Athenian:  There is some difficulty in understanding my meaning, but not a very great one, nor will any great length of time be required.  And of this I am myself a proof; for I did not know these things long ago, nor in the days of my youth, and yet I can explain them to you in a brief space of time; whereas if they had been difficult I could certainly never have explained them all, old as I am, to old men like yourselves.

Cleinias:  True; but what is this study which you describe as wonderful and fitting for youth to learn, but of which we are ignorant?  Try and explain the nature of it to us as clearly as you can.

Athenian:  I will.  For, O my good friends, that other doctrine about the wandering of the sun and the moon and the other stars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth.  Each of them moves in the same path—­ not in many paths, but in one only, which is circular, and the varieties are only apparent.  Nor are we right in supposing that the swiftest of them is the slowest, nor conversely, that the slowest is the quickest.  And if what I say is true, only just imagine that we had a similar notion about horses running at Olympia, or about men who ran in the long course, and that we addressed the swiftest as the slowest and the slowest as the swiftest, and sang the praises of the vanquished as though he were the victor—­in that case our praises would not be true, nor very agreeable to the runners, though they be but men; and now, to commit the same error about the Gods which would have been ludicrous and erroneous in the case of men—­is not that ludicrous and erroneous?

Cleinias:  Worse than ludicrous, I should say.

Athenian:  At all events, the Gods cannot like us to be spreading a false report of them.

Cleinias:  Most true, if such is the fact.

Athenian:  And if we can show that such is really the fact, then all these matters ought to be learned so far as is necessary for the avoidance of impiety; but if we cannot, they may be let alone, and let this be our decision.

Cleinias:  Very good.

Athenian:  Enough of laws relating to education and learning.  But hunting and similar pursuits in like manner claim our attention.  For the legislator appears to have a duty imposed upon him which goes beyond mere legislation.  There is something over and above law which lies in a region between admonition and law, and has several times occurred to us in the course of discussion; for example, in the education of very young children there were things, as we maintain, which are not to be defined, and to regard them as matters of positive law is a great absurdity.  Now, our laws and the whole constitution of our state having been thus delineated, the praise of the virtuous citizen is not complete when he is described as the person who serves the laws best and obeys them most, but the higher form of praise is that which describes