road.

  Y. Soc. What road?

  Str. I think that we may have a little amusement; there is a
famous tale, of which a good portion may with advantage be interwoven,
and then we may resume our series of divisions, and proceed in the old
path until we arrive at the desired summit. Shall we do as I say?

  Y. Soc. By all means.

  Str. Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to hear; and
you are not too old for childish amusement.

  Y. Soc. Let me hear.

  Str. There did really happen, and will again happen, like many other
events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record, the
portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel of
Atreus and Thyestes. You have heard no doubt, and remember what they
say happened at that time?

  Y. Soc. I suppose you to mean the token of the birth of the golden
lamb.

  Str. No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how
the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east,
and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which
they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus.

  Y. Soc. Yes; there is that legend also.

  Str. Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos.

  Y. Soc. Yes, very often.

  Str. Did you ever hear that the men of former times were
earthborn, and not begotten of one another?

  Y. Soc. Yes, that is another old tradition.

  Str. All these stories, and ten thousand others which are still more
wonderful, have a common origin; many of them have been lost in the
lapse of ages, or are repeated only in a disconnected form; but the
origin of them is what no one has told, and may as well be told now;
for the tale is suited to throw light on the nature of the king.

  Y. Soc. Very good; and I hope that you will give the whole story,
and leave out nothing.

  Str. Listen, then. There is a time when God himself guides and helps
to roll the world in its course; and there is a time, on the
completion of a certain cycle, when he lets go, and the world being
a living creature, and having originally received intelligence from
its author and creator turns about and by an inherent necessity
revolves in the opposite direction.

  Y. Soc. Why is that?

  Str. Why, because only the most divine things of all remain ever
unchanged and the same, and body is not included in this class. Heaven
and the universe, as we have termed them, although they have been
endowed by the Creator with many glories, partake of a bodily
nature, and therefore cannot be entirely free from perturbation. But
their motion is, as far as possible, single and in the same place, and
of the same kind; and is therefore only subject to a reversal, which
is the least alteration possible. For the lord of all moving things is
alone able to move of himself; and to think that he moves them at
one time in one direction and at another time in another is blasphemy.
Hence we must not say that the world is either self-moved always, or
all made to go round by God in two opposite courses; or that two Gods,
having opposite purposes, make it move round. But as I have already
said (and this is the only remaining alternative) the world is
guided at one time by an external power which is divine and receives
fresh life and immortality from the renewing hand of the Creator,
and again, when let go, moves spontaneously, being set free at such
a time as to have, during infinite cycles of years, a reverse
movement: this is due to its perfect balance, to its vast size, and to
the fact that it turns on the smallest pivot.

  Y. Soc. Your account of the world seems to be very reasonable
indeed.

  Str. Let us now reflect and try to gather from what has been said
the nature of the phenomenon which we affirmed to be the cause of
all these wonders. It is this.

  Y. Soc. What?

  Str. The reversal which takes place from time to time of the
motion of the universe.

  Y. Soc. How is that the cause?

  Str. Of all changes of the heavenly motions, we may consider this to
be the greatest and most complete.

  Y. Soc. I should imagine so.

  Str. And it may be supposed to result in the greatest changes to the