[620b]
The soul that drew the twentieth lot chose the life of a
lion; it was the soul of Ajax, the son of Telamon, which, because it
remembered the adjudication of the arms of Achilles, was unwilling to become
a man. The next, the soul of Agamemnon, likewise from hatred of the human
race because of its sufferings, substituted the life of an eagle.1
Drawing one of the middle lots the soul of Atalanta caught sight of the
great honors attached to an athlete's life and could not pass them by but
snatched at them.
1 Cf. Aesch.Ag. 114 ff.
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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