians say that I must. PHAEDO  

Socrates smiled and said : O Simmias, how strange that is ; I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I am unable to persuade you, and you will keep fancying that I am at all more troubled now than at any other time. Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans ? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are. But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe ; which are said indeed to tune a lay of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than of the swans. But because they are sacred to Apollo and have the gift of prophecy and anticipate the good things of another world, therefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before. And I, too, believing myself to be the consecrated servant of the same God, and the fellow servant of the swans, and thinking that I have received from my master gifts of prophecy which are not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life less merrily than the swans. Cease to mind then about this, but speak and ask anything which you like, while the eleven magistrates of Athens allow. PHAEDO

Crito  , when he heard this, made a sign to the servant, and the servant went in, and remained for some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying a cup of poison. Socrates said : You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed. The man answered : You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said : What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god ? May I, or not ? The man answered : We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough. I understand, he said : yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world — may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow ; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast ; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed ; and at that moment. Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness : What is this strange outcry ? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. PHAEDO

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

Phaedr. Yes, but I will ; and my word shall be an oath. "I say, or rather swear" — but what god will be witness of my oath ? — "By this plane-tree I swear, that unless you repeat the discourse here in the face of this very plane-tree, I will never tell you another ; never let you have word of another !" PHAEDRUS

Soc. Well, and is not Eros the son of Aphrodite, and a god ? PHAEDRUS

Such is the life of the gods ; but of other souls, that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being ; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first ; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort ; and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers ; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being, go away, and feed upon opinion. The reason why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul ; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a law of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man ; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature ; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be some righteous king or warrior chief ; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or trader ; the fourth shall be lover of gymnastic toils, or a physician ; the fifth shall lead the life of a prophet or hierophant ; to the sixth the character of poet or some other imitative artist will be assigned ; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman ; to the eighth that of a sophist or demagogue ; to the ninth that of a tyrant — all these are states of probation, in which he who does righteously improves, and he who does unrighteously, improves, and he who does unrighteously, deteriorates his lot. PHAEDRUS

But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining in company with the celestial forms ; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses ; though not by that is wisdom seen ; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be equally lovely. But this is the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight. Now he who is not newly initiated or who has become corrupted, does not easily rise out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other ; he looks only at her earthly namesake, and instead of being awed at the sight of her, he is given over to pleasure, and like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy and beget ; he consorts with wantonness, and is not afraid or ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. But he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty ; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him ; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god ; then while he gazes on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration ; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms. And as he warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wings begins to swell and grow from the root upwards ; and the growth extends under the whole soul — for once the whole was winged. 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

Soc. And when the king or orator has the power, as Lycurgus or Solon or Darius had, of attaining an immortality or authorship in a state, is he not thought by posterity, when they see his compositions, and does he not think himself, while he is yet alive, to be a god ? PHAEDRUS

Soc. I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization ; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any man who is able to see "a One and Many" in nature, him I follow, and "walk in his footsteps as if he were a god." And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians ; but God knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what name you would give to your or to Lysias’ disciples, and whether this may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others teach and practise ? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them. PHAEDRUS

Soc. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth ; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt ; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of the he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories ; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied : O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have ; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories ; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth ; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing ; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing ; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. PHAEDRUS

Soc. Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs ; but differs, in that I attend men and not women ; and look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies : and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the mid-wives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just — the reason is, that the god compels me to be a midwife, but does not allow me to bring forth. And therefore I am not myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the invention or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me profit. Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards, as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, they all make astonishing progress ; and this in the opinion of others as well as in their own. It is quite dear that they never learned anything from me ; the many fine discoveries to which they cling are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their delivery. And the proof of my words is, that many of them in their ignorance, either in their self-conceit despising me, or falling under the influence of others, have gone away too soon ; and have not only lost the children of whom I had previously delivered them by an ill bringing up, but have stifled whatever else they had in them by evil communications, being fonder of lies and shams than of the truth ; and they have at last ended by seeing themselves, as others see them, to be great fools. Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus, is one of them, and there are many others. The truants often return to me, and beg that I would consort with them again — they are ready to go to me on their knees and then, if my familiar allows, which is not always the case, I receive them, and they begin to grow again. Dire are the pangs which my art is able to arouse and to allay in those who consort with me, just like the pangs of women in childbirth ; night and day they are full of perplexity and travail which is even worse than that of the women. So much for them. And there are others, Theaetetus  , who come to me apparently having nothing in them ; and as I know that they have no need of my art, I coax them into marrying some one, and by the grace of God I can generally tell who is likely to do them good. Many of them I have given away to Prodicus, and many to other inspired sages. I tell you this long story, friend Theaetetus, because I suspect, as indeed you seem to think yourself, that you are in labour — great with some conception. Come then to me, who am a midwife’s son and myself a midwife, and do your best to answer the questions which I will ask you. And if I abstract and expose your first-born, because I discover upon inspection that the conception which you have formed is a vain shadow, do not quarrel with me on that account, as the manner of women is when their first children are taken from them. For I have actually known some who were ready to bite me when I deprived them of a darling folly ; they did not perceive that I acted from good will, not knowing that no god is the enemy of man — that was not within the range of their ideas ; neither am I their enemy in all this, but it would be wrong for me to admit falsehood, or to stifle the truth. Once more, then, Theaetetus, I repeat my old question, "What is knowledge ?" — and do not say that you cannot tell ; but quit yourself like a man, and by the help of God you will be able to tell. THEAETETUS

