[359d]
which men say
once came to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian.1 They relate that he was a
shepherd in the service of the ruler at that time of Lydia, and that after a great deluge of
rain and an earthquake the ground opened and a chasm appeared in the place
where he was pasturing; and they say that he saw and wondered and went down
into the chasm; and the story goes that he beheld other marvels there and a
hollow bronze horse with little doors, and that he peeped in and saw a
corpse within, as it seemed, of more than mortal stature,
1 So manuscripts and Proclus. There are many emendations which the curious will find in Adam's first appendix to the book. Herodotus i. 8-13 tells a similar but not identical story of Gyges himself, in which the magic ring and many other points of Plato's tale are lacking. On the whole legend cf. the study of Kirby Flower Smith, A.J.P. vol. xxiii. pp. 261-282, 361-387, and Frazer's Paus. iii. p. 417.
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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