20
You are right. You see, in fact, how many have come to dislike me and how I am imperilled because I follow it. However, I am very well up in the opposite calling, too: I mean the one with love for a base; for I am a truth-lover, a beauty-lover, a simplicitylover, and a lover of all else that is kindred to love. But there are very few who deserve to have this calling practised upon them, while those who come under the other and are closer akin to hatefulness number untold thousands. So the chances are that by this time I have lost my skill in the pne calling for lack of practice, but have become very expert in the other.
20
But that ought not to be so, for if a man can do the one, they say, he can do the other. So do not distinguish the two callings; they are but one, though they seem two.
20
You know best as to that, Philosophy. For my part, however, I am so-constituted as to hate rascals and to commend and love honest men.
21
Come, now, since we are where we planned to be, let us hold our court somewhere hereabouts in the portico of Our Lady of the Citadel.Athena Polias, who shared with Erechtheus the temple now known as the Erechtheum. Priestess, arrange the benches for us. Let us in the meantime pay our homage to the goddess.
21
Lady of the Citadel, come to my aid against the pretenders, remembering how many oaths thou dost hear them make and break each day, and what they do thou alone seest, dwelling as thou dost upon a lookout. Now is thine hour to requite them. If thou seest that I am being overborne, and that the black ballots are more than the half, add thou thine own and set me free.Frankness aske of Athena more aid than she generally gave; for the proverbial ballot of Athena merely decided a tie vote in favour of the defendant, as in the trial of Orestes.