Socrates. Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us in the disguise of a stranger ? For Homer says that all the gods, and especially the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and just, and visit the good and evil among men. And may not your companion be one of those higher powers, a cross-examining deity, who has come to spy out our weakness in argument, and to cross-examine us ? SOPHIST

Theod. Nay, Socrates, he is not one of the disputatious sort — he is too good for that. And, in my opinion, he is not a god at all ; but divine he certainly is, for this is a title which I should give to all philosophers. SOPHIST

Theod. By Ammon, the god of Cyrene, Socrates, that is a very fair hit ; and shows that you have not forgotten your geometry. I will retaliate on you at some other time, but I must now ask the Stranger, who will not, I hope, tire of his goodness to us, to proceed either with the Statesman   or with the Philosopher, whichever he prefers. STATESMAN

Str. No, not that ; but another part of the story, which tells how the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus. STATESMAN

Str. I mean to say that when we were asked about a king and statesman of the present ; and generation, we told of a shepherd of a human flock who belonged to the other cycle, and of one who was a god when he ought to have been a man ; and this a great error. Again, we declared him to be, the ruler of the entire State, without, explaining how : this was not the whole truth, nor very intelligible ; but still it was true, and therefore the second error was not so, great as the first. STATESMAN

Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and even, having a surface in every direction equidistant from the centre, a body entire and perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies. And in the centre he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the body, making it also to be the exterior environment of it ; and he made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in view he created the world a blessed god. TIMAEUS  

In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter who was called Cleito. The maiden had already reached womanhood, when her father and mother died ; Poseidon fell in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, inclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one another ; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant every way from the centre, so that no man could get to the island, for ships and voyages were not as yet. He himself, being a god, found no difficulty in making special arrangements for the centre island, bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food to spring up abundantly from the soil. He also begat and brought up five pairs of twin male children ; and dividing the island of Atlantis into ten portions, he gave to the first-born of the eldest pair his mother’s dwelling and the surrounding allotment, which was the largest and best, and made him king over the rest ; the others he made princes, and gave them rule over many men, and a large territory. And he named them all ; the eldest, who was the first king, he named Atlas, and after him the whole island and the ocean were called Atlantic. To his twin brother, who was born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twins he called one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon. To the elder of the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus, and Autochthon to the one who followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus, and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger that of Diaprepes. All these and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea ; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in our direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. CRITIAS  

First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace. And at the very beginning they built the palace in the habitation of the god and of their ancestors, which they continued to ornament in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who went before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the ships ; for the banks were raised considerably above the water. Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth ; but the next two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. All this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One kind was white, another black, and a third red, and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum. CRITIAS

The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed on this wise : — in the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold ; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to each of the ten. Here was Poseidon’s own temple which was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum ; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold : there was the god himself standing in a chariot — the charioteer of six winged horses — and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head ; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them by the men of those days. There were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by private persons. And around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the descendants of the ten kings and of their wives, and there were many other great offerings of kings and of private persons, coming both from the city itself and from the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to this magnificence, and the palaces, in like manner, answered to the greatness of the kingdom and the glory of the temple. CRITIAS

As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number. And when they were gathered together they consulted about their common interests, and enquired if any one had transgressed in anything and passed judgment and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another on this wise : — There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon ; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons but with staves and nooses ; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them ; the rest of the victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round. Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself and for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god ; and after they had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the embers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had an accusation to bring against any one ; and when they given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be a memorial. CRITIAS

