“Friend,” answered; the philosopher, “let us investigate our situation.  Since we are in motion, we must arrive somewhere, and since earthly existence must have a limit, I believe that this limit is to be found at the parting of two beginnings.  In the struggle of light with darkness we attain the crown of our endeavours.  Since the ability to think has not been taken from us, I believe that it is the will of the divine being who called our power of thinking into existence that we should investigate the goal of our endeavours ourselves.  Therefore, Elpidias, let us in dignified manner go to meet the dawn that lies beyond those clouds.

“Oh, my friend!  If that is the dawn, I would rather the long cheerless night:  had endured forever, for it was quiet and peaceful.  Don’t you think our time passed tolerably well in instructive converse?  And now my soul trembles before the tempest drawing nigh.  Say what you will, but there before us are no ordinary shades of the dead night.”

Zeus hurled a bolt into the bottomless gulf.

Ctesippus looked up to the peak, and his soul was frozen with horror.  Huge sombre figures of the Olympian gods crowded on the mountain in a circle.  A last ray shot through the region of clouds and mists, and died away like a faint memory.  A storm was approaching now, and the powers of night were once more in the ascendant.  Dark figures covered the heavens.  In the centre Ctesippus could discern the all-powerful son of Cronos surrounded by a halo.  The sombre figures of the older gods encircled him in wrathful excitement.  Like flocks of birds winging their way in the twilight, like eddies of dust driven by a hurricane, like autumn leaves lashed by Boreas, numerous minor gods hovered in long clouds and occupied the spaces.

When the clouds gradually lifted from the peak and sent down dismal horror to embrace the earth, Ctesippus fell upon his knees.  Later, he admitted that in this dreadful moment he forgot all his master’s deductions and conclusions.  His courage failed him; and terror took possession of his soul.

He merely listened.

Two voices resounded there where before had been silence, the one the mighty and threatening voice of the Godhead, the other the weak voice of a mortal which the wind carried from the mountain slope to the spot where Ctesippus had left Socrates.

“Are you,” thus spake the voice from the clouds, “are you the blasphemous Socrates who strives with the gods of heaven and earth?  Once there were none so joyous, so immortal, as we.  Now, for long we have passed our days in darkness because of the unbelief and doubt that have come upon earth.  Never has the mist closed in on us so heavily as since the time your voice resounded in Athens, the city we once so dearly loved.  Why did you not follow the commands of your father, Sophroniscus?  The good man permitted himself a few little sins, especially in his youth, yet by way of recompense, we frequently enjoyed the smell of his offerings—­”