Book III - Page 2

arts were unknown
during ten thousand times ten thousand years. And no more than a thousand
or two thousand years have elapsed since the discoveries of Daedalus,
Orpheus and Palamedes,--since Marsyas and Olympus invented music, and
Amphion the lyre--not to speak of numberless other inventions which are
but of yesterday.

ATHENIAN: Have you forgotten, Cleinias, the name of a friend who is really
of yesterday?

CLEINIAS: I suppose that you mean Epimenides.

ATHENIAN: The same, my friend; he does indeed far overleap the heads of
all mankind by his invention; for he carried out in practice, as you
declare, what of old Hesiod (Works and Days) only preached.

CLEINIAS: Yes, according to our tradition.

ATHENIAN: After the great destruction, may we not suppose that the state
of man was something of this sort:--In the beginning of things there was a
fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land; a herd or two of
oxen would be the only survivors of the animal world; and there might be a
few goats, these too hardly enough to maintain the shepherds who tended
them?

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: And of cities or governments or legislation, about which we are
now talking, do you suppose that they could have any recollection at all?

CLEINIAS: None whatever.

ATHENIAN: And out of this state of things has there not sprung all that we
now are and have: cities and governments, and arts and laws, and a great
deal of vice and a great deal of virtue?

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: Why, my good friend, how can we possibly suppose that those who
knew nothing of all the good and evil of cities could have attained their
full development, whether of virtue or of vice?

CLEINIAS: I understand your meaning, and you are quite right.

ATHENIAN: But, as time advanced and the race multiplied, the world came to
be what the world is.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: Doubtless the change was not made all in a moment, but little by
little, during a very long period of time.

CLEINIAS: A highly probable supposition.

ATHENIAN: At first, they would have a natural fear ringing in their ears
which would prevent their descending from the heights into the plain.

CLEINIAS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: The fewness of the survivors at that time would have made them
all the more desirous of seeing one another; but then the means of
travelling either by land or sea had been almost entirely lost, as I may
say, with the loss of the arts, and there was great difficulty in getting
at one another; for iron and brass and all metals were jumbled together
and had disappeared in the chaos; nor was there any possibility of
extracting ore from