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. Some god or divine man, who in the Egyptian legend is said to have been Theuth, observing that the human voice was infinite, first distinguished in this infinity a certain number of vowels, and then other letters which had sound, but were not pure vowels (i.e., the semivowels) ; these too exist in a definite number ; and lastly, he distinguished a third class of letters which we now call mutes, without voice and without sound, and divided these, and likewise the two other classes of vowels and semivowels, into the individual sounds, told the number of them, and gave to each and all of them the name of letters ; and observing that none of us could learn any one of them and not learn them all, and in consideration of this common bond which in a manner united them, he assigned to them all a single art, and this he called the art of grammar or letters. PHILEBUS  

Soc. If you say that, I have nothing to apprehend, for the words "if you are willing" dispel all my fear ; and, moreover, a god seems to have recalled something to my mind. PHILEBUS

Phi. You magnify, Socrates, the importance of your favourite god. PHILEBUS

Soc. Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the god who presides over the ceremony of mingling. PHILEBUS

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

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. Let us look at the matter thus : May we not conceive each of us living beings to be a puppet of the Gods, either their plaything only, or created with a purpose — which of the two we cannot certainly know ? But we do know, that these affections in us are like cords and strings, which pull us different and opposite ways, and to opposite actions ; and herein lies the difference between virtue and vice. According to the argument there is one among these cords which every man ought to grasp and never let go, but to pull with it against all the rest ; and this is the sacred and golden cord of reason, called by us the common law of the State ; there are others which are hard and of iron, but this one is soft because golden ; and there are several other kinds. Now we ought always to cooperate with the lead of the best, which is law. For inasmuch as reason is beautiful and gentle, and not violent, her rule must needs have ministers in order to help the golden principle in vanquishing the other principles. And thus the moral of the tale about our being puppets will not have been lost, and the meaning of the expression "superior or inferior to a man’s self" will become clearer ; and the individual, attaining to right reason in this matter of pulling the strings of the puppet, should live according to its rule ; while the city, receiving the same from some god or from one who has knowledge of these things, should embody it in a law, to be her guide in her dealings with herself and with other states. In this way virtue and vice will be more clearly distinguished by us. And when they have become clearer, education and other institutions will in like manner become clearer ; and in particular that question of convivial entertainment, which may seem, perhaps, to have been a very trifling matter, and to have taken a great many more words than were necessary. LAWS BOOK I

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

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

Athenian : It shall be done, if the god himself will be our guide. Do but join in my prayer. EPINOMIS   BOOK XII

[3.315c] But as for me, I would not call upon a man, and much less a god, and bid him enjoy himself — a god, because I would be imposing a task contrary to his nature (since the Deity has his abode far beyond pleasure or pain), — nor yet a man, because pleasure and pain generate mischief for the most part, since they breed in the soul mental sloth and forgetfulness and witlessness and insolence. Let such, then, be my declaration regarding the mode of address ; and you, when you read it, accept it in what sense you please. It is stated by not a few that you related to some [3.315d] of the ambassadors at your Court, that upon one occasion I heard you speaking of your intention to occupy the Greek cities in Italy and to relieve the Syracusans by changing the government to a monarchy instead of a tyranny, and at that time (as you assert) I stopped you from doing so, although you were most eager to do it, whereas now I am urging Dion to do precisely the same thing ; and thus we are robbing you of your empire by means of your own plans. [3.315e] Whether you derive any benefit from this talk you know best yourself, but you certainly wrong me by saying what is contrary to the fact. For of false accusation I have had enough from Philistides and many others who accused me to the mercenaries and to the Syracusan populace because I stayed in the acropolis ; and the people outside, whenever a mistake occurred, ascribed it entirely to me, alleging that you obeyed me in all things. But you yourself know for certain [3.316a] that I willingly took part in some few of your political acts at the first, when I thought that I was doing some good by it and that I gave a fair amount of attention to the Preludes of the laws, besides other small matters, apart from the additions in writing made by you or anyone else — for I am told that some of you afterwards revised my Preludes ; but no doubt the several contributions will be evident to those who are competent to appreciate my style. Well then, as I said just now, what I need is not any further accusation to the Syracusans, or any others there may be who believe your story, but much rather [3.316b] a defence not only against the previous false accusations, but also against the graver and more violent accusation which is now being concocted to follow it. Against the two accusations I must necessarily make a twofold defence — stating, firstly, that I reasonably avoided sharing in your political transactions ; and, secondly, that neither the advice was mine, nor yet the hindrance you alleged, — when you said that I had stopped you when you proposed to plant colonists in the Greek cities. LETTERS LETTER III

