Seite - 818 - in The Complete Plato

we may have described a sort of royal form, we have not as yet accurately worked out the true image of the Statesman? and that we cannot reveal him as he truly is in his own nature, until we have disengaged and separated him from those who hang about him and claim to share in his prerogatives? YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true. STRANGER: And that, Socrates, is what we must do, if we do not mean to bring disgrace upon the argument at its close. YOUNG SOCRATES: We must certainly avoid that. STRANGER: Then let us make a new beginning, and travel by a different road. YOUNG SOCRATES: What road? STRANGER: I think that we may have a little amusement; there is a famous tale, of which a good portion may with advantage be interwoven, and then we may resume our series of divisions, and proceed in the old path until we arrive at the desired summit. Shall we do as I say? YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means. STRANGER: Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to hear; and you are not too old for childish amusement. YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear. STRANGER: There did really happen, and will again happen, like many other events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record, the portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes. You have heard, no doubt, and remember what they say happened at that time? YOUNG SOCRATES: I suppose you to mean the token of the birth of the golden lamb. STRANGER: 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. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; there is that legend also. STRANGER: Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos. YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, very often. STRANGER: Did you ever hear that the men of former times were earth- born, and not begotten of one another? 818