Cleinias:  What jests?

Athenian:  They will make some irreverent speech of this sort:  ’O inhabitants of Athens, and Sparta, and Cnosus,’ they will reply, ’in that you speak truly; for some of us deny the very existence of the Gods, while others, as you say, are of opinion that they do not care about us; and others that they are turned from their course by gifts.  Now we have a right to claim, as you yourself allowed, in the matter of laws, that before you are hard upon us and threaten us, you should argue with us and convince us—­you should first attempt to teach and persuade us that there are Gods by reasonable evidences, and also that they are too good to be unrighteous, or to be propitiated, or turned from their course by gifts.  For when we hear such things said of them by those who are esteemed to be the best of poets, and orators, and prophets, and priests, and by innumerable others, the thoughts of most of us are not set upon abstaining from unrighteous acts, but upon doing them and atoning for them.  When lawgivers profess that they are gentle and not stern, we think that they should first of all use persuasion to us, and show us the existence of Gods, if not in a better manner than other men, at any rate in a truer; and who knows but that we shall hearken to you?  If then our request is a fair one, please to accept our challenge.

Cleinias:  But is there any difficulty in proving the existence of the Gods?

Athenian:  How would you prove it?

Cleinias:  How?  In the first place, the earth and the sun, and the stars and the universe, and the fair order of the seasons, and the division of them into years and months, furnish proofs of their existence, and also there is the fact that all Hellenes and barbarians believe in them.

Athenian:  I fear, my sweet friend, though I will not say that I much regard, the contempt with which the profane will be likely to assail us.  For you do not understand the nature of their complaint, and you fancy that they rush into impiety only from a love of sensual pleasure.

Cleinias:  Why, Stranger, what other reason is there?

Athenian:  One which you who live in a different atmosphere would never guess.

Cleinias:  What is it?

Athenian:  A very grievous sort of ignorance which is imagined to be the greatest wisdom.

Cleinias:  What do you mean?

Athenian:  At Athens there are tales preserved in writing which the virtue of your state, as I am informed, refuses to admit.  They speak of the Gods in prose as well as verse, and the oldest of them tell of the origin of the heavens and of the world, and not far from the beginning of their story they proceed to narrate the birth of the Gods, and how after they were born they behaved to one another.  Whether these stories have in other ways a good or a bad influence, I should not like to be severe upon