hich is
in motion (tou pheromenon ephaptomene), herein showing her wisdom. And
Hades, who is wise, consorts with her, because she is wise. They alter
her name into Pherephatta now-a-days, because the present generation
care for euphony more than truth. There is the other name, Apollo,
which, as I was saying, is generally supposed to have some terrible
signification. Have you remarked this fact?

HERMOGENES: To be sure I have, and what you say is true.

SOCRATES: But the name, in my opinion, is really most expressive of the
power of the God.

HERMOGENES: How so?

SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain, for I do not believe that any
single name could have been better adapted to express the attributes of
the God, embracing and in a manner signifying all four of them,--music,
and prophecy, and medicine, and archery.

HERMOGENES: That must be a strange name, and I should like to hear the
explanation.

SOCRATES: Say rather an harmonious name, as beseems the God of Harmony.
In the first place, the purgations and purifications which doctors and
diviners use, and their fumigations with drugs magical or medicinal,
as well as their washings and lustral sprinklings, have all one and the
same object, which is to make a man pure both in body and soul.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And is not Apollo the purifier, and the washer, and the
absolver from all impurities?

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: Then in reference to his ablutions and absolutions, as
being the physician who orders them, he may be rightly called Apolouon
(purifier); or in respect of his powers of divination, and his truth
and sincerity, which is the same as truth, he may be most fitly called
Aplos, from aplous (sincere), as in the Thessalian dialect, for all the
Thessalians call him Aplos; also he is aei Ballon (always shooting),
because he is a master archer who never misses; or again, the name
may refer to his musical attributes, and then, as in akolouthos,
and akoitis, and in many other words the alpha is supposed to mean
'together,' so the meaning of the name Apollo will be 'moving together,'
whether in the poles of heaven as they are called, or in the harmony
of song, which is termed concord, because he moves all together by an
harmonious power, as astronomers and musicians ingeniously declare.
And he is the God who presides over harmony, and makes all things move
together, both among Gods and among men. And as in the words akolouthos
and ako