THEAETETUS: Say more distinctly what you mean.

STRANGER: I think that Parmenides, and all ever yet undertook to

determine the number and nature of existences, talked to us in rather a

light and easy strain.

THEAETETUS: How?

STRANGER: As if we had been children, to whom they repeated each his own

mythus or story;--one said that there were three principles, and that at

one time there was war between certain of them; and then again there was

peace, and they were married and begat children, and brought them up;

and another spoke of two principles,--a moist and a dry, or a hot and

a cold, and made them marry and cohabit. The Eleatics, however, in our

part of the world, say that all things are many in name, but in nature

one; this is their mythus, which goes back to Xenophanes, and is even

older. Then there are Ionian, and in more recent times Sicilian muses,

who have arrived at the conclusion that to unite the two principles is

safer, and to say that being is one and many, and that these are held

together by enmity and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting, as

the severer Muses assert, while the gentler ones do not insist on the

perpetual strife and peace, but admit a relaxation and alternation of

them; peace and unity sometimes prevailing under the sway of Aphrodite,

and then again plurality and war, by reason of a principle of strife.

Whether any of them spoke the truth in all this is hard to determine;

besides, antiquity and famous men should have reverence, and not be

Sophist