INDEX LOCORUM: PLATO
APOLOGY
28dSo I should have done a terrible thing, eif, when the commanders whom you chose to command me stationed me, both at Potidaea and at Amphipolis and at Delium, I remained where they stationed me, like anybody else, and ran the risk of death, but when the god gave me a station, as I believed and understood, with orders to spend my life in philosophy and in examining myself and others, 29athen I were to desert my post through fear of death or anything else whatsoever.
30dAnd so, men of Athens, I am now making my defence not for my own sake, as one might imagine, but far more for yours, that you may not by condemning me err in your treatment of the gift the God gave you. eFor if you put me to death, you will not easily find another, who, to use a rather absurd figure, attaches himself to the city as a gadfly to a horse, which, though large and well bred, is sluggish on account of his size and needs to be aroused by stinging. I think the god fastened me upon the city in some such capacity, and I go about arousing, 31aand urging and reproaching each one of you, constantly alighting upon you everywhere the whole day long. Such another is not likely to come to you, gentlemen; but if you take my advice, you will spare me.
CHARMIDES
154eVery much so, said Critias; for, I may say, he is in fact 155aa philosopher, and also - as others besides himself consider - quite a poet.
That, my dear Critias, I said, is a gift which your family has had a long while back, through your kinship with Solon. But why not call the young man here and show him to me? For surely, even if he were younger still, there could be no discredit in our having a talk with him before you, who are at once his guardian and his cousin.
You are quite right he said, and we will call him. 155bThereupon he said to his attendant, - Boy, call Charmides; tell him I want him to see a doctor about the ailment with which he told me he was troubled yesterday. Then, turning to me, - You know, he has spoken lately of having a headache, said Critias, on getting up in the morning: now why should you not represent to him that you know a cure for headache?
157dWhy, yes, I said, and it is only right, Charmides, that you should excel the rest in all these respects; for 157eI do not suppose there is anyone else here who could readily point to a case of any two Athenian houses uniting together which would be likely to produce handsomer or nobler offspring than those from which you are sprung. For your father's house, which comes from Critias, son of Dropides, has been celebrated by Anacreon and Solon and many other poets, so that it is famed by tradition among us as preeminent in beauty and virtue 158aand all else that is accounted happiness; and then, your mother's house is famous in the same way, for of Pyrilampes, your uncle, it is said that no one in all the continent was considered to be his superior in beauty or stature, whenever he came as envoy to the great king or anyone else in Asia, and his house as a whole is no whit inferior to the other.
HIPPIAS MAJOR
285eSocrates: By Zeus, Hippias, it is lucky for you that the Lacedaemonians do not enjoy hearing one recite the list of our archons from Solon's time; if they did, you would have trouble in learning it by heart.
LYSIS
209dAh, do let me ask this, I went on: what, pray, of the Great King? Would he allow his eldest son, heir-apparent to the throne of Asia, to put what he chose into the royal stew, eor would he prefer us to do it, supposing we came before him and convinced him that we had a better notion than his son of preparing a tasty dish?
MENEXENUS
236dSocrates: In respect of deeds, these men have received at our hands what is due unto them, endowed wherewith they travel their predestined road; for they have been escorted forth in solemn procession publicly by the City and privately by their kinsfolk. But in respect of words, the honor that remains still due to these heroes the law enjoins us, and it is right, to pay in full. 236eFor it is by means of speech finely spoken that deeds nobly done gain for their doers from the hearers the meed of memory and renown. And the speech required is one which will adequately eulogize the dead and give kindly exhortation to the living, appealing to their children and their brethren to copy the virtues of these heroes, and to their fathers and mothers and any still surviving ancestors offering consolation. 237aWhere then could we discover a speech like that? Or how could we rightly commence our laudation of these valiant men, who in their lifetime delighted their friends by their virtue, and purchased the safety of the living by their deaths? We ought, in my judgement, to adopt the natural order in our praise, even as the men themselves were natural in their virtue. And virtuous they were because they were sprung from men of virtue. Firstly, then, let us eulogize their nobility of birth, and secondly their nurture and training: 237bthereafter we shall exhibit the character of their exploits, how nobly and worthily they wrought them. Now as regards nobility of birth, their first claim thereto is this - that the forefathers of these men were not of immigrant stock, nor were these their sons declared by their origin to be strangers in the land sprung from immigrants, but natives sprung from the soil living and dwelling in their own true fatherland; and nurtured also by no stepmother, like other folk, but by that mother-country 237cwherein they dwelt, which bare them and reared them and now at their death receives them again to rest in their own abodes. Most meet it is that first we should celebrate that Mother herself; for by so doing we shall also celebrate therewith the noble birth of these heroes.
