TES: Very true.

STRANGER: But if this is as you say, can our argument about the king
be true and unimpeachable? Were we right in selecting him out of ten
thousand other claimants to be the shepherd and rearer of the human
flock?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Surely not.

STRANGER: Had we not reason just to now to apprehend, that although we
may have described a sort of royal form, we have not as yet accurately
worked out the true image of the Statesman? and that we cannot reveal
him as he truly is in his own nature, until we have disengaged and
separated him from those who hang about him and claim to share in his
prerogatives?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And that, Socrates, is what we must do, if we do not mean to
bring disgrace upon the argument at its close.

YOUNG SOCRATES: We must certainly avoid that.

STRANGER: Then let us make a new beginning, and travel by a different
road.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What road?

STRANGER: 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?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

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

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: 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?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I suppose you to mean the token of the birth of the
golden lamb.

STRANGER: 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.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; there is that legend also.

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

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, very often.

STRANGER: Did you ever hear that the men of former times were
earth-born, and not begotten of one another?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that is another old tradition.

STRANGER: All these stories, and ten thousand others which are still
more wonderful, have a common orig