[624a]
Athenian
To whom do you ascribe the authorship of your legal arrangements, Strangers? To a god or to some man?Clinias
To a god, Stranger, most rightfully to a god. We Cretans call Zeus our lawgiver; while in Lacedaemon, where our friend here has his home, I believe they claim Apollo as theirs. Is not that so, Megillus?Megillus
Yes.Athenian
Do you then, like Homer,1 say that
[624b]
Minos used to go every ninth year to hold converse with his father Zeus, and that he was guided by his divine oracles in laying down the laws for your cities?Clinias
So our people say. And they say also that his brother Rhadamanthys,—no doubt you have heard the name,—was exceedingly just. And certainly we Cretans
1 Cp. Hom. Od. 19.178.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
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