Our country is deserving of praise, not only from us but from all men, on many grounds, but first and foremost because she is god-beloved. The strife of the gods who contended over her and their judgement testify to the truth of our statement. 237dAnd how should not she whom the gods praised deserve to be praised by all mankind? And a second just ground of praise would be this, - that during that period in which the whole earth was putting forth and producing animals of every kind, wild and tame, our country showed herself barren and void of wild animals, but chose for herself and gave birth to man, who surpasses all other animals in intelligence and alone of animals regards justice and the gods. 237eAnd we have a signal proof of this statement in that this land of ours has given birth to the forefathers both of these men and of ourselves. For every creature that brings forth possesses a suitable supply of nourishment for its offspring; and by this test it is manifest also whether a woman be truly a mother or no, if she possesses no founts of nourishment for her child. Now our land, which is also our mother, furnishes to the full this proof of her having brought forth men; for, of all the lands that then existed, she was the first and the only one to produce human nourishment, 238anamely the grain of wheat and barley, whereby the race of mankind is most richly and well nourished, inasmuch as she herself was the true mother of this creature. And proofs such as this one ought to accept more readily on behalf of a country than on behalf of a woman; for it is not the country that imitates the woman in the matter of conception and birth, but the woman the country. But this her produce of grain she did not begrudge to the rest of men, but dispensed it to them also. And after it she brought to birth for her children the olive, sore labor's balm. And when she had nurtured and reared them up to man's estate, 238bshe introduced gods to be their governors and tutors; the names of whom it behoves us to pass over in this discourse, since we know them; and they set in order our mode of life, not only in respect of daily business, by instructing us before all others in the arts, but also in respect of the guardianship of our country, by teaching us how to acquire and handle arms.
239aWherefore the forefathers of these men and of us, and these men themselves, having been reared up thus in complete freedom, and being nobly born, achieved before all men many noble deeds both individual and national, bdeeming it their duty to fight in the cause of freedom alike with Greeks on behalf of Greeks and with barbarians on behalf of the whole of Greece. The story of how they repulsed Eumolpus and the Amazons, and still earlier invaders, when they marched upon our country, and how they defended the Argives against the Cadmeians and the Heracleidae against the Argives, is a story which our time is too short to relate as it deserves, and already their valor has been adequately celebrated in song by poets who have made it known throughout the world; cconsequently, if we should attempt to magnify the same achievements in plain prose, we should probably find ourselves outmatched. These exploits, therefore, for these reasons I judge that we should pass over, seeing also that they have their due meed of praise; but those exploits for which as yet no poet has received worthy renown for worthy cause, and which lie still buried in oblivion, I ought, as I think, to celebrate, not only praising them myself but providing material also for others to build up into odes and other forms of poetry in a manner worthy of the doers of those deeds. And of the deeds whereof I speak the first were these:
dThe Persians were in command of Asia, and were enslaving Europe, when they came in contact with the children of this land, our own parents, of whom it is right and proper that we should make mention first and celebrate their valor. But if we are to celebrate it fitly, in order to visualize it we must place ourselves, in thought, at that epoch when the whole of Asia was already in bondage to the third of the Persian kings. Cyrus, the first of these kings, had by his own spirited action set free his fellow-countrymen, the Persians, and not only enslaved the Medes, their masters, ebut also gained command of the rest of Asia, as far as to Egypt. His son ruled over Egypt and as much of Libya as he could traverse; while the third king, Darius, extended his empire by land as far as to the Scythians, and by his navy controlled the sea and the islands, 240aso that none so much as thought of disputing his sway. Thus the minds of all men were enslaved; so many were the mighty and warlike nations which had fallen under the yoke of the Persian Empire.
