Statesman | Page 7

will
all dispute his right to manage the flock. I think that we can best
distinguish him by having recourse to a famous old tradition, which
may amuse as well as instruct us; the narrative is perfectly true,

although the scepticism of mankind is prone to doubt the tales of old.
You have heard what happened in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes?
'You mean about the golden lamb?' No, not that; but another part of the
story, which tells how the sun and stars once arose in the west and set
in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, as a witness to the
right of Atreus. 'There is such a story.' And no doubt you have heard of
the empire of Cronos, and of the earthborn men? The origin of these
and the like stories is to be found in the tale which I am about to
narrate.
There was a time when God directed the revolutions of the world, but
at the completion of a certain cycle he let go; and the world, by a
necessity of its nature, turned back, and went round the other way. For
divine things alone are unchangeable; but the earth and heavens,
although endowed with many glories, have a body, and are therefore
liable to perturbation. In the case of the world, the perturbation is very
slight, and amounts only to a reversal of motion. For the lord of moving
things is alone self-moved; neither can piety allow that he goes at one
time in one direction and at another time in another; or that God has
given the universe opposite motions; or that there are two gods, one
turning it in one direction, another in another. But the truth is, that there
are two cycles of the world, and in one of them it is governed by an
immediate Providence, and receives life and immortality, and in the
other is let go again, and has a reverse action during infinite ages. This
new action is spontaneous, and is due to exquisite perfection of balance,
to the vast size of the universe, and to the smallness of the pivot upon
which it turns. All changes in the heaven affect the animal world, and
this being the greatest of them, is most destructive to men and animals.
At the beginning of the cycle before our own very few of them had
survived; and on these a mighty change passed. For their life was
reversed like the motion of the world, and first of all coming to a stand
then quickly returned to youth and beauty. The white locks of the aged
became black; the cheeks of the bearded man were restored to their
youth and fineness; the young men grew softer and smaller, and, being
reduced to the condition of children in mind as well as body, began to
vanish away; and the bodies of those who had died by violence, in a
few moments underwent a parallel change and disappeared. In that
cycle of existence there was no such thing as the procreation of animals

from one another, but they were born of the earth, and of this our
ancestors, who came into being immediately after the end of the last
cycle and at the beginning of this, have preserved the recollection. Such
traditions are often now unduly discredited, and yet they may be proved
by internal evidence. For observe how consistent the narrative is; as the
old returned to youth, so the dead returned to life; the wheel of their
existence having been reversed, they rose again from the earth: a few
only were reserved by God for another destiny. Such was the origin of
the earthborn men.
'And is this cycle, of which you are speaking, the reign of Cronos, or
our present state of existence?' No, Socrates, that blessed and
spontaneous life belongs not to this, but to the previous state, in which
God was the governor of the whole world, and other gods subject to
him ruled over parts of the world, as is still the case in certain places.
They were shepherds of men and animals, each of them sufficing for
those of whom he had the care. And there was no violence among them,
or war, or devouring of one another. Their life was spontaneous,
because in those days God ruled over man; and he was to man what
man is now to the animals. Under his government there were no estates,
or private possessions, or families; but the earth produced a sufficiency
of all things, and men were born out of the earth, having no traditions
of the past; and as the temperature of the seasons was mild, they took
no thought for raiment, and had no beds, but lived and dwelt in the