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Str. Every one of them seems to tell us a story, as if we were children. One says there are three principles, that some of them are sometimes waging a sort of war with each other, and sometimes become friends and marry and have children and bring them up; and another says there are two, wet and dry or hot and cold, which he settles together and unites in marriage. This refers apparently to Pherecydes and the early lonians. And the Eleatic sect in our region, beginning with Xenophanes and even earlier, have their story that all things, as they are called, are really one. Then some Ionian Heracleitus and his followers. and later some Sicilian Empedocles and his disciples. Muses reflected that it was safest to combine the two tales and to say that being is many and one, and is (or are) held together by enmity and friendship.
243
Str. For the more strenuous Muses say it is always simultaneously coming together and separating; but the gentler ones relaxed the strictness of the doctrine of perpetual strife; they say that the all is sometimes one and friendly, under the influence of Aphrodite, and sometimes many and at variance with itself by reason of some sort of strife. Now whether any of them spoke the truth in all this, or not, it is harsh and improper to impute to famous men of old such a great wrong as falsehood. But one assertion can be made without offence.
243
Theaet. What is that?
243
Str. That they paid too little attention and consideration to the mass of people like ourselves. For they go on to the end, each in his own way, without caring whether their arguments carry us along with them, or whether we are left behind.
243
Theaet. What do you mean?