eI, therefore, affirm that those men were the begetters not merely of our bodies but of our freedom also, and the freedom of all the dwellers in this continent; for it was the example of that exploit of theirs which fired the Greeks with courage to risk the later battles in the cause of salvation, learning their lesson from the men of Marathon. To them, therefore, we award in this our speech the first prize for valor, and the second to those who fought and won the sea-fights off Salamis 241aand at Artemisium. And truly concerning these men also one might have much to relate, regarding the manner of onsets they endured both by land and sea, and how they repelled them; but the achievement I shall mention is that which was, in my judgement, the noblest that they performed, in that it followed up the achievement of the men of Marathon. For whereas the men of Marathon had only proved to the Greeks thus much, - that it was possible to repel bthe barbarians by land though few against many, yet the prospect in a sea-fight remained still doubtful, and the Persians still retained the reputation of being invincible by sea, in virtue of their numbers and their wealth, their naval skill and strength. For this, then, the men who fought those sea-fights merit our praise, that they delivered the Greeks from the second of their fears, and put an end to the terrors inspired by multitudes of ships and men. So it came about, by the action of both - the soldiers who fought at Marathon and the sailors who fought at Salamis -, cthat the rest of the Greeks were trained and accustomed to have no fear of the barbarians, neither by land, as our soldiers taught them, nor yet, as our sailors taught them, by sea. The exploit at Plataea I put third both in order and in merit of those which secured the salvation of Greece; and in this exploit, at last, the Lacedaemonians cooperated with the Athenians. By the action of all these men the greatest and most formidable danger was warded off, and because of this their valor ewe pronounce their eulogy now, as our successors will in the time to come.
PHAEDO
59bPhaedo: Of native Athenians there was this Apollodorus, and Critobulus and his father, and Hermogenes and Epiganes and Aeschines and Antisthenes; and Ctesippus the Paeanian was there too, and Menexenus and some other Athenians. But Plato, I think, was ill.
61aPhaedo: For I thought it was safer not to go hence 61bbefore making sure that I had done what I ought, by obeying the dream and composing verses. So first I composed a hymn to the god whose festival it was; and after the god, considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet, must compose myths and not speeches, since I was not a maker of myths, I took the myths of Aesop, which I had at hand and knew, and turned into verse the first I came upon.
99aIf anyone were to say that I could not have done what I thought proper if I had not bones and sinews and other things that I have, he would be right. But to say that those things are the cause of my doing what I do, 99band that I act with intelligence but not from the choice of what is best, would be an extremely careless way of talking. Whoever talks in that way is unable to make a distinction and to see that in reality a cause is one thing, and the thing without which the cause could never be a cause is quite another thing. And so it seems to me that most people, when they give the name of cause to the latter, are groping in the dark, as it were, and are giving it a name that does not belong to it. And so one man makes the earth stay below the heavens by putting a vortex about it, and another regards the earth as a flat trough supported on a foundation of air; but they do not look for 99cthe power which causes things to be now placed as it is best for them to be placed, nor do they think it has any divine force, but they think they can find a new Atlas more powerful and more immortal and more all-embracing than this, and in truth they give no thought to the good, which must embrace and hold together all things.
REPUBLIC
8.547aHesiod's and our races of gold, silver, bronze and iron. And this intermixture of the iron with the silver and the bronze with the gold will engender unlikeness and an unharmonious unevenness, things that always beget war and enmity wherever they arise. "Of this lineage, look you," we must aver the dissension to be, wherever it occurs and always."
SEVENTH LETTER
324bIn the days of my youth my experience was the same as that of many others. I thought that as soon as I should become my own master 324cI would immediately enter into public life. But it so happened, I found, that the following changes occurred in the political situation.
