Page:Plato (IA platocollins00colliala).pdf/166

 sophist, poet, musician, all in one. At their request Socrates sums up his theories of the previous day, but professes himself to be hardly satisfied with his ideal sketch. Like one who has seen animals in a painting or at rest, and who would like to see them in active movement, so, he tells them, he would like to see how his imaginary State would really act in some great crisis, and how his citizens would bear themselves when they went forth to war; and he appeals to his friends to help him to exhibit his republic playing a noble part in history. And then Critias tells "an old-world story," handed down in his family from his great-grandfather Dropidas, who had heard it from Solon, and Solon had himself heard it in this wise.

Near the mouths of the Nile in Egypt stands the ancient city called Sais, where Amasis the king was born, founded by a goddess whom the Egyptians call Neith and the Greeks Athenè. Thither Solon came in his travels, and was received with great honour; and he asked many questions of the priests about the times of old, and told them many ancient legends, as he thought them, of his own land. But one of the priests, being himself of a great age, said: "O Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there is not an old man among you all. You have no traditions that are really grey with time, and your stories of Deucalion and Phaeton are only the partial history of one out of many destructions by flood and fire which have come at certain periods upon mankind, sweeping away states, and with them letters and all knowledge. The Nile has preserved our land from such calami-