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[181a] unless we protect ourselves and escape somehow, we shall pay the penalty, like those in the palaestra, who in playing on the line are caught by both sides and dragged in opposite directions.1 I think, then, we had better examine first the one party, those whom we originally set out to join, the flowing ones, and if we find their arguments sound, we will help them to pull us over, trying thus to escape the others; but if we find that the partisans of “the whole” seem to have truer doctrines, we will take refuge with them from those who would move what is motionless.


1 In the game referred to (called διελκυστίνδα by Pollux, ix. 112) the players were divided into two parties, each of which tried to drag its opponents over a line drawn across the palaestra.

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