In the government then existing, reviled as it was by many, a revolution took place; and the revolution was headed by fifty-one leaders, of whom eleven were in the City and ten in the Piraeus - each of these sections dealing with the market and with all municipal matters requiring management - and Thirty were established 324das irresponsible rulers of all. Now of these some were actually connections and acquaintances of mine; and indeed they invited me at once to join their administration, thinking it would be congenial. The feelings I then experienced, owing to my youth, were in no way surprising: for I imagined that they would administer the State by leading it out of an unjust way of life into a just way, and consequently I gave my mind to them very diligently, to see what they would do. And indeed I saw how these men within a short time caused men to look back on the former government as a golden age; and above all how they treated my 324eaged friend Socrates, whom I would hardly scruple to call the most just of men then living, when they tried to send him, along with others, after one of the citizens, to fetch him by force 325athat he might be put to death - their object being that Socrates, whether he wished or no, might be made to share in their political actions; he, however, refused to obey and risked the uttermost penalties rather than be a partaker in their unholy deeds. So when I beheld all these actions and others of a similar grave kind, I was indignant, and I withdrew myself from the evil practices then going on. But in no long time the power of the Thirty was overthrown together with the whole of the government which then existed. Then once again I was really, though less urgently, impelled with a desire to take part in public and 325bpolitical affairs.
326bThis was the view I held when I came to Italy and Sicily, at the time of my first arrival. And when I came I was in no wise pleased at all with "the blissful life," as it is there termed, replete as it is with Italian and Syracusan banquetings; for thus one's existence is spent in gorging food twice a day and never sleeping alone at night, 326cand all the practices which accompany this mode of living.
327dHolding these right views, Dion persuaded Dionysius to summon me; and he himself also sent a request that I should by all means come with all speed, before that 327eany others should encounter Dionysius and turn him aside to some way of life other than the best. And these were the terms - long though they are to repeat - in which his request was couched: " What opportunities (he asked) are we to wait for that could be better than those that have now been presented by a stroke of divine good fortune?" And he dwelt in detail on the extent of the empire 328ain Italy and Sicily and his own power therein, and the youth of Dionysius, mentioning also how great a desire he had for philosophy and education, and he spoke of his own nephews and connections, and how they would be not only easily converted themselves to the doctrines and the life I always taught, but also most useful in helping to influence Dionysius; so that now, if ever (he concluded), all our hopes will be fulfilled of seeing the same persons at once philosophers and rulers of mighty States.
329bOn my arrival - I must not be tedious - I found Dionysius's kingdom all full of civil strife and of slanderous stories 329cbrought to the court concerning Dion. So I defended him, so far as I was able, though it was little I could do; but about three months later, charging Dion with plotting against the tyranny, Dionysius set him aboard a small vessel and drove him out with ignominy.
330aHe became indeed more and more devoted as time advanced, according as he grew familiar with my disposition and character, but he was desirous that I should praise him more than Dion and regard him rather than Dion as my special friend, and this triumph he was marvellously anxious to achieve. But the best way to achieve this, if it was to be achieved - 330bnamely, by occupying himself in learning and in listening to discourses on philosophy and by associating with me - this he always shirked owing to his dread of the talk of slanderers, lest he might be hampered in some measure and Dion might accomplish all his designs.
340aAnd when 340bI arrived, I deemed that I ought first of all to gain proof of this point, - whether Dionysius was really inflamed by philosophy, as it were by fire, or all this persistent account which had come to Athens was empty rumor. Now there is a method of testing such matters which is not ignoble but really suitable in the case of tyrants, and especially such as are crammed with borrowed doctrines; and this was certainly what had happened to Dionysius, as I perceived as soon as I arrived. To such persons one must point out what the subject is as a whole, 340cand what its character, and how many preliminary subjects it entails and how much labor. For on hearing this, if the pupil be truly philosophic, in sympathy with the subject and worthy of it, because divinely gifted, he believes that he has been shown a marvellous pathway and that he must brace himself at once to follow it, and that life will not be worth living if he does otherwise. After this he braces both himself and him who is guiding him on the path, nor does he desist until either he has reached the goal of all his studies, or else has gained such power as to be capable of directing his own steps without the aid of the instructor. It is thus, 340dand in this mind, that such a student lives, occupied indeed in whatever occupations he may find himself, but always beyond all else cleaving fast to philosophy and to that mode of daily life which will best make him apt to learn and of retentive mind and able to reason within himself soberly; but the mode of life which is opposite to this he continually abhors. Those, on the other hand, who are in reality not philosophic, but superficially tinged by opinions, - like men whose bodies are sunburnt on the surface - when they see how many studies are required and how great labor, 340eand how the orderly mode of daily life is that which befits the subject, they deem it difficult or impossible for themselves, and thus they become in fact incapable of pursuing it; 341awhile some of them persuade themselves that they have been sufficiently instructed in the whole subject and no longer require any further effort.
