[790d]
if that were possible—on the sea. As it is, with new-born infants one should reproduce this condition as nearly as possible. Further evidence of this may be seen in the fact that this course is adopted and its usefulness recognized both by those who nurse small children and by those who administer remedies in cases of Corybantism.1 Thus when mothers have children suffering from sleeplessness, and want to lull them to rest, the treatment they apply is to give them, not quiet, but motion, for they rock them constantly in their arms; and instead of silence,
1 “Corybantism” is a technical term for a state of morbid mental excitement (cp. “tarantism”) derived from “Corybantes,” the name given to the frenzied worshippers of Bacchus.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.