[717b]
as also in assigning to the former gods the things superior, the opposites of these.1 Next after these gods the wise man will offer worship to the daemons, and after the daemons to the heroes. After these will come private shrines legally dedicated to ancestral deities; and next, honors paid to living parents. For to these duty enjoins that the debtor should pay back the first and greatest of debts, the most primary of all dues, and that he should acknowledge that all that he owns and has belongs to those who begot and reared him,
1 This account of the ritual proper to the worship of the various deities is obscure. Plainly, however, it is based on the Pythagorean doctrine of “Opposites,” in which the Odd (number) is “superior” to the Even, and the “Right” (side) to the Left (as also the “Male” to the “Female”). It is here laid down that “honors” (or worship) of the “superior” grade are to be offered only to the deities of Olympus, or of the State, and inferior honors only to the deities of the underworld. In Greek augury, also, the left was the side of ill omen (sinister), whereas in Roman augury the right is so.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.