well aware, that, if you only would, none were better
qualified to carry the discussion further, and that when you had engaged
our city in a suitable war, you of all men living could best exhibit
her playing a fitting part. When I had completed my task, I in return
imposed this other task upon you. You conferred together and agreed
to entertain me to-day, as I had entertained you, with a feast of
discourse. Here am I in festive array, and no man can be more ready for
the promised banquet.

HERMOCRATES: And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus says, will not be wanting
in enthusiasm; and there is no excuse for not complying with your
request. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest-chamber of
Critias, with whom we are staying, or rather on our way thither, we
talked the matter over, and he told us an ancient tradition, which I
wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates, so that he may help us
to judge whether it will satisfy his requirements or not.

CRITIAS: I will, if Timaeus, who is our other partner, approves.

TIMAEUS: I quite approve.

CRITIAS: Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is
certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of
the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my
great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his
poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered
and repeated it to us. There were of old, he said, great and marvellous
actions of the Athenian city, which have passed into oblivion through
lapse of time and the destruction of mankind, and one in particular,
greater than all the rest. This we will now rehearse. It will be a
fitting monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn of praise true and
worthy of the goddess, on this her day of festival.

SOCRATES: Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of the
Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to be not
a mere legend, but an actual fact?

CRITIAS: I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man;
for Critias, at the time of telling it, was, as he said, nearly ninety
years of age, and I was about ten. Now the day was that day of the
Apaturia which is called the Registration of Youth, at which, according
to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the poems of
several poets were recited by us boys, and many of us sang the poems of
Solon, which at that time had not gone out of fashion.