y do.

ATHENIAN: Just so, Megillus and Cleinias; and I maintain that our
citizens and our youth ought to learn about the nature of the Gods in
heaven, so far as to be able to offer sacrifices and pray to them in
pious language, and not to blaspheme about them.

CLEINIAS: There you are right, if such a knowledge be only attainable;
and if we are wrong in our mode of speaking now, and can be better
instructed and learn to use better language, then I quite agree with
you that such a degree of knowledge as will enable us to speak rightly
should be acquired by us. And now do you try to explain to us your whole
meaning, and we, on our part, will endeavour to understand you.

ATHENIAN: There is some difficulty in understanding my meaning, but not
a very great one, nor will any great length of time be required. And of
this I am myself a proof; for I did not know these things long ago, nor
in the days of my youth, and yet I can explain them to you in a brief
space of time; whereas if they had been difficult I could certainly
never have explained them all, old as I am, to old men like yourselves.

CLEINIAS: True; but what is this study which you describe as wonderful
and fitting for youth to learn, but of which we are ignorant? Try and
explain the nature of it to us as clearly as you can.

ATHENIAN: I will. For, O my good friends, that other doctrine about the
wandering of the sun and the moon and the other stars is not the truth,
but the very reverse of the truth. Each of them moves in the same
path--not in many paths, but in one only, which is circular, and the
varieties are only apparent. Nor are we right in supposing that the
swiftest of them is the slowest, nor conversely, that the slowest is
the quickest. And if what I say is true, only just imagine that we had a
similar notion about horses running at Olympia, or about men who ran in
the long course, and that we addressed the swiftest as the slowest and
the slowest as the swiftest, and sang the praises of the vanquished as
though he were the victor--in that case our praises would not be true,
nor very agreeable to the runners, though they be but men; and now, to
commit the same error about the Gods which would have been ludicrous and
erroneous in the case of men--is not that ludicrous and erroneous?

CLEINIAS: Worse than ludicrous, I should say.

ATHENIAN: At all events, the Gods cannot like us to be spreading a false
report of them.

CLEINIAS: Most true, if such is