[336b]
And if all this had been done by a man who was just and courageous and temperate and wisdom-loving, the most of men would have formed the same opinion of virtue which would have prevailed, one may say, throughout the whole world, if Dionysius had been persuaded by me, and which would have saved all. But as it is, the onset of some deity or some avenging spirit, by means of lawlessness and godlessness and, above all, by the rash acts of ignorance1—that ignorance which is the root whence all evils for all men spring and which will bear hereafter most bitter fruit for those who have planted it—this it is which for the second time
1 For the calamitous effects of “ignorance” (or “folly”) cf. Plat. Laws 688c ff., Plat. Laws 863c ff.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 7 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1966.
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