Book 3
677
Ath. That the men who then escaped destruction must have been mostly herdsmen of the hills, scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops.
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Clin. Evidently.
677
Ath. Moreover, men of this kind must necessarily have been unskilled in the arts generally, and especially in such contrivances as men use against one another in cities for purposes of greed and rivalry and all the other villainies which they devise one against another.
677
Clin. It is certainly probable.
677
Ath. Shall we assume that the cities situated in the plains and near the sea were totally destroyed at the time?
677
Clin. Let us assume it.
677
Ath. And shall we say that all implements were lost, and that everything in the way of important arts or inventions that they may have had,—whether concerned with politics or other sciences,— perished at that time? For, supposing that things had remained all that time ordered just as they are now, how, my good sir, could anything new have ever been invented?
677
Clin. Do you mean that these things were unknown to the men of those days for thousands upon thousands of years, and that one or two thousand years ago some of them were revealed to Daedalus, some to Orpheus, some to Palamedes, musical arts to Marsyas and Olympus, lyric to Amphion, and, in short, a vast number of others to other persons—all dating, so to say, from yesterday or the day before?
677
Ath. Are you aware, Clinias, that you have left out your friend who was literally a man of yesterday?
677
Clin. Is it EpimenidesCp. Plat. Laws 642d. you mean?
