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[453d] “I foresaw and feared, and so shrank from touching on the law concerning the getting and breeding of women and children.” “It does not seem an easy thing, by heaven,” he said, “no, by heaven.” “No, it is not,” said I; “but the fact is that whether one tumbles into a little diving-pool or plump into the great sea he swims all the same.” “By all means.” “Then we, too, must swim and try to escape out of the sea1 of argument in the hope that either some dolphin2 will take us on its back or some other desperate rescue.”

1 Cf. the πέλαγος τῶν λόγωνProtagoras 338 A. Similarly Sidney Smith: “cut his cable, and spread his enormous canvas, and launch into the wide sea of reasoning eloquence.”

2 An allusion to the story of Arion and the dolphin in Herodotus i. 24, as ὑπολαβεῖν perhaps proves. For ἄπορον cf. 378 A.

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