345dStill I judged that I had no right to be more angry with Dionysius than with myself and those who had forced me to come the third time to the straits adjoining Scylla - 345e"There yet again to traverse the length of deadly Charybdis;" rather I should inform Dionysius that it was impossible for me to remain now that Dion was so insultingly treated.
LAWS
1.638aAthenian: Larger States, for example, are victorious in battle over smaller States, 638band we find the Syracusans subjugating the Locrians, who are reputed to have been the best-governed of the peoples in that part of the world: and the Athenians the Ceians, - and we could find countless other instances of the same kind. So let us leave victories and defeats out of account for the present, and discuss each several institution on its own merits in the endeavor to convince ourselves, and explain in what way one kind is good and another had. And to begin with, listen to my account of the right method of inquiring into the merits and demerits of institutions.
2.656dAthenian: It is marvellous, even in the telling. It appears that long ago they determined on the rule of which we are now speaking, that the youth of a State should practise in their rehearsals postures and tunes that are good: these they prescribed in detail and posted up in the temples, 656eand outside this official list it was, and still is, forbidden to painters and all other producers of postures and representations to introduce any innovation or invention, whether in such productions or in any other branch of music, over and above the traditional forms. And if you look there, you will find that the things depicted or graven there 10,000 years ago (I mean what I say, 657anot loosely but literally 10,000) are no whit better or worse than the productions of today, but wrought with the same art.
5.739aAthenian: The next move in our settling of the laws is one that might at first hearing cause surprise because of its unusual character - like the move of a draughts-player who quits his "sacred line"; none the less, it will be clear to him who reasons it out and uses experience that a State will probably have a constitution no higher than second in point of excellence.
PSEUDO-PLATO: ALCIBIADES
121aBut take the lines of those people, going back from them: you have a succession of kings reaching to Zeus - on the one hand, kings of Argos and Sparta; on the other, of Persia, which they have always ruled, and frequently Asia also, as at present [...]
cAnd the Persian king so far surpasses us that no one has a suspicion that he could have been born of anybody but the king before him; and hence the king's wife has nothing to guard her except fear. When the eldest son, the heir to the throne, is born, first of all the king's subjects who are in his palace have a feast, and then for ever after on that date the whole of Asia celebrates the king's birthday with sacrifice and feasting [...]
PSEUDO-PLATO: HIPPARCHUS
228bSocrates: 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 228cthey 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, 228dhe 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 228ehis 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.
PSEUDO-PLATO: MINOS
318dSocrates: Then do you know who were their good kings? Minos and Rhadamanthus, the sons of Zeus and Europa; those laws were theirs.
Companion: Rhadamanthus, they do say, Socrates, was a just man; but Minos was a savage sort of person, harsh and unjust.
Socrates: Your tale, my excellent friend, is a fiction of Attic tragedy.
dCompanion: What! Is not this the tradition about Minos?
Socrates: Not in Homer and Hesiod; and yet they are more to be believed than all the tragedians together, from whom you heard your tale.
Companion: Well, and what, pray, is their tale about Minos?
Socrates: I will tell you, in order that you may not share the impiety of the multitude: for there cannot conceivably be anything more impious or more to be guarded against than being mistaken in word and deed with regard to the gods, and after them, with regard to divine men; you must take very great precaution, whenever you are about to 319ablame or praise a man, so as not to speak incorrectly. For this reason you must learn to distinguish honest and dishonest men: for God feels resentment when one blames a man who is like himself, or praises a man who is the opposite; and the former is the good man. For you must not suppose that while stocks and stones and birds and snakes are sacred, men are not; nay, the good man is the most sacred of all these things, and the wicked man is the most defiled.
