he said, and you would mean by animals living beings?

Yes, I said.

You agree then, that those animals only are yours with which you have
the power to do all these things which I was just naming?

I agree.

Then, after a pause, in which he seemed to be lost in the contemplation
of something great, he said: Tell me, Socrates, have you an ancestral
Zeus? Here, anticipating the final move, like a person caught in a
net, who gives a desperate twist that he may get away, I said: No,
Dionysodorus, I have not.

What a miserable man you must be then, he said; you are not an Athenian
at all if you have no ancestral gods or temples, or any other mark of
gentility.

Nay, Dionysodorus, I said, do not be rough; good words, if you
please; in the way of religion I have altars and temples, domestic and
ancestral, and all that other Athenians have.

And have not other Athenians, he said, an ancestral Zeus?

That name, I said, is not to be found among the Ionians, whether
colonists or citizens of Athens; an ancestral Apollo there is, who
is the father of Ion, and a family Zeus, and a Zeus guardian of
the phratry, and an Athene guardian of the phratry. But the name of
ancestral Zeus is unknown to us.

No matter, said Dionysodorus, for you admit that you have Apollo, Zeus,
and Athene.

Certainly, I said.

And they are your gods, he said.

Yes, I said, my lords and ancestors.

At any rate they are yours, he said, did you not admit that?

I did, I said; what is going to happen to me?

And are not these gods animals? for you admit that all things which have
life are animals; and have not these gods life?

They have life, I said.

Then are they not animals?

They are animals, I said.

And you admitted that of animals those are yours which you could give
away or sell or offer in sacrifice, as you pleased?

I did admit that, Euthydemus, and I have no way of escape.

Well then, said he, if you admit that Zeus and the other gods are yours,
can you sell them or give them away or do what you will with them, as
you would with other animals?

At this I was quite struck dumb, Crito, and lay prostrate. Ctesippus
came to the rescue.

Bravo, Heracles, brave words, said he.

Bravo Heracles, or is Heracles a Bravo? said Dionysodorus.

Poseidon, said Ctesippus, what awful distinctions. I will have no more
of them; the pair are invincible.

Then, my dear Crito, there was universal applause of the speakers and
their words,