Elpidias laughed.

“Really you philosophers sometimes don’t know how to answer the simplest questions.  I’m a plain tanner who never in my life studied sophistry, yet I know why I must honour the Olympians.”

“Tell me quickly, so that I. too, may know why.”

“Why?  Ha!  Ha!  It’s too simple, you wise Socrates.”

“So much the better if it’s simple.  But don’t keep your wisdom from, me.  Tell me—­why must one honour the gods?”

“Why.  Because everybody does it.”

“Friend, you know very well that not every one honours the gods.  Wouldn’t it be more correct to say ’many’?”

“Very well, many.”

“But tell me, don’t more men deal wickedly than righteously?”

“I think so.  You find more wicked people than good people.”

“Therefore, if you follow the majority, you ought to deal wickedly and not righteously?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying it, you are.  But I think the reason that men reverence the Olympians is not because the majority worship them.  We must find another, more rational ground.  Perhaps you mean they deserve reverence?”

“Yes, very right.”

“Good.  But then arises a new question:  Why do they deserve reverence?”

“Because of their greatness.”

“Ah, that’s more like it.  Perhaps I will soon be agreeing with you.  It only remains for you to tell me wherein their greatness consists.  That’s a difficult question, isn’t it?  Let us seek the answer together.  Homer says that the impetuous Ares, when stretched flat on the ground by a stone thrown by Pallas Athene, covered with his body the space that can be travelled in seven mornings.  You see what an enormous space.”

“Is that wherein greatness consists?”

“There you have me, my friend.  That raises another question.  Do you remember the athlete Theophantes?  He towered over the people a whole head’s length, whereas Pericles was no larger than you.  But whom do we call great, Pericles or Theophantes?”

“I see that greatness does not consist in size of body.  In that you’re right.  I am glad we agree.  Perhaps greatness consists in virtue?”

“Certainly.”

“I think so, too.”

“Well, then, who must bow to whom?  The small before the large, or those who are great in virtues before the wicked?”

“The answer is clear.”

“I think so, too.  Now we will look further into this matter.  Tell me truly, did you ever kill other people’s children with arrows?”

“It goes without saying, never!  Do you think so ill of me?”

“Nor have you, I trust, ever seduced the wives of other men?”

“I was an upright tanner and a good husband.  Don’t forget that, Socrates, I beg of you!”

“You never became a brute, nor by your lustfulness gave your faithful Larissa occasion to revenge herself on women whom you had ruined and on their innocent children?”