So if I now proceed to relate how Minos is eulogized by Homer band Hesiod, my purpose is to prevent you, a man sprung from a man, from making a mistake in regard to a hero who was the son of Zeus. For Homer, in telling of Crete that there were in it many men and “ninety cities,” says: "And amongst them is the mighty city of Cnossos, where Minos was king, having colloquy with mighty Zeus in the ninth year."
cNow here in Homer we have a eulogy of Minos, briefly expressed, such as the poet never composed for a single one of the heroes. For that Zeus is a sophist, and that sophistry is a highly honorable art, he makes plain in many other places, and particularly here. For he says that Minos consorted and discoursed with Zeus in the ninth year, and went regularly to be educated by Zeus as though he were a sophist. And the fact that Homer assigned this privilege of having been educated by Zeus to no one among the heroes but Minos makes this a marvellous piece of praise. dAnd in the Ghost-raising in the Odyssey he has described Minos as judging with a golden scepter in his hand, but not Rhadamanthus: Rhadamanthus he has neither described here as judging nor anywhere as consorting with Zeus; wherefore I say that Minos above all persons has been eulogized by Homer. For to have been the son of Zeus, and to have been the only one who was educated by Zeus, is praise unsurpassable.
For the meaning of the verse - "he was king having colloquy with mighty Zeus in the ninth year " - eis that Minos was a disciple of Zeus. For colloquies are discourses, and he who has colloquy is a disciple by means of discourse. So every ninth year Minos repaired to the cave of Zeus, to learn some things, and to show his knowledge of others that he had learnt from Zeus in the preceding nine years. Some there are who suppose that he who has colloquy is a cup-companion and fellow-jester of Zeus: but one may take the following as a proof that 320athey who suppose so are babblers. For of all the many nations of men, both Greek and foreign, the only people who refrain from drinking-bouts and the jesting that occurs where there is wine, are the Cretans, and after them the Spartans, who learnt it from the Cretans. In Crete it is one of their laws which Minos ordained that they are not to drink with each other to intoxication. And yet it is evident that the things he thought honorable were what he ordained as lawful for his people as well. For surely Minos did not, like an inferior person, bthink one thing and do another, different from what he thought: no, this intercourse, as I say, was held by means of discussion for education in virtue. Wherefore he ordained for his people these very laws, which have made Crete happy through the length of time, and Sparta happy also, since she began to use them; for they are divine.
Rhadamanthus was a good man indeed, for he had been educated by Minos; he had, however, been educated, cnot in the whole of the kingly art, but in one subsidiary to the kingly, enough for presiding in law courts; so that he was spoken of as a good judge. For Minos used him as guardian of the law in the city, and Talos as the same for the rest of Crete. For Talos thrice a year made a round of the villages, guarding the laws in them, by holding their laws inscribed on brazen tablets, which gave him his name of "brazen." And what Hesiod also has said dof Minos is akin to this. For after mentioning him by name he remarks - "Who was most kingly of mortal kings, and lorded it over more neighboring folk than any, holding the scepter of Zeus: therewith it was that he ruled the cities as king." And by the scepter of Zeus he means nothing else than the education that he had of Zeus, whereby he directed Crete.
Companion: Then how has it ever come about, Socrates, that this report is spread abroad of Minos, as an uneducated eand harsh-tempered person?
Socrates: Because of something that will make both you, if you are wise, my excellent friend, and everybody else who cares to have a good reputation, beware of ever quarreling with any man of a poetic turn. For poets have great influence over opinion, according as they create it in the minds of men by either commending or vilifying. And this was the mistake that Minos made, in waging war on this city of ours, which besides all its various culture has poets of every kind, and especially those who write tragedy. 321aNow tragedy is a thing of ancient standing here; it did not begin, as people suppose, from Thespis or from Phrynicus, but if you will reflect, you will find it is a very ancient invention of our city. Tragedy is the most popularly delightful and soul-enthralling branch of poetry: in it, accordingly, we get Minos on the rack of verse, and thus avenge ourselves for that tribute which he compelled us to pay This, then, was the mistake that Minos made - his quarrel with us - and hence it is that, as you said in your question, he has fallen more and more into evil repute. For that he was a good band law-abiding person, as we stated in what went before - a good apportioner - is most convincingly shown by the fact the his laws are unshaken, since they were made by one who discovered aright the truth of reality in regard to the management of a state.