So, listen first [3.316c] to the origin of the first of the accusations I have mentioned. It was on your invitation and Dion’s that I came to Syracuse. Dion was a tried comrade of mine and a guest-friend of old standing, and he was a man of staid middle age, — qualities that are specially required by men who possess even a particle of sense when they intend to advise concerning affairs so important as yours then were. You, on the other hand, were extremely young, and in your case I was quite without experience of those points regarding which experience was required, [3.316d] as I was totally unacquainted with you. Thereafter, some man or god or chance, with your assistance, cast out Dion, and you were left alone. Do you suppose, then, that I took any part with you in your political acts, when I had lost my wise partner and saw the unwise one left behind in the company of a crowd of evil men, not ruling himself, but being ruled by men of that sort, while fancying himself the ruler ? In these circumstances what ought I to have done ? Was I not bound to do as I did, — to bid farewell for the future to politics, [3.316e] shunning the slanders which proceed from envy, and to use every endeavor to make you and Dion as friendly to each other as possible, separated though you were and at variance with each other ? Yea, you yourself also are a witness of this, that I have never yet ceased to strive for this very object. And it was agreed between us — although with difficulty — that I should sail home, [3.317a] since you were engaged in war, and that, when peace was restored, Dion and I should go to Syracuse and that you should invite us. And that was how things took place as regards my first sojourn at Syracuse and my safe return home again. But on the second occasion, when peace was restored, you did not keep to our agreement in the invitation you gave me but wrote that I should come alone, and stated that you would send for Dion later on. On this account I did not go ; and, moreover, I was vexed also with Dion ; [3.317b] for he was of opinion that it was better for me to go and to yield to your wishes. Subsequently, after a year’s interval, a trireme arrived with letters from you, and the first words written in the letters were to the effect that if I came I should find that Dion’s affairs would all proceed as I desired, but the opposite if I failed to come. And indeed I am ashamed to say how many letters came at that time from Italy and Sicily from you and [3.317c] from others on your account, or to how many of my friends and acquaintances they were addressed, all enjoining me to go and beseeching me to trust you entirely. It was the firm opinion of everyone, beginning with Dion, that it was my duty to make the voyage and not be faint-hearted. But I always made my age an excuse ; and as for you, I kept assuring them that you would not be able to withstand those who slander us and desire that we should quarrel ; for I saw then, as I see now, that, as a rule, when great and exorbitant wealth is in the hands either of private citizens or of monarchs, [3.317d] the greater it is, the greater and more numerous are the slanderers it breeds and the hordes of parasites and wastrels — than which there is no greater evil generated by wealth or by the other privileges of power. Notwithstanding, I put aside all these considerations and went, resolving that none of my friends should lay it to my charge that owing to my lack of energy all their fortunes were ruined when they might have been saved from ruin. [3.317e] On my arrival — for you know, to be sure, all that subsequently took place — I, of course, requested, in accordance with the agreement in your letters, that you should, in the first place, recall Dion on terms of friendship — which terms I mentioned ; and if you had then yielded to this request, things would probably have turned out better than they have done now both for you and Syracuse and for the rest of Greece — that, at least, is my own intuitive belief. Next, I requested that Dion’s family should have possession of his property, [3.318a] instead of the distributors, whom you wot of, having the distribution of it. And further, I deemed it right that the revenue which was usually paid over to him year by year should be forwarded to him all the more, rather than all the less, because of my presence. None of these requests being granted, I asked leave to depart. Thereupon you kept urging me to stop for the year, declaring that you would sell all Dion’s property and send one half of the proceeds to Corinth and retain the other half for his son. [3.318b] And I could mention many other promises none of which you fulfilled ; but the number of them is so great that I cut it short. For when you had sold all the goods, without Dion’s consent — though you had declared that without his consent you would not dispose of them — you put the coping-stone on all your promises, my admirable friend, in a most outrageous way : you invented a plan that was neither noble nor ingenious nor just nor profitable — namely, to scare me off from so much as [3.318c] seeking for the dispatch of the money, as being in ignorance of the events then going on. For when you sought to expel Heracleides unjustly, as it seemed to the Syracusans as well as to myself — because I had joined with Theodotes and Eurybius in entreating you not to do so, you took this as an ample excuse, and asserted that it had long been plain to you that I paid no regard to you, but only to Dion and Dion’s friends and connections, and now that Theodotes and Heracleides, who were Dion’s connections, were the subjects of accusations, I was using every means to prevent their paying the just penalty. LETTERS LETTER III

Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind : having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them ; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges, the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the King of Lydia ; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he, stooping and looking in, saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human and having nothing on but a gold ring ; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the King ; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outward and reappeared ; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result — when he turned the collet inward he became invisible, when outward he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court ; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the Queen, and with her help conspired against the King and slew him and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other ; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with anyone at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust ; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever anyone thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine anyone obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this. THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

"As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god, THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

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

I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have so much difficulty in making myself apprehended. Like a bad speaker, therefore, I will not take the whole of the subject, but will break a piece off in illustration of my meaning. You know the first lines of the "Iliad," in which the poet says that Chryses prayed Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that Agamemnon flew into a passion with him ; whereupon Chryses, failing of his object, invoked the anger of the god against the Achaeans. Now as far as these lines, THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never conceals himself, then again the imitation is dropped, and his poetry becomes simple narration. However, in order that I may make my meaning quite clear, and that you may no more say, "I don’t understand," I will show how the change might be effected. If Homer had said, "The priest came, having his daughter’s ransom in his hands, supplicating the Achaeans, and above all the kings ;" and then if, instead of speaking in the person of Chryses, he had continued in his own person, the words would have been, not imitation, but simple narration. The passage would have run as follows (I am no poet, and therefore I drop the metre) : "The priest came and prayed the gods on behalf of the Greeks that they might capture Troy and return safely home, but begged that they would give him back his daughter, and take the ransom which he brought, and respect the god. Thus he spoke, and the other Greeks revered the priest and assented. But Agamemnon was wroth, and bade him depart and not come again, lest the staff and chaplets of the god should be of no avail to him — the daughter of Chryses should not be released, he said — she should grow old with him in Argos. And then he told him to go away and not to provoke him, if he intended to get home unscathed. And the old man went away in fear and silence, and, when he had left the camp, he called upon Apollo by his many names, reminding him of everything which he had done pleasing to him, whether in building his temples, or in offering sacrifice, and praying that his good deeds might be returned to him, and that the Achaeans might expiate his tears by the arrows of the god" — and so on. In this way the whole becomes simple narrative. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Naturally so, I replied. Nevertheless, the tragedians and Pindar   disobeying our behests, although they acknowledge that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, say also that he was bribed into healing a rich man who was at the point of death, and for this reason he was struck by lightning. But we, in accordance with the principle already affirmed by us, will not believe them when they tell us both ; if he was the son of a god, we maintain that he was not avaricious ; or, if he was avaricious, he was not the son of a god. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

And as there are two principles of human nature, one the spirited and the other the philosophical, some god, as I should say, has given mankind two arts answering to them (and only indirectly to the soul and body), in order that these two principles (like the strings of an instrument) may be relaxed or drawn tighter until they are duly harmonized. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Nothing to us, I replied ; but to Apollo, the god of Delphi, there remains the ordering of the greatest and noblest and chiefest things of all. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

The institution of temples and sacrifices, and the entire service of gods, demigods, and heroes ; also the ordering of the repositories of the dead, and the rites which have to be observed by him who would propitiate the inhabitants of the world below. These are matters of which we are ignorant ourselves, and as founders of a city we should be unwise in trusting them to any interpreter but our ancestral deity. He is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel of the earth, and he is the interpreter of religion to all mankind. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

We must learn of the god how we are to order the sepulture of divine and heroic personages, and what is to be their special distinction ; and we must do as he bids ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Neither shall we offer up arms at the temples of the gods, least of all the arms of Hellenes, if we care to maintain good feeling with other Hellenes ; and, indeed, we have reason to fear that the offering of spoils taken from kinsmen may be a pollution unless commanded by the god himself ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

The god of jealousy himself, he said, could find no fault with such a study. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

I imagine not, he said ; had he been educated he would never have made a blind god director of his chorus, or given him chief honor. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

Very true, I said. But imagine one of these owners, the master say of some fifty slaves, together with his family and property and slaves, carried off by a god into the wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him — will he not be in an agony of fear lest he and his wife and children should be put to death by his slaves ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And suppose the same god, who carried him away, to surround him with neighbors who will not suffer one man to be the master of another, and who, if they could catch the offender, would take his life ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

Come, now, and let us gently reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in error. "Sweet sir," we will say to him, "what think you of things esteemed noble and ignoble ? Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man ? and the ignoble that which subjects the man to the beast ?" He can hardly avoid saying, Yes — can he, now ? Not if he has any regard for my opinion. But, if he agree so far, we may ask him to answer another question : "Then how would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst ? Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or daughter into slavery for money, especially if he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil men, would be the gainer, however large might be the sum which he received ? And will anyone say that he is not a miserable caitiff who remorselessly sells his own divine being to that which is most godless and detestable ? Eriphyle took the necklace as the price of her husband’s life, but he is taking a bribe in order to compass a worse ruin." THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX