Cleinias:  What do you mean?

Athenian:  I mean that he might watch them from the point of view of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite ages.

Cleinias:  How so?

Athenian:  Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?

Cleinias:  Hardly.

Athenian:  But are sure that it must be vast and incalculable?

Cleinias:  Certainly.

Athenian:  And have not thousands and thousands of cities come into being during this period and as many perished?  And has not each of them had every form of government many times over, now growing larger, now smaller, and again improving or declining?

Cleinias:  To be sure.

Athenian:  Let us endeavour to ascertain the cause of these changes; for that will probably explain the first origin and development of forms of government.

Cleinias:  Very good.  You shall endeavour to impart your thoughts to us, and we will make an effort to understand you.

Athenian:  Do you believe that there is any truth in ancient traditions?

Cleinias:  What traditions?

Athenian:  The traditions about the many destructions of mankind which have been occasioned by deluges and pestilences, and in many other ways, and of the survival of a remnant?

Cleinias:  Every one is disposed to believe them.

Athenian:  Let us consider one of them, that which was caused by the famous deluge.

Cleinias:  What are we to observe about it?

Athenian:  I mean to say that those who then escaped would only be hill shepherds,—­small sparks of the human race preserved on the tops of mountains.

Cleinias:  Clearly.

Athenian:  Such survivors would necessarily be unacquainted with the arts and the various devices which are suggested to the dwellers in cities by interest or ambition, and with all the wrongs which they contrive against one another.

Cleinias:  Very true.

Athenian:  Let us suppose, then, that the cities in the plain and on the sea-coast were utterly destroyed at that time.

Cleinias:  Very good.

Athenian:  Would not all implements have then perished and every other excellent invention of political or any other sort of wisdom have utterly disappeared?

Cleinias:  Why, yes, my friend; and if things had always continued as they are at present ordered, how could any discovery have ever been made even in the least particular?  For it is evident that the arts were unknown during ten thousand times ten thousand years.  And no more than a thousand or two thousand years have elapsed since the discoveries of Daedalus, Orpheus and Palamedes,—­since Marsyas and Olympus invented music, and Amphion the lyre—­not to speak of numberless other inventions which are but of yesterday.