677
Athenian
Ath. And shall we say that all implements were lost, and that everything in the way of important arts or inventions that they may have had,—whether concerned with politics or other sciences,— perished at that time? For, supposing that things had remained all that time ordered just as they are now, how, my good sir, could anything new have ever been invented?
Clinias
Clin. Do you mean that these things were unknown to the men of those days for thousands upon thousands of years, and that one or two thousand years ago some of them were revealed to Daedalus, some to Orpheus, some to Palamedes, musical arts to Marsyas and Olympus, lyric to Amphion, and, in short, a vast number of others to other persons—all dating, so to say, from yesterday or the day before?
Athenian
Ath. Are you aware, Clinias, that you have left out your friend who was literally a man of yesterday?
15
Clinias
Clin. Is it EpimenidesCp. Plat. Laws 642d. you mean?
Athenian
Ath. Yes, I mean him. For he far outstripped everybody you had, my friend, by that invention of his of which he was the actual producer, as you Cretans say, although HesiodHes. WD 640f. νήπιοι, οὐδὲ ἴασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντός, οὐδ’ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ’ ὄνειαρ. Hesiod’s allusion to the great virtue residing in mallow and asphodel is supposed to have suggested to Epimenides his invention of a herbal concoction, or elixir of life. had divined it and spoken of it long before.
Clinias
Clin. We do say so.