16–18
ACADEMIC
But I swear to you by the dog and the plane-tree that this is so.
BUYER
Heracles! What curious gods!
ACADEMIC
What is that you say? Don’t you think the dog is a god? Don’t you know about Anubis in Egypt, how great he is, and about Sirius in the sky and Cerberus in the world below?
BUYER
Quite right; I was entirely mistaken. But what is your manner of life?
ACADEMIC
I dwell in a city that I created for myself, using an imported constitution and enacting statutes of my own.The allusion is to Plato’s Republic.
BUYER
I should like to hear one of your enactments.
ACADEMIC
Let me tell you the most important one, the view that I hold about wives; it is that none of thei shall belong solely to any one man, but that everyone who so desires may share the rights of the husband.
BUYER
You mean by this that you have abolished the laws against adultery?
5
ACADEMIC
Yes, and in a word, all this pettiness about such matters.
BUYER
What is your attitude as to pretty boys?
ACADEMIC
Their kisses shall be a guerdon for the bravest after they have done some splendid, reckless deed.
BUYER
My word, what generosity! And what is the gist of your wisdom?
ACADEMIC
My “ideas”; I mean the patterns of existing things: for of everything that you behold, the earth, with all that is upon it, the sky, the sea, invisible images exist outside the universe.
BUYER
Where do they exist?
