677
Athenian
Ath. Do you consider that there is any truth in the ancient tales?
Clinias
Clin. What tales?
Athenian
Ath. That the world of men has often been destroyed by floods, plagues, and many other things, in such a way that only a small portion of the human race has survived.
Clinias
Clin. Everyone would regard such accounts as perfectly credible.
Athenian
Ath. Come now, let us picture to ourselves one of the many catastrophes,—namely, that which occurred once upon a time through the Deluge.Deucalion’s Flood: cp. Polit. 270 C.
5
Clinias
Clin. And what are we to imagine about it?
Athenian
Ath. That the men who then escaped destruction must have been mostly herdsmen of the hills, scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops.
Athenian
Ath. Moreover, men of this kind must necessarily have been unskilled in the arts generally, and especially in such contrivances as men use against one another in cities for purposes of greed and rivalry and all the other villainies which they devise one against another.
Clinias
Clin. It is certainly probable.
10
Athenian
Ath. Shall we assume that the cities situated in the plains and near the sea were totally destroyed at the time?
Clinias
Clin. Let us assume it.