if all things were as they now are, nothing would have ever been invented.  All our famous discoveries have been made within the last thousand years, and many of them are but of yesterday.’  Yes, Cleinias, and you must not forget Epimenides, who was really of yesterday; he practised the lesson of moderation and abstinence which Hesiod only preached.  ‘True.’  After the great destruction we may imagine that the earth was a desert, in which there were a herd or two of oxen and a few goats, hardly enough to support those who tended them; while of politics and governments the survivors would know nothing.  And out of this state of things have arisen arts and laws, and a great deal of virtue and a great deal of vice; little by little the world has come to be what it is.  At first, the few inhabitants would have had a natural fear of descending into the plains; although they would want to have intercourse with one another, they would have a difficulty in getting about, having lost the arts, and having no means of extracting metals from the earth, or of felling timber; for even if they had saved any tools, these would soon have been worn out, and they could get no more until the art of metallurgy had been again revived.  Faction and war would be extinguished among them, for being solitary they would incline to be friendly; and having abundance of pasture and plenty of milk and flesh, they would have nothing to quarrel about.  We may assume that they had also dwellings, clothes, pottery, for the weaving and plastic arts do not require the use of metals.  In those days they were neither poor nor rich, and there was no insolence or injustice among them; for they were of noble natures, and lived up to their principles, and believed what they were told; knowing nothing of land or naval warfare, or of legal practices or party conflicts, they were simpler and more temperate, and also more just than the men of our day.  ‘Very true.’  I am showing whence the need of lawgivers arises, for in primitive ages they neither had nor wanted them.  Men lived according to the customs of their fathers, in a simple manner, under a patriarchal government, such as still exists both among Hellenes and barbarians, and is described in Homer as prevailing among the Cyclopes:—­

’They have no laws, and they dwell in rocks or on the tops of mountains, and every one is the judge of his wife and children, and they do not trouble themselves about one another.’

’That is a charming poet of yours, though I know little of him, for in Crete foreign poets are not much read.’  ’But he is well known in Sparta, though he describes Ionian rather than Dorian manners, and he seems to take your view of primitive society.’  May we not suppose that government arose out of the union of single families who survived the destruction, and were under the rule of patriarchs, because they had originally descended from a single father and mother?  ‘That is very probable.’  As time went on, men increased