[588c]
“What sort
of an image?” he said. “One of those natures that the
ancient fables tell of,” said I, “as that of the
Chimaera1 or Scylla2 or
Cerberus,3 and the numerous other examples that are told of many
forms grown together in one.” “Yes, they do tell of
them.” “Mould, then, a single shape of a manifold and
many-headed beast4 that has a ring
of heads of tame and wild beasts and can change them and cause to spring
forth from itself all such growths.”
1 Cf. Homer, Il. vi. 179-182, Phaedr. 229 D.
2 Od. xii. 85 ff.
3 Hesiod, Theog. 311-312.
4 Stallbaum ad loc. gives a long list of writers who imitated this passage. Hesiod, Theog. 823 f., portrays a similar monster in Typhoeus, who had a hundred serpent-heads. For the animal in man c.Tim. 70 E, Charm. 155 D-E, Phaedr. 230 A, 246 A ff., Boethius, Cons. iv. 2-3, Horace Epist. i. 1. 76, Iamblichus, Protrept. chap. iii.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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