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[153c] it learns nothing and forgets what it has learned?

Theaetetus
Certainly.

Socrates
Then the good, both for the soul and for the body, is motion, and rest is the opposite?

Theaetetus
Apparently.

Socrates
Now shall I go on and mention to you also windless air, calm sea, and all that sort of thing, and say that stillness causes decay and destruction and that the opposite brings preservation? And shall I add to this the all-compelling and crowning argument that Homer by “the golden chain”1 refers to nothing else than the sun,


1 Hom. Il. 8.18 ff. especially 26. In this passage Zeus declares that all the gods and goddesses together could not, with a golden chain, drag him from on high, but that if he pulled, he would drag them, with earth and sea, would then bind the chain round the summit of Olympus, and all the rest would hang aloft. This “crowning argument” is a reductio ad absurdumof the habit of using texts from Homer in support of all kinds of doctrine.

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