ittle read among the Cretans.

MEGILLUS: But they are in Lacedaemon, and he appears to be the prince
of them all; the manner of life, however, which he describes is not
Spartan, but rather Ionian, and he seems quite to confirm what you are
saying, when he traces up the ancient state of mankind by the help of
tradition to barbarism.

ATHENIAN: Yes, he does confirm it; and we may accept his witness to the
fact that such forms of government sometimes arise.

CLEINIAS: We may.

ATHENIAN: And were not such states composed of men who had been
dispersed in single habitations and families by the poverty which
attended the devastations; and did not the eldest then rule among them,
because with them government originated in the authority of a father and
a mother, whom, like a flock of birds, they followed, forming one troop
under the patriarchal rule and sovereignty of their parents, which of
all sovereignties is the most just?

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: After this they came together in greater numbers, and
increased the size of their cities, and betook themselves to husbandry,
first of all at the foot of the mountains, and made enclosures of loose
walls and works of defence, in order to keep off wild beasts; thus
creating a single large and common habitation.

CLEINIAS: Yes; at least we may suppose so.

ATHENIAN: There is another thing which would probably happen.

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: When these larger habitations grew up out of the lesser
original ones, each of the lesser ones would survive in the larger;
every family would be under the rule of the eldest, and, owing to their
separation from one another, would have peculiar customs in things
divine and human, which they would have received from their several
parents who had educated them; and these customs would incline them to
order, when the parents had the element of order in their nature, and to
courage, when they had the element of courage. And they would naturally
stamp upon their children, and upon their children's children, their
own likings; and, as we are saying, they would find their way into the
larger society, having already their own peculiar laws.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And every man surely likes his own laws best, and the laws of
others not so well.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Then now we seem to have stumbled upon the beginnings of
legislation.

CLEINIAS: Exactly.

ATHENIAN: The next step will be that these persons w