Athenian:  Have you forgotten, Cleinias, the name of a friend who is really of yesterday?

Cleinias:  I suppose that you mean Epimenides.

Athenian:  The same, my friend; he does indeed far overleap the heads of all mankind by his invention; for he carried out in practice, as you declare, what of old Hesiod (Works and Days) only preached.

Cleinias:  Yes, according to our tradition.

Athenian:  After the great destruction, may we not suppose that the state of man was something of this sort:—­In the beginning of things there was a fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land; a herd or two of oxen would be the only survivors of the animal world; and there might be a few goats, these too hardly enough to maintain the shepherds who tended them?

Cleinias:  True.

Athenian:  And of cities or governments or legislation, about which we are now talking, do you suppose that they could have any recollection at all?

Cleinias:  None whatever.

Athenian:  And out of this state of things has there not sprung all that we now are and have:  cities and governments, and arts and laws, and a great deal of vice and a great deal of virtue?

Cleinias:  What do you mean?

Athenian:  Why, my good friend, how can we possibly suppose that those who knew nothing of all the good and evil of cities could have attained their full development, whether of virtue or of vice?

Cleinias:  I understand your meaning, and you are quite right.

Athenian:  But, as time advanced and the race multiplied, the world came to be what the world is.

Cleinias:  Very true.

Athenian:  Doubtless the change was not made all in a moment, but little by little, during a very long period of time.

Cleinias:  A highly probable supposition.

Athenian:  At first, they would have a natural fear ringing in their ears which would prevent their descending from the heights into the plain.

Cleinias:  Of course.

Athenian:  The fewness of the survivors at that time would have made them all the more desirous of seeing one another; but then the means of travelling either by land or sea had been almost entirely lost, as I may say, with the loss of the arts, and there was great difficulty in getting at one another; for iron and brass and all metals were jumbled together and had disappeared in the chaos; nor was there any possibility of extracting ore from them; and they had scarcely any means of felling timber.  Even if you suppose that some implements might have been preserved in the mountains, they must quickly have worn out and vanished, and there would be no more of them until the art of metallurgy had again revived.

Cleinias:  There could not have been.