[391e]
For, as we were saying, such utterances are
both impious and false. For we proved, I take it, that for evil to arise
from gods is an impossibility.” “Certainly.”
“And they are furthermore harmful to those that hear them. For
every man will be very lenient with his own misdeeds if he is convinced that
such are and were the actions of“
The near-sown seed of gods,
Close kin to Zeus, for whom on Ida's top
Ancestral altars flame to highest heaven,
Nor in their life-blood fails1 the fire
divine.
”Aesch. Niobe Fr.For which cause we must put
down such fables, lest they breed
1 Plato was probably thinking of this passage when he wrote the last paragraph of the Critias.
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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