(328) Adeimantus added: Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening? With horses! I replied: That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches and pass them one to another during the race? Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will be celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse. Glaucon said: I suppose, since you insist, that we must. Very good, I replied. Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, and then he said:— You don’t come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus.

(327) I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess 1 ; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait. I turned round, and asked him where his master was. There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait. Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession. Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your companion are already on your way to the city. You are not far wrong, I said. But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are? Of course. And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are. May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go? But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said. Certainly not, replied Glaucon. Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.

(509) Glaucon said, with a ludicrous earnestness: By the light of heaven, how amazing! Yes, I said, and the exaggeration may be set down to you; for you made me utter my fancies. And pray continue to utter them; at any rate let us hear if there is anything more to be said about the similitude of the sun. Yes, I said, there is a great deal more. Then omit nothing, however slight. I will do my best, I said; but I should think that a great deal will have to be omitted. I hope not, he said. You have to imagine, then, that there are two ruling powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual world, the other over the visible. I do not say heaven, lest you should fancy that I am playing upon the name ( οὐρανός, ὁρατός ). May I suppose that you have this distinction of the visible and intelligible fixed in your mind? I have. Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal 13 parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will find that the first section in the

(414) deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city? What sort of lie? he said. Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician 41 tale of what has often occurred before now in other places, (as the poets say, and have made the world believe ) though not in our time, and I do not know whether such an event could ever happen again, or could now even be made probable, if it did. How your words seem to hesitate on your lips! You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you have heard. Speak, he said, and fear not. Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers. You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were going to tell.

(498) me, who have recently become friends, although, indeed, we were never enemies; for I shall go on striving to the utmost until I either convert him and other men, or do something which may profit them against the day when they live again, and hold the like discourse in another state of existence. You are speaking of a time which is not very near. Rather, I replied, of a time which is as nothing in comparison with eternity. Nevertheless, I do not wonder that the many refuse to believe; for they have never seen that of which we are now speaking realized; they have seen only a conventional imitation of philosophy, consisting of words artificially brought together, not like these of ours having a natural unity. But a human being who in word and work is perfectly moulded, as far as he can be, into the proportion and likeness of virtue—such a man ruling in a city which bears the same image, they have never yet seen, neither one nor many of them—do you think that they ever did? No indeed. No, my friend, and they have seldom, if ever, heard free and noble sentiments; such as men utter when they are earnestly and by every means in their power seeking after truth for the sake of knowledge, while they look coldly on the subtleties of controversy, of which the end is opinion and strife, whether they meet with them in the courts of law or in society. They are strangers, he said, to the words of which you speak. And this was what we foresaw, and this was the reason