Athenian
Ath. Or again, when you see men attaining the goal of old age, and leaving behind them children’s children in the highest offices, very likely you are disturbed, when amongst the number of these you discover—whether from hearsay or from your own personal observation—some who have been guilty of many dreadful impieties, and who, just because of these, have risen from a small position to royalty and the highest rank; then the consequence of all this clearly is that, since on the one hand you are unwilling to hold the gods responsible for such things because of your kinship to them, and since on the other hand you are driven by lack of logic and inability to repudiate the gods, you have come to your present morbid state of mind, in which you opine that the gods exist, but scorn and neglect human affairs. In order, therefore, that your present opinion may not grow to a greater height of morbid impiety, but that we may succeed in repelling the onset of its pollution (if haply we are able) by argument, let us endeavor to attach our next argument to that which we set forth in full to him who utterly disbelieves gods, and thereby to employ the latter as well. And do you, Clinias and Megillus, take the part of the young man in answering, as you did before; and should anything untoward occur in the course of the argument, I will make answer for you, as I did just now, and convey you across the stream.Cp. Plat. Laws 892d, Plat. Laws 892e.