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[187b] you must beware lest you try your experiment, not on a “corpus vile”,1 but on your sons and the children of your friends, and you prove to be a mere case, as the proverbial saying has it, of starting pottery on a wine-jar.2 So tell us what you claim, or do not claim, as your resources and acquirements in this kind.” There, Lysimachus, demand that from these good persons, and do not let them off.


1 Lit. “on the Carian slave.”

2 i.e., on a large instead of small piece of work, in which a beginner's mistake would be less costly. Cf. Gorg. 514 E.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955.

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