15–18
Sokrates
Well, who could be a better man than I to associate with the fair? It is beautiful souls that I love, not bodies.
Indeed, I swear it to you by the dog and the plane-tree.
Buyer
Heavens, what strange gods!
Sokrates
What's that you say? Don't you think the dog is a god? Perhaps you have not noticed how great Anoubis is in Egypt, and Seirios in the heavens, and Kerberos among the dead.
Buyer
You are right, it was my mistake. But what is your manner of life?
Sokrates
I live by myself in a sort of state that I fashioned with a foreign form of government, and I enact my own laws.
Buyer
I should like to hear one of your principles.
Sokrates
Well, this is the most important: my decision about women. No woman is assigned to one man alone, but to every one who wishes her in marriage. Have you, then, abrogated the laws about marriage?
Sokrates
Dear me, yes, and all such petty formalities. Beauty shall be the reward of the bravest-those who have accomplished some brilliant feat of daring.
Buyer
A fine reward! And what is the substance of your philosophy?
Sokrates
The ideas and the types of existing things; for, indeed, everything that you see-the earth and all upon it, the sky, the sea-all these things have invisible images outside the universe.
Sokrates
Nowhere; for if they were anywhere they could not be.
Buyer
I don't see these types you speak of.
5
Sokrates
Naturally; for your soul's eye is blind. But I see the images of all things: an invisible you, another me, and everything double.
