one avoid being
utterly ridiculous, who attempts to compel women to show in public
how much they eat and drink? There is nothing at which the sex is more
likely to take offence. For women are accustomed to creep into dark
places, and when dragged out into the light they will exert their
utmost powers of resistance, and be far too much for the legislator. And
therefore, as I said before, in most places they will not endure to have
the truth spoken without raising a tremendous outcry, but in this state
perhaps they may. And if we may assume that our whole discussion about
the state has not been mere idle talk, I should like to prove to you,
if you will consent to listen, that this institution is good and proper;
but if you had rather not, I will refrain.

CLEINIAS: There is nothing which we should both of us like better,
Stranger, than to hear what you have to say.

ATHENIAN: Very good; and you must not be surprised if I go back a
little, for we have plenty of leisure, and there is nothing to prevent
us from considering in every point of view the subject of law.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Then let us return once more to what we were saying at first.
Every man should understand that the human race either had no beginning
at all, and will never have an end, but always will be and has been; or
that it began an immense while ago.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: Well, and have there not been constitutions and destructions
of states, and all sorts of pursuits both orderly and disorderly, and
diverse desires of meats and drinks always, and in all the world, and
all sorts of changes of the seasons in which animals may be expected to
have undergone innumerable transformations of themselves?

CLEINIAS: No doubt.

ATHENIAN: And may we not suppose that vines appeared, which had
previously no existence, and also olives, and the gifts of Demeter
and her daughter, of which one Triptolemus was the minister, and that,
before these existed, animals took to devouring each other as they do
still?

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: Again, the practice of men sacrificing one another still
exists among many nations; while, on the other hand, we hear of other
human beings who did not even venture to taste the flesh of a cow and
had no animal sacrifices, but only cakes and fruits dipped in honey,
and similar pure offerings, but no flesh of animals; from these they
abstained under the idea that they ought not to eat them, and might not
st