are Gods, believes also that they take no
heed of human affairs: To him we say--O thou best of men, in believing
that there are Gods you are led by some affinity to them, which attracts
you towards your kindred and makes you honour and believe in them. But
the fortunes of evil and unrighteous men in private as well as public
life, which, though not really happy, are wrongly counted happy in
the judgment of men, and are celebrated both by poets and prose
writers--these draw you aside from your natural piety. Perhaps you have
seen impious men growing old and leaving their children's children in
high offices, and their prosperity shakes your faith--you have known or
heard or been yourself an eyewitness of many monstrous impieties, and
have beheld men by such criminal means from small beginnings attaining
to sovereignty and the pinnacle of greatness; and considering all these
things you do not like to accuse the Gods of them, because they are your
relatives; and so from some want of reasoning power, and also from an
unwillingness to find fault with them, you have come to believe that
they exist indeed, but have no thought or care of human things. Now,
that your present evil opinion may not grow to still greater impiety,
and that we may if possible use arguments which may conjure away the
evil before it arrives, we will add another argument to that originally
addressed to him who utterly denied the existence of the Gods. And do
you, Megillus and Cleinias, answer for the young man as you did before;
and if any impediment comes in our way, I will take the word out of your
mouths, and carry you over the river as I did just now.

CLEINIAS: Very good; do as you say, and we will help you as well as we
can.

ATHENIAN: There will probably be no difficulty in proving to him that
the Gods care about the small as well as about the great. For he was
present and heard what was said, that they are perfectly good, and that
the care of all things is most entirely natural to them.

CLEINIAS: No doubt he heard that.

ATHENIAN: Let us consider together in the next place what we mean by
this virtue which we ascribe to them. Surely we should say that to be
temperate and to possess mind belongs to virtue, and the contrary to
vice?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Yes; and courage is a part of virtue, and cowardice of vice?

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: And the one is honourable, and the other dishonourable?

CLEINIAS: To be sure.

ATH