ginary history, which is a fragment only, commenced in the Timaeus
and continued in the Critias: (3) the much less artistic fiction of the
foundation of the Cretan colony which is introduced in the preface to
the Laws, but soon falls into the background: (4) the beautiful but
rather artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus narrated in his
rhetorical manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called after him: (5)
the speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus, which is a parody of the
orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the recantation of it.
To these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers, and (7) the tale
of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus: (8) the parable of the
Cave (Republic), in which the previous argument is recapitulated, and
the nature and degrees of knowledge having been previously set forth
in the abstract are represented in a picture: (9) the fiction of the
earth-born men (Republic; compare Laws), in which by the adaptation of
an old tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society: (10) the
myth of Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym.: (11)
the parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous sailors
(Republic), in which is represented the relation of the better part of
the world, and of the philosopher, to the mob of politicians: (12) the
ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina charging
only a small payment for saving men from death, the reason being that he
is uncertain whether to live or die is better for them (Gor.): (13) the
treatment of freemen and citizens by physicians and of slaves by
their apprentices,--a somewhat laboured figure of speech intended to
illustrate the two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws).
There also occur in Plato continuous images; some of them extend over
several pages, appearing and reappearing at intervals: such as the bees
stinging and stingless (paupers and thieves) in the Eighth Book of
the Republic, who are generated in the transition from timocracy to
oligarchy: the sun, which is to the visible world what the idea of good
is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book of the Republic: the composite
animal, having the form of a man, but containing under a human skin a
lion and a many-headed monster (Republic): the great beast, i.e. the
populace: and the wild beast within us, meaning the passions which are
always liable to break out: the animated comparisons of the degradation
of phi