Athenian:  And we must suppose this event to have taken place many ages after the deluge?

Athenian:  A marvellous forgetfulness of the former destruction would appear to have come over them, when they placed their town right under numerous streams flowing from the heights, trusting for their security to not very high hills, either.

Cleinias:  There must have been a long interval, clearly.

Athenian:  And, as population increased, many other cities would begin to be inhabited.

Cleinias:  Doubtless.

Athenian:  Those cities made war against Troy—­by sea as well as land—­for at that time men were ceasing to be afraid of the sea.

Cleinias:  Clearly.

Athenian:  The Achaeans remained ten years, and overthrew Troy.

Cleinias:  True.

Athenian:  And during the ten years in which the Achaeans were besieging Ilium, the homes of the besiegers were falling into an evil plight.  Their youth revolted; and when the soldiers returned to their own cities and families, they did not receive them properly, and as they ought to have done, and numerous deaths, murders, exiles, were the consequence.  The exiles came again, under a new name, no longer Achaeans, but Dorians,—­a name which they derived from Dorieus; for it was he who gathered them together.  The rest of the story is told by you Lacedaemonians as part of the history of Sparta.

Megillus:  To be sure.

Athenian:  Thus, after digressing from the original subject of laws into music and drinking-bouts, the argument has, providentially, come back to the same point, and presents to us another handle.  For we have reached the settlement of Lacedaemon; which, as you truly say, is in laws and in institutions the sister of Crete.  And we are all the better for the digression, because we have gone through various governments and settlements, and have been present at the foundation of a first, second, and third state, succeeding one another in infinite time.  And now there appears on the horizon a fourth state or nation which was once in process of settlement and has continued settled to this day.  If, out of all this, we are able to discern what is well or ill settled, and what laws are the salvation and what are the destruction of cities, and what changes would make a state happy, O Megillus and Cleinias, we may now begin again, unless we have some fault to find with the previous discussion.

Megillus:  If some God, Stranger, would promise us that our new enquiry about legislation would be as good and full as the present, I would go a great way to hear such another, and would think that a day as long as this —­and we are now approaching the longest day of the year—­was too short for the discussion.

Athenian:  Then I suppose that we must consider this subject?

Megillus:  